Monday, August 18, 2003
As If You Didn’t Have Enough Not To Care About
Forgive, if you will, the paucity of posting (or “postcity"). I have a lot to do - work, other projects, ransom notes, the regular stuff… but during my lunch here let me catch you all up on my thrilling experiences.
Last Tuesday: Blaster virus. Stayed up till 2 am on weds cleaning it out.
Last Wednesday: Happy hour (emergency version). Loved meeting Caitlin and her friends, who came all the way from as far as Sacramento to share the moment.
Last Thursday: restful slumbers following the penultimate installation of Amazing Race, which is now down to one dull team, one irritating team, and one team I’d like to see taken out by an unbalanced cleaver salesman.
Last Friday:
Kel goes off to work for a 36 hour stint; I walk the dog, get the dry cleaning, work a solid day, bus it home, grab some supper and walk the dog, and catch two more busses to L-13 for “real” happy hour. Out too late, on my return I find the dog has gotten bored and chewed up a fresh roll of toilet paper and a glass votive holder. Broken glass litters his bed; his poop will have big chunks of wax in it for the next two days. Believe me, I get to find out. And if I live through it I sure as hell am going to share it with the world.
Last Saturday: Kel is still at work. I clean house, do laundry, sweep, tidy, shred bank records from the late 90s and automotive paperwork from the late 80s, find bizarre reminders of lives long since lived. Work on new mix CD using the RealPlayer “Rhapsody” program, which offers the following features:
* permits recording from an incoming analog audio source like a tape deck or turntable
* permits (I think) a track to be split into two parts (in case you prefer to burn only part of a long track)
* permits cross-fading so one song fades down as the next fades up over it
* permits normalization of volume across tracks
Maybe I sound like a shill but this is great stuff. Once I get a decent output source set up I’ll be able to record my old mix tapes, going back to “Big Dance Faves” of 1986, plus the entire Funksgiving series. But anyway.
By Saturday afternoon the new mix is sounding pretty good, but not quite good enough. Too much blank space at the end; some clumsy segues; a few songs that needed to be switched out. In the late afternoon I take a quick ride across the BOB (Big Orange Bridge) and the fog is literally dripping off my helmet and glasses. It’s a 40 minute wind sprint and feels great.
Saturday night Kel gets home at 6:20 and we have a lovely fifteen minutes to catch up; then I go off to Berkeley for drinks with HJ and James, Greg and of course the catalytic Jennn, who got us thirsty in the first place. We are out later than I’d ever have expected, eating bbq and getting up close and personal. I was stuck in an hour and a half of traffic on the way home - at midnight, no less! Bastards!
Sunday I wake up early and do a bit more cd mixing and cleaning, walk the dog, take things slow… then Kel and I drive down to Pescadero and hike around in the lovely marshes a bit, watching the egrets and letting the muted colors wash my eyes clean, the serpentine river reflecting blue skies and green mountains. Afterwards Kel wanted to visit the Pescadero “Fun and Art Fair,” which was unremittingly depressing and squalid. I don’t know what she expected. I was frankly glad not to be exposed to a hog butchering demonstration or a sadly incompetent rural magician, both of which I totally envisioned.
We broke free of the misery of the fair to have a nice dinner at Duartes, pronounced like what an artist does. It’s been there since the 1890s, though it closed during the depression, and serves a very decent supper and pie. I’ve had more exciting meals but the place felt so comfortable and easy on the mind, with semi-tacky paintings and lithos up all over the walls and long labrinthine hallways. It was extremely authentic and I enjoyed watching the interactions of locals and staff, all of whom seemed to be intimately familiar, if not related.
Sunday night I re-watched a Simpson’s re-run, for no really good reason, finished the CD, and fell asleep. Today Kel is off work and will hit CostCo and affiliated time-sinks. I will try to go running after work. After tonight I won’t see Kel much till Thursday - I have a volunteer gig tomorrow night, she has a gig Wednesday night… and she’s sleeping at work again on Friday....
I am going to cut this update short now, before I get into details even I don’t want to know about. Yeah, we’ve just scratched the surface, but maybe that’s where we should stay for now…
