I've been ruthless. Cutting things out, dropping levels of parts I thought were crucial to the song, only to find out how much better things sound without them, adding things in that basically completed the songs and ultimately cleaning things up and getting them ready for mastering. I've also had some amazing creative spurts, born out of just simply clearing my head and starting fresh on these projects first thing in the morning, while at home alone with no one but the cat and the DVR to distract me.
It's been great. And it's made me have an epiphany about my work, specifically where I do it. It matters to the overall quality of a creative session where it takes place. I've known this for years on some level really but having two places where I do the bulk of my work has made me realize how important the where is. My most prolific months to date can be attributed to being in a the most comfortable and, somehow simultaneously exciting place I had been in for years. My apartment in Greensboro, NC on South Mendenhall Street in the top floor of a beautiful hundred year old Victorian effing gingerbread house in the semester of graduate school immediately following my divorce and return to single life. And most significantly, the first time I ever had a living space all to myself (with just a cat). Starting back to graduate school was exciting, living in that place was incredibly healing and the future was wide open for the first time in my adult life.
Now, my life is still exciting (and getting more exciting every day), I live in another beautiful space, not quite as old, still pretty beautiful, and comparitively sizeable, still not entirely alone (though for most of the day and yes, still with the same cat) and I finally have most of the things I need for a pretty basic home studio, up to and including a damn comfortable chair. Why would I trade that in for working on my music here at work, furtively shoving my earphones in between answering phone calls and emails, hoping that those famous lulls in activity can sustain themselves long enough for me to get something, anything done?
Granted, I've found that I can get simple, remedial tasks done here in my down time but ultimately, there's nothing that beats being home and in my own space for creative work. Those moments where the muse just speaks to you don't happen when you're not entirely focused. You can't write when you're thinking about it in terms of "getting it done really quick before you have to be somewhere else." It's so much better to approach the creative task when you actually have time to do this, so you're not thinking about how little time you have to complete something meaningful. I find that this makes me manage my time much better because if I only have two full days off during the week to write and do creative things, I pretty much have to do my creative work on those days and get the projects up to a point where I can do whatever else needs to be done at work. For example, if I'm writing out a score for something. I write the music at home and input the basic idea into the computer while in front of the piano, then I take the score to work with me and add in dynamic markings and clean up the score and basically do anything tedious and mind numbing that I don't necessarily need the creative part of my brain for, or large amounts of focus.
That said, 6 of the 7 have test mixes ready to go for the car ride on Saturday. And barring some meteor strike, tidal wave, solar flare, pole reversal Mayan Apocalypse (which won't happen because it's really just the end of the calendar and not the end of the world), earthquake, super volcano, nuclear explosion, I'm sure the world will be around to hear my music get licensed to some film/tv show/commercial/documentary/something something as yet to be determined. Rock and freaking roll. Daoust out.
Showing posts with label the apartment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the apartment. Show all posts
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Mickey-mousing, ballerinas and the love of a challenge...
The fan came out of the closet today. No, it didn't tell me it was gay. That's just how muggy it's getting. It's not the heat but the humidity that, for me, heralds the arrival of summer…or in this case, foreshadows because obviously we're a few weeks off here. Either way, it's starting to get uncomfortable and every time I run into one of my neighbors who lives up here on the top floor of our building, he warns me about how hot it gets up here during the summer since we're right under the roof. "You'd better get yourselves an A/C!" I keep telling him we have one. For now the fan is helping fight the heat and humidity just fine. It's actually quite cool in here and it happens to fit right on my window sill…granted it's the window to the fire escape but still, it's a perfect spot. Last apartment I was in I had to stack it precariously on my guitar amp and then it barely reached above the level of the bed.
But anyway, I'm not here to talk about that tonight. That was just to set the scene. I've still got a lot of work cut out for me film score-wise and I haven't even started on the music for the next scene of "The Life." Now there's talk of extending the first one for submission to Sundance so I may have to crack open that file again and lengthen the music cue for the credits. Shouldn't be too hard. Meanwhile, the ballerina scene, Mohammad and I had a chat about it on the phone the other night and shared some ideas. Luckily, we were right on par with where the music should go. He was thinking exactly the same thing I had already thought, which is always good. Plus, we were both in agreement about the need to tie the two scenes together musically as well. Using elements from the first scene will be easy and may feel like cheating but it makes sense. Continuity is a great thing.
Tomorrow, I'm also working on adding in a cello part to the score for the sci fi short. A real one. Recorded by my good friend Lacy and dropbox-ed up from Philly just today. I'm just too tired to start on anything tonight though I am looking it over right now as we speak. Just spent the earlier part of the day polishing off some changes to the last cue (the one that needs the cello part). The first two are basically done and the third is the final cue of the film, the climax scene as it were. The third is the longest because it encompasses two distinct scenes and one that sort of has the feel of a montage. It's also two fight scenes, a chase and an escape all rolled into one. It's been the most challenging, needless to say.
I think the bulk of the work of this film has been this cue to be honest. The first two, once I had the sound palette chosen, fell together in a matter of days and then it was just minor tweaks to the placement of hit points, etc. But this last cue has to hit pretty hard and also has a lot of nuanced things in it. In other words there's a lot going on and the music ends up being in the foreground a lot. But I do love a challenge. The mechanics of a scene like this are mind boggling and scoring it feels a lot like blocking it must have felt. Tedious. I don't really want to say much else about the scene itself until the movie is actually done but suffice it to say, I'm not necessarily mickey-mousing (in other words, matching music precisely to the action) but there are a fair few things that do need to line up and several things happen that the music must not so much announce but support. I was kind of talking about this before when I was mentioning how everything needed to build at the same rate as the action of the scene. But additionally, exact hit points come into play and one has to alter the music in one of many ways, either taking out elements, bringing elements back in, striking a certain chord, changing the chord progression, varying the rhythm, accenting certain notes. But also you can't do so in a way that's contrived. Because that would be mickey-mousing. Seriously, look that up, it's an actual industry term.
Anyway, enough about mickey-mousing. I'm going to need to sleep so I'll be of some use creatively tomorrow. I must always write these entries before sleep. I'm always going on about sleep.
But anyway, I'm not here to talk about that tonight. That was just to set the scene. I've still got a lot of work cut out for me film score-wise and I haven't even started on the music for the next scene of "The Life." Now there's talk of extending the first one for submission to Sundance so I may have to crack open that file again and lengthen the music cue for the credits. Shouldn't be too hard. Meanwhile, the ballerina scene, Mohammad and I had a chat about it on the phone the other night and shared some ideas. Luckily, we were right on par with where the music should go. He was thinking exactly the same thing I had already thought, which is always good. Plus, we were both in agreement about the need to tie the two scenes together musically as well. Using elements from the first scene will be easy and may feel like cheating but it makes sense. Continuity is a great thing.
Tomorrow, I'm also working on adding in a cello part to the score for the sci fi short. A real one. Recorded by my good friend Lacy and dropbox-ed up from Philly just today. I'm just too tired to start on anything tonight though I am looking it over right now as we speak. Just spent the earlier part of the day polishing off some changes to the last cue (the one that needs the cello part). The first two are basically done and the third is the final cue of the film, the climax scene as it were. The third is the longest because it encompasses two distinct scenes and one that sort of has the feel of a montage. It's also two fight scenes, a chase and an escape all rolled into one. It's been the most challenging, needless to say.
I think the bulk of the work of this film has been this cue to be honest. The first two, once I had the sound palette chosen, fell together in a matter of days and then it was just minor tweaks to the placement of hit points, etc. But this last cue has to hit pretty hard and also has a lot of nuanced things in it. In other words there's a lot going on and the music ends up being in the foreground a lot. But I do love a challenge. The mechanics of a scene like this are mind boggling and scoring it feels a lot like blocking it must have felt. Tedious. I don't really want to say much else about the scene itself until the movie is actually done but suffice it to say, I'm not necessarily mickey-mousing (in other words, matching music precisely to the action) but there are a fair few things that do need to line up and several things happen that the music must not so much announce but support. I was kind of talking about this before when I was mentioning how everything needed to build at the same rate as the action of the scene. But additionally, exact hit points come into play and one has to alter the music in one of many ways, either taking out elements, bringing elements back in, striking a certain chord, changing the chord progression, varying the rhythm, accenting certain notes. But also you can't do so in a way that's contrived. Because that would be mickey-mousing. Seriously, look that up, it's an actual industry term.
Anyway, enough about mickey-mousing. I'm going to need to sleep so I'll be of some use creatively tomorrow. I must always write these entries before sleep. I'm always going on about sleep.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Victory!
New York City landlords, 0. Tim and Katrina, 1.
I didn't think that the post office operated the day after Thanksgiving but there was a stack of letters in the mailbox last night when I got home from rehearsing with Tania. Through the window of one envelope, I saw both mine and Katrina's names, then the apartment number of my old apartment next to the words MEMO. Knowing what it was right away, I started to do a little dance in the hallway and exclaim my disbelief out loud, trying to be as quiet as possible, being it 1 in the morning at this point.
Dropping all of my stuff unceremoniously once inside the door to my apartment, I ripped open the envelope to see a check for the entire amount of our security deposit! Upon closer inspection I realized that the check was dated the 17th of November, before I sent the letter the second time. Even closer inspection revealed that the street number of my landlord's address was actually one number off from what I recall putting on both copies of the letter that I sent. This explains why the first one bounced back. I remember now that I actually called him shortly after I figured that first letter should have arrived (even though I hadn't seen the receipt saying he'd signed for it). I ended up leaving a message but whatever I said in that message must have prompted them to finally send it along. I didn't even need to send the letter the second time and it doesn't matter now anyway, because it's most certainly going to bounce back again.
In a way, I'm slightly disappointed that he didn't get to read the masterpiece I crafted with the help of my loyal editors (thanks mom and Josee!). But I'm in no way disappointed that the money is now in our possession. In fact, some combination of floored, ecstatic, incredulous and relieved might come closer to encapsulating the feeling I had upon receiving it.
That having been said, go us. Now, I can really say that we landed on our feet. Moving right along, I rehearsed Moon, Tides, Cycles with Tania last night in Queens. It went pretty well, considering I didn't have my score with me. Everything in the Mainstage template worked as before, with me barely having to do anything with regards to setup. I'm thinking about adding some more things to it, like a control for some delay effects on the ring modulation and perhaps a filter sweep for the Absynth sounds.
I already added a channel to record the whole performance which I'm surprised I didn't think to do before when we performed it at the Metropolitan Room. It's going to be so much better to actually have control over the recording and not have to worry about whether it's going to be in stereo or whether or whether or not some guy is even going to record it and hand it over in a timely fashion.
It occurs to me now that I do have that recording of the Metropolitan Room performance but I haven't posted it yet. Wha? But speaking of posting, I posted new voice over demos in advance of attending the New York Voiceover Mixer next Saturday (the same night of the concert!) So, check those out if you're interested. I composed all the music beds for the newest demo, the documentary demo and one of the new cuts on the old narration demo which has only been re-edited a little with the addition of one new script at the end.
Anyway, I'm going to return to being giddy about the security deposit and see if I can't get some work done on the Mainstage template for next weekend's concert. Huzzah!
I didn't think that the post office operated the day after Thanksgiving but there was a stack of letters in the mailbox last night when I got home from rehearsing with Tania. Through the window of one envelope, I saw both mine and Katrina's names, then the apartment number of my old apartment next to the words MEMO. Knowing what it was right away, I started to do a little dance in the hallway and exclaim my disbelief out loud, trying to be as quiet as possible, being it 1 in the morning at this point.
