Joe's New Blog

Tired

2012-01-14T23:40:00.000-06:00

I am just really tired of everything right now. My job, into which I'm not really all that settled, is now in an even more unstable state as my boss, the only one I've worked under in this position, has been moved to a different department. Which leaves me kind of in the lurch as far as what's going to be expected of me from here on out.My "band" has not been together for at least a month now. I asked them probably six months ago where we wanted to get as a group, and I heard all the right things, but we obviously haven't moved very far in the direction of either recording or playing live. No, we still play probably once every two or three weeks, on average, in the drummer's family room.The girlfriend wants to move to Austin in the next couple of months, which means that we'll both get to start over in our career paths. That should be loads of fun. I just don't know that I want to go through all of this crap all over again. Damn it, I'm tired...

Day off...

2012-01-12T22:03:00.002-06:00

I took the day off from work today. I had hoped to get a few things done around the house, and specifically I'd hoped to get some things done with my music. I have a couple of songs that I've been trying to work on lately, but I'm having a hard time getting the parts recorded well when I have the ambition to work on them. Unfortunately, today I didn't get them done, either. I did at least get the bass part for one of them recorded fairly well, though, after realizing that the drum part that I'd come up with didn't quite have the right structure. So now I have a bass part with no drum part, but I'm hoping I can resolve that problem tomorrow and work from there.

I did get a new light hung up in the bedroom, which made the girlfriend quite happy. It's been kind of dark in there since we moved down, but the new light fixture brightens the place up quite well. Not sure how I feel about the fluorescent bulbs, but they're a whole hell of a lot better than the dingy yellow light that came through the shade on the old fixture. So it wasn't a totally lost day, in any case. But tomorrow, it's back to the grind...

Dinner at the Agave Azul

2011-12-27T23:44:00.003-06:00

The girlfriend and I went down to Carrollton and met a couple of her friends at the Agave Azul, a nice little Tex-Mex restaurant tucked into the little downtown shopping district. The service was good and the food tasted and smelled quite delicious. I had the Jalisco platter, which was a cheese enchilada, a pork tamale, and a beef taco, along with rice and beans. Everyone else had fajitas, since it was fajita Tuesday, with a $9.99 price tag on that particular dish. She seemed pretty satisfied with hers, too, and David, one of the friends we were with, cleared his plate out in record time. So I gather his beef fajita was pretty good, too...

My girlfriend's Etsy shop

2011-12-11T15:47:00.001-06:00

This weekend, my girlfriend has opened a little shop on Etsy. She does knitting and crocheting, some embroidery stuff, and is generally a pretty creative gal. So, feel free to stop by and see if she's got anything on there that you'd love to have in your own home.

2011-11-07T13:19:00.002-06:00

I'm taking the day off from work. It's pretty much a mental health day, because for the past couple of weeks, I've felt like I was getting more and more testy with the people who I have to work with, and more and more likely to just finally say "Fuck it!" and walk out without really thinking through my actions. And that wouldn't be good, because for now, I need the money to keep a roof over my head and gas in the car. And just to keep the car, for that matter.

I had a bunch of things that I wanted to get accomplished this weekend, and with the day off, and I've been gradually working on some of them. One load of laundry is done, another is washed but not dried. The dishwasher is half emptied. And I've moved my amp and power supply from out of my portable rack and replaced them with my main synth module, bass processor, main guitar processor, and tuner. So I think I'm set up to play music a little better than I have been in the recent past. So, now it's time to get on with it and play some music...

2011-10-25T09:17:00.001-05:00

Fall is definitely in the air, and I'm rather ambivalent about it. The temperature is nice right now, but I know it's going to be getting cold in the near future. While I don't like the hundred degree weather that we've had most of this summer, I also don't particularly care for the freezing cold that we had for several weeks last winter. I suppose on the plus side, I can always bundle up when it gets cold, but you can only take off so much clothing when it gets hot.

2011-10-11T00:24:00.003-05:00

I was just looking at some old blog entries in other places. I've had a number of different blogs on different websites over the years, and it seems that I go through phases of writing a lot for a while, then not writing anything for months on end. Maybe one day I'll take a little time and move all of those other entries over onto this blog. I don't know. But I do know that I should write more. It's good for me to get stuff off my chest now and again, instead of just letting it eat away at me. Nothing much to say right now, though. It's late, and I should be going to bed. It's going to be another early day tomorrow, and probably another long day tomorrow. I just despise going back to that place, though...

New day, new job!

2011-08-19T08:31:00.002-05:00

For the past two years and two months, I've been working in the file room at a local car dealership and driving the courtesy van for their service department. It's not exactly a stressful position, but it's also not exactly one that's making me top dollar. I suppose it's been getting the bills paid all right, but just barely. The girlfriend and I have sometimes had to struggle to make ends meet, and I've tapped out most of the cushion that I put away at my old job.

But yesterday evening, management told me that they're finally coming through on one of the other jobs that they've sort of dangled in front of my nose for the past month or two. This morning, when I get to work, instead of lugging the stack of orders to be filed down to the file room, I'm going to be reporting back to the make ready department. There, I'm going to train to be their new service writer.

One of the things I told the managers about a year ago, when they talked to me about possible career options at the dealership, is that I didn't really want to be one of the regular service advisers. I don't particularly care to deal with upset customers all day, even though the money might be decent. And I don't like the idea that most of the pay in that position is based on commission, so if you get one pissed off customer who sends in a bad survey, your pay for the month can go straight down the tubes.

So in this job, I'm not actually going to be dealing directly with the public at all. Instead, I get the requests for service from the sales staff, and pass that info on to the guys who actually do the work back in the make ready area. In a way, it's a lot like what I used to do when I was a production clerk and shipping clerk with Kathrein: Take the orders and pass them on to the workers; get requests for information from the sales staff, find the answers and pass the information back to them. I think it should be something that I'm very good at, and I'm hoping that it will make me a fair amount more money than what I'm making now.

In any case, it's a good thing. Moving back up in the world...

2011-08-18T09:20:00.002-05:00

So, as the girlfriend has pointed out a few times in the past couple of months, I haven't been blogging all that much of late. Sorry about that. I've mostly been writing on 750words.com, which is private. I haven't been writing there because it's private, or because I want to hide what I write or anything. It's mostly just because I don't like writing these half-finished draft entries and then not ever finishing them. There, it's more like writing in a journal, where you just write whatever comes into your head. I originally had the idea of going back and finding the interesting little nuggets that are "bloggable" and fleshing them out into blog entries, but I know how I am, and I know how many little projects like that are already on my plate. So there's very little chance that I'm ever going to do that. But I guess I'll start trying to write an entry here every day or so, too...

New website for music toys...

2011-07-30T18:12:00.001-05:00

VSTPLANET - VST Plugins Free - Virtual instruments and effects

Well, technically, I don't suppose it's a "new" website, since they have entries dating back at least three years. But I just found it while looking for some audio toys to play with. In any case, it's not like I don't have a metric buttload of audio toys around that I already don't know how to use, but I've downloaded a few more to play with. I suppose I should go ahead and get busy actually recording some music to use them on, eh?

Good intentions...

2011-04-26T08:59:00.003-05:00

Back when I had my old job, in Oregon, I worked with a lady named Wendy. She was one of those outgoing, funny sorts of gals. She was often trying to lose weight, and she and her husband would buy lots of vegetables and fruits and such. One day, she was talking to me and some other folks about cleaning out all of the fruits and veggies which had gone bad before they could use them. She referred to the crisper drawer in her fridge as the "drawer of good intentions."

I've occasionally used that phrase about the same thing, but as I look around, I realize that I pretty much have a whole life of good intentions. A few minutes ago, I was reorganizing part of the book shelf in the living room, making room for some records and such that moved from somewhere else. And I noticed that I have two full shelves and then some of cookbooks. And I have a full shelf of music books. A couple of math books, and a couple on photography. And an entire book case full of computer programming books.

Most of those books have never been used, and I don't know that a lot of them ever will be. I bought them because I thought that, one of these days, I'll read through and learn about statistics, to apply that to my "real job." I'll try a bunch of those recipes. And I'll learn some of those songs that I love to listen to, and polish up my music theory. Of course, I haven't done many of those things, but I still have the shelves full of books. The cabinet full of baking supplies, for when I start making more cookies. The shelf full of modeling supplies, for when I start working on that model train layout.

I need to quit working on the intention and start working on the doing...

2011-03-27T12:55:00.003-05:00

So what's been going on in Joe's world for the past month or so since I've posted on here? Pretty much the same old things. I did finally get my transcripts from my old college, and those had sort of an interesting plus to them: The somehow lost track of my first four years, the awful years, of my college career. Only two classes show up on the transcript, and they're both A's. So I don't have to worry about my GPA if I happen to decide to transfer to a 4-year school down here in Texas. I haven't yet applied to NCTC, but I need to do so very soon if I plan to go during the summer.

The job is pretty much the same crap. I found out the other day, through the grapevine, that I didn't get the IT job that was opening up. Turns out that a guy from back in Make Ready who was taking a few IT classes when he dropped out of college, but who is friends with some of the managers, is better qualified to do the job than someone who's been doing it professionally for 13 years. Guess it just goes to show that sometimes you can get more places in the world by sucking up than by actually working hard.

And, after spending who knows how much time down in the file room stewing over all that crap, I've decided that I will go back into the IT world. Rather than trying to do programming, though, I'm going to see if I can get myself a DBA qualification and work as a database manager. Maybe add some more similar types of things later, if I can find a decent job that lets me have enough time and money to get the qualifications.

Anyway, that's about it for now...

2011-02-22T21:36:00.002-06:00

Last night the girlfriend was looking at Facebook and such on her computer while she was winding down for the evening, and she commented to me that I haven't posted anything on here for a while. She says this is the only way that she knows what's going on with me. I guess I'm not the most outgoing, talkative sort of guy about stuff that's bugging me. Sorry.

And I haven't been posting on here because sometimes it just feels like a long litany of boredom interspersed with episodes of failure. I still haven't applied to NCTC yet. I'm still working at the same crappy job, which I rather despise. I look through the paper now and again to see what jobs are out there, but most of the things that are any better than where I am now, I'm not qualified for.

I guess the band thing is going all right, but I doubt it's really going to go much further than playing in the drummer's spare room. We missed an entire month of practice. We've only been practicing once a week anyway, at most, and it's taking us a long time to get even a few songs down solidly. I know that I don't do enough practicing when I'm not there with the guys, and I don't think anyone else in the group really puts in the necessary practice, either. It might be time to move on and try to find a more dedicated group of folks to try to play with.

My own musical efforts fail because I don't follow through on things, much like many of my other efforts. The combination of laziness, lack of follow-through, lack of self-confidence... That's pretty much a recipe for certain failure in most endeavors, I think. I've been trying to at least keep myself a little more organized, get myself sort of a ritual that I go through to try to get things checked off my to-do list. It's working for some of the little things, but some of the other things, not so well.

Anyway, it's back to the moping and depression, so I suppose I'll sign it off...

2011-02-09T07:43:00.002-06:00

It's snowing lightly outside. Last night, I heard the rain coming down, too. This morning, the girlfriend had to open. Her co-worker was feeling ill, the same way she feels ill every time the weather gets icy or snowy out there. Unfortunately, this morning, the ice wasn't coming off her windshield very well, so she got me up to go help her. Last time she slipped and nearly broke her ankle, so I don't feel bad about going out and giving her a hand. When I was out there, it was sleeting and her wipers were frozen to her windshield.

Now I'm up, because I really couldn't go back to sleep after being outside. And the sleet which was coming down then has turned to tiny little flakes of snow over the last hour. It's just a dusting, barely covering the ground, but the wind is also blowing rather strongly at times, so it's probably going to be something of a skating rink out there this morning. I just hope I don't get crushed by a truck that takes a wind gust or something like that.

Daily Stuff, February 8, 2011

2011-02-09T00:30:00.005-06:00

Wake up when my alarm goes off, on weekdays at least.

Drink my liter of water a day.

Shave, put lotion on my legs, and brush my teeth each morning.

Eat something for breakfast every day.

Clean up Ernie's poo area in the back yard.

Scoop Kala's litter box.

Check the mail when I get home from work.

I'm sure I'll add more stuff, and there are things that I really should be doing, like recording music and such, that aren't on there but should be. But if I can just get to the point where I'm checking those items off every day, maybe I'll get a smooth pattern going and have more time for the rest.

Today, or technically yesterday, I managed to accomplish all of those things. Yay, me!

