Caffeinated...

Yerba Mate can be my salvation when doing these overnight shifts.  It has just enough caffeine so that I can push my way through the last 8 hours of a 24 hour period of wakefulness that is often only broken up, as in the case of today, by a meager 40 minute nap.  A nap that was interrupted by my precious and wonderful cat scratching around in the litter box.  She seriously has some kind of compulsion where, after she uses the litter box, she repeatedly wacks her front paws against the side of the box, probably in attempt to dislodge little disgusting granules of cat litter with no regard to the fact that I'm sleeping like a BABY!  Or that I was sleeping like a baby, that is.

I'm in a little early tonight and working on the laptop in my "office" overlooking 9th Avenue.  Okay, so it's just a conference room that I have no claim on that happens to reach Google's guest wifi.  Anyway, I spent a lot of time last night looking up alternatives to a plugin that comes with Mainstage that's used for looping.  I have it all set up as such (see blog on main webpage here), and yet I'm having issues with record latency so I've downloaded two open source plugins, one called Sooper Looper and the other Mobius.  Tonight I'm going to be devouring all I can about the two.

This week, Mohammad and I will try and do a test screening Sides of the Track on the big screen.  If not, this week, then next.  It's still not solid yet when we will do it, but expect impressions on that once it happens.  I'm excited to see and hear it in a big theater.

And, with any luck, I'll have some updates on the state of the apartment that will not include rants about interrupted sleep.   I anticipate work being done during the day tomorrow and Tuesday, outside and I'm hoping that my super and his guys will be working demolishing the walls and ceiling in my cousin's room.  I implored him not to come on Monday or Tuesday but to definitely come at some point and, even if they aren't yet finished on the outside, to at least start cleaning up the mold and disgusting-ness inside.  Hopefully, that will pan out in the best possible way.  I have a guest coming to stay with me this coming Saturday.  Let's just say the apartment is going to be a little bit crowded if Katrina can't sleep in her own room.

All this has gotten me thinking about my luck lately. I've got so much floating up in the air right now, from little things like the payment for the Celiac disease study to much bigger things like the resolution of the apartment debacle, that I can't wait for it all to just resolve itself and have found myself hoping that at least something will work out for the better.  Because I've had a handful of other things come to rather disappointing resolutions lately, not all of which I will talk about here.  Have you ever gotten that feeling like several things are about to happen and any number of them could go any way?  Yeah, I have that now.  And it's the anticipation that drives me nuts.  You almost stop caring about the outcome out of a sheer desire for something to just happen already!  But then, I feel like sooner or later, my luck just has to change and maybe something will turn out the way I had hoped.  With the apartment situation, I just wish I could be comfortable again soon whatever the outcome is.  With my music, I just want new jobs and to pick up some momentum on my own projects.  With voice over, I just wish I had the time to devote to it and could finish my new demo on my own.

The good news is, and I hesitate to say too much about this but, I came up with a musical idea today that may actually turn into something.  I was sitting in church this morning and our new interim minister was reciting a Rumi poem that really hit me, so I googled it on my phone, copied it and pasted it into an email to myself.  While I was sitting with Jennie after brunch, enjoying the weather, and waiting on our friend Dawn to meet us, I read it out loud and it still resonated.  So, this evening, while I was laying in bed trying to drift back off to sleep after my at woke me up, a melody and accompaniment started to swim around in my head.   Ultimately, this is what made me finally give up on the tossing and turning and catapult myself out of bed and toward the piano.  I plunked out the idea I had and luckily it fit the first few lines quite well.  I played through a few things and scrawled out my ideas on some staff paper that I keep on the piano.  Tomorrow I plan to drop it into Sibelius and flesh it out a little (or a lot) and we'll just see where it goes.  The rest should fall into place as long as I still like it when I sit down with it tomorrow evening.

All in an afternoon's work.  That having been given away, I hope soon to have something basic I can show to my choir director and maybe we can get another piece of mine premiered before the end of the year.  I think the choral music might become a staple for me since I have a definite outlet for it.  It's hard to write my chamber pieces without any idea of when or how I could get them performed.  The piano works of mine are probably going to become another important area for me, especially piano with electronics, now that Tania and I are working together so closely.  She wants to premier something new at a concert in Feburary and we are planning on doing the Rhythmic Movement concert again at some point later in the year.

Anyway, I'd better go for now.  Hope this rambling blog made some sense.  Cohesion is not my forte in the wee small hours.