Dropping all of my stuff unceremoniously once inside the door to my apartment, I ripped open the envelope to see a check for the entire amount of our security deposit! Upon closer inspection I realized that the check was dated the 17th of November, before I sent the letter the second time. Even closer inspection revealed that the street number of my landlord's address was actually one number off from what I recall putting on both copies of the letter that I sent. This explains why the first one bounced back. I remember now that I actually called him shortly after I figured that first letter should have arrived (even though I hadn't seen the receipt saying he'd signed for it). I ended up leaving a message but whatever I said in that message must have prompted them to finally send it along. I didn't even need to send the letter the second time and it doesn't matter now anyway, because it's most certainly going to bounce back again.
In a way, I'm slightly disappointed that he didn't get to read the masterpiece I crafted with the help of my loyal editors (thanks mom and Josee!). But I'm in no way disappointed that the money is now in our possession. In fact, some combination of floored, ecstatic, incredulous and relieved might come closer to encapsulating the feeling I had upon receiving it.
That having been said, go us. Now, I can really say that we landed on our feet. Moving right along, I rehearsed Moon, Tides, Cycles with Tania last night in Queens. It went pretty well, considering I didn't have my score with me. Everything in the Mainstage template worked as before, with me barely having to do anything with regards to setup. I'm thinking about adding some more things to it, like a control for some delay effects on the ring modulation and perhaps a filter sweep for the Absynth sounds.
I already added a channel to record the whole performance which I'm surprised I didn't think to do before when we performed it at the Metropolitan Room. It's going to be so much better to actually have control over the recording and not have to worry about whether it's going to be in stereo or whether or whether or not some guy is even going to record it and hand it over in a timely fashion.
It occurs to me now that I do have that recording of the Metropolitan Room performance but I haven't posted it yet. Wha? But speaking of posting, I posted new voice over demos in advance of attending the New York Voiceover Mixer next Saturday (the same night of the concert!) So, check those out if you're interested. I composed all the music beds for the newest demo, the documentary demo and one of the new cuts on the old narration demo which has only been re-edited a little with the addition of one new script at the end.
Anyway, I'm going to return to being giddy about the security deposit and see if I can't get some work done on the Mainstage template for next weekend's concert. Huzzah!
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Schedule full...
When it rains it pours doesn't even begin to describe it. Well, it guess it does begin to describe it but it doesn't finish describing it. I'm speaking about jobs. Work. Lots of it. And most of it I'm excited about.
First, I'm working overnights and overtime and my full time job, and I'm getting more calls from Technicolor. Second, I've been helping shoot a film with my friend George. He's shooting a few scenes from his pilot to drum up interest in making the series and he's asked me to help with audio. So for two nights out of my weekend I was operating boom mic on a sidewalk in Hell's Kitchen for a scene between two pimps and a prostitute. Edgy subject matter. But more on that later. I'm also going to be writing some music, a theme, for this particular piece. And on top of that, Mohammad has me working on a tune for his production reel, utilizing the accordion. Bringing in my friend Crystal on this one potentially.
So, on top of writing the piano piece Tania and I will be performing together in Feburary, I'm suddenly writing two other pieces and working like a mad man. I LOVE IT!
I'm crazy, I know.
Anyway, on the VO front, I just caught wind of an event in midtown in a few weeks that I desperately want to be at and for which I would hope to have at least one of my new demos done. The 2011 New York Voiceover Mixer. I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. And now it comes at a time when it's going to push me to finally get my new demos done. But I'm not sure it's going to be enough time. So, a little nervous about that. I guess I could go with my old demo but I would much prefer to get the new ones done.
Guess there's no rest for the weary!
On another note altogether, I still love my apartment and the new neighborhood…in fact, more and more everyday. Under the blanket of my apartment is included my landlord, whom I also love. Leaky radiator? Fixed in a day. Breaker blown? Fixed in minutes. The other day, I took a bike ride and was at Prospect Park in minutes, where I took these pics:
First, I'm working overnights and overtime and my full time job, and I'm getting more calls from Technicolor. Second, I've been helping shoot a film with my friend George. He's shooting a few scenes from his pilot to drum up interest in making the series and he's asked me to help with audio. So for two nights out of my weekend I was operating boom mic on a sidewalk in Hell's Kitchen for a scene between two pimps and a prostitute. Edgy subject matter. But more on that later. I'm also going to be writing some music, a theme, for this particular piece. And on top of that, Mohammad has me working on a tune for his production reel, utilizing the accordion. Bringing in my friend Crystal on this one potentially.
So, on top of writing the piano piece Tania and I will be performing together in Feburary, I'm suddenly writing two other pieces and working like a mad man. I LOVE IT!
I'm crazy, I know.
Anyway, on the VO front, I just caught wind of an event in midtown in a few weeks that I desperately want to be at and for which I would hope to have at least one of my new demos done. The 2011 New York Voiceover Mixer. I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. And now it comes at a time when it's going to push me to finally get my new demos done. But I'm not sure it's going to be enough time. So, a little nervous about that. I guess I could go with my old demo but I would much prefer to get the new ones done.
Guess there's no rest for the weary!
On another note altogether, I still love my apartment and the new neighborhood…in fact, more and more everyday. Under the blanket of my apartment is included my landlord, whom I also love. Leaky radiator? Fixed in a day. Breaker blown? Fixed in minutes. The other day, I took a bike ride and was at Prospect Park in minutes, where I took these pics:
 |
| Fall Colors Prospect Park 2011 |
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Breaking in the new apartment...
I finally posted a clip from the finished DVD of Sides of the Track on the new website. Had a little time this afternoon around the apartment since I was preparing to host my friend Lauren for dinner. The first guest we've had in the apartment since moving in. Also, put some more touches on the piano and electronics piece that I've been working on. I've got a neat workflow going on with the laptop and the piano. With the piano being in my room I can put the laptop behind me on the bed with my notation software open and all I have to do is just swing around on the bench and enter notes in Sibelius as I riff on the piano. It's great.
While I was at it, I couldn't resist, since the apartment was looking so nice after I tidied up for my guest, taking a few pictures of what the place looks like, specifically my den/lair/studio/bedroom. Here they are:
Some of those were taken on another night when we were bored playing with the cat.
I can't describe how amazing it is to have a space that I enjoy working in…and cooking in. I made a nice roasted root vegetable soup for my friend to break in the kitchen…unfortunately though, I had to come in to work tonight, for my fifth overnight in a row. Tomorrow's technically a day off but I'll be working until 7am Friday so it won't really feel like one. I go back in to work at 10am Saturday and straight afterwards, I go to the location for the film shoot. Another shoot, same time on Sunday and then I come back in for another overnight at NY1. Five more in a row and then I'm back on my regular schedule. If I survive this, I can do anything.
While I was at it, I couldn't resist, since the apartment was looking so nice after I tidied up for my guest, taking a few pictures of what the place looks like, specifically my den/lair/studio/bedroom. Here they are:
 |
| New Apartment all set up best |
Some of those were taken on another night when we were bored playing with the cat.
I can't describe how amazing it is to have a space that I enjoy working in…and cooking in. I made a nice roasted root vegetable soup for my friend to break in the kitchen…unfortunately though, I had to come in to work tonight, for my fifth overnight in a row. Tomorrow's technically a day off but I'll be working until 7am Friday so it won't really feel like one. I go back in to work at 10am Saturday and straight afterwards, I go to the location for the film shoot. Another shoot, same time on Sunday and then I come back in for another overnight at NY1. Five more in a row and then I'm back on my regular schedule. If I survive this, I can do anything.
Friday, October 28, 2011
I've never...
I've never found a place this fast that I like this much, yes. But I've also never gotten settled in said place quite so fast as I have. Maybe time is just moving faster and I've perceived it as such. It did take a full almost a full week to get where I am now: boxes all unpacked, window treatments hung, important decisions about furniture placement made. Hell, we even already have cable by some random fluke (I hooked up the wires when I was setting up the TV and stereo and Katrina happened to notice that our old wireless account as popping up on her laptop). But that week seemed to breeze by. I didn't have a long period of feeling uncomfortable and unsettled and I didn't even mind that I had no blinds on my windows for most of the week. Maybe it's because, unlike when I lived in Sunset Park and having no blinds was a huge problem with me being on the first floor of the building and on the street side, my room was actually quite pleasant without blinds with the sun pouring in. Never mind the fact that I barely could sleep those first few mornings due to the brightness. Maybe it's also because I like the place that much. It could be that simple. I was already thousands of times more comfortable even with a maze of boxes and no internet and barely any food in the house.
Anyway, the only thing remaining to do, at this point, is to decide where to hang pictures and take boxes out to the garbage. But now my mind is turning toward things like how awesome it's going to be to have a comfortable living space. Especially for my creativity. I remember now that one of the best things about my favorite apartment and living situation (500 Mendenhall Street…the big apartment in the 110 year old Victorian house) was that I had so much more creative energy in that place. I wrote prolifically and my concentration was unparalleled. It's so important to have a good healthy space in which to create. Hopefully, now that I have that again, I can harness that energy. I mean, I can't imagine it being that hard with a piano just inches from the foot of my bed. It's going to be especially important because Tania and will be needing to get together soon to work on the new piece. I'm not even finished fleshing it out and I have to sit down with her and practice using my software to sample the piano parts live and mangle the samples while the piece is being performed. I also will need to use this time to figure out how to creatively use the sampled piano to advance the piece. But that's why we're starting this in November for a concert in February. I may need all that time, but I may only need a single recording of her performance of the first part of the piece.
How exciting to be composing again already!
Inevitably, there are a few things about the apartment (more about the building than anything really) is that we do live with a smoker downstairs…smoker of what I can't seem to figure out. In the morning it smells like cigarettes, in the evenings something else all together. There is also a dog but I have yet to do more than just smell the animal in the halls. Oh, and also to contend with the minefield of poop in the backyard where I lock my bike. But these are things that register barely if at all with me in light of recent indoor fungal growth and difficult landlords. My own new landlord, when faced with a leak in the apartments below us, called a plumber immediately and scheduled him for the next week. We were only in the apartment without a shower until around Wednesday. A tiny inconvenience when you factor in what we had been experiencing.
With all that having been said, I can't get enough of this new place and how amazing it is. And I don't think my opinion is too terribly influenced by the previous situation by comparison.
Anyway, the only thing remaining to do, at this point, is to decide where to hang pictures and take boxes out to the garbage. But now my mind is turning toward things like how awesome it's going to be to have a comfortable living space. Especially for my creativity. I remember now that one of the best things about my favorite apartment and living situation (500 Mendenhall Street…the big apartment in the 110 year old Victorian house) was that I had so much more creative energy in that place. I wrote prolifically and my concentration was unparalleled. It's so important to have a good healthy space in which to create. Hopefully, now that I have that again, I can harness that energy. I mean, I can't imagine it being that hard with a piano just inches from the foot of my bed. It's going to be especially important because Tania and will be needing to get together soon to work on the new piece. I'm not even finished fleshing it out and I have to sit down with her and practice using my software to sample the piano parts live and mangle the samples while the piece is being performed. I also will need to use this time to figure out how to creatively use the sampled piano to advance the piece. But that's why we're starting this in November for a concert in February. I may need all that time, but I may only need a single recording of her performance of the first part of the piece.
How exciting to be composing again already!
Inevitably, there are a few things about the apartment (more about the building than anything really) is that we do live with a smoker downstairs…smoker of what I can't seem to figure out. In the morning it smells like cigarettes, in the evenings something else all together. There is also a dog but I have yet to do more than just smell the animal in the halls. Oh, and also to contend with the minefield of poop in the backyard where I lock my bike. But these are things that register barely if at all with me in light of recent indoor fungal growth and difficult landlords. My own new landlord, when faced with a leak in the apartments below us, called a plumber immediately and scheduled him for the next week. We were only in the apartment without a shower until around Wednesday. A tiny inconvenience when you factor in what we had been experiencing.