Daily Stuff, February 8, 2011

2011-02-09T00:30:00.003-06:00

I've started making myself little lists of things to do for the day. Actually, I've been doing that for ages, but I'm trying to make another go at doing it again, and keeping myself in the habit. One of my running goals for February is to try to keep all the dishes clean and out of the sink. Yesterday I got everything done. Today there is a pot and a few bowls and such in the sink, although I did put some of the stuff in the dishwasher. If the girlfriend doesn't finish them tomorrow morning before she goes to work, I'll go ahead and get them done then.

This weekend while we were driving around, I went to put on my sunglasses and noticed that one of the lenses had popped out. I tried to stuff it back in, but it didn't want to stay. So today at lunch, I stopped at J.C. Penney, where I'd purchased the glasses a year or so ago. All it took was for the lady there to loosen a couple of the screws, pop the lens back in, and re-tighten the screws. I was out of there in about ten minutes, of which about half was just waiting for someone to see me at all.

Overall, I'd say it's been a decent day, although nothing really spectacular. The weather is supposed to get pretty nasty tonight, although I doubt it will be as bad as it was last week. Anyway, we'll see what tomorrow morning brings. For now, I'm going to head off to sleep...

2011-02-04T12:04:00.003-06:00

There's snow again today. The service manager had the girlfriend call me from work and tell me to stay home. In itself, that wouldn't be such a horrible thing, but I don't really have the vacation time to get paid for today. The Weather Channel and such were saying that there should only be accumulations of about an inch locally, but I'm looking out the back door at about four inches on top of the barbecue. I need to find a better job, where I get more than one vacation day every three or four months...

11 Reasons You Won’t Get Published

2011-02-01T12:05:00.000-06:00

11 Reasons You Won’t Get Published

This is a blog post from another blog. Even though it's about writing, and the things that will keep you from succeeding in the writing biz, many of the lessons included apply to a lot of other fields of endeavor. Like, nearly every field of endeavor. In my case, I've fallen into most of the 11 traps he lists in my music, in my blogging, in my writing, in job hunts, and in nearly everything else that I've done. I'm always trying to find ways out of the ruts, with little success. Which explains why I'm making little money at my job, never playing my music live, have over a hundred unfinished drafts on my blog, and have dozens of started stories on my computer. I do really need to get my ass in gear and quit starting projects that I don't finish...

Weekends of January 22-23 and 29-30

2011-01-29T21:28:00.001-06:00

Last weekend, I had to work Saturday morning. Nonetheless, we had a more active weekend than usual. After I got off work, we drove down to see one of the girlfriend’s nephews play basketball. He’s 8 years old, so it wasn’t exactly an offensive shootout or anything. Final score was 7-6, but his team won at least.

After the basketball game, we went to the birthday party for that nephew’s little brother. He was turning three, and it was a monster truck themed party. It was all right, although we were there quite a bit longer than we had really expected to stay.

This weekend, we went over to Scott and Betty’s house on Friday. Betty is one of the girlfriend’s oldest friends. Her husband plays guitar, and he has a couple of songs that he was interested in jamming with me on. So we played for a while, had dinner, and generally had some pleasant conversation.

And this morning we drove out to the dog park with Ernie. We only stayed out for an hour or so, despite the absolutely beautiful weather. The girlfriend didn’t have any sunscreen on, though, and we didn’t want her to burn to a crisp. In any case, though, the little man had a lot of fun running around with all the dogs out there, and we got out of the house for a bit.

See more progress on: Get out of the house and do something every weekend

2011-01-29T18:29:00.001-06:00

For the past several days, I've been feeling rather unsatisfied with myself. I go to work, feel miserable there. I feel like I'm being walked all over, taken advantage of. I should be doing something better with my life. And then I come home and really don't do anything at all to better my situation. I usually sit around and watch TV. Maybe I'll plunk on a little bit of music, but maybe not. I really need to try to buckle down and do something productive every night, and I really need to get the balls to demand something better for myself at work.

I'm going to go do something now. I don't know what...

Starting over...

2011-01-24T21:00:00.001-06:00

So for the past couple of days, I really haven’t done much writing. I guess that’s a sign that I’m going to be starting this goal all over again, with the 24th of January being day one of the new journal year. We’ll see how far I make it this time around…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

January 21-22, 2011

2011-01-23T23:04:00.001-06:00

Not great days on this goal. On Friday, the girlfriend and I stopped a couple of places on the way home from work, and then when we got home, she wanted to do some reorganization to the living room. That, combined with a serious lack of ambition on my part, kind of shot down most of the work on other goals for that day.

Yesterday, I had to work in the morning. Following work, we had quite a busy afternoon and evening. We drove down to see one of her nephews play a basketball game. His team won, 7-6. I guess you can’t really expect all that much offense from a bunch of 8-year-olds. After that, we drove down into Fort Worth to get one of her other nephews a gift card from the museum of science and history. We didn’t really recall the fact that the Fort Worth Stock Show was going on at the same time. We couldn’t find any place to park that wasn’t way too expensive. In the end, we wasted about an hour just driving around. Oh well. We went to the nephew’s birthday party after that and stayed there for a couple of hours.

By the time we got home, I wasn’t really feeling like doing very much of anything. I did stay up a fair amount later watching TV, but that was about all I did. So, I’d say it was about a 50% pair of days for this goal. Still trying to get better, though…

See more progress on: Do the daily things for January 2011

January 20, 2011

2011-01-21T09:33:00.001-06:00

I think I crawled back up to about 90% yesterday on this one. I did get up when my alarm went off and immediately went and did the morning clean-up. I already had my bottle of water filled from the night before. I didn’t take it to work with me again, but I did drink it in the morning, at lunch, and after work, so I got the whole thing down well before I went to bed. Which was good.

The girlfriend said she was hungry, but we didn’t have much stuff around the house that was quick to make. So, on the way to work, we stopped at the donut shop and picked up a couple of kolaches and donuts for breakfast. Not the healthiest, but I’m still counting it.

I wrote my blog entry in the morning, then finished one of the old entries in the evening. I also gave away all my cheers here on 43Things in the morning and evening. And I emptied the dishwasher and folded up some laundry when I got home.

While sitting around watching a hockey game, I put a few more stitches into Mom’s cross stitch project. And then when the game was over, I made a couple of stabs at recording another one of the bass parts that I haven’t been able to get down really well. It was another mediocre recording, but it’s a little better than the best take I’d had before.

Before I went to bed, I went upstairs and scooped Kala’s litter box. I also made the coffee and filled my water bottle, which have become other little daily habits for me. I also need to check the mail daily, which I didn’t do yesterday.

So, once again, all I fully missed was taking recycling. Got to do it before it starts getting out of hand again…

See more progress on: Do the daily things for January 2011

January 19, 2011

2011-01-20T09:27:00.001-06:00

I did a little better yesterday than the day before. I’d call it about an 88%. I did hit the snooze one time after the buzzer went off. It was cold, and I was weak. But we still managed to leave for work nearly on time, so that’s all right.

I had my liter of water already poured, but I forgot it in the fridge when I went to work. But I did drink it in the evening. Probably a little too late, as I kept having to get up in the middle of the night to relieve myself. Breakfast wasn’t all that healthy, but I had a couple of breakfast bars. Probably have the same again today. I did do all my morning ablutions.

I wrote my blog in the morning, and then finished one of my draft entries when I got home after work. I also gave away something like 15 cheers here on 43Things over the course of the morning and evening. While sitting around playing on the computer, I also did a couple of stitches on Mom’s cross stitch project.

I cleaned Kala’s litter box entirely and took the used litter and some other garbage out to the dumpster. One little addition that I’d like to make sure I do daily is going upstairs and scooping Kala’s litter box. It’ll both make her happier and get me upstairs, so maybe I’ll do a little cleaning in the upstairs room.

Before going to bed, I got out the bass and got it tuned up. Then I took a couple stabs at recording the bass part for one of the songs that I’ve had some troubles getting down completely. It’s still not exactly the greatest bass part that I’ve ever played, but it’s better than it was. I’ll try it again tonight, and maybe it’ll turn into a complete song.

The one major thing missing was the fact that I didn’t take anything down to the recycle center. Of course, we took three bags down there the day before, but it’s supposed to be every day. So, more to work on today…

See more progress on: Do the daily things for January 2011

January 18, 2011

2011-01-19T09:28:00.002-06:00

I’d say I pretty much struggled to about 85% completion on my task list yesterday. I did get up on time, but we were in something of a hurry to get out of the house because the girlfriend wanted to stop at Hastings and pick up a couple more books in the series she’s reading. So while I did lotion up my legs and do a quick shave, I left without brushing my teeth. Also, all I had for breakfast was an apple fritter from one of the little convenience stores.

In the evening, I did do some stitching on Mom’s cross stitch, I finished one of my old blog entries and wrote a new one, and the girlfriend rode her trike down to the recycle center while I walked along with Ernie in tow. We completely cleared out the “other” bin, leaving just the plastic and paper bins. One of those will go this evening, I think. Also, I ran a load of laundry through the wash, for the “cleaning” entry. And, of course, I gave away all my cheers here on 43Things…

I didn’t record any music, but I did do some editing on the recordings the band made last Saturday and sent a couple of MP3s to the guys. And over the course of the day, I did drink my liter bottle of water. So, I’ll try to fill those couple of little gaps today and we’ll move on from there…

See more progress on: Do the daily things for January 2011

Untitled

2011-01-18T23:16:00.001-06:00

I was sort of trying to keep up with this here on 43Things for a while, but lately I’ve just been posting the stuff on my blog. I’ve made it over a hundred days a couple of times, and I’m currently at about a month, but I’m still not able to keep it going for an entire year. Maybe this will be the year…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

2011-01-18T08:54:00.002-06:00

The weather forecast for today has been changed to morning showers and a high of about 54. So it shouldn't really be all that bad, but I'd still prefer the nearly 60-degree weather they were predicting yesterday.

Yesterday evening on the drive home, the girlfriend was asking me what I had planned for the evening. I was going to do some vacuuming and such, but she asked if I'd rather do that or just go take Ernie for a walk. She said that in that kind of division of labor, she'd rather do the cleaning than take the little man out walking. And I, of course, don't really care for cleaning all that much, so I'm happy to take him out into the world instead.

I did vacuum the stairway when I brought the vacuum cleaner downstairs. That's where Kala tends to sit and watch us, and all of her fur would probably have driven the girlfriend's allergies into immediate overdrive. I'm probably also going to have to be the permanent designated emptier of the vacuum, too, for about the same reasons.

After vacuuming, I took the little man down to the recycle place and deposited some cardboard. We went a couple blocks further than we usually do, but it still didn't get my step count up to the full 10K. I guess I'll have to walk a little further with him the next time I go.

Well, the girlfriend has slept in a little later than usual today, so I suppose I should go get her up. I didn't hear her alarm go off, so she may have forgotten to set it, or just turned it off in her sleep. Then it's off to work...

Sort of a 43Things "sub-list"

2011-01-17T23:53:00.001-06:00

For the rest of January, I’d like to try to do the following things every day:

1. Get up when the alarm goes off (at least when the buzzer does)
2. Drink 1L of water every day
3. Have something for breakfast
4. Brush my teeth, shave, and put lotion on my legs every morning
5. Take something down to the recycle dumpsters
6. Write a blog entry, and finish one of my old draft entries
7. Give away 5 cheers on 43Things
8. Vacuum, do some dishes, mitt the sofa, or otherwise clean some
9. Record something musical
10. Do a few stitches on Mom’s cross stitch project

I feel like if I do these things, I’ll kind of get in the habit of doing them, and maybe that will get me a little closer to the goals I want to accomplish.

See more progress on: Do the daily things for January 2011

Working on a couple of them...

2011-01-17T21:27:00.002-06:00

I have two songs that I’m hoping to finish by the end of January. One is the song I wrote for my girlfriend about three or four years ago, before I moved here to Texas. Like a lot of musicians who aren’t primarily singers, I always feel very uncomfortable with my own vocals, so it’s taken me a long time to get those done. Well, it’s taken me a long time so far. They’re not done yet…

The other song I’m working on is a re-work of an instrumental bit that I wrote probably 20 years ago. Of course, when I originally recorded it, I didn’t have the software or hardware that I do now. I overdubbed all of the parts onto a little 2-input 4-track cassette recorder, bouncing the tracks back and forth over the top of each other. And when you do that on cassette, the sound quality suffers dramatically with each bounce. So I’ve pretty much re-learned the piece and I’m working on recording each piece, but I’m having a difficult time with the drum part. In the original, I used a Yamaha DD-3 drum machine. It had some cheesy sounds and some cheesy patterns, but they worked all right for me. That unit is long gone, though, and I don’t really have a drum library that has a simple country 2-step MIDI pattern with fills, intros, and the like. So I’m trying to cobble things together from what I do have, and it’s taking some time.