With all that having been said, I can't get enough of this new place and how amazing it is. And I don't think my opinion is too terribly influenced by the previous situation by comparison.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
No sleep 'til...
People are always saying they don't know how I do it. It being overnight shifts alternating with day shifts. And while they don't always directly ask how I do it, I am sometimes compelled to ponder how I would answer such a question. If I had to say one thing that is key to staying up all night, it's mindset. I've tried every combination of trying to sleep in the morning before an overnight shift, napping in the afternoon, over caffeinating myself etc. But none of these things has served its function of keeping me awake through the whole stretch like adjusting my mindset has. It's too easy to go into an overnight shift after being up since 8 am thinking, "Dear God, how am I going to pull this off!?" This kind of thinking actually makes you more tired though. I've found that if I just forget that I've been up for that long and that I have to be up much longer, it goes a lot more smoothly. It's exhausting thinking negative thoughts. And if I can manage to distract myself from those kinds of thoughts than I can usually go a pretty long time without getting terribly lethargic. I sometimes even go into work pretending that I haven't already been up for almost 16 hours.
I'm not going to lie and say that there aren't nights when I've passed out at work (see last night), nor would I say that there aren't moments throughout the day and during the overnight shift that I get tired, but basically if I've had 8 hours of sleep the night before, then even if I don't pull of a brief nap, I can usually make it through relatively well if I try not to think about how much it sucks. I even have spurts of energy at select times throughout the evening. Right when I arrive at night, sometime before I take my lunch at 4am and the walk to the train from work at 7am are the big ones usually. The slump comes anywhere between 2 and 5am.
So, I've found a way to pull it off because I have to…for now. That's not to say that I'm not so sick of it that I want nothing more than to be my own boss for a change. But, all in time.
In a few weeks, I've got some freelance work with George Perez of "Peeper: A Sort of Love Story" fame. I'll be operating the boom mic on a couple of weekend shoots in November for his series titled "Life." This'll be the first scene of the pilot episode. Should be tons of fun. They're shooting on location in the West 40s on 10th Avenue. Gritty Hell's Kitchen location that they scared up. I've yet to check it out but it should set the stage quite nicely for the scene we'll be shooting.
More on that later. I'm still trying to get things square away with the old apartment and get settled in the new so I can start composing again. I had a little bit of an issue with my speakers when I set up the computer today. Not something I can't fix but it always seems like every few months something comes up like this. Some technical issue that puts a damper on my progress. I'm just glad it's something that I can work around for now. And not something necessarily earth shattering.
Either way, I can't wait to get my space comfortable again. I think the worst part about moving is the period of feeling unhinged. I had to unpack a bunch of things in the kitchen before I could even cook breakfast this morning and that took a chunk out of my morning. Because you start looking for what you need and you find ten other things that you think you want to put away. It's hard to stay focused. Especially when the exhaustion starts to kick in. Speaking of which...
I'm not going to lie and say that there aren't nights when I've passed out at work (see last night), nor would I say that there aren't moments throughout the day and during the overnight shift that I get tired, but basically if I've had 8 hours of sleep the night before, then even if I don't pull of a brief nap, I can usually make it through relatively well if I try not to think about how much it sucks. I even have spurts of energy at select times throughout the evening. Right when I arrive at night, sometime before I take my lunch at 4am and the walk to the train from work at 7am are the big ones usually. The slump comes anywhere between 2 and 5am.
So, I've found a way to pull it off because I have to…for now. That's not to say that I'm not so sick of it that I want nothing more than to be my own boss for a change. But, all in time.
In a few weeks, I've got some freelance work with George Perez of "Peeper: A Sort of Love Story" fame. I'll be operating the boom mic on a couple of weekend shoots in November for his series titled "Life." This'll be the first scene of the pilot episode. Should be tons of fun. They're shooting on location in the West 40s on 10th Avenue. Gritty Hell's Kitchen location that they scared up. I've yet to check it out but it should set the stage quite nicely for the scene we'll be shooting.
More on that later. I'm still trying to get things square away with the old apartment and get settled in the new so I can start composing again. I had a little bit of an issue with my speakers when I set up the computer today. Not something I can't fix but it always seems like every few months something comes up like this. Some technical issue that puts a damper on my progress. I'm just glad it's something that I can work around for now. And not something necessarily earth shattering.
Either way, I can't wait to get my space comfortable again. I think the worst part about moving is the period of feeling unhinged. I had to unpack a bunch of things in the kitchen before I could even cook breakfast this morning and that took a chunk out of my morning. Because you start looking for what you need and you find ten other things that you think you want to put away. It's hard to stay focused. Especially when the exhaustion starts to kick in. Speaking of which...
Sunday, October 23, 2011
The move...
Moving a piano is an art form and one that I enjoy observing as such. I've witnessed the act enough times that, even when performed by four Polish guys, I can understand the untranslated dialogue because the whole time it's dawning on me that I've had these arguments before in English many times about which way to turn the piano and how to ease it down and heave it up the stairs. I did have to look up the word "suka" though. I was sure it was something profane.
Anyway, my slightly uncouth movers were quick about the job and managed to accomplish everything in under four hours, for which I salute them. And even despite my own unintentional unpreparedness (I think I may have blogged before about how one can't prepare for anything even if you do think you've prepared for everything). I did the ol' set your alarm for PM instead of AM number and sprang out of bed not at the sound of my alarm at 7am but the sound of the movers buzzing the front door at 845am! Not my best move all day. I was intending to get the cat out of harm's way early, take a few small things over including the bike (yeah, I know it's not small) and pack up what was left laying around that we couldn't find boxes for, well before the movers got there. Unfortunately, none of that happened.
I let the movers up and started trying to frantically do some of that stuff but ultimately decided to take the cat over with her litter box first and get her set up. She was fairly well behaved on the walk over (all 6 blocks of it), and even did her standard slinking around low to the ground maneuvering that she does whenever introduced to a new space. Then, once she had settled on a spot to hideout until she was comfortable, she started to hack and heave as though she was about to leave me a hairball. Her idea of christening the apartment I guess. But after a second or two of watching her she seemed to be having a bit more trouble than just a hairball and I wondered if it was more serious. She gave me quite a scare but ultimately calmed down and when I returned later on with the next batch of small stuff she seemed fine.
In my absence, though, the movers had begun to box things using all the extra materials that they brought and that we found out they'd be charging us for (see, no matter how much you prepare, there's always something that you didn't prepare for…they charged us for tape, too, so they could double wrap all the boxes we had packed…plus they wanted me to take all of my clothes out of the dresser so they could just wrap it in and carry it in one piece and that took extra time). The good thing was they were making awesome time even doing all this. Before I knew it we were finishing up at the old place and I was trying to beat the truck over to the new place on foot.
The piano went up the stairs a whole lot easier than I thought it would. At the old apartment they took off the legs, wrapped it in moving blankets and plastic and slid it onto a cushioned board with rope handles, ran two straps through holes in the bottom of it and dragged it down the stairs with relative ease.
At the new place, they quailed at the sight of the first flight of stairs and we joked a little about the task ahead. One asked if I was sure I wanted it upstairs. It wasn't long, though, before they were sliding it in the front door and into my bedroom where we each played a few triumphant chords on the thing upon unwrapping it. It felt good.
After everything else was in and we paid the guys, Katrina and I took off down the street to a small restaurant on 5th Avenue called Korzo. They had an amazing looking brunch menu that even offered all you can drink Mimosas and Bloody Marys. I dug into a German omelette with a side of grilled sausage and Katrina had their potato latke with a poached egg on top. All the food was amazing and our server actually was gluten free savvy and realized without my having to tell him that the sweet potato fries would be no good for me because they were fried in the same fryer with all the breaded foods. That was a little hard because I wanted to devour everything on my plate since it was the first food besides dried figs and peanuts I'd had all morning.
Upon sobering up from my two mimosa buzz, we set to work on getting the last few items at the old apartment over to the new place and I eventually began unpacking what little I needed to to be comfortable enough in my new room to take a nap. A nap which never materialized because my mind is completely full right now. So here I sit having just devoured my dinner in the breakroom at work and contemplating how I'm going to stay up for almost 24 hours straight yet again.
Hopefully, once we are completely done with the old apartment, place cleaned and keys turned in, I'll get a little rest and can get to work on this piano and electronics piece. I need to make it a longer piece and organize the structure of it, then Tania and I need to get together at some point so I can work out the electronics part and everything…but right now, I'm too unsettled to do anything creative. Even though I did take a little break from supervising the move to improvise on the piano for a good five minutes while the movers kept on moving. It's good to have a new place with a piano in it.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Again...
It never ends. By that I mean, the constant introduction of obstacles by the universe. Some of them great, some of them minuscule and manageable. I called my new landlady last night to let her know I'd be by to bring over a few small things and let her know our move in date while I was on the phone with her.
Now, a few days ago, Katrina and I were cleaning the new place when our landlady came huffing up the stairs frantically (as frantically as a woman in probably her 70s can) asking if we had been using any water. The tenant downstairs had water coming from his ceiling and she wanted to know where it was coming from. At first, I'm thinking, "great, this again." It was even raining out at the time so I'm thinking it could be a leak from outside and here we go again. But then I realized the good side of all this: My landlady was there in seconds to respond to the problem.
However, this means that she has a plumber coming on Tuesday and until then there's no water in our bathroom…until he fixes the problem which might entail taking out a wall downstairs. This is what she tells me when I called last night. Now I feel like a real jerk for moving in early. And I have yet to tell my cousin about it.
Good news is the apartment is pretty much packed up and we await the movers at 9 am tomorrow. The actual brunt work of moving is actually the easy part (especially when you hire people and all you have to do is direct them). It's all the logistical bullshit from finding a broker who's not going to bait and switch you, to finding a place, to passing the credit check, to seizing it before anyone else does, to signing the lease, to finding respectable movers at a decent price (don't even get me started on having to find ones that'll move a piano properly and not charge an arm and a leg), to hiring said movers, to gathering together boxes because you threw all of the ones you had out because New York City apartments are tiny and then finally to packing every damned thing in your apartment into whatever boxes you can manage to scrounge up (and carry awkwardly on the train hopefully not during the evening rush hours).
It's a mess and every time I move into an apartment where I have some reservation, even the tiniest, about whether or not I'm going to like it still in a few months, I quail at the thought of having to do this all over again. Especially with a piano. I just found out that I have an 80 year old neighbor directly below me. I'm going to have to make friends with him or having the piano at all is going to be moot. And that will actually be a problem. My process for fleshing out piano sketch no. 4 into a full on piano and electronics piece to be performed in February is going to involve sitting at said piano and playing…a lot.
We'll see how it goes. So wish me luck. I gotta finish my tea and head to work. I'm sitting in 'Snice right now on 8th Avenue in the West Village soaking up their wi-fi and listening to one of my favorite Fleet Foxes songs that just came on their stereo. So I'll probably hang out and listen to the rest of it. Laters.
Now, a few days ago, Katrina and I were cleaning the new place when our landlady came huffing up the stairs frantically (as frantically as a woman in probably her 70s can) asking if we had been using any water. The tenant downstairs had water coming from his ceiling and she wanted to know where it was coming from. At first, I'm thinking, "great, this again." It was even raining out at the time so I'm thinking it could be a leak from outside and here we go again. But then I realized the good side of all this: My landlady was there in seconds to respond to the problem.
However, this means that she has a plumber coming on Tuesday and until then there's no water in our bathroom…until he fixes the problem which might entail taking out a wall downstairs. This is what she tells me when I called last night. Now I feel like a real jerk for moving in early. And I have yet to tell my cousin about it.