But we’re at least making some progress…

See more progress on: Record a song and upload it to Garageband.com

2011-01-17T09:26:00.003-06:00

I'm not feeling really inspired this morning, but I guess I'll make do with the situation I have. My step count has been down this weekend, so I've got to try to pump that up a bit. It's kind of a drizzly, foggy day out there today, so probably not going to be enjoying a lot of outdoor activity. I'll at least try to get a couple more things out of the old car, though. Got to get that thing out of there, plus I could use a little money from selling the thing off.

2011-01-16T23:37:00.003-06:00

It was a busy day today. We drove down to Lewisville and stopped by the girlfriend's mom's house, so the girlfriend could give her opinion on colors for the mom's new chair. While there, her stepfather asked me to look at some sound problems on his computer. That was pretty easy to fix, but he also said that he wants to upgrade his computer in the near future. It'll probably just be an upgrade to the hard drive, but we'll see what he wants to do with it.

After spending a bit more time there than expected, we drove down to Half-Price Books. I have a gift certificate and a couple of coupons there, and I usually find a lot of neat stuff when I'm there. This time around, I picked up a couple of Java programming books and three cookbooks. I probably could have spent quite a bit more, but I guess that's enough for one trip.

After Half-Price, we stopped at the Lewisville Sears to see if they had a replacement belt for the girlfriend's vacuum. They didn't. Then it was off to have a decent lunch at Olive Garden. And then on to the Denton Sears, which also didn't have the replacement belt. By then, it was a little later than we'd expected, so rather than finish all of our errands, we came back home to let Ernie out for his lunch and some running around time.

We left again after about an hour or so, taking Ernie with us this time. First we stopped at Michaels. The girlfriend went in and got some things that were on sale while I walked Ernie up and down the sidewalk for a while and then sat in the car and stayed warm and out of trouble. After she got back out of Michaels and we got some gas in her car, we went to Petsmart. Ernie has a bunch of people there who think he's just the bee's knees. All we actually got there was a laser pointer for Kala, but we did get to spend some time walking him around.

A couple of the workers there at Petsmart recommended this thing called the FURminator to us. It's like a fine-tooth comb designed for thinning the undercoat of long haired dogs. The girlfriend ran their sample through Ernie's hair once, and it pulled out about as much hair as three or four hard strokes with the regular brush would have. We've got the item on our wish list now. We would have just picked one up, but the smallest ones are about $40. The one that would be the best size for Ernie is about ten bucks more. One of these days we'll get one, but it's a bit tight right now.

After Petsmart, it was on to Kroger to get some groceries. I bought a little more stuff than what was on the list, but hopefully we'll use it all up before anything goes bad. Then it was home, where I watched the Seahawks get thrashed by the Bears. I'm a bit disappointed, but hardly surprised. I guess now I'll have to pick another team to root on to victory in the Super Bowl.

It's getting late, and it's another day of work tomorrow, so off to bed with me...

Should have done this years ago...

2011-01-16T11:05:00.002-06:00

...But at least I’m beginning to work on it. I found out that the local junior college still needs to get my transcripts from my old college (20-odd years ago in a different state), so I need to sit down and do all the paperwork to get those sent to me. That’s my sub-goal on this one for this weekend…

See more progress on: go back to college

Weekend of 1/14/2011

2011-01-15T21:55:00.002-06:00

It’s Saturday, and I’ve already been out into the world. This morning, I drove down to practice with the quasi-band. And after I got back from there, the girlfriend and I drove down to the dog park and let our little corgi run around for an hour or so. It’s pretty brisk out there, but it was good to get out and talk to some folks.

Tomorrow we have some shopping and other errands to run, so it’ll be a double-outing sort of weekend…

See more progress on: Get out of the house and do something every weekend

2011-01-14T23:13:00.003-06:00

Well, I'd say I did moderately well with my goals for today. I did get up reasonably on time, and I did do all of my health and grooming things this morning. While I didn't go out in the morning and get any items out of the old car, I did get a couple on the way back home for lunch. Unfortunately, I didn't clean Kala's litter box, so that's something I need to add to tomorrow's list. Also, we didn't stop at the recycle place, but the girlfriend wants to get all of that done this weekend, so we should be able to get a clean start on that.

Work goals were pretty well accomplished. I still have something of a backlog there, but I don't think anyone else is stressing over it, so I'm not going to either.

After work, I did play through all of the band material. I didn't play my own original stuff, but that's not really critical. I need to get in the habit of practicing at least part of the band repertoire and my own stuff pretty much every evening. And, finally, I didn't make it anywhere near my step count. The pedometer did reset once during the day, but I don't think I would have made it close anyway. Oh well.

So, for tomorrow, there's cleaning Kala's litter box. I still want to make sure I brush my teeth and put on lotion in the morning, and have a piece of fruit and my bottle of water. I'd like to get a couple more things out of the old car, too.

I have band practice tomorrow, and I'd like to record that again. Assuming I do so, I'd like to at least dump the MP3s over onto my computer, if not actually beginning the editing process. Since I'll be playing all the band material at practice, I'm not going to worry about that, but I do want to play all of my original stuff I've been working on, and I want to get good bass parts for "The G/D Slap Thing" and "Walking".

Since tomorrow is a weekend day, I should have plenty of time, so I'd like to vacuum and do some dishes. And then I'd like to get upstairs and sort through some of the stuff in the spare bedroom. I still eventually want to turn that into a music room, and it's not getting any closer when I don't even go up there. We'll see how things to tomorrow, though...

2011-01-13T23:23:00.002-06:00

What do I have planned for tomorrow? I'm hoping to get up when my alarm goes off; at least when the beeper does, if not the music. Since I've been slacking in the grooming and self-care department recently, I need to make sure I brush my teeth, shave, and put lotion on my legs. And I need to eat an apple or an orange for breakfast and fill my water bottle for work. Then I want to go outside and get at least two items out of the old blue car. Finally, I'm going to go upstairs and clean Kala's litter box.

I don't really have much planned for work tomorrow. Get there reasonably on time, which doesn't seem to happen really often lately. And then try to get through, oh, let's say three of the stacks of paper sitting on my cart. Also, on the way either to work in the morning or back after lunch, I'd like to stop at the recycle center and drop some stuff off.

After work, and perhaps at lunch and/or before work, I want to play through all of the band's songs on bass, and play through all of the seven tunes that I've been working on by myself on bass. And over the course of doing all of this stuff, I also want to make sure that I get to my 10,000 steps. I've had problems with the pedometer these past couple of days, with it resetting the count to 0 at some point during the day, so I'm not totally sure how many I've been getting. But, I'm going to try to get back to the 10K plateau and keep it there for three or four days, at least.

And now, off to bed...

Not going well at the moment...

2011-01-12T09:40:00.002-06:00

I’ve kind of slacked, and actually slid backward a bit, on trying to clean up all of the draft entries on the ol’ blog. I currently have 121 drafts. Admittedly, only adding about 30 in the past year is a whole lot better than I’d done previously, but the goal wasn’t to not add so many; it was to get rid of the ones I already have. So, I guess I’ll have to try to pick one per evening to clean up and publish, and maybe I’ll be done by the summer…

See more progress on: Finish all of the draft entries I've partially written on my blog

2011-01-12T09:06:00.002-06:00

Yesterday was the first day since I got my new pedometer that I've actually managed 10,000 steps two days in a row. I've come close a couple of times, like last week when I ended up at 9983 the day after hitting 10K. Now I just need to try to keep it up. Three days is the beginning of a trend, I suppose...

2011-01-11T22:33:00.002-06:00

It's been a very cold, but otherwise mostly uneventful sort of day. The girlfriend had to open again this morning, so I took care of little man in the morning. Work was pretty uneventful. Once again, all of the drives this afternoon were quite short. It seems as though the cold weather is keeping people from bringing in their cars for routine service. Most of the stuff we've been seeing has been pretty major, but I guess they've mostly had their own rides. Anyway, it all pays the same...

2011-01-10T22:22:00.002-06:00

It was very cold today. There was a tiny bit of snow this morning, but it was just little flakes that really didn't amount to very much. Fortunately, by the time I had to go to work, the roads were dry and I really didn't have any problem driving. All of the driving I did at work today was very local, which I'm glad of. I didn't really want to be driving out in some of the areas where there is always shade on the road.

Right now, I'm watching the BCS National Championship game, hoping that the Ducks can come back to win. They've been struggling more offensively than I've seen them do most of the season, but Auburn isn't exactly lighting up the scoreboard, either. I know some of the sports writers were expecting a very high scoring game between these two high-powered offenses, but it seems that the long period the defenses have had to prepare has made for a defensive struggle. We'll see if Oregon can pull out its first national championship, though...

So, it's been a while...

2011-01-09T23:28:00.002-06:00

It’s been quite a long time since I’ve written updates to most of my goals, including this one. It’s kind of like starting the goal over for 2011. So, without further ado:

The weekend of the 1st and 2nd, the girlfriend and I took Ernie, our corgi, down to the dog park. We also stopped and did a little shopping.

This weekend, week 2 of the year, we also took him down to the dog park after getting her car inspected at the auto dealership where we work. While we had big plans of doing some other stuff, we wound up being kind of tired yesterday and the snow sort of kept us around the house today. But at least we made it out yesterday…

See more progress on: Get out of the house and do something every weekend

2011-01-09T22:41:00.002-06:00

It was kind of a blustery, wintry day today. The picture up there is outside of the apartment after it had pretty much stopped snowing. I think we ended up getting about two to three inches of total accumulation. We thought it was going to be more, but it didn't snow as long as they expected. It's still plenty, considering that the weather is supposed to hover just around the freezing point for the next four or five days. That means that it's going to get just warm enough to let the snow melt a bit in the afternoon, then it's going to freeze up like glass at night. I guess we'll see how the driving is tomorrow, though...

In a band, kind of...

2011-01-08T16:12:00.002-06:00

For the past year and a half or so, I’ve been playing bass with a drummer down the road a few miles. Toward the end of last August, we got together with a guitarist/singer/songwriter, and then his brother who also plays guitar.

There have been a few little bumps along the way. The drummer has a military musical background, along with having played in jazz bands in college. He’s used to playing off charts, without a whole lot of improvisation on the overall song structures.

The brothers, on the other hand, are self-taught musicians who enjoy jamming out when playing. They don’t tend to have really well defined structures to their songs, sort of playing according to feel.

I’m somewhere in the middle of the two extremes, so I ended up playing the part of Switzerland quite a bit early on. Now I think we’ve reached something of a compromise between well-structured pieces and some improvisation over solos and such, and I think it’s getting better as we get used to playing together.

I’m not going to mark this as completed yet, because we haven’t actually played out anywhere or done any serious recording. Once we get at least one of those things done, this goal will be closed…

See more progress on: play in a band again

2011-01-08T00:19:00.002-06:00

The girlfriend reminded me this morning that I need to turn in my resume to the IT director at work. So I gave it just a bit of a polish, printed it out at lunch, and waited till the IT director came by his office. I felt kind of like a stalker, as I stood there next to the window in the file room and sorted some stuff while I watched for him to drive up. He said he'd look at it this weekend, but I don't know when or if I'll hear any particular results. We'll see, though...

I wrote to the guys in the band yesterday to see what the practice schedule's like for the week. Turns out we're not going to be practicing tomorrow. I guess that's not too bad a thing, though, because it will leave me more time to smoke the brisket. That piece of meat is currently sitting on the counter defrosting. I thought I was going to have to soak it in brine to get it to defrost in time for cooking this weekend, but it seems to be doing pretty well without the soaking. Now as long as the weather holds out, I should be fine...

I did practice a little bit of music, but I need to get off my ass and work on it quite a bit more tomorrow. That's one of my major goals for this year, and I'm falling further behind by the day. Between that and not working on Mom's cross stitch project, I'm pretty frustrated with myself. But right now, I'm pretty damned tired, so I'm going to go to bed and see if I can motivate myself to work on some of those things tomorrow...

"Resolutions" vs. "Goals"

2011-01-06T23:50:00.002-06:00

I was mentioning some of my New Year's resolutions to the girlfriend earlier this evening. She made the comment that she prefers not to refer to them as "resolutions." Instead, she prefers to call them "goals." I guess it's a matter of semantics, but it makes some sense. When you resolve to do something, once you fail to do it for the first time, that resolution has been broken. On the other hand, when you simply set something as a goal, if you fail to meet it, you haven't "broken" anything. You've just not met the goal yet, and you can continue to work on it until you meet it. I guess it's a fine point of argument, but it's one that I rather like...

2011-01-05T23:09:00.003-06:00

Today's been another depressing but fairly uneventful day. We woke up this morning to find the cable turned off. After calling Charter's 800 number and getting their automated system, we tried to find a number for their local office. Unfortunately, all of our phone books and even Google only had the number for their old office, which shut down several years ago. We were pretty sure that we still had a couple of days to pay the bill, but after a more careful reading, it seems that the cable will get shut off before the "late fee" kicks in.

So we left a bit early for work. We stopped at the bank and I transferred some money over to checking, just in case we had to pay the past due and the current amount. When we got to the Charter office, the lady was very nice, and we just had to pay the past due amount. She turned our cable back on right then. It was only a soft shut-off. A "warning," she said. Last time I checked, a warning would be something more along the lines of a phone call or a message on the bottom of the screen that said your cable was going to be shut off in a few days. But, oh well. It's back on now, which is nice.

The day at work was fairly slow, but otherwise normal. On the way home from lunch, we stopped and paid the electric bill. Trying to make sure we avoided the same kind of issues as Charter gave us. Plus if they turn off the power, it has much more of an effect than losing the TV. I had no drives at all this evening at work, but that's all right. It gave me more time to get some filing done.

Since getting home, I've mostly just sat around and played on the computer and watched TV. The girlfriend made some spaghetti for dinner, which is always nice. But now it's getting late, and there's work again tomorrow, so it's off to bed with me...

2011-01-04T23:29:00.003-06:00

Today wasn't a really eventful or exciting day. This morning, Ernie and Kala had a little bit of face-to-face interaction on the stairs when I went up to feed her. He climbed up to about the fourth step, and she came down and sniffed at him a little. Fortunately, his little butt was wagging away and he didn't get hyper and start barking or anything. I guess we'll try to do a little more of that every morning and try to get her a little more used to him.

Work was pretty much the usual stuff today. Still behind on the filing, even though I didn't have a lot of drives. I don't know if I'll ever get caught up there, but I guess I'll just keep plugging away until I'm either caught up or until they move me into some other job. Or till I quit...

When I got home today, I took Ernie down to pay the rent while the girlfriend made dinner. Ernie seemed happy to get outside and running around, even on a leash. And I managed to make my 10,000 step count for the first time in the new year. I guess that's not too terribly bad: Four days to get to my goal. Now if I can just keep it there, I'll be in good shape. Now I guess I'll think about getting ready for bed, after I go feed Kala...

2011-01-03T23:28:00.001-06:00

This morning at work, I was thinking about the situation there. They've asked me to help out some with installing software on computers and the like, which could be a nice little change from doing the filing and driving. Hopefully it would also involve me making a little more money, too. Initially, I kind of jumped at the chance, but then I got to thinking a little more about what I was being offered. It seems that I'd be doing three part time jobs, since they haven't said anything about relieving me of any of the duties of filing or driving. And I'm already getting further and further behind on the filing because they keep dragging me away to do other things.

So, when I saw the IT director early this afternoon, I flagged him down to have a bit of a chat with him. I told him that I felt like I was being set up for failure, since I was sort of being asked to do three separate jobs while reporting to two different departments. He told me that he understood the situation, and that actually my helping him out was sort of a test for me. Although I wasn't aware of it, my name has apparently come up as a possible replacement for the IT person at our facility.

While I appreciate the idea that they've been thinking of possibly having me in that position, I'm frankly a little pissed off at some of the attitude from management. Apparently, they decided not to tell me that this was a test because they were afraid that if I didn't get the position, my work ethic would suffer. So basically, I'm going to compete against other people who are applying for that job without actually knowing that there's a competition going on. I wish I'd known, because I would have put more effort into getting the laptop software installed. Oh well...

2011-01-02T20:15:00.003-06:00

This morning, the girlfriend was still feeling rather under the weather, so I ended up making dessert for the lunch. I made creme brulee. I just made the plain one out of the book I got for the girlfriend a couple of years ago. It came out pretty well, especially for my first one, and it wasn't really all that difficult. I did decide not to make the other flavor that she was going to make, mostly just because of the time required to bake and cool them.

The lunch went well. Ernie was on pretty decent behavior most of the time. He does tend to jump a little more than we'd really like, but once he got over his initial excitement, he pretty much just minded his own business. He got quite a bit of loving from them after we finished the lunch, when they were sitting on the couch and we were talking. He mostly just sat between them and got whatever attention they'd give him, which was a considerable amount.

After lunch, I sat and watched football for a while. The girlfriend was pretty worn out, so she mostly just rested in the bedroom and watched some of her holiday movies. After a few hours, though, her step-mom called and said that she was just up the road and wanted to stop by. Fortunately, we had already cleaned for the most part, so the place wasn't a total disaster. She only ended up staying for maybe half an hour, and Ernie was again a little jumpy and over-excited, but then settled down to just sit near her as she ate a sandwich.

Since then, I've mostly just been sitting around more, cutting up the recordings from yesterday's practice and watching more football. I can hardly believe that the Seahawks managed to make it into the playoffs. The first team in league history to win their division with a losing record. The announcers mentioned that it had to do with the parity in the league, but it makes it look to me more like the Western Division of the NFC just plain sucks. I wish them the best of luck against the defending champion Saints next weekend, but I will be absolutely astonished if they manage to win that one.

Well, one more round of MP3s to send off to the boys in the band, and then I suppose I should start thinking about heading off to bed. The girlfriend has to open tomorrow, so I'll probably get up a bit early myself to let the little man run around for a while. I was going to go to the bank and see about refinancing my car, but I think I'll probably wait until Tuesday instead. No sense cutting Ernie's time out of the crate short...

2011-01-01T22:38:00.003-06:00

Day one of the new year. I got up a bit later than I wanted, but managed to get down to the drummer's house within a relatively reasonable time. We had a practice that wasn't all that long, maybe a couple of hours, but we did get a fair amount accomplished. I recorded most of the practice on my little voice recorder, and I still need to chop that up to get the individual songs isolated. We also started writing one band song, as opposed to having individuals bring in written songs and then the rest of us just adding on our particular instrumental part. We'll see how the group song goes, but it sounds all right so far.

Tomorrow, a couple of friends are coming over to celebrate the girlfriend's birthday. So when I got home from band practice, I started helping out with some of the cleaning and such. She's been feeling rather under the weather lately, so I'm trying to step up and help out a little more than usual. I did some picking up and bringing stuff upstairs, took all the recycling down to the center, and went to the grocery store. Unfortunately, when I did get to the recycle place, most of the bins that we really needed most (cardboard and plastic) were already jammed full and people had just been heaping their stuff up against the side of the dumpsters. Not being that kind of douche myself, I still have most of the plastic and cardboard sitting outside in my car. Hopefully I'll be able to get it all out of there in the next couple of days. I don't need a bunch more crap staying in my car for who knows how long...

I've been watching the end of the Fiesta Bowl in between doing some of the other little things, but that's over now. So I guess I should get some vacuuming done and then head off to bed. Don't want to be dozing off at the lunch table tomorrow when they get here...

2010-12-31T23:43:00.002-06:00

The New Year is nearly here. I've managed to accomplish just very nearly nothing with the past year, aside from eating up my retirement and generally wasting another 365 days. So, here's hoping that 2011 will be a better year than this one was. Can't really go too much further down hill...

2010-12-30T22:21:00.003-06:00

Today I spent about the first hour of work helping the lady in rental with the data entry stuff that I did yesterday. Then, when I finally got over to the file room, the service manager asked me to go see the IT manager, so I could help him out with something. It turns out that the something in question there was loading Windows 7 and some other software onto a laptop for the service department. Not really all that thrilling of stuff, and I couldn't complete the task because I couldn't connect to the wireless router to get to the internet, but I managed to get some of the work done, and I guess at least a toe is in the door with the IT folks there, as I didn't manage to screw anything up big time. We'll see what they have to say tomorrow, or whenever they get back to me.

Aside from that and a bit of driving, it was a pretty uneventful day. I started working a bit on a drum part when I got home, but I'm having a hard time getting the sound I want out of it. I'm trying to sort of replicate this cheesy little two-step country western beat that was on my first old drum machine, but I'm having a hard time figuring out the voices to use to get it. In any case, I think I'm done with it for tonight, so I should start getting ready to head off to bed and hit it again tomorrow. And I should practice a bit, since the band is getting together for practice on Saturday morning and I haven't really even listened to the songs for a couple of weeks...

2010-12-29T22:42:00.004-06:00

It was a rather unproductive day down in the file room today. In fact, I spent most of the morning doing the data entry that I was warned about a couple of days ago. All I had to do was enter all of the Cadillac rental agreements for the past month into this new system that they're using. I was not surprised that the managers were somewhat astonished that I got the whole stack of them done before I went to lunch. The fixed assets manager, who is manager over the service department and several other related areas, asked me whether I knew much about operating systems and computers and such. I told him what I'd done at my previous jobs, being half of the IT department, and he said that they might have me help out the shop foremen when they got new computers and had computer problems. So maybe I'll end up in IT by the back door again. I guess we'll see if the carrot gets taken away again...

After work, I stopped by Macy's and returned the jacket that I'd bought on Sunday. When I wore it yesterday, I stuck some snacks in one of the front pockets. Then when I went to get them out at work, one of the snaps came apart. The rivet itself came apart in the middle, although the parts that snap together didn't come undone. So I guess it was just a little more efficient than they'd really wanted at staying closed. I had no problems with the return, though. I went down to JC Penney to look at their jackets, but I didn't find anything I really liked. Guess I'll just have to brush my wool jacket a little more often to try to get the masses of Ernie hair off of it...

The girlfriend has to open at work tomorrow, so I guess I should get ready to head off to bed myself. I tend to wake her up when I go to bed, and that's not good when she has to be at work at seven in the morning. Anyway, off to the world...

2010-12-28T23:46:00.003-06:00

Today's been a fairly nondescript sort of day. The data entry work which I was supposed to start doing today has been postponed at least until tomorrow. It seems that, as usual, management didn't lay the groundwork for their proposed plan, so they didn't have the data that I was supposed to enter available when I was. So it was filing as usual today, instead. Which is good, because I don't know how long this data entry task will last, and I might wind up falling quite a way behind on the filing. We'll see, as usual...

The weather was pretty miserable today. It started out kind of misty and cold, just about what an Oregon winter day was usually like. By the time I got off work this evening, the rain was coming down quite steadily. We need some of it, though, so it's not necessarily a bad thing. I just wish I didn't have to walk around in it quite so much. Not to mention the driving.

I didn't do too much after work. I dropped off the utility payment at the landlord's office. Had leftovers for dinner. Gave Ernie something of a mini-bath. He stank, and it turns out it was because he had a crusty butt. We're going to have to pay better attention to that in the future. After washing him, I took a shower myself. I must say, the new shower head was a very good investment. I don't know if it was because of just that or because we hadn't used much warm water over the rest of the day, but the shower stayed hot for a lot longer than it has been recently, or so it seemed. I'm happy about that.

After the shower, I pretty much just lounged around, watched some TV, read some of the book Mom sent me for Christmas, and played a little bit of guitar. I should really reverse the proportion of those, because the guitar playing is what should really be important to me right now. I'm not going to ever accomplish anything with reading or watching TV, but the music could wind up getting me at least a little bit of something down the road. We'll see if I can do better tomorrow...

2010-12-27T23:24:00.005-06:00

It's difficult to get any kind of real purchase on your new resolutions when you oversleep by nearly an hour in the morning. I didn't get a great night's sleep, waking up several times over the course of the wee early hours of the morning. So this morning, it was incredibly difficult to drag myself out from under the nice warm blankets. So not much was done this morning, although we did manage to make it to work just a couple of minutes late, thanks to the light traffic on the roads.

Work was pretty much the usual stuff. I did get all of the filing for today done, and I did a little bit of catch-up work. I don't know if I'm going to be able to finish all of the backlog, which is what I had hoped to accomplish by the end of this week. At least I shouldn't get too much further behind, though. Although now that I recall, the service manager mentioned to me that they were going to have me do some data entry into the system tomorrow, so I might not really get much of a chance to do any filing at all tomorrow. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Also, the girlfriend might end up having to work on Saturday, even though it's a holiday. Management is discussing whether they want to open on New Year's day or not, and they don't really expect to have an answer until Wednesday. Great to have a little advanced notice, eh?

On the way home, some douchebag was tailgating us as the girlfriend came off the freeway. She moved over and let him pass, and then she stuck her tongue out at him as he drove by. He proceeded to swerve over in front of us and come to a stop, then kept moving back and forth as we tried to get past him. I was getting ready to call 911 to send out an ambulance after I got out and beat the fucker to death, but I guess he got tired of the game and took back off down the road. It makes me wonder about some of the people out there, when some minor thing like having someone stick out their tongue at you can cause someone to go off the deep end and start acting in a way that could cause someone serious injury. I do hope the fucker does that to an off-duty police officer someday and gets himself locked up for a few weeks...