Good news is the apartment is pretty much packed up and we await the movers at 9 am tomorrow. The actual brunt work of moving is actually the easy part (especially when you hire people and all you have to do is direct them). It's all the logistical bullshit from finding a broker who's not going to bait and switch you, to finding a place, to passing the credit check, to seizing it before anyone else does, to signing the lease, to finding respectable movers at a decent price (don't even get me started on having to find ones that'll move a piano properly and not charge an arm and a leg), to hiring said movers, to gathering together boxes because you threw all of the ones you had out because New York City apartments are tiny and then finally to packing every damned thing in your apartment into whatever boxes you can manage to scrounge up (and carry awkwardly on the train hopefully not during the evening rush hours).
It's a mess and every time I move into an apartment where I have some reservation, even the tiniest, about whether or not I'm going to like it still in a few months, I quail at the thought of having to do this all over again. Especially with a piano. I just found out that I have an 80 year old neighbor directly below me. I'm going to have to make friends with him or having the piano at all is going to be moot. And that will actually be a problem. My process for fleshing out piano sketch no. 4 into a full on piano and electronics piece to be performed in February is going to involve sitting at said piano and playing…a lot.
We'll see how it goes. So wish me luck. I gotta finish my tea and head to work. I'm sitting in 'Snice right now on 8th Avenue in the West Village soaking up their wi-fi and listening to one of my favorite Fleet Foxes songs that just came on their stereo. So I'll probably hang out and listen to the rest of it. Laters.
Friday, October 14, 2011
New digs...
It happens that fast! Yeah, this was the third apartment we looked at between the two of us and it happened to be it. The way I found it: a friend.
My friend (remember the person I shared a cab with back in December that I ended up becoming friends with?) told me she had an apartment in her building that was opening up so she gave me the number of the realtor. I called him and they told me that it was already rented but that they had another one a short distance away. Thankfully, a short distance away in the right direction: North. It's on 19th street, so it's closer to the Prospect Avenue subway stop.
Anyway, I set up a time to see the apartment with this guy on Wednesday afternoon. He initially told me it was on 16th street so I was checking the street view on Google maps and really liking the block. On the Wednesday, he told me it was actually on 19th Street. I'm thinking, "okay, not a deal breaker…let's just hope it's still a good block." It was. And it was a cool looking building. He had told me before that the landlord lived in the building, another bonus for us because it means, first of all, that she'll take care of the building…unlike our current landlord. I did get a chance to meet her and she seems like a nice lady.
The apartment itself was on the third floor (a slight worry for the prospect of moving the piano in…the first quote I got today from a mover to move the piano up 3 flights of stairs was $700!) but it was at the back of the building. Inside the halls, family pictures adorned the walls and the stairs creaked pleasantly asI ascended the stairs. Upon entering the apartment though, I had one of those rare, "This is our apartment." moments. You just know when you see a place. It was spacious, airy and bright. The kitchen is big with lots of light and a view of downtown Manhattan out the side window. The buildings around it are smaller so we have a clear view in two directions. The larger bedroom was about as big as my bedroom in Sunset Park two years ago, and there are double doors opening into it. The living room is about as big as our current living room, perhaps slightly bigger. There were three closets, two in the common area and one in the smaller bedroom. This alone made me feel like this would be a perfect match for Katrina and I. She needs a closet and I need space. Plus all the closets are big.
I could rant and rave but I didn't need to to convince Katrina that we needed to move on this place. I sent her these pics:
…and a similar description to the above, only organized into cons first, pros second. She said she liked it but wanted to do a walk through later that night. I called and scheduled it with the broker and we came back, cashier's check in hand, ready to seize the place.
I can't encapsulate how excited I am about this. Suffice it to say that I'm floored that I like this place this much and that it was so easy to find. We really did luck out. There are more and more things every day that I realize are going to be great. It's on the back of the building and on a quiet block, so no more getting pissed off because people are honking their horns outside while I'm trying to record. I can fit the piano into my room (that is, if I end up moving it). Think of the inspiration and being closer to the computer when I come up with ideas that I want to save…no more running between rooms! Their is an alley to access the backyard where I can lock up my bike more safely.
And while the laundromat may be further down the block and the subway slightly farther, I think we've pretty much moved up. More to come on the trials of moving. Thank god we're going to be able to move in once we get the key on Monday after I sign the lease. Stay tuned!
My friend (remember the person I shared a cab with back in December that I ended up becoming friends with?) told me she had an apartment in her building that was opening up so she gave me the number of the realtor. I called him and they told me that it was already rented but that they had another one a short distance away. Thankfully, a short distance away in the right direction: North. It's on 19th street, so it's closer to the Prospect Avenue subway stop.
Anyway, I set up a time to see the apartment with this guy on Wednesday afternoon. He initially told me it was on 16th street so I was checking the street view on Google maps and really liking the block. On the Wednesday, he told me it was actually on 19th Street. I'm thinking, "okay, not a deal breaker…let's just hope it's still a good block." It was. And it was a cool looking building. He had told me before that the landlord lived in the building, another bonus for us because it means, first of all, that she'll take care of the building…unlike our current landlord. I did get a chance to meet her and she seems like a nice lady.
The apartment itself was on the third floor (a slight worry for the prospect of moving the piano in…the first quote I got today from a mover to move the piano up 3 flights of stairs was $700!) but it was at the back of the building. Inside the halls, family pictures adorned the walls and the stairs creaked pleasantly asI ascended the stairs. Upon entering the apartment though, I had one of those rare, "This is our apartment." moments. You just know when you see a place. It was spacious, airy and bright. The kitchen is big with lots of light and a view of downtown Manhattan out the side window. The buildings around it are smaller so we have a clear view in two directions. The larger bedroom was about as big as my bedroom in Sunset Park two years ago, and there are double doors opening into it. The living room is about as big as our current living room, perhaps slightly bigger. There were three closets, two in the common area and one in the smaller bedroom. This alone made me feel like this would be a perfect match for Katrina and I. She needs a closet and I need space. Plus all the closets are big.
I could rant and rave but I didn't need to to convince Katrina that we needed to move on this place. I sent her these pics:
 |
| Apartment on 19th Street |
…and a similar description to the above, only organized into cons first, pros second. She said she liked it but wanted to do a walk through later that night. I called and scheduled it with the broker and we came back, cashier's check in hand, ready to seize the place.
I can't encapsulate how excited I am about this. Suffice it to say that I'm floored that I like this place this much and that it was so easy to find. We really did luck out. There are more and more things every day that I realize are going to be great. It's on the back of the building and on a quiet block, so no more getting pissed off because people are honking their horns outside while I'm trying to record. I can fit the piano into my room (that is, if I end up moving it). Think of the inspiration and being closer to the computer when I come up with ideas that I want to save…no more running between rooms! Their is an alley to access the backyard where I can lock up my bike more safely.
And while the laundromat may be further down the block and the subway slightly farther, I think we've pretty much moved up. More to come on the trials of moving. Thank god we're going to be able to move in once we get the key on Monday after I sign the lease. Stay tuned!
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Moving out and a test screening...
I'm definitely moving out. We are definitely moving out, that is. There was some doubt in my mind because I was starting to get a little paranoid that I wouldn't be able to afford to move the piano and would most certainly have to donate it, something that has crossed my mind many a time over the last few years during which I've possessed said beast of a musical instrument. That among other things. I did one of those classic listing the pros and cons exercises and it did wonders to clear my head. But the biggest thing was looking at these pictures again and realizing, of course we effing have a valid reason for wanting to get out of this place!
And anyway, if I were to get a subletter, the task would be convincing that person, likely a friend that I've probably already bitched to about my predicament, to live in the very apartment that has been the source of my woes. So, that's one of the cons of that situation; the extra effort of acquiring a willing subletter.
All in all, it was a fruitful exercise and by the morning, tired though I was, my head was clear. I didn't call my landlord today though because for some reason, all the thoughts I had about what I was going to say to him had escaped my head (or buried themselves behind other synapses). Plus, I had a test screening for Sides of the Track that I wanted to make it to before heading over to the dentist to get a damned cavity filled. The test screening was awesome, getting the cavity filled, not so much. But then, it's getting a cavity filled, what do you expect?
Mohammad was able to rent out the very theater that we will be screening in on Friday this afternoon so that he, I, the DP and the Executive Producer could take in the full experience, big screen, big speakers, etc. It sounds awesome! And looks awesome! There's nothing to compare to seeing (and hearing) your work on the big screen. Unfortunately, the screening is by invite only and I've already chosen my +1. They are sure to screen again soon. But I'm psyched, you know? It's another milestone marked but it's also a chance to network. I haven't gotten to meet any of the other cast and crew yet and am especially looking forward to meeting certain people on the producing team. All around it should be a good night as I have the whole evening off from work and there is a reception and after party as well.
For now, I need some sleep. The leg is feeling better, especially after another amazing yoga class with Adriana, my favorite teacher at Abhaya. I think it should be okay for my long planned trip to the Statue of Liberty with my friend Allison. Sure I nearly killed it this weekend hiking about 6 miles through the Adirondack mountains, but a few stairs shouldn't be a problem right? Anyway, I'm excited because I'm finally doing this for the first time...plus, it's Allison's first time too (she, a lifelong New Yorker, too!). So it should be a blast! Pics are, of course, forthcoming.
 |
| Messed up Kitchen |
And anyway, if I were to get a subletter, the task would be convincing that person, likely a friend that I've probably already bitched to about my predicament, to live in the very apartment that has been the source of my woes. So, that's one of the cons of that situation; the extra effort of acquiring a willing subletter.
All in all, it was a fruitful exercise and by the morning, tired though I was, my head was clear. I didn't call my landlord today though because for some reason, all the thoughts I had about what I was going to say to him had escaped my head (or buried themselves behind other synapses). Plus, I had a test screening for Sides of the Track that I wanted to make it to before heading over to the dentist to get a damned cavity filled. The test screening was awesome, getting the cavity filled, not so much. But then, it's getting a cavity filled, what do you expect?
Mohammad was able to rent out the very theater that we will be screening in on Friday this afternoon so that he, I, the DP and the Executive Producer could take in the full experience, big screen, big speakers, etc. It sounds awesome! And looks awesome! There's nothing to compare to seeing (and hearing) your work on the big screen. Unfortunately, the screening is by invite only and I've already chosen my +1. They are sure to screen again soon. But I'm psyched, you know? It's another milestone marked but it's also a chance to network. I haven't gotten to meet any of the other cast and crew yet and am especially looking forward to meeting certain people on the producing team. All around it should be a good night as I have the whole evening off from work and there is a reception and after party as well.
For now, I need some sleep. The leg is feeling better, especially after another amazing yoga class with Adriana, my favorite teacher at Abhaya. I think it should be okay for my long planned trip to the Statue of Liberty with my friend Allison. Sure I nearly killed it this weekend hiking about 6 miles through the Adirondack mountains, but a few stairs shouldn't be a problem right? Anyway, I'm excited because I'm finally doing this for the first time...plus, it's Allison's first time too (she, a lifelong New Yorker, too!). So it should be a blast! Pics are, of course, forthcoming.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Conquered by the Adirondacks...
Okay, first of all, my left leg really hurts right now. I'm debating going to the doctor about it. Backpacking did not help it at all, obviously, but it feels way worse. Worse enough that I'm taking Ibuprofen right now, something I haven't done in years.
The camping trip was a lot of fun though. Even if we did get cut short and even if I did come off the mountain feeling pretty crappy. We drove up to Lake George, NY from Albany, stopping briefly to get a few things at an Eastern Mountain Supply store, and lunch, in Saratoga Springs. Here's a link to the hike that we did. The Tongue Mountain Range. I said it was fun but the following description is going to make me sound practically sadistic.
We were supposed to hike up to the first lean-to about 3 miles in, camp and then do part of the loop, possibly camping further in and making it back to the car early Sunday morning. We revised this plan when we saw the lean-to was free and decided we'd take what we needed in our day packs leaving the larger ones behind in the lean-to, so that we could make good time around the loop on Saturday and camp in the same spot Saturday night so we'd be near the car.