After getting home, I emptied the dishwasher and helped the girlfriend do a little bit of other cleaning around the place. We have some guests coming over for her birthday brunch next Sunday, and she'd like to have the place looking a bit better. After the cleaning, I took the little man out for a walk. I took a couple of bags of recycling with me, and we walked down to the Cupboard, a natural-foods store that has a bunch of recycling dumpsters out in their parking lot. Ernie did well on the walk, but I found out after I got back that my pedometer had been askew, so it didn't record most of the walking I'd done. That route is usually about 1500 steps, and it logged only about 500. Oh well. I've been working on trying to get the count up to 10K anyway, and I should have it there by the time I go to bed.

The girlfriend was playing Wii when I got back. She was playing her dance game, but she doesn't like to play it when I'm around, so she stopped shortly thereafter. I played an 18-hole game of gold on the Sports Resort. It's the first time I've played the system in several months. Probably ought to play a little more often to make it worth having the thing.

I didn't really do anything musical at all today. One of the guys in the band sent me a copy of a new song he'd written. It just seems like I'm letting myself kind of get shoved into the background again, and it's just because I continually feel uncertain about my own writing and performing. Especially the performing aspect. I keep thinking I should just go ahead and sing, but it's tough to actually open my mouth and let my voice out, because I know it won't always sound great at first, and it might not sound all that great even after a while. But the only way I'll ever get better is to practice, so I should make that one of my priorities. Not tonight, though, because now it's time to go feed Kala and then head off to bed...

2010-12-26T20:06:00.003-06:00

I'm trying to kind of start my New Year's Resolutions a little early, get a head start kind of, but I'm not doing all that great yet. We'll see how things go once the actual new year begins. I've been keeping track of my step counts for the past month or so, and my goal is 10,000 steps per day. So far, I've actually made it twice. I've come close a few more times. So, the 10K per day is a way off...

The musical goals aren't really that much better. I'm desperately hoping that I'll get up the motivation to do one song per month over the course of the next year, but considering that I haven't done one yet in the past couple of years, that's aiming pretty high. We'll see if I at least manage to get a few songs done, and I'm hoping to record something, just a little melody or bass part or something, every day of the coming year. I figure if I can record 365 snippets of music, a song has to come out of it sooner or later.

Today's the girlfriend's birthday. We went down to the dog park this morning, or more like early this afternoon. When we got there, there weren't very many people or animals around at all. We didn't see any of the regulars, but a few more dogs did trickle in over the hour and a half or so that we were there. It was a good time, and Ernie got to do quite a bit of running around with the big dogs.

After coming back home from the dog park for an hour or so, we headed out to do a little shopping. We'd both received some gift certificates and some money for Christmas, and we had a few things that we wanted to look for in the after-Christmas sales. I got a new jacket, some T-shirts, a desk calendar, a little pocket daily planner, a jar of herbes de Provence, and a new shower head for the bathroom.

Our current shower head, one of the type with the removable handheld sprayer, started spraying water out of the hose a few weeks ago. It's been getting worse, and it seems like recently the hot water has been running out very quickly. I think it's because most of the water is just spraying out of the hose, not the head. So I got us a nice double-headed unit, with the fixed wall head and a separate handheld sprayer, which can be toggled with a knob on the fixture. It's installed now, no dripping from the hose, and I'm hoping that my next shower will be a bit warmer than my last one was.

Anyway, I suppose I should go ahead and list out the rest of the resolutions, even though I'll probably not keep up with them very well. And then I should probably go clean up the mess I made cooking chili for dinner. And I need to do laundry for work tomorrow. Sigh...

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T23:46:00.000-06:00

I hope any readers out there have had a wonderful holiday season with friends and family, and safe travels wherever they may have been. The girlfriend and I went down to her family's get-togethers the past couple of days. My mom spent the past couple of weeks up at my sister's house, but it's a bit too far away and the budget is a bit too tight these days for me to get up there to see them. They appreciated the gifts we sent, though, and we talked to them on the phone and via text message for the past few days. I do hope we manage to get ourselves moved back up to the Pacific Northwest soon, but that's going to make things a bit difficult for getting down here to see her family members. We'll work things out, though...

2010-11-28T21:40:00.003-06:00

Last night we went to a combined birthday party for several of us who have birthdays in November and early December. It was fun, and we got to play one of our board games for the first time since we got it about six months ago. We had played this game called Encore Deluxe at the girlfriend's brother's place about a year ago, and we really liked it and thought some of our friends would, too. Of course, since then it seems most of our friends have vanished into thin air, but we finally played with the old book club group yesterday. It was quite a bit of fun, although I wound up seriously overindulging on the rum that was available. Still not feeling all that great most of the day today. Hopefully I didn't piss anyone off and drive off the rest of the friends we have...

This morning, or early afternoon, her friend Will came over to go to the dog park with us. He's been missing some of the dogs they've fostered over the years, so we figured getting him out there with all the puppies and stuff would be a happy time for him. And, of course, having someone else to keep our little man entertained is certainly a bonus. Unfortunately, not many of Ernie's usual friends were down at the park. Not really much of a surprise, with it being the weekend right after a major holiday. I'm sure a lot of people were off with families and such. In any case, there were a few familiar faces and enough new dogs to keep the little man somewhat entertained for an hour or so.

On the way back home, we stopped at Mr. Chopsticks here in Denton and picked up some lunch. It's kind of nice to actually eat at the dining room table once in a while, even if the food is kind of mediocre. The girlfriend says it used to be pretty good but has gone downhill in the last few years. She says that about a lot of places, though. Seems I missed the high point of Denton's cuisine. Oh well.

Since we had lunch, I've mostly just been sitting here watching football, napping, and doing a little work on my music. I have been working on what I'm calling the Seven Songs of the Apocalypse. Really, they have almost nothing apocalyptic about them. It's just a coincidence that there are seven of them, so I thought the name kind of fit. Mostly they're just old snippets of music I already had lying around, but I've put some additional little sections to them to make them into complete songs. We'll see if the band likes them or if they'll be solo efforts. But they won't be anything if I don't work on them some more, so I'm off...

2010-11-27T14:44:00.002-06:00

It turns out that walking down to the recycling dumpsters and around the block with the little man in tow is about 1500 steps. So, if I do that every day after I get home from work, I can be sure to add plenty to my count. Not that I'll be really likely to do that every day after I get home from work. But at least I can think about doing it...

2010-11-27T11:38:00.002-06:00

Yesterday wound up not being too bad at work. I only had a couple of drives to do, they were both pretty short, and the traffic wasn't bad at all. Fortunately, I wasn't going anywhere near any of the major shopping areas in town. In the end, I wound up getting a lot more filing done than I thought I would. That's a good thing, because I'm still quite a way behind in that department.

I ended up with a total of 8511 steps on my pedometer yesterday, which is the best I've had since I bought the thing. I'm thinking I might take little man out for a walk down to the recycle bins down the street today. Kill a couple or few birds with one little exercise. Get some steps in, get him out of the house so maybe he'll quit barking his head off, and get some of that recycling out of the house. We'll see how that goes.

2010-11-26T13:18:00.002-06:00

I'm home for lunch early today. I had a greatly shortened time down in the file room, because one of the other drivers took a vacation day today. So instead of being able to use a slow paperwork day to get caught up, I'm probably going to spend it out on the road. I guess it all pays the same, though, so it really doesn't matter all that much. I'm going to make sure I stop at a store and get the newspapers this Sunday, because I'm starting to get even more tired than usual of the job there...

Counting the steps...

2010-11-26T09:09:00.002-06:00

About a week ago, the day after the girlfriend and I got our new phones, I also got a new pedometer while I was waiting around Best Buy. For the past week, I've just pretty much done what I would normally do, sort of to set a baseline step count. And, for that week, my average number of steps per day was about 5427. So beginning today, I'm going to try to make sure I beat that count every day, and hopefully I'll get myself up to the 10,000-step plateau. No, it's not really a weight-loss thing; it's more about just trying to get myself back into some kind of cardiovascular shape. It's pretty sad when I walk briskly around the room after the corgi for about five minutes and I have to sit for ten because I'm gasping for breath. So, another year, another goal...

2010-11-21T23:19:00.003-06:00

We went to the dog park early this afternoon. It was very warm, but also cloudy and windy. It looks like it's going to be warm for the next couple of days, but then it should cool back down into wintry sort of temperatures. There weren't a whole lot of people at the dog park, but it seems that might have been because of the clouds and the football games on the tube. We were happy to meet up with Conchita and her parents, though. There were a few other little dogs around, too, so it was worth the trip there.

After the dog park, we went to Petsmart to get Ernie some more food. We met several of his favorite people there. He's always pretty happy to see everyone there.

Over the course of the day, I exported several of the tracks we recorded yesterday to MP3 and sent them off to the band members. They didn't come out exceptionally well, but I guess they're all right as scratch tracks. We'll get them done better before too terribly long, I hope, and then maybe we'll be able to send out some demo CDs and see if we can get a few gigs. I guess we'll see how that goes...

Ernie at leisure...

2010-11-21T09:42:00.004-06:00

2010-11-20T21:22:00.004-06:00

It's been kind of a long day today. I was up late last night getting together all of the equipment, cables and such that I thought we might need for our recording this morning. I was rather surprised that I did indeed manage to find everything, because I was looking for stuff that has been stuck in the back of the closet for months, if not years.

This morning, it took me a little longer than it should have for me to get everything packed into the car, so I wound up being a bit late getting down there. It also took me a lot longer to get everything set up than it used to, back when I did that kind of stuff nearly every gig for the old band. I also found out that my direct box, which I'd planned to use to record Brian's lead guitar, wasn't working properly. So I had to run that through a microphone, which isn't optimal. Also, Scott's amp only has one output aside from the internal speaker. That's an effect send jack, and the level is extremely low. So running that output via a 1/4" cable across the room led to some extreme noise. Not good.

Despite the problems, I did the recordings as planned, trying to get as good a mix as I could under the circumstances. I listened to some of them this afternoon and evening, and the drums and bass don't sound god-awful, but the rest of the mix is almost nonexistent. I guess it's at least something to work from. Now I just need to try to put together tempo maps and such for each of the songs. That's going to be quite a bit of work. Guess I'd better get to it...

Testing the new phone...

2010-11-19T17:55:00.001-06:00

So the new phone is working and all of that, but I haven't sent anything to my blog by e-mail for ages. I'm assuming it should still work, but I guess I'll see when I get home...

2010-11-18T23:55:00.005-06:00

Today was a pretty nice day in general. I've spent most of the day tinkering around with the new phone. The girlfriend was having some problems getting hers activated, and now it seems to think she has two separate accounts. We tried doing the phone activation and the online activation, and neither one seems to have been successful, but both of them seem to have set up a sort of partial account.

So we drove down to Best Buy. She was just going to return her phone if they couldn't get it to work properly. Fortunately, the lady we talked to this time around seemed a lot more competent than the guy who helped us yesterday. She called the MetroPCS "special number" and managed to get everything set. We're going to keep an eye on the billing and make sure she only gets dinged for one account, though.

While we were there at Best Buy, I bought myself a new pedometer. It's a little better than the old one I had, and it seems like it's a little more durable. Now I just need to get out there and start taking those steps...

2010-11-17T23:55:00.002-06:00

So, after long discussion, the girlfriend and I stopped at Best Buy and picked up a couple of MetroPCS Samsung FreeForm phones. After about 45 minutes talking to a couple of people who obviously don't speak English as their native language, I got my phone set up and started playing with the unlimited web access and the e-mail synchronization with Gmail. Now, it's several hours later. I can tell what's going to be the latest thing that takes up all my time. But, I really need to make sure that I still spend plenty of time on my music. And now, I need to go spend some time getting some sleep...

Gmail Issues

2010-11-16T15:13:00.001-06:00

I don't know if everyone's Gmail is screwed up right now, or if it's just mine, but it has me in HTML mode (for slow connections) despite the fact that I have the latest version of Firefox, no conflicting applications or plug-ins, and I'm on Charter's high speed internet. I don't know if they have a server issue or what, but it's annoying the heck out of me. Oh well. You get what you pay for, I suppose.

2010-11-15T23:05:00.003-06:00

In the course of my filing job, from time to time I see Better Business Bureau complaints that have been filed against the company I'm working for. I think it's just sort of part of the nature of doing the amount of business we do. In any case, one of them came through this morning, and I read through it.

The complaint was what they describe as "Info Only." Basically, it just means that the person wanted to file a grievance, but didn't really expect any kind of resolution to their complaint. It's pretty much a way to bitch out the company in question without the company really having any kind of recourse.

This particular complaint was from a man complaining about a repair done to his parents' car. According to him, his "nearly senile" parents had come into our service center to have a no-cost repair done on their 2006 Cadillac DTS. But in addition to the warranty repair, they had another repair done which cost $1200. According to the complaint, the man had spoken with other mechanics who said this other repair shouldn't usually need to be done until 90,000 miles, and our service department had recommended it to this man's elderly parents after only about 45,000 miles. So, he complained that our service advisors should have contacted him before going ahead with the repairs. We had obviously taken advantage of his helpless parents to make a quick buck.

Now, the real question I have is this: If this man's parents were so old, helpless, and "nearly senile" that they should not even have been making a decision about a repair without the approval of their son, then what in the hell are they doing driving around on public roads in a fucking Cadillac?

Smoked Turkey

2010-11-14T22:45:00.002-06:00

The turkey came out pretty well. Smoked it for about two and a half hours and then put it in the oven for a couple more. We sampled a couple of little pieces of it, and it tastes pretty good. Definitely worth the 39 cents a pound I paid for it at Kroger the other week, and worth the probably hour of actual work that I had to put into it...

2010-11-14T18:32:00.002-06:00

The girlfriend and I went down to the dog park earlier this afternoon. When we got there, we were hoping to meet Chris, Linda, and Conchita, but their car was not in the lot. We assumed that we just missed them, because we were a bit later than we wanted. They're usually there by noon, and we didn't get down there until about 12:30 or so. There were a couple of dogs in the little dog section, though, so we stuck around to let Ernie run around a bit. A number of other dogs came in while we were there, and several of them were really good matches for Ernie in temperament and activity level. It's good to see him running around a lot more when we're down there than he did the first couple of months that we took him to the park. Then after we were there about an hour or so, Conchita and her parents showed up at last. Conchita is quite the sweet little puppy, probably only half of Ernie's size at most. Ernie played with her for a bit, as well as continuing to play with several of the other dogs. Despite the fact that they got there so much later than us, they wound up leaving earlier, although we left shortly after them.

We were going to go to Target after we went to the dog park, but I started smoking the turkey and watching a football game, and the girlfriend took a nap for about an hour. There's nothing that we desperately need, so I guess it'll wait until tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm going to finish watching this game and keep an eye on the smoke pouring from the barbecue. Hopefully the bird will be done in time to eat it tonight, but I'm not really counting on it...

2010-11-13T23:32:00.003-06:00

I got up this morning and realized that I wasn't going to be able to smoke the turkey today like I had planned. While the turkey itself was partially defrosted, it was probably more than half frozen still. In any case, it is now sitting in a stock pot on the counter, soaking in a savory sort of brine. With any luck, I'll be able to get the little fellow smoking tomorrow after we go to the dog park. Smoked turkey and football. What a way to spend a Sunday...

After putting the turkey in the brine, I headed down to Roanoke to play with the guys. It was a fairly productive practice, and we all came to the decision that we need to record some decent scratch tracks, so we can all practice our parts when we're not actually there together. So next week, I get to be the sound engineer and bring all my recording gear down there. I have limited inputs on my system, so we're not going to get anything studio quality, but at least we'll be able to have the structures down on tape, so to speak. And listening to those songs the same way and playing along with them the same way every day will eliminate a lot of the wasted time that we have now, where we're just trying to figure out how many times we went through the solo or what intro we were going to use for that song, before we even start really practicing it. And after we get those scratch tracks down, at least three of us can each lay down our own tracks on top to eventually make what can be a nearly studio quality mix. The only person who will need some extra help on that count is Joey, the drummer. He doesn't have Sonar on his computer, so I'll need to record his drum kit into my computer at some point in time for each of the songs that we do. Anyway, at least we're all on the same wavelength as far as the goal here, and I think this is a great step in the right direction.

After band practice, I headed off to meet Ernie and the girlfriend at the dog park. Ernie found a lot of little friends there, and he ran around a lot more than he usually does. We would probably have stayed a little longer than we did, but the sun was going down and it was starting to get pretty cold. As it is, I think we were there for a good hour and a half. We're probably going back down there tomorrow to meet Conchita and her parents, Chris and Linda.

After the dog park, we came home and puttered around for a little bit before heading off to Ikea. The girlfriend wanted to look for a few little things like Christmas fabric and such. We found a couple of things that she wanted, but most of the fabric was already gone. I guess we'll have to get down there about the middle of September to get a decent selection of Christmas stuff next year. We stopped at the grocery store on the way home and got a few essentials and a couple of things that we don't really need, but which I wanted. I've got a bit of cooking to do tomorrow, in addition to the turkey. And that means that I should probably be heading off to bed soon. Or now...

2010-11-12T23:52:00.003-06:00

Long day today. The girlfriend had to open, and we've decided that when one of us leaves early, it's usually best for the other to get up and let Ernie see that we're leaving. He kind of freaks out if one of us leaves while he's in his cage. It's like he doesn't understand where we've gone and spends the whole morning searching for the missing person.

So, rather than have him freak out, I got up at about 6:45 so he could watch her leave for work. I could have gone back to bed, but I was already awake. So I just made a pot of coffee and played with the little man for a couple of hours before heading off to work. I did also work a little on some of the music I've been trying to write these past few days, but I didn't really accomplish too much with that. Got to work on it more consistently. Get a pattern going...

Work was pretty uneventful. It was drizzling a little when I got to work, and then I heard it pretty much pouring down rain while I was in the file room. Fortunately, it stopped before I headed off to lunch. It was fortunate because I didn't bring my rain coat with me. I would have been soaked like a wet dog if I'd had to walk out to my car in that mess.

I had a very short lunch today because I had to stop at the storage unit and pay the rent for the month. It'll be nice when we actually have a house with some kind of garage or something, so I can get rid of that little bill every month. I was going to get a few things out of my music racks while I was there, but I decided that I didn't have the time. Maybe that'll be something to do this weekend.

After work, I came home and watched the Boise State Broncos beat up on the Idaho Vandals. It was a pretty brutal first quarter for the Vandals, with BSU being up 28-0 and Idaho having only 11 yards of offense after the quarter. The Vandals did quite a bit better the rest of the game, but still wound up losing 52-14. Definitely not a pretty game for them, but their fans pretty much stuck around and supported the team right to the end of the game.

Anyway, I have band practice tomorrow, so I should probably be heading off to bed now. Don't want to be half asleep while I'm trying to remember how to play songs...

2010-11-11T23:49:00.002-06:00

After work today, I took Ernie for a long walk down to the Square. We heard some music playing from quite a distance, so we knew that something was going on down there. I figured it was more of the Veteran's Day sort of activities. It turns out that it was a peace rally sort of thing. We saw quite a few people there, but Ernie was a little nervous about the men who we met. I still don't know what his deal is with being so fearful of men. Anyway, we met a musician named Jason who was getting ready to play at the rally. He was the one who told me what it was going on there. He thought Ernie was just the cutest thing. We talked for a few minutes, and then headed back toward home. We met a few other folks on the way back home who thought Ernie was just the cutest thing.

The girlfriend has to open at work tomorrow morning. Hopefully the rain will hold off so she can take him down to the dog park after she gets off. He's still getting a little of his cabin fever, even though we've been out on walks the past few days. Not sure what we can really do to alleviate it, but I guess eventually he'll grow out of it or just get used to the situation. Hopefully we'll have a house within the next few months, and then we can put in a doggy door and let him come and go into the yard at will. I guess we'll see how the financial situation is in a few months.

Since I'll be dealing with the little man all morning on my own, I guess I'd better get ready to go to bed to make sure I'm not a zombie...

2010-11-11T00:06:00.002-06:00

After I got home from work today, I took Ernie for a walk. We took a little of the recycling up to the corner and got that cleared out, then walked down the back street back home. We met one of the other little dogs that the girlfriend sees every once in a while when she's out walking. The dog's name is Rose, and her owner is Leo. He's a nice older gentleman. He told me that Rose has never missed a day of walking in her 12 years. That's serious dedication.

A while after I got home from the walk, the girlfriend asked if I'd make some cookies. Unfortunately, we didn't have any butter, but I figured there would be some kind of butter-free recipe in my 1001 cookie recipes cookbook. The one I found was for almond bar cookies. They turned out tasting all right, but they were kind of a dry biscuit-style bar cookie, not a moist, chewy sort of cookie which the girlfriend would probably have preferred. I guess I'll take them to work or something and let the vultures out back take care of them...

Almond Bars II

2 large eggs
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 ounce bittersweet chocolate, grated
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 cup almonds, ground
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 cups all-purpose flour

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 9-inch square baking pan.

2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs until thick and light-colored. Beat in the brown sugar. Beat in the chocolate and almond extract. Beat in the almonds, baking powder and cinnamon. Gradually blend in the flour.

3. Spread the dough evenly into the prepared pan.

4. Bake for 28 to 30 minutes, or until the top is golden brown. Cool in he pan on a rack before cutting into large or small bars.

Baking notes: For variation, spread half the dough in the bottom of a 8- or 9-inch square baking pan and bake for 8 to 10 minutes. While still warm, spread with 2 to 3 tablespoons of your favorite jam or preserves. Spread the remaining dough over the jam and bake for 12 to 15 minutes longer, or until the top is golden brown. Or prepare and bake the bars as directed. Meanwhile, beat 2 large egg whites with 1/4 teaspoon salt until stiff but not dry. Fold in 1/4 cup granulated sugar. While the cookies are still warm, spread the egg whites over the top. Sprinkle with 1/4 cup ground almonds and bake for 8 to 10 minutes longer.

Yield: 1 to 2 dozen.
Total Time: 45 minutes.

2010-11-10T08:55:00.003-06:00

I'm letting the girlfriend sleep in a bit today. She's been feeling a bit under the weather recently, and she did not want to move when the alarm went off. So I've been out here in the living room playing with Ernie and trying to give him something of a brushing. It seems like you can take half a gerbil's worth of fur off of him nearly every time you brush him. And I'd rather have it stuck to the brush than stuck to the furniture and my clothes.

I have an idea for revamping "Cloudcover," making it a bit more band friendly. I've had this bass melody wandering around in various forms practically since I started understanding chords on the bass, and I've never seriously moved it beyond taking the same little part and maybe putting some other instrument over it as a melody. I really need to work on recording that idea this evening when I get home. I also really need to get upstairs and buckle down on getting the room cleared out so I can make it into a music room. I probably should also take little man out for a walk, so hopefully I can get that taken care of and not lose my motivation to do some music and cleaning, too. Better start getting ready for work now, though...

2010-11-09T23:30:00.003-06:00

Today was a fairly typical, boring, mundane kind of day at work. The girlfriend called in sick, so I had to drive myself to work today, though. Aside from that, it was just a march down to the file room with my stack of papers, and stick them all in the manila folders. Boring, tedious, and barely pays enough to get the bills paid.

After I got off work, I really didn't accomplish many of the other things I would have liked to do. Instead, I was lured in yet again by the shiny box in the corner, and I sat and killed several hours watching a hockey game. I really need to do better trying to accomplish the things I need to do, just for the sake of my own sanity and well-being. Not to mention in the name of finding myself a better home in which to live...

2010-11-08T23:34:00.003-06:00

This morning I was down in the file room, doing my usual thing, when Kendall, the warranty administrator, came in needing a couple of repair orders pulled. As she was leaving, she told me that she appreciated the help, and that I was a master at my craft. I kind of chuckled at that. I've never really thought of what I do as a "craft." In fact, the main skills required seem to me to be just one small step removed from being able to say my ABCs and count to 100. Oh well...

2010-11-07T16:04:00.002-06:00

I got an e-mail this morning that band practice wasn't going to be held today. So I did to a little bit of work on a new little tune that I came up with. The girlfriend said it sounded like "Daytripper" to her, although I wasn't deliberately trying to make it sound like that. I just thought it had kind of a funky little blue note thing in the middle of it, which I liked. So I recorded the bass part and plinked out the melody on keyboard, so I can figure it out again if I forget it later. I also finally sat down and figured out how to use the Session Drummer module that I downloaded for my copy of Sonar a couple of months ago. I still need to figure out some things with the patterns and such. I still wish they had the old drum module that came with my old copy of Home Studio, but they don't seem to have anything quite like that available any more. So, I guess I have to use what they've got available...

2010-11-06T22:59:00.001-05:00

Work was pretty much the usual sort of crap today. Got to play porter and go on a couple of drives. I suppose it makes me a little bit of extra money, but I think I'd still just rather have the day off. After I got off work, we took Ernie down to the dog park, so he could frolic with his furry little friends. He always has a good time down there, and it got him a little tired out. Which was a good thing, because we had to leave him home for a fair chunk of the afternoon.

The girlfriend's brother John was having his birthday celebration today. We drove down to Lewisville to her mom and stepfather's place. It was a catfish fry for dinner. The food was all right. I suppose it was about what I would have expected for a catfish fry, with breaded fish and French fries deep fried in a turkey fryer out on the driveway. Nothing spectacular, but good down-home cooking.