Then, of course, that plan got blown out too. We knew as we watched the sun set from a clearing near the lean-to, a rain cloud slowly creeping up, that the weather was going to figure pretty prominently in our plans for the next day.
We couldn't start a fire because everything was too damp, though we tried for an hour or so. An earlier attempt to use stove fuel to get something going proved futile even if it did almost singe my eyebrows. (This, immediately after J. Scott said to me, as I was trying to light the fire a bit too cautiously, "I didn't put that much on there." Famous last words.) Our decision to cut things short, though we made it the next morning upon seeing the rain finally start in earnest, was actually somewhat influenced by this inability to ignite anything. The camping stove was leaking fuel too, so between that and our lack of campfire, hot food wasn't an option.
We slept pretty soundly in that old lean-to but shortly after we woke and saw the rain starting and felt the cold chill in the air, the lean-to began to leak, first above my head and then above J. Scott's. A futile attempt was made to repair the camping stove but peanut butter sandwiches ended up being the breakfast of choice. We then agreed on a plan to hike back to the car, drop our packs and take a smaller pack each, filled with snacks and water, back up the mountain to explore the shorter Dear Leap out-and-back trail. This took us to a nice vista of the lake and the town of Hulett's Landing on the far shore. The wind was so heavy that even from our height we could see white caps in the lake.
Dreaming of diner coffee and steak and eggs, we hiked back up the steep incline and back to the car. Both pairs of socks I was wearing were thoroughly soaked when we arrived at the car because my boots are no longer water-proof apparently. When I sat down in the car, I felt like I had fever and my bones were chilled. It was a bizarre sensation, but I guess it was I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a nylon wind-breaker over it and the hike had simultaneously heated me up and chilled my extremities. Though I had wrapped my knee before attempting the hike, it throbbed something awful, too.
No matter. We had called my aunt before setting out to inform her of our predicament. She offered to have us over so we could get out of the rain and put us up for the night. Before heading down there, though, we found a little street side diner where I got my much sought after steak and eggs and was able to charge my phone and call my aunt to talk logistics. We took our time getting down there and made sure we showed up with food and drinks...never mind that it took a wild goose chase around the towns of Coxsackie and Athens and several back roads in between to find a grocery store that was actually across the street from our first stopping point in Coxsackie; the liquor store. I'm a terrible navigator and was not able to redeem myself the whole weekend.
Anyway, as a result of my plan and my aunt's hospitality, I had a nice relaxing evening as opposed to trying to sleep out in the rain again. She made us a dinner of ham and cabbage with potatoes (just the thing on a cold evening) and J. Scott and I watched the Florida Gators game until my aunt returned from her defensive driving course. That night I slept like a rock. Forget that the Adirondacks beat us. We were comfortable.
This evening I still feel pretty sick though and my leg is not happy at all so I'm taking the night off work to recover. Hopefully, I can stay off my leg for a day and give it some time to actually get better. Because this Wednesday, I have plans to go to the Statue of Liberty with a friend. And I'm pretty sure there's no elevator there.
Coming back home to Brooklyn was interesting. The contractors worked in my apartment at a break-neck pace this weekend and did sort of a sloppy job. The new sheet rock is stained through brown from the dampness of the bricks and it doesn't even look as though they did anything but make it worse, at least aesthetically. If I don't hear from my landlord tomorrow about our demands as per the rent for this month and our security deposit, he'll be hearing from me. With any luck, we'll be looking at new apartments by the end of the week and not this:
The prospects for this week are starting to look worse than that other week I was complaining about a few entries ago when nothing would go right. This time, I have a bum leg, I'm getting a cavity filled on Tuesday, I'm still in a crappy apartment and I could go on but I won't. I found a four-leaf clover today while waiting for the bus in Albany and couldn't help but hope that my luck might change soon. We'll see.
The camping trip was a lot of fun though. Even if we did get cut short and even if I did come off the mountain feeling pretty crappy. We drove up to Lake George, NY from Albany, stopping briefly to get a few things at an Eastern Mountain Supply store, and lunch, in Saratoga Springs. Here's a link to the hike that we did. The Tongue Mountain Range. I said it was fun but the following description is going to make me sound practically sadistic.
We were supposed to hike up to the first lean-to about 3 miles in, camp and then do part of the loop, possibly camping further in and making it back to the car early Sunday morning. We revised this plan when we saw the lean-to was free and decided we'd take what we needed in our day packs leaving the larger ones behind in the lean-to, so that we could make good time around the loop on Saturday and camp in the same spot Saturday night so we'd be near the car.
Then, of course, that plan got blown out too. We knew as we watched the sun set from a clearing near the lean-to, a rain cloud slowly creeping up, that the weather was going to figure pretty prominently in our plans for the next day.
We couldn't start a fire because everything was too damp, though we tried for an hour or so. An earlier attempt to use stove fuel to get something going proved futile even if it did almost singe my eyebrows. (This, immediately after J. Scott said to me, as I was trying to light the fire a bit too cautiously, "I didn't put that much on there." Famous last words.) Our decision to cut things short, though we made it the next morning upon seeing the rain finally start in earnest, was actually somewhat influenced by this inability to ignite anything. The camping stove was leaking fuel too, so between that and our lack of campfire, hot food wasn't an option.
We slept pretty soundly in that old lean-to but shortly after we woke and saw the rain starting and felt the cold chill in the air, the lean-to began to leak, first above my head and then above J. Scott's. A futile attempt was made to repair the camping stove but peanut butter sandwiches ended up being the breakfast of choice. We then agreed on a plan to hike back to the car, drop our packs and take a smaller pack each, filled with snacks and water, back up the mountain to explore the shorter Dear Leap out-and-back trail. This took us to a nice vista of the lake and the town of Hulett's Landing on the far shore. The wind was so heavy that even from our height we could see white caps in the lake.
Dreaming of diner coffee and steak and eggs, we hiked back up the steep incline and back to the car. Both pairs of socks I was wearing were thoroughly soaked when we arrived at the car because my boots are no longer water-proof apparently. When I sat down in the car, I felt like I had fever and my bones were chilled. It was a bizarre sensation, but I guess it was I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a nylon wind-breaker over it and the hike had simultaneously heated me up and chilled my extremities. Though I had wrapped my knee before attempting the hike, it throbbed something awful, too.
No matter. We had called my aunt before setting out to inform her of our predicament. She offered to have us over so we could get out of the rain and put us up for the night. Before heading down there, though, we found a little street side diner where I got my much sought after steak and eggs and was able to charge my phone and call my aunt to talk logistics. We took our time getting down there and made sure we showed up with food and drinks...never mind that it took a wild goose chase around the towns of Coxsackie and Athens and several back roads in between to find a grocery store that was actually across the street from our first stopping point in Coxsackie; the liquor store. I'm a terrible navigator and was not able to redeem myself the whole weekend.
Anyway, as a result of my plan and my aunt's hospitality, I had a nice relaxing evening as opposed to trying to sleep out in the rain again. She made us a dinner of ham and cabbage with potatoes (just the thing on a cold evening) and J. Scott and I watched the Florida Gators game until my aunt returned from her defensive driving course. That night I slept like a rock. Forget that the Adirondacks beat us. We were comfortable.
This evening I still feel pretty sick though and my leg is not happy at all so I'm taking the night off work to recover. Hopefully, I can stay off my leg for a day and give it some time to actually get better. Because this Wednesday, I have plans to go to the Statue of Liberty with a friend. And I'm pretty sure there's no elevator there.
Coming back home to Brooklyn was interesting. The contractors worked in my apartment at a break-neck pace this weekend and did sort of a sloppy job. The new sheet rock is stained through brown from the dampness of the bricks and it doesn't even look as though they did anything but make it worse, at least aesthetically. If I don't hear from my landlord tomorrow about our demands as per the rent for this month and our security deposit, he'll be hearing from me. With any luck, we'll be looking at new apartments by the end of the week and not this:
 |
| Messed up Kitchen |
The prospects for this week are starting to look worse than that other week I was complaining about a few entries ago when nothing would go right. This time, I have a bum leg, I'm getting a cavity filled on Tuesday, I'm still in a crappy apartment and I could go on but I won't. I found a four-leaf clover today while waiting for the bus in Albany and couldn't help but hope that my luck might change soon. We'll see.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Blurb #26
We're moving out. We decided this Friday night. I came home with the letter drafted and planned on showing Katrina but before I could get through the finer points of what it said as far as our terms, she says, "I think we should just move out." I was actually pretty excited having thought I would need to do some convincing. I guess mushrooms in your ceiling are about as convincing as things can get. I guess that's one thing that's turned out the way I had hoped this week! That and I heard finally that the Celiac Disease study payment is on its way!
Anyway, I redrafted the letter and Katrina and I spent the rest of the evening on our laptops scouring padmapper.com and our other resources just to get started with the apartment hunt and discussion about our preferences this time around...which include no slumlords. Anyway, more chronicles of the third New York City move will certainly be forthcoming. For now, I'm off to the DUMBO Arts Festival with my friend who's visiting from Chicago. We're headed to brunch at Superfine in DUMBO first. See ya!
Anyway, I redrafted the letter and Katrina and I spent the rest of the evening on our laptops scouring padmapper.com and our other resources just to get started with the apartment hunt and discussion about our preferences this time around...which include no slumlords. Anyway, more chronicles of the third New York City move will certainly be forthcoming. For now, I'm off to the DUMBO Arts Festival with my friend who's visiting from Chicago. We're headed to brunch at Superfine in DUMBO first. See ya!
Friday, September 23, 2011
Mushrooms, still, and other non fungal topics...
There are still mushrooms in my cousin's ceiling and the work outside on the bricks has stopped because of the threat of rain. This is not good. I've been stressing mildly about it all week even though I'm not the one sleeping not in my bed. My poor cousin has had to endure sleeping in the living room and getting woken up by me coming in late every night this week. The next course of action for us is to withhold rent until the repairs are done and to only pay what we feel we owe for the month of essentially living in a one bedroom apartment. But good luck getting in touch with my landlord. This is the guy for whom I only have one phone number and no email address. I'm going to start putting all my correspondences in snail mail if I have to...registered snail mail.
I met with Tania last night after work and ended up chatting about our upcoming endeavors at a little place called The Tea Set just off Greenwich Avenue until just about midnight when they kicked us out. It's getting exciting now that she's back from Europe, talking about what's coming up next. We're going to be doing Rhythmic Movement, the concert she did back in July, again sometime in November and she already has a spot booked on a program of new music at the Harlem National Black Theater in February 2012, at which she's going to premier my new piece for piano and electronics. As it stands now, I'm taking a sketch that never got premiered but deserves to see some daylight in my opinion, fleshing it out and adding an electronic element. Back when I was in grad school I saw a classmate of mine put a saxophone through a computer, sample it, and, using a program called Max/MSP, do all kinds of random shit with the sound. I intend to do this same thing with this piano piece but the shit is not going to be random. Like I did with Moon, Tides, Cycles, I plan on running the piano through Mainstage but instead of just adding effects to it and fading it in and out, I plan on sampling it, twisting the recording around a little and running it through some effects and mapping the sample chunks to my keyboard so I can play them during the second half of the piece. We're going to get together again in November when she's less busy so I can record her playing what I've written of the piece and do some test runs with the sampling. Meanwhile, I flesh out!
That sounded funny. Idioms used in weird contexts. Heh.
In other exciting news, if I haven't mentioned, the premier screening of Sides of the Track is happening on October 7th and here's the trailer on Facebook. Yes, that's my music!
This weekend, I have a friend coming into town for some art related conference and we plan on going to the DUMBO Arts Festival on Sunday. I'll post about that and hopefully, I'll at least have the sense to bring my good camera. More to come!
I met with Tania last night after work and ended up chatting about our upcoming endeavors at a little place called The Tea Set just off Greenwich Avenue until just about midnight when they kicked us out. It's getting exciting now that she's back from Europe, talking about what's coming up next. We're going to be doing Rhythmic Movement, the concert she did back in July, again sometime in November and she already has a spot booked on a program of new music at the Harlem National Black Theater in February 2012, at which she's going to premier my new piece for piano and electronics. As it stands now, I'm taking a sketch that never got premiered but deserves to see some daylight in my opinion, fleshing it out and adding an electronic element. Back when I was in grad school I saw a classmate of mine put a saxophone through a computer, sample it, and, using a program called Max/MSP, do all kinds of random shit with the sound. I intend to do this same thing with this piano piece but the shit is not going to be random. Like I did with Moon, Tides, Cycles, I plan on running the piano through Mainstage but instead of just adding effects to it and fading it in and out, I plan on sampling it, twisting the recording around a little and running it through some effects and mapping the sample chunks to my keyboard so I can play them during the second half of the piece. We're going to get together again in November when she's less busy so I can record her playing what I've written of the piece and do some test runs with the sampling. Meanwhile, I flesh out!
That sounded funny. Idioms used in weird contexts. Heh.
In other exciting news, if I haven't mentioned, the premier screening of Sides of the Track is happening on October 7th and here's the trailer on Facebook. Yes, that's my music!
This weekend, I have a friend coming into town for some art related conference and we plan on going to the DUMBO Arts Festival on Sunday. I'll post about that and hopefully, I'll at least have the sense to bring my good camera. More to come!
Monday, September 19, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Fun things and not so fun things...
Tassles and G-Strings. Tuesday night, I found myself at a Burlesque show that was done "in the round" at a small club on Chrystie Street (see, fun things happen on Chrystie street, see my blog from last week). Mystique Ultra Lounge was holding this event which was planned by an ex-coworker of mine who just recently started her own event planning company. The show was part of a launch party for a deck of playing cards with a selection of the city's most well-known burlesque dancers photographed for the backs of each card. The "Play Me Burlesque" playing cards.
I arrived a little early and had to wait a bit to get in but I had a friend with me so it was good. Prime people watching anyway. Once inside, and after an hour of waiting and drinking scotch, there were three back to back sets of burlesque dancers, with names like Miss Tickle, The Asian Sex-sation, Heidi Honeysuckle and others I can't immediately recall. My favorite was Miss Tickle, if only for the elaborate costume she wore that incorporated feathers which she wore as a dress and then reassembled, at the end of her dance, into a pair of 6 foot tall wings. They get pretty fancy with the costumes and the routines.
Jennie and I left after the second set. I was running on 4 hours of sleep, like I do, and she had work in the morning. And it was a tad crowded. Since I lost my seat between sets I had to sit on the floor for the second set. Mildly uncomfortable but overall I had a good time. This was my first burlesque show and I wonder why I never went to one before now. It was, for lack of a more descriptive impression, pretty cool.
And speaking of pretty cool, Lacy and I continued to explore the open mic circuit, adding Paddy Reilly's and Arctica Bar up in Murray Hill to our list. Both of them were mediocre to fair. Paddy Reilly's having great sound and good performers but poor attendance (and generally weak audience response...it was dead in there!). By the time we got to Arctica Bar, several people had already signed up for the opening slots, so as the night progressed we made a decision to leave before we went on because Lacy had to drive back to Philly and it was getting late. So after sizing up the crowd and the scene and chowing down on some spinach and artichoke dip, we bolted. It was a great sound system but the space was odd...it was essentially a classy sports bar...which as you should know is not classy at all but merely has the appearance of class. Either way, I think we'll try to attend both again next week before we pass any judgement on them. Next week, we'll even try to get over to Arctica sooner and maybe get the first slot.
On the apartment front, I don't know if I've mentioned the scene here lately. Remember the leaky windows and walls from the nor'easter about a year and a half ago? While, back then, we did complain to the landlord and the superintendent, nothing ever got done and, as the leak only reoccurred when the rains were accompanied by heavy winds, we never followed up all that well. Until Hurricane Irene came through. The damage was getting worse.
Apparently, we weren't the only ones who complained either because all of a sudden there was a lot of talk about them actually doing something about it. So what they did was they started renovating the upstairs apartments before they fixed the leak. While I was trying to sleep after an overnight last week I heard the banging on the walls upstairs. I found out later that they had to wait until the bricks were dry outside before they reset them. At first this did not make sense to me, why they would fix the inside first...it was even raining the day they started renovations! At one point, my super told us that he'd be working in our apartment sometime last week, but with one night's notice!
Of course, this didn't happen and good thing, too. I saw Frances' apartment (the one right above me) because she beckoned me to come look at the state the workers had left it in; all the furniture moved out of the room and covered in plastic, walls and ceiling totally stripped down to the bricks. The next morning after they started renovating upstairs, I get a panicked text from my roommate that there were now mushrooms growing out of her ceiling. I didn't believe it until I saw it.
They must have kicked something up upstairs when they were renovating Frances' apartment. The musty, fungal smell in the other bedroom was to the point where my roommate couldn't sleep in there let alone go in there for five seconds to get her allergy medication.
At this point, I started calling the landlord. I left two messages before he got back to me. And he told me that they'd be fixing the bricks outside this morning and Alex would need 2-3 days in my apartment after he finished with the apartments upstairs. Luckily, this morning, I actually saw people outside in the alley surveying the walls and later up on the fire escape. So hopefully, this will all be over soon.
So there's a pretty good summary of New York life these days: live music, burlesque dancers and some pretty classic New York apartment living anecdotes. Today, I was back to work after three nights of excitement and so tonight I've decided to stay in for my health...which is why I'm only drinking one glass of wine before bed. Not much else to report, except that I still love this city and the weather has turned cooler all of a sudden. It's always exhilarating to me when I take that first breath of 50 degree air in the fall. I love the change in the air. I was taking huge draughts of it on the walk home which I extended by getting off the train early at 4th Avenue/9th Street and walking the extra 13 blocks. I know some people may think I'm weird for actually liking the cold but I know I'm not the only one who likes the days of sweater weather. Bring it on, New York!
I arrived a little early and had to wait a bit to get in but I had a friend with me so it was good. Prime people watching anyway. Once inside, and after an hour of waiting and drinking scotch, there were three back to back sets of burlesque dancers, with names like Miss Tickle, The Asian Sex-sation, Heidi Honeysuckle and others I can't immediately recall. My favorite was Miss Tickle, if only for the elaborate costume she wore that incorporated feathers which she wore as a dress and then reassembled, at the end of her dance, into a pair of 6 foot tall wings. They get pretty fancy with the costumes and the routines.
Jennie and I left after the second set. I was running on 4 hours of sleep, like I do, and she had work in the morning. And it was a tad crowded. Since I lost my seat between sets I had to sit on the floor for the second set. Mildly uncomfortable but overall I had a good time. This was my first burlesque show and I wonder why I never went to one before now. It was, for lack of a more descriptive impression, pretty cool.
And speaking of pretty cool, Lacy and I continued to explore the open mic circuit, adding Paddy Reilly's and Arctica Bar up in Murray Hill to our list. Both of them were mediocre to fair. Paddy Reilly's having great sound and good performers but poor attendance (and generally weak audience response...it was dead in there!). By the time we got to Arctica Bar, several people had already signed up for the opening slots, so as the night progressed we made a decision to leave before we went on because Lacy had to drive back to Philly and it was getting late. So after sizing up the crowd and the scene and chowing down on some spinach and artichoke dip, we bolted. It was a great sound system but the space was odd...it was essentially a classy sports bar...which as you should know is not classy at all but merely has the appearance of class. Either way, I think we'll try to attend both again next week before we pass any judgement on them. Next week, we'll even try to get over to Arctica sooner and maybe get the first slot.
On the apartment front, I don't know if I've mentioned the scene here lately. Remember the leaky windows and walls from the nor'easter about a year and a half ago? While, back then, we did complain to the landlord and the superintendent, nothing ever got done and, as the leak only reoccurred when the rains were accompanied by heavy winds, we never followed up all that well. Until Hurricane Irene came through. The damage was getting worse.
Apparently, we weren't the only ones who complained either because all of a sudden there was a lot of talk about them actually doing something about it. So what they did was they started renovating the upstairs apartments before they fixed the leak. While I was trying to sleep after an overnight last week I heard the banging on the walls upstairs. I found out later that they had to wait until the bricks were dry outside before they reset them. At first this did not make sense to me, why they would fix the inside first...it was even raining the day they started renovations! At one point, my super told us that he'd be working in our apartment sometime last week, but with one night's notice!
Of course, this didn't happen and good thing, too. I saw Frances' apartment (the one right above me) because she beckoned me to come look at the state the workers had left it in; all the furniture moved out of the room and covered in plastic, walls and ceiling totally stripped down to the bricks. The next morning after they started renovating upstairs, I get a panicked text from my roommate that there were now mushrooms growing out of her ceiling. I didn't believe it until I saw it.
 |
| Ceiling Mushrooms |
They must have kicked something up upstairs when they were renovating Frances' apartment. The musty, fungal smell in the other bedroom was to the point where my roommate couldn't sleep in there let alone go in there for five seconds to get her allergy medication.
At this point, I started calling the landlord. I left two messages before he got back to me. And he told me that they'd be fixing the bricks outside this morning and Alex would need 2-3 days in my apartment after he finished with the apartments upstairs. Luckily, this morning, I actually saw people outside in the alley surveying the walls and later up on the fire escape. So hopefully, this will all be over soon.
So there's a pretty good summary of New York life these days: live music, burlesque dancers and some pretty classic New York apartment living anecdotes. Today, I was back to work after three nights of excitement and so tonight I've decided to stay in for my health...which is why I'm only drinking one glass of wine before bed. Not much else to report, except that I still love this city and the weather has turned cooler all of a sudden. It's always exhilarating to me when I take that first breath of 50 degree air in the fall. I love the change in the air. I was taking huge draughts of it on the walk home which I extended by getting off the train early at 4th Avenue/9th Street and walking the extra 13 blocks. I know some people may think I'm weird for actually liking the cold but I know I'm not the only one who likes the days of sweater weather. Bring it on, New York!
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
I did it!
I actually slept past 2pm after an overnight shift! Even despite hammering outside my apartment that woke me up at around 1045am, I still managed to finally sleep it off like a rock star. It takes a rainy day, with the lack of direct sunlight to make the conditions just right for uninterrupted sleep. Simple fact of the matter though is that I'm not sure how much longer I can do this. Although an odd schedule like mine can be conducive to creating sometimes, having the apartment to myself when I'm off work at odd times, it sort of drains you. And being drained is not conducive to creating. I can't keep my focus and I start to get a little bedraggled.
This has all kind of gotten me thinking about success and how you measure it. I harp on a theme on this blog a lot, that I often forget, or that often moves to the back of my mind. I have already accomplished a lot just by moving up here and sometimes it can help me when I'm feeling overwhelmed to remember this fact. But I can't stop at that obviously. Sure moving up here was an accomplishment but there's still more to be done. I'm semi-comfortable in my routine and am happy with the individual things I've done so far but I'm always trying to get to the next step. And sometimes, figuring out what that next step is can be a step itself. So, I find myself at a bit of a crossroads. Or maybe it's more like a river crossing. I can see the other side. I just can't quite find a way to cross over yet.
Specifically, I'm trying to get from a place where I know confidently that I can do the kinds of jobs that I'm after to a place where I'm able to prove that to the people who might hire me to do those jobs. I've met people who are doing what I want to be doing and I'm getting the impression that I'm not far off. The thing I keep hearing is that I just need to keep working. Writing every day. Networking. Working on my web presence. Etc.