We got home relatively early this evening and did a little cleaning around the place. I'm still not sure if I'll have band practice tomorrow. We had to postpone from today, both because of my work and because Brian, the guitarist, had to go to Shreveport today. I'm still waiting to hear if we're going to be on tomorrow...

2010-11-05T08:27:00.003-05:00

Well, I did get Kala's litter box cleaned yesterday, and I did record a version of the little tune on bass at least, but I still haven't vacuumed upstairs yet. I did also load the dishwasher and do a little of the hand washing. So even though I didn't manage to get everything done yesterday evening that I wanted, I'll pretty much still call it a break-even.

Work was all right yesterday. I finished yesterday's filing and one of the stacks from my cart, which was my goal. And the driving was pretty decent, too. I had about five pickups, but they were all right within a few miles, and most of them I was able to do in a couple of loops, so that was nice. At the end of the day, we had one of the pains in the ass come in and expect to get a ride back to his house at a bit after 6:00. And he already lives well outside of our coverage area. I wouldn't have been able to make it back to the dealership until close to 8:00 if I'd have gone. Fortunately, the evening manager didn't want to stay late, either, so he got the customer put into a rental car. That's a good thing, because I was supposed to meet the girlfriend and Ernie at the dog park after work. I only got to spend a few minutes at the park before it was dark, but at least it got the little man out of the house and active for a while.

And now, I need to get ready for work, again...

2010-11-04T09:32:00.002-05:00

I'm tired, I'm depressed, and I'm broke. Aside from that, things are going all right. I didn't accomplish very much of anything that I wanted to do last night, although I did take the little man out on a walk, which is good. He always has way more energy than the girlfriend and I, so it's good to get him out there and let him burn some of that off.

The girlfriend had to open today, so I have a pouty, bored little man sitting around the house this morning, too. He sees that I'm putting on the work clothes, and he knows what's about to happen, so he's not being quite as hyper as he has been for most of the morning. Just about all I've done today is make my coffee and throw my jeans in the dryer, then play tug and such with the little guy and try to read my e-mail. I should have used the time for doing some music stuff, but of course I didn't. Tonight when I get home, I need to go upstairs and vacuum, clean Kala's litter box, and then try to record the new little piece of music that I've been thinking about for a few days, before I forget what I had in mind...

2010-11-03T09:16:00.002-05:00

Of course, when I don't quite have the money in the checking account yet, that's the time that the landlords go ahead and deposit the rent check the day I give it to them. Usually they wait nearly a week. Plus the accounting department still hasn't applied my vacation day. Stupid, lazy fuckers...

2010-11-01T22:46:00.000-05:00

Today was a pretty mediocre sort of day at work. I got there a bit late, because I had to make my loan payment before work. That was all right, and I have plenty in the checking account to pay the insurance and stuff that come out automatically at the beginning of the month, but it's going to be something of a strain getting the rent paid. Guess I need to start budgeting a bit better. Not to mention the fact that I need to get a better job.

To add insult to the deal, I found out when we got the mail at lunch today that I not only got to pay the late charge because of being two days late on my Capital One payment, but I also got bumped to the penalty interest rate, which is almost 30%. Guess I'd better get that paid off quickly to make sure I'm not paying even more.

In any case, when I got to work, I had two large stacks of filing to be done. It was all the end of month crap. So now I'm a little further behind than I was before. And then I spent almost all of the late part of the shift out driving, so I couldn't even get a little bit caught up then. Guess I'll just have to get used to constantly being a bit behind in there. Really, I should be out looking for a better job, not just trudging away at this dead-end crap. Maybe sometime soon...

At lunch today, we decided we were going to make chili for dinner. So when I got home, I started browning the meat and such. The girlfriend got home just a little bit after me, though, and she finished the meal up. It probably wasn't the best chili either of us have ever had, but it was pretty good. I think tomorrow I might throw some dogs on the grill and have hot dogs and corn. Or something like that.

During and after cooking, we watched the Rangers get absolutely dominated by San Francisco's pitching. The high-scoring, hot-hitting Rangers managed to score a total of 5 runs in the last four games, and got only three hits each of the last two nights. Kind of sucks, but at least it wasn't the Yankees or the Braves who won.

And now, I think it's just about time to start getting ready for bed...

So that's the issue...

2010-10-29T15:10:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I took a little quiz-type thing on Facebook. It was an assessment of my "Autism Spectrum Quotient." The girlfriend had taken it earlier, and her result was a 23, which is apparently slightly "more autistic" than the norm. Of course, they mention that it's not a diagnostic, but it's part of a battery that they use to diagnose different disorders in the autism group. Most people with serious autism will score around 35 or so, and most men in the "normal" range score around 17. Me? I scored 31. The girlfriend laughed when she heard my score.

This morning, the girlfriend had to open again, so I spent a couple of hours trying to keep the little man entertained while tinkering around on the computer a bit. One thing that was mentioned on the Facebook thing was Asperger syndrome. I've heard the name, but really didn't know what it was. So I looked that up on Wikipedia while the little man roamed around and whoofed at the windows.

And reading through the Wikipedia article, I checked off most of the symptoms in my head, remembering things from my childhood and adolescence that matched the examples almost precisely. I'm pretty sure that if anyone had really checked me for it, I would have been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome as a child. And I'm pretty sure that I'm a borderline case even now. But I guess there are worse things to have...

2010-10-28T22:10:00.002-05:00

Well, at least the Rangers made it to the World Series this year. Looks like they're going to have to do something really fancy to keep from losing it badly, though. All the vaunted pitching and hitting are nowhere to be seen as they're getting their asses handed to them by the Giants. 9-0 in the top of the 9th. Way to pound the strike zone, boys...

And, what the hell, just for good measure, the Stars got beat 5-2 by the Kings. That puts them back a bit in the standings, too...

2010-10-28T08:53:00.003-05:00

I was going to get up early this morning and take the little man out for a walk. The girlfriend had to go in and open today, so it's just me and Ernie, and Kala upstairs, of course. But she doesn't do more than just come to the top of the stairs and meow for attention now that Ernie's here.

In any case, I was feeling tired when the alarm went off, so I wound up not getting up until the usual time. Little man and I played some tug and such for a while, but then he got to looking out the window and whoofing at whatever was walking by out there, so I figured I'd just sit here and play around on the computer and drink my coffee. I really should work on my music and such, but I just don't feel the motivation. I know, I always have something that I want to do "in order to get myself started," but I just don't know what that something is. I always feel so self conscious about my singing and playing any other instrument besides bass. Guess I'd better just suck it up and start trying to mix down some of the tracks and get the music out there. See what the world thinks...

2010-10-18T20:16:00.002-05:00

It was another mediocre sort of day at work today. I fell behind a little further on the filing, both because I showed up late for work and because they dragged me out of the file room early to go take a customer home. I don't really know if I'm ever going to get caught up in there again, but I guess we'll see. Driving was not too terribly bad. No real traffic and most of the runs were right here in Denton. That's always a good thing.

The girlfriend got off earlier than usual today because of the new hours for the sales departments at work. They weren't getting any sales calls for the 7:00 to 8:00 hour for the past month, so they've decided to go to winter hours a little earlier than they were planning. But her mom is staying on vacation a little longer than they had expected, so she's off feeding the fish and checking the mail now. I'm just sitting around watching the Rangers leading the Yankees, and tinkering a bit with some of my old songs...

2010-10-18T09:17:00.004-05:00

I woke up this morning to the beginnings of what appears to be another crap week. The girlfriend has jury duty this morning, so she had already left for the day. The guy who was here yesterday to trim the shrubs and such fired up his trimmer at about 8:00, which definitely didn't help me get any more rest than I already would have. And because of him wandering around outside and such, little man has been very unhappy all morning. Mostly he's just been sitting at the window, woofing and muttering, letting out the occasional bout of howling. It's been a pleasant, restful sort of morning...

Yesterday evening, we went to Hastings so the girlfriend could find a small-sized book to put in her purse for this morning. She was a bit concerned about how long she was going to be waiting to hear if she had to serve on a jury or anything, so she needed a little reading material which wasn't going to be inconvenient to carry around. She got her books and then we headed off to the grocery store to get a few things.

I got some more newspapers, even though it seems that I haven't looked for jobs in them the last several times I've bought them. I'm torn between trying to find a better job and just sticking this one out for a while until we can get approved to buy a house. Of course, I don't know if we're going to get approved on the kind of money we're both making right now, so it might just be one of those catch-22 types of things. In any case, I also picked up some food from the store, including a big package of chicken quarters. Those went on the grill last night along with some hamburger patties left over from the recipe the girlfriend prepared for next weekend's wedding. Overall, I think the chicken came out quite well. Nice crispy skin, but not too terribly dried out. It was all an accident, but a happy one.

I guess I should get ready to head out the door soon. Another day, another dollar...

2010-10-17T16:04:00.011-05:00

So, it's been another fairly useless, fairly crappy sort of weekend. The Rangers managed to at least split the first two games of the ALCS at home with the Yankees, but now they need to go back and play three in a row in New York. One of the things that disheartens me a bit about their games is that they blew a 5-run lead in the 7th and 8th innings of that first game. They did manage to keep the Yankees down to only 2 runs in the second game, but they managed to make even a 6-run lead in that game seem like it might be a little precarious. I guess we'll see how they do tomorrow, when they play game 3 at Yankee Stadium.

Ernie has been down to the dog park both yesterday and today. The weather was very nice, and we had a few other places to go, so it was an opportune time to take advantage and get the little man a bit of exercise. Yesterday, the weather was particularly gorgeous, so we expected to find the park full of people in the late morning. Instead, when we got there, the little dog section of the park was entirely empty. We hadn't ever brought him over into the big dog area, mostly because he's always been so docile with other dogs. But after pretty much sitting around for a few minutes with nothing at all happening in the small territory, we took the plunge and let him run with the big dogs.

It turns out that he did just fine. He mostly just puttered around like he usually does. He makes friends with the people and mostly just ignores the other dogs. I'm not entirely sure that most of them know what to make of him, since he just sort of shuffles around like a big furry tank. In any case, we were both quite happy to see him do his normal thing in this new territory, but we're hoping we don't really have to take him back to the large dog section in the future.

After the dog park, we went down to the girlfriend's mom's house to feed their fish and pick up a couple of folding tables and chairs for a wedding we're attending next weekend. Unfortunately, her sister-in-law had not yet returned most of the said tables and chairs to the mom's house, so it was in large part a wasted trip down there. But that's all right. We still had to feed the fish, and the little man still got to get out and run around in the back yard for a while.

After we got back home, we had to get ready to go to a combination Halloween party and baby shower. Because of that combination, everyone was supposed to go in costume, but the little twist was that each costume was supposed to incorporate a pregnancy. The girlfriend and I were going to go as Lucy and Desi, but I really have nothing at all in common with Desi, so instead I went as the grim reaper. Of course, it was a pregnant grim reaper. So, as one of the other guests mentioned, I was sort of the whole circle of life all rolled into one.

The shower/party ended up going a lot longer than we had expected, so we didn't get home until about 9:30 in the evening. By which time I was pretty well exhausted, not being used to the whole baby shower experience. I actually spent about the last half of the shower trying to keep myself awake. In any case, it doesn't seem that anyone noticed that I was nearly nodding off, which was good.

This morning, I slept in a lot later than I expected. On Friday, I won tickets to go see the Schola Cantorum of North Texas perform at a Methodist church down in Fort Worth, so we had planned to head down there in the afternoon and see that. We decided to go back down to the dog park in the morning, though, since we expected to leave him in his kennel by himself for a fair chunk of the afternoon. It was another nice day today, and we were pleasantly surprised this time to find a large number of little dogs in that section of the park. We thought we were only going to stick around for about half an hour or so. It was about 1:00 when we got there, and the show we were to see began at 3:00. So, with driving time and getting dressed and such, we figured leaving there by about 1:30 would give us enough time. But we wound up having so much fun talking to the various people and playing with their dogs that we stayed until closer to 2:30. And so, we didn't make it to the show. But we've found out that one of the couples, who have a tiny little corgi named Conchita, are probably going to be there next Sunday around the same time, so maybe we'll have an ongoing play-date for Ernie. We'll see.

Since we got back home, I've been mostly watching football, as well as tinkering a bit with some of my music. We didn't have band practice again this weekend, because the drummer (who hosts) has a work project that he's preparing for. I'm hoping to get together with the guitar-playing brothers sometime this next week, but we'll have to see about that. For now, back to football and MIDI...

2010-10-12T23:14:00.000-05:00

Work was fairly productive the last couple of days. Today it was good because I didn't have much new filing to do. Yesterday, I just didn't have much driving to do, so I was able to go catch up on some of the file backlog. Today I had a couple of long drives, but nothing all that terrible. It's just that the traffic coming back up the freeway was worse than usual, so what should have been about an hour's drive instead wound up being more like an hour and a half. And that definitely eats into the day.