I guess I just need to keep my head up and accept that it's not the kind of thing that happens overnight. It's good to check every once in a while to see if I am, in fact, on track. I've done a lot this year. But next year I want to do way more. I mean way more. I've already got designs on performing my electronic music and I'm getting closer to logistically being able to do that (learning how to make Mainstage do what I want it to do and buying that one last piece of MIDI equipment that I need). One place I'm wanting to increase my activity even more, though, is my contemporary music. Tania is sure to be performing more of my pieces next year and we may even be doing Moon, Tides, Cycles again in the fall. My goal is to write more not just for her but to get one of my new chamber pieces finished and performed. Specifically, the one with electronics. This will be an undertaking of mass proportions however.
On top of all that, the most important goal of mine is to score more films. And I realize that that one requires more networking than anything else. I could apply to scoring jobs online until my face falls off but when it comes down to it I haven't done all that much and I'm up against so many other candidates who either have or at least look like they have done way more. So I have to work on making the kind of connections that I've made with George and Mohammad and bank on the recommendations from the work I have done. Once I build up work like that, then I'll have a more bloated and impressive portfolio that I can use to apply to jobs with directors that I don't know yet. That's the idea anyway. I think I've spoken before on here about breaking things down into manageable steps. Step 1 in this case would be network.
Funny enough, I'm going to a Celiac Disease meetup next Monday and while I was trolling around meetup.com, it occurred to me to look for filmmaker groups. Found a few and joined but not all of them have meetups scheduled, nor does it look like they've even been active recently. I'm already a member of the IFP filmmakers group on Facebook but I've yet to make use of that membership. Either way, over the course of the next few weeks, and once the music for the trailer for Sides of the Track is finished, I intend to be networking like gangbusters.
If I can get some sleep. Speaking of Facebook, they've been doing this thing lately where your status updates from this day in whatever year appear on the sidebar. The one from this day in 2010 said something about sleeping in until 5pm and that I guessed my body needed it. Sort of puts in perspective how long I've been enduring such a crazy schedule. It'll be two years this January.
Update to the first paragraph of this blog. The hammering was coming from the apartment above. They're finally working on fixing all the water damage. The woman who lives above me wanted to show me all the work they were doing because her apartment was in shambles, all her furniture moved out into the main room while in the bedroom the walls were completely stripped of plaster. She was complaining in broken English about what an upheaval it was. Let's just hope that I don't have to endure the same thing in a week. Why? Because I'll be sleeping all day again.
This has all kind of gotten me thinking about success and how you measure it. I harp on a theme on this blog a lot, that I often forget, or that often moves to the back of my mind. I have already accomplished a lot just by moving up here and sometimes it can help me when I'm feeling overwhelmed to remember this fact. But I can't stop at that obviously. Sure moving up here was an accomplishment but there's still more to be done. I'm semi-comfortable in my routine and am happy with the individual things I've done so far but I'm always trying to get to the next step. And sometimes, figuring out what that next step is can be a step itself. So, I find myself at a bit of a crossroads. Or maybe it's more like a river crossing. I can see the other side. I just can't quite find a way to cross over yet.
Specifically, I'm trying to get from a place where I know confidently that I can do the kinds of jobs that I'm after to a place where I'm able to prove that to the people who might hire me to do those jobs. I've met people who are doing what I want to be doing and I'm getting the impression that I'm not far off. The thing I keep hearing is that I just need to keep working. Writing every day. Networking. Working on my web presence. Etc.
I guess I just need to keep my head up and accept that it's not the kind of thing that happens overnight. It's good to check every once in a while to see if I am, in fact, on track. I've done a lot this year. But next year I want to do way more. I mean way more. I've already got designs on performing my electronic music and I'm getting closer to logistically being able to do that (learning how to make Mainstage do what I want it to do and buying that one last piece of MIDI equipment that I need). One place I'm wanting to increase my activity even more, though, is my contemporary music. Tania is sure to be performing more of my pieces next year and we may even be doing Moon, Tides, Cycles again in the fall. My goal is to write more not just for her but to get one of my new chamber pieces finished and performed. Specifically, the one with electronics. This will be an undertaking of mass proportions however.
On top of all that, the most important goal of mine is to score more films. And I realize that that one requires more networking than anything else. I could apply to scoring jobs online until my face falls off but when it comes down to it I haven't done all that much and I'm up against so many other candidates who either have or at least look like they have done way more. So I have to work on making the kind of connections that I've made with George and Mohammad and bank on the recommendations from the work I have done. Once I build up work like that, then I'll have a more bloated and impressive portfolio that I can use to apply to jobs with directors that I don't know yet. That's the idea anyway. I think I've spoken before on here about breaking things down into manageable steps. Step 1 in this case would be network.
Funny enough, I'm going to a Celiac Disease meetup next Monday and while I was trolling around meetup.com, it occurred to me to look for filmmaker groups. Found a few and joined but not all of them have meetups scheduled, nor does it look like they've even been active recently. I'm already a member of the IFP filmmakers group on Facebook but I've yet to make use of that membership. Either way, over the course of the next few weeks, and once the music for the trailer for Sides of the Track is finished, I intend to be networking like gangbusters.
If I can get some sleep. Speaking of Facebook, they've been doing this thing lately where your status updates from this day in whatever year appear on the sidebar. The one from this day in 2010 said something about sleeping in until 5pm and that I guessed my body needed it. Sort of puts in perspective how long I've been enduring such a crazy schedule. It'll be two years this January.
Update to the first paragraph of this blog. The hammering was coming from the apartment above. They're finally working on fixing all the water damage. The woman who lives above me wanted to show me all the work they were doing because her apartment was in shambles, all her furniture moved out into the main room while in the bedroom the walls were completely stripped of plaster. She was complaining in broken English about what an upheaval it was. Let's just hope that I don't have to endure the same thing in a week. Why? Because I'll be sleeping all day again.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Film Score = Done!
I just submitted the final mixes for the film score to my dropbox so that Mohammad can download and listen. Tomorrow is the deadline for online submissions to Sundance Film Festival, the first of many that he intends to submit to.
So, I'm pretty psyched about that and pretty pleased with my final cut of the music. It's been a great project to work on and has taught me a lot. I especially enjoyed working with another musician again. My scores for Boyce Returns (2008) and Solstice (2007) both included my friend Jon on the clarinet but most of the other scores I've done, I worked alone on even if they were collaborative scores like Zero Sum Game (2008) and Peeper: A Sort of Love Story (2009). I was just responsible for my cues and the other composers either were working before I came on to the project or were working simultaneously on their cues.
Anyway, there's a dynamic nature to the piece when you have another mind come in to interpret what you've done. On this score, in particular, there were ideas that occurred to me only after we had recorded the first few takes of the oud (sampling his performances and mangling the results to create atmospheric sounds, for example). Add on top of all that the fact that we had our oud player improvise around an idea that I wrote. You almost never know what you're going to get in that case. All you can do is set a mood and hope that it works with what's on screen.
And in this case, as with Solstice, I was writing the music before the film had even been shot and continuing to work on it after the shoot and well into the editing process without even having seen the scenes I was scoring. Luckily, there wasn't too much that had to hit at the right time, so it was easy to conform the piece to the action on screen after it had been written. But miraculously the key, the tone, the mood, the tempo, everything fit perfectly when we saw it with the scene. I can't wait to be able to show everyone a finished product.
Right now, it's rainy and muggy in New York and I just finally dealt with a fly problem we were having out in the living room. It was apparently due to the window being cracked open at the top, unbeknownst to us. Our window is uncomfortably close to the recycling bins down on the ground level, so that explains the high number of flies and why they were wafting up to our level.
Either way, it feels good to have a clean apartment and a clean slate to get to work on some of my next projects. I do want to write a choral piece again and I have tons of other unfinsheds and as yet to be writtens floating around the apartment and the inside of my brain. But I've also thought it might be nice to try and find some more film scoring work. I'll probably focus on the choral piece first though because it's always good to know when starting a piece that there's a high probability that I can get it performed without too much financial investment.
So, I'll be updating as that progresses. For now, I'm too tired to think of anything else to say...imagine that. Me. Tired on an overnight shift.
So, I'm pretty psyched about that and pretty pleased with my final cut of the music. It's been a great project to work on and has taught me a lot. I especially enjoyed working with another musician again. My scores for Boyce Returns (2008) and Solstice (2007) both included my friend Jon on the clarinet but most of the other scores I've done, I worked alone on even if they were collaborative scores like Zero Sum Game (2008) and Peeper: A Sort of Love Story (2009). I was just responsible for my cues and the other composers either were working before I came on to the project or were working simultaneously on their cues.
Anyway, there's a dynamic nature to the piece when you have another mind come in to interpret what you've done. On this score, in particular, there were ideas that occurred to me only after we had recorded the first few takes of the oud (sampling his performances and mangling the results to create atmospheric sounds, for example). Add on top of all that the fact that we had our oud player improvise around an idea that I wrote. You almost never know what you're going to get in that case. All you can do is set a mood and hope that it works with what's on screen.
And in this case, as with Solstice, I was writing the music before the film had even been shot and continuing to work on it after the shoot and well into the editing process without even having seen the scenes I was scoring. Luckily, there wasn't too much that had to hit at the right time, so it was easy to conform the piece to the action on screen after it had been written. But miraculously the key, the tone, the mood, the tempo, everything fit perfectly when we saw it with the scene. I can't wait to be able to show everyone a finished product.
Right now, it's rainy and muggy in New York and I just finally dealt with a fly problem we were having out in the living room. It was apparently due to the window being cracked open at the top, unbeknownst to us. Our window is uncomfortably close to the recycling bins down on the ground level, so that explains the high number of flies and why they were wafting up to our level.
Either way, it feels good to have a clean apartment and a clean slate to get to work on some of my next projects. I do want to write a choral piece again and I have tons of other unfinsheds and as yet to be writtens floating around the apartment and the inside of my brain. But I've also thought it might be nice to try and find some more film scoring work. I'll probably focus on the choral piece first though because it's always good to know when starting a piece that there's a high probability that I can get it performed without too much financial investment.
So, I'll be updating as that progresses. For now, I'm too tired to think of anything else to say...imagine that. Me. Tired on an overnight shift.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Brooklyn is home and Merry Christmas...
Christmas night. Unlike last Christmas, which I spent almost entirely alone, I was able to spend my afternoon and evening with some friends from the church, having dinner and sitting by the fire in my friend's brownstone apartment (firewood provided by yours truly, which I picked up from the bodega on the way). My friend Dawn invited me and some others to what she called an "orphan's Christmas" as it was mostly comprised of people who had no place to go for Christmas. We had Tofurkey and mashed potatoes among other traditional turkey dinner trimmings.
It was a rather nice dinner and great company besides. Made me happy to be in New York. Of course, I'm always happy to be here, though. I've felt particularly connected to the borough in many ways in the past few weeks. Take what happened last Sunday, when I was running late to choir rehearsal because of the train (for a change, ha!). After waiting on the platform for ten minutes, I started to notice people wandering toward the turnstiles from the far ends of the platform and, when I took my headphones out, I could hear a muffled sound on the PA. So, I headed back toward the entrance myself and found the station attendant addressing the throngs of people (the first sign it's been a while since a train has passed is an unnatural buildup of people on the platform). Apparently, the R train was stuck at 36th Street for some unknown (or undisclosed) reason and we were being told to either wait or that we could get a train at DeKalb Avenue (for those of you non-Brooklynites, DeKalb Avenue is 5 stops away from where I usually catch the train at 25th Street). I thought, "to hell with this, I'll either walk to 4th Avenue/9th Street and get the F or G or try to catch a livery cab or go back home and sleep." The last option, I hoped not to do because the choir was having one of its last rehearsals before the Christmas Eve service. Thinking there'd be no way I'd be on time if I walked 13 blocks to the F train and then waited, I started to crane my neck out into traffic and scan for any kind of cab I could spot. A passerby, who had obviously been in the train station previously, saw my familiar maneuvering and asked me if I was getting a cab. When I told her I was, she asked if she could share one with me and we began discussing our various paths (She had to go to Manhattan). Before I knew it, another two people had come up and asked us if they could ride along as well. We all talked it over and agreed, and luckily just as we had come to a consensus that we could all benefit from the same cab ride, despite our wildly different destinations, a livery cab drove up and I deftly flagged him down. We all hopped in and got chatting and it turned out that the two girls in the back seat with me were also musicians and one was even also on her way to a church choir rehearsal. Imagine that. I even ran into the other choir singer a few days later on the R train and we exchanged info, agreeing that us musicians should stick together for networking's sake at least. She's a music teacher and an opera singer.
I just loved that spirit of New Yorkers banding together when the system fails us. It just made me love this city even more, that total strangers can trust and help each other in a situation like that. Even more thrilling was the fact that, more so than anywhere else I've lived, musicians and other like-minded artistic and creative people just seem to pop out of the woodwork here. I've made so many connections just by being where I am than I have trying to go out and specifically meet musicians and filmmakers. It's beautiful.
Tonight, as I was heading back from Dawn's apartment, I spotted someone smiling at me on the train platform at Bergen Street and then it dawned on me after boarding the train that it was one of my neighbors. She lives in my wing of the building but two floors up and I've never spoken to her except for a few smiles and occasional hellos on the way in and out. So when we both made the same train connection at 4th Avenue/9th Street we started chatting. She's really nice and it turns out she's a vet tech and we both work overnight shifts so we got to laughing about that. She's lived in the building all her life and knows everyone here. It's always interesting to me when I get to talk to lifelong New Yorkers too and compare living in the suburbs to their lives growing up in a huge metropolis like New York.
I felt bad because I didn't initially talk to her, not tonight on the platform, or even all those times I crossed her path on the stairs. And then I find out how nice she is. I realize that a lot of outsiders in New York move into places with people who have lived there all their lives and see the newcomers as signs of gentrification and sometimes with a little bit of mistrust or suspicion. It's too bad and my shyness ends up playing into that. Yet, I'm at the same time curious about their lives and, without exception almost, every one that I have met here is very kind and outgoing and helpful. The guys at the corner deli (who I found out are all brothers) who always say hey, how's it going? when I go in there before work, Frances upstairs with her granddaughter that she's always apologizing for stomping on the floor, even the quiet Chinese man, who works in the laundromat downstairs, helping me with my bills in the change machine. Brooklyn is feeling like home to me because of all of these things coming together.
And I love it.
Tonight, I'm running on a few hours of broken sleep, which ended abruptly at 5 this morning when I had to go in for an odd shift covering for a coworker who had covered me a few weeks ago when I had two concerts in one week. Tomorrow I do the overnight so I'm pushing myself to stay up and sleep late tomorrow. I'll go to the Vespers service at the Unitarian church tomorrow to sing but I'm definitely sleeping until at least 1 or 2 in the afternoon.
Beyond that, I've not been doing much since I got home. Just wrapping presents and organizing my thoughts on my next couple of projects. As usual my mind is full and I now have to empty it out and try to sleep. More to come. But for now, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
It was a rather nice dinner and great company besides. Made me happy to be in New York. Of course, I'm always happy to be here, though. I've felt particularly connected to the borough in many ways in the past few weeks. Take what happened last Sunday, when I was running late to choir rehearsal because of the train (for a change, ha!). After waiting on the platform for ten minutes, I started to notice people wandering toward the turnstiles from the far ends of the platform and, when I took my headphones out, I could hear a muffled sound on the PA. So, I headed back toward the entrance myself and found the station attendant addressing the throngs of people (the first sign it's been a while since a train has passed is an unnatural buildup of people on the platform). Apparently, the R train was stuck at 36th Street for some unknown (or undisclosed) reason and we were being told to either wait or that we could get a train at DeKalb Avenue (for those of you non-Brooklynites, DeKalb Avenue is 5 stops away from where I usually catch the train at 25th Street). I thought, "to hell with this, I'll either walk to 4th Avenue/9th Street and get the F or G or try to catch a livery cab or go back home and sleep." The last option, I hoped not to do because the choir was having one of its last rehearsals before the Christmas Eve service. Thinking there'd be no way I'd be on time if I walked 13 blocks to the F train and then waited, I started to crane my neck out into traffic and scan for any kind of cab I could spot. A passerby, who had obviously been in the train station previously, saw my familiar maneuvering and asked me if I was getting a cab. When I told her I was, she asked if she could share one with me and we began discussing our various paths (She had to go to Manhattan). Before I knew it, another two people had come up and asked us if they could ride along as well. We all talked it over and agreed, and luckily just as we had come to a consensus that we could all benefit from the same cab ride, despite our wildly different destinations, a livery cab drove up and I deftly flagged him down. We all hopped in and got chatting and it turned out that the two girls in the back seat with me were also musicians and one was even also on her way to a church choir rehearsal. Imagine that. I even ran into the other choir singer a few days later on the R train and we exchanged info, agreeing that us musicians should stick together for networking's sake at least. She's a music teacher and an opera singer.
I just loved that spirit of New Yorkers banding together when the system fails us. It just made me love this city even more, that total strangers can trust and help each other in a situation like that. Even more thrilling was the fact that, more so than anywhere else I've lived, musicians and other like-minded artistic and creative people just seem to pop out of the woodwork here. I've made so many connections just by being where I am than I have trying to go out and specifically meet musicians and filmmakers. It's beautiful.
Tonight, as I was heading back from Dawn's apartment, I spotted someone smiling at me on the train platform at Bergen Street and then it dawned on me after boarding the train that it was one of my neighbors. She lives in my wing of the building but two floors up and I've never spoken to her except for a few smiles and occasional hellos on the way in and out. So when we both made the same train connection at 4th Avenue/9th Street we started chatting. She's really nice and it turns out she's a vet tech and we both work overnight shifts so we got to laughing about that. She's lived in the building all her life and knows everyone here. It's always interesting to me when I get to talk to lifelong New Yorkers too and compare living in the suburbs to their lives growing up in a huge metropolis like New York.
I felt bad because I didn't initially talk to her, not tonight on the platform, or even all those times I crossed her path on the stairs. And then I find out how nice she is. I realize that a lot of outsiders in New York move into places with people who have lived there all their lives and see the newcomers as signs of gentrification and sometimes with a little bit of mistrust or suspicion. It's too bad and my shyness ends up playing into that. Yet, I'm at the same time curious about their lives and, without exception almost, every one that I have met here is very kind and outgoing and helpful. The guys at the corner deli (who I found out are all brothers) who always say hey, how's it going? when I go in there before work, Frances upstairs with her granddaughter that she's always apologizing for stomping on the floor, even the quiet Chinese man, who works in the laundromat downstairs, helping me with my bills in the change machine. Brooklyn is feeling like home to me because of all of these things coming together.
And I love it.
Tonight, I'm running on a few hours of broken sleep, which ended abruptly at 5 this morning when I had to go in for an odd shift covering for a coworker who had covered me a few weeks ago when I had two concerts in one week. Tomorrow I do the overnight so I'm pushing myself to stay up and sleep late tomorrow. I'll go to the Vespers service at the Unitarian church tomorrow to sing but I'm definitely sleeping until at least 1 or 2 in the afternoon.
Beyond that, I've not been doing much since I got home. Just wrapping presents and organizing my thoughts on my next couple of projects. As usual my mind is full and I now have to empty it out and try to sleep. More to come. But for now, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Decluttering and Destressing...
Sitting at home on a Saturday night working on a piece of music, taking a little break for an update. I got done with a lot of small tasks on this particular piece I had set aside for tonight. Things like fixing a few mistakes I'd caught, writing a few new parts and finishing re-entering parts of the score from the printed copy that were missing from the older copy I had to revert to after the virus. Now, I'm getting to the point where I'm taking a step back and listening to my ideas, thinking about what the piece is missing. I have a lot of logistical things with this piece, like sampling and looping the orchestra parts, that I'm trying to work out as I write it, but some of the logistics I can't really bother with until the piece is written anyway. So, now it's time to rethink a few things. The structure of the piece is there but it's lacking in some places...there's no real arc yet.
Anyway, so right now my other big thing has been this ongoing battle to get the room to a point where it doesn't feel so cluttered so I can work in here more effectively. I had a discussion with my roommate/cousin about all the things that are hanging about with no real home and cluttering up the common space and it started to make sense to me to rent a storage space for these things. The only big things are my beer equipment, camping gear and window AC unit...so now I have to justify other things that might go in there. Some of the boxes under my bed come to mind. Musical instruments are all staying here, of course.
If I'm going to stay in this apartment another year or more, I do want it to be comfortable, so it's probably best for me to just stop fighting the fact that my bedroom is so small and start really working to solve the problem. I have a friend donating her flat screen monitor to me soon, so I imagine that this monitor I'm looking at now that takes up 1/4 of my room by itself, will probably go in storage until my dad takes it back.
But blah blah blah. The best news of the week is that the six piano sketches are all done and ready to be performed...better yet, published. That's the next thing to do. More on that later.
Additionally, I've done my second volunteer training session at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. Mainly, I've just been "directing" which entails merely, listening to the narrator, catching mistakes and marking page numbers. It's fun though, and I'm learning their conventions for how they read certain passages. It's interesting to note that they are required to describe photos and diagrams in these text books as they go along. I've met some nice people there so far and hope to be doing it once a week until I get fully trained and then maybe once or twice a month.
What else is there to tell? It's getting cold in the city and will probably snow soon. Work is going well but taking it out of me slowly for all the schedule switching but I could be doing something a lot worse for a company that sucks quite a lot more. The company isn't bad, though. They threw us another great Christmas party and I even won one of the raffle prizes and then danced my face off while full on some excellent catered food.
I should get back to work though. I may be burnt out on the orchestra piece but I think I'll work on some electronic stuff. Laters.
Anyway, so right now my other big thing has been this ongoing battle to get the room to a point where it doesn't feel so cluttered so I can work in here more effectively. I had a discussion with my roommate/cousin about all the things that are hanging about with no real home and cluttering up the common space and it started to make sense to me to rent a storage space for these things. The only big things are my beer equipment, camping gear and window AC unit...so now I have to justify other things that might go in there. Some of the boxes under my bed come to mind. Musical instruments are all staying here, of course.
If I'm going to stay in this apartment another year or more, I do want it to be comfortable, so it's probably best for me to just stop fighting the fact that my bedroom is so small and start really working to solve the problem. I have a friend donating her flat screen monitor to me soon, so I imagine that this monitor I'm looking at now that takes up 1/4 of my room by itself, will probably go in storage until my dad takes it back.
But blah blah blah. The best news of the week is that the six piano sketches are all done and ready to be performed...better yet, published. That's the next thing to do. More on that later.
Additionally, I've done my second volunteer training session at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. Mainly, I've just been "directing" which entails merely, listening to the narrator, catching mistakes and marking page numbers. It's fun though, and I'm learning their conventions for how they read certain passages. It's interesting to note that they are required to describe photos and diagrams in these text books as they go along. I've met some nice people there so far and hope to be doing it once a week until I get fully trained and then maybe once or twice a month.
What else is there to tell? It's getting cold in the city and will probably snow soon. Work is going well but taking it out of me slowly for all the schedule switching but I could be doing something a lot worse for a company that sucks quite a lot more. The company isn't bad, though. They threw us another great Christmas party and I even won one of the raffle prizes and then danced my face off while full on some excellent catered food.
I should get back to work though. I may be burnt out on the orchestra piece but I think I'll work on some electronic stuff. Laters.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)