Yesterday after work, I met the girlfriend and Ernie at the dog park. He seemed to be a bit more energetic there than he has been on most of his previous outings. He was scampering around trying to keep up with some of the faster dogs, and generally he just seemed to have a good time. I wish we had a little more daylight after work so we could take him down there more often. Just another reason why I should be looking for a new job.

Haven't done much on the music front for the past couple of days. Again. Of course, I haven't done that much of anything productive for the past couple of days. I did cook dinner today. Sort of a oriental-ish gravy type thing over rice. It wound up being a lot more salty than I'd intended, but I guess it was all right. And now, since it's getting fairly late, I do believe I'll head off toward bed...

2010-10-11T08:55:00.003-05:00

The girlfriend had to open this morning, so I've been trying to keep the little hound at least somewhat amused since I got up an hour or so ago. I got him a new harness-type device yesterday at Petsmart, to try to keep him from pulling quite so much when he's walking, but I haven't tried it out on him yet. It's called the Gentle Leader, and it has a loop that snaps up over the top of the muzzle, but leaves his mouth free. Then the leash is attached to that muzzle loop, so when the dog pulls away, his head is turned back toward toward you by the pressure on the muzzle. You don't really have to pull back on him at all, because he's the one causing all the tension on his face. We're hoping that'll help cure him of his tendency to pretend that he's a sled dog doing the Iditarod.

We actually did quite a lot more shopping than I really expected yesterday. Or at least I spent quite a bit more money than I really expected. We had lunch at RG's Burgers, which has always been a pretty decent place to eat. Not really so much any more. Better than fast food, but only just. And the surly little boy who served us was quite lucky that the girlfriend paid for lunch and not me. He wasn't rude, per se, but he was just right on the borderline. Kind of plunked the food down on the table and was already walking away as he muttered, "Enjoy your meal," under his breath. She gave him about a $3.50 tip on an $18-plus bill. I was just going to leave a $20 and call it good. I think that 15% tip is based on decent, pleasant service. Not necessarily going out of the way to be overly jubilant or anything, but just a smile, actually sounding like you give a rat's ass if your customer is enjoying the food, that kind of thing. And I just don't really think that kid earned that kind of tip at all. Hopefully we'll be able to find a decent burger joint sometime soon, because RG's certainly isn't Really Good any more...

After lunch, we headed over to JC Penney. They were having some decent sales on menswear, and I needed to get some stuff to go with the suit I bought a few weeks ago. I never realized it was going to be quite so expensive just to attend a wedding. Because they had a lot of their ties and belts on sale, buy one, get one half off, I figured this would be a good time to stock up a bit. I had to get a shirt, tie, belt, and dress socks for the wedding, and I wound up getting another casual belt and a second shirt and tie because of the sale. In all, it ended up being about $120, which I know isn't all that bad for all I got, but it was still a fair bit more than I expected to leave there. Now I just need to find somewhere else to wear a suit and tie...

Following that little shopping episode, we came home and got the little man. It was off to Petsmart to get him some food. Most of his regular people weren't there at the store, but he did get the chance to talk to some of the customer's and their pups. It wasn't exactly much of an adventure, but at least we got him out of the house. I also got him that harness and a new rope toy, and I got Kala stocked up on canned cat food.

A quick stop at the grocery store, and it was back home. I spent most of the evening watching more sports. We actually listened to the end of the Rangers' game in the car on the way down to the girlfriend's mom's house. They lost again, and now have to go back to Tampa for game 5. I have the feeling they're going to blow it again, but I guess we'll have to wait until Tuesday to see. I didn't work much on music again. This evening, I really need to buckle down on some of the things I'd like to get done. For now, though, it's off to work...

2010-10-10T14:35:00.003-05:00

I slept in late this morning, and now I'm sitting here watching the Rangers play the Rays. They looked like they were going to win yesterday, but then pretty much gave up the game in the last couple of innings. And now they've fallen behind and been looking bad today. So it looks like the series will probably go back to Tampa, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they managed to blow it in the first round again this year. Although it does look like the Rangers are managing to put together a little bit of an uprising here in the 6th inning. Maybe they'll manage to turn the tables on the Rays today like the Rays did yesterday.

The girlfriend and I are getting ready to head off to lunch and maybe do a little shopping, so I guess I'd best sign off and head out the door...

2010-10-09T17:41:00.003-05:00

I spent another Saturday morning at work today. It's a pain in the rear, but it's a few more dollars in the old paycheck next week. I still wouldn't mind find a job that got me a bit more money without having to work so many hours, but I guess that'll have to wait a while yet. I do need to make sure I get my transcripts pretty soon, though, so I can get myself back into college for the next spring term. While I really don't have any problem with the job I'm doing right now, I realize that I can certainly make a whole lot more money with the same effort doing some other things. I just really don't know what the hell I want to do...

The girlfriend had to work all day today. She was going to split the day with the other regular operator, because their backup person was gone for the weekend. Of course, with the other regular person being sick the last part of the week, that just left her to cover the whole shift. Kind of sucks, but again, we're just looking forward to having the extra money on the paycheck next week.

I've spent most of the afternoon alternately watching hockey and college football, playing pinball, and working a bit on my music. I'm waiting for the Rangers game to come on later this evening. Hopefully they'll manage to complete the sweep of the Rays, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

The band was supposed to get together this afternoon, but there were some personal things that one of the guitarists had to deal with this weekend, and currently the other guitarist is relying on him for a ride, so we called it off for this weekend. Hopefully get back together and get some serious work done next weekend. In the meantime, I've been trying to work on a few of my own little pieces of music, with some mixed results. I think I'm doing a little better on vocals than I have been recently, but it's still something that needs work. In the meantime, I guess I'll tinker around with a few more of my songs now...

2010-10-07T19:39:00.005-05:00

Another day of work done. Glad to see that the Rangers won the second game of their series. Maybe they'll finally manage to get that monkey off their backs, being the only team in the major leagues to never have won a playoff series. I guess we'll see this weekend, when they come back home to Arlington.

Work has pretty much been crap for the past couple of weeks. Last week, I covered for one of the other drivers, so I was working 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. all week. It meant a decent paycheck yesterday, but it also meant that I was dead tired by the end of the week. It also meant that I wasn't really doing very much of my filing, so now I'm about as far behind as I've been since I started that job. I've been trying to get down there during my driving time for the past few days to get caught up, but without much luck. Then yesterday, they just kept adding more and more runs to the list, and I ended up not getting back from the last run until about 7:20. Got back to a dark office, but at least they'd pulled up the customer's car. It's the least they could do. Actually, it probably was about the least they could do. Minimal effort is the policy at work...

The girlfriend has been having schedule issues at work lately, too. The other phone operator has been sick off and on for months, and she's having another set of issues now, so the girlfriend has been having to open for the past couple of days. On the plus side, she gets off work earlier, so she has more of the day when things are open and it's light outside. But it's kind of a pain when the schedule keeps changing. She's closing again tomorrow, then working Saturday. It'd be nice if she actually had a set schedule, which really did stay the way it was planned for more than a week or two at a time...

I haven't worked on any of my music for the past couple of days. Same old issues. Got to work on that more...

2010-10-06T09:39:00.003-05:00

So, once again I haven't been blogging all that much. No big loss to the literary world, this. It's just mostly been more of the same. I do have something of a band together now, although there might be some problems with that, too. And I've been working on trying to re-learn some of my own music that I wrote ages ago, but which I've since long forgotten. I have the melody for one tune back under my fingers, and I think I have the chord progression for another back on paper, but it's been slow going. Much of which, of course, is because I don't work on it enough. In any case, I'm off to work now. Hopefully this evening I'll spend more time on the music...

Checking on a home loan...

2010-08-26T23:36:00.002-05:00

The girlfriend and I went down to Dallas this morning to see if we could qualify for a home loan. On the way down, she was concerned that her credit score would be so horrible that even HMS, the company that supposedly helps people "with bumps and bruises on their credit," would just laugh us out the door. Instead, they turned out to be quite nice and gave us some good tips for improving our credit. The minimum credit score needed to qualify for a loan is 620. Mine is a little over that, about 645, but hers is about 591. So it's nowhere near as bad as she thought. In face, we were conditionally approved for a loan to have a new house built. The condition is based on her getting into their home-buyer's credit program, which will help improve her credit score but will also cost us a fair amount of money.

So we're probably going to use some of their tips and try to do a little credit repair on our own, then go back and see how we've done in a month or two. I know it's going to take a while before we get our scores up to the good levels, but we'll see what we can accomplish on our own dime. And maybe home-ownership will be back within reach in the not too distant future...

What's my "point of view"?

2010-08-03T00:30:00.005-05:00

I've been watching "The Next Food Network Star" on TV for the last season, and I've watched it a few seasons before. I realize, of course, that it's a silly reality type show (complete with air-quotes around "reality") which pits 12 cooks selected from their audition tapes (and presumably a live audition) against each other with the goal of becoming the host of a show on the eponymous Food Network. I realize that this show was not created with the actual idea of finding the next Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, or Rachael Ray. That's much like the idea of "American Idol" actually finding the next great singing sensation. It's just not going to actually happen.

The idea behind the show is actually to get a bunch of people to watch it, thinking they're going to be seeing the creation of the next Emeril, Bobby, or Rachael. In all honesty, I'm sure Food Network would be tremendously happy to get another Guy Fieri, or someone similar, who could host a couple of second-string shows on the network. If they really wanted to find a new star for their network, they'd be able to pick from the best of the culinary world. In any case, that's not what this whole post is all about...

What this post is about is one of the questions that the judges on that show keep asking the contestants: "What is your culinary point of view?" Of course, I don't really give a rat's ass about my own point of view from a culinary standpoint, because I'm not planning to compete on that show, nor am I planning to open a restaurant or write a cookbook. But just as a general question, I find myself lacking an answer. What's my viewpoint? What do I want to do with my life? What do I want to be when I grow up?

Why don't I have an answer?...

2010-07-15T15:09:00.002-05:00

Home for lunch again. I got to work this morning thinking it might not be such a big day of filing, since I've pretty much had a giant stack of warranty stuff from our other office every day for the past two weeks. I thought it had been so much because the warranty person over there had been on vacation for a week, but it seemed to be a bit more than that. So I went and asked our office admin, and she told me that it was actually because of a set of recalls by General Motors. On these particular recalls, they have a deal going on where if you get the recall done, they'll send you a check for $100. Only it seems that the volume is a bit overwhelming for the GM accounting people, so they're pushing most of the work down to their dealerships. Instead of cutting a check for each person who gets the recall done, they're tallying up all of the recalls performed by each service department for a week or so and then cutting one lump-sum check to send to the dealership. And then they're letting the dealer work out all the details of sending the checks out to the individuals. So it looks like for the next month or so, I'm going to continue getting a stack of those orders as well as the regular warranty stuff, plus all of the usual customer-paid invoices and the like. Which means the likelihood of my staying caught up on the filing is slim to none, and Slim is packing up to leave town...

Lunch time...

2010-07-13T15:13:00.003-05:00

It's been another fairly dull day at work. There was a large stack of filing from our other location, but since I didn't have much of a backlog to begin the day, I managed to get everything done and the table cleaned for tomorrow. This was despite the interruption as I was called to drive someone home in the early afternoon. The only problem was that both of the other drivers were out on runs, so I didn't have a vehicle to drive. That's all right, though, because it gave me the time I needed to finish up.

The girlfriend opened at work for the second day in a row today, and she might be having to do so for the remainder of the week. So that means that I didn't see her at lunch again. Not that a whole lot ever happens at lunch, but it's still nice to talk to her in the middle of the day. I'll see her this evening though. For now, it's back to do the driving...

Joe's New Blog

Tired

Day off...

Dinner at the Agave Azul

My girlfriend's Etsy shop

New day, new job!

New website for music toys...

Good intentions...

Daily Stuff, February 8, 2011

Daily Stuff, February 8, 2011

11 Reasons You Won’t Get Published

Weekends of January 22-23 and 29-30

Starting over...

January 21-22, 2011

January 20, 2011

January 19, 2011

January 18, 2011

Untitled

Sort of a 43Things "sub-list"

Working on a couple of them...

Should have done this years ago...

Weekend of 1/14/2011

Not going well at the moment...

So, it's been a while...

In a band, kind of...

"Resolutions" vs. "Goals"

Merry Christmas!

Counting the steps...

Ernie at leisure...

Testing the new phone...

Gmail Issues

Smoked Turkey

So *that's* the issue...

Checking on a home loan...

What's my "point of view"?

Lunch time...

So that's the issue...