Ambitious hobbiest pursuit. He's a retired ad executive. He's working on the house. So, a pretty typical place to install a hardwood floor. I have to say, that room looks much better without the carpet. Even the luan ply we put down looked nicer (minus the nails) than the carpeting.

A random place for hardwood flooring? Streets, ceilings, a garage, the middle of the woods...

Just went to take another shot at mixing one of my songs, and just realized that I must have left my external HD in the hotel room I stayed in the first night I got here. Lost and found turned up nothing, but I guess the head of housekeeping isn't in today, so I still have a chance at having it returned to me. But if not, I am pretty well fucked in most all my orifices.

And yet, I am not angry? Cause the thing is totally gone, there's no way they have that shit. I just gotta re-record dem songs. It's not like they were fantastic performances, it is the songs themselves that make my music worth listening to, so I will just have to do that shit better when I get back. It is sort of motivation to be less shitasssucky at my instruments. I dunno if this is going to continue tomorrow, but I am feeling oddly at peace about this.

When i go crackers i will put hardwood flooring on to trees.

I can understand not being pissed about losing the working files. I have lost a lot of shit over the years to technological failures. For me, as long as i have some copy of whatever song, i am pretty okay with losing the workerfiles. The main thing that makes me go straight up spaceragemad, is losing the only copy of a song or something, which i also have done quite a few times over the years.

Which only brings to mind for me something that has occured to me befoe: i really should start being better about uploading copies of shit to the internets for a slightly more relative safekeeping storage. Rather, one that is less dependent on my hardware here. Even still, i probably won't start uploading work files, just mixes/mp3s.

Not that this is without its flaws. I have a couple things that i lost the workfiles for but magically retained mixes of, that i just cannot figure out how the fuck i played, and figure it would be easier if i could solo some guitars or something. That scenario is definitely one of exceptions to a rule though.

I have a fever, complete with wacky hallucinations

Ah, I see now! Lately I've been taking things a bit too literally. It sounds a lot like my job; I'm really just folding shirts all day. Super easy and monotonous, but at least I get those eight and a half hours to myself before I have to go and work my ass off for someone/thing else at the end of the day.

I definitely went through that phase not too long ago, too, so I can relate with you pretty well. Nothing I was writing was really striking a chord with what I wanted desperately to hear, so I played all the time. Eventually I took a six month break from music (got to fill my mind with mindless customer service work), and came back to it mid-2011. Haven't had too many problems since.

Germany was definitely a good time! Such a nice place to be, I was very surprised. What reasoning did you have for going over there when you were younger?
We attempted to learn a bit before we went over, but..... The Rosetta Stone we had turned out to be a fake, and we couldn't find an easy way to learn the language. We're pretty lazy Most people over there speak English really well, as they learn it for nine years in school and such, so they were glad to have an excuse to use the skill. We got pretty lucky, I'd say.

^ this

but replace wacky hallucinations with overly vivid dreams including vampires, 007 and haunted houses...

So I am fairly certain I am going to get a job offer from Sam Ash today. Called me back in (for the forth time, mind) today for one last meeting, pretty sure it is going to be the hiring me meeting. Because they would have to be incredible assholes to call me in just to tell me I didn't get the gig.

I would commit seppuku under such circumstances.

At first, I was about ready to lose my shit and then some sorta serenity passed over me. Snot like I can't do that shit again or I've forgot how to play the tunes. It doesn't hurt that almost all my songs are mad short, too.

What flavour of wacky? Is it time to prepare the ice bath?

But you have to admit, that would be a pretty slick sort of dick move for an overly bored store manager to pull. Like that is just what he does to avoid doing any real work, just continuously interview with random folks he likes conversing with. That would be some Office Space type shit right there.

I randomly took German in high school, mainly because they offered it, and i didn't want to do french or spanish. My highshcool at the time had a kind of sweet exchange thing going on with a Gymnasium(aka High School) in Heidelberg. (Really, the deal with the program was basically: our German teacher and one of their English teachers, were old pals, and basically kind of used the exchange program as an excuse to hang out and get trashed together for about a couple months a year or so.)

And so it came to pass, that i had about three years of rudimentary high school German in my skull by the time i got over there. It was interesting because all of the younger Germans basically spoke better English than we did, but their parents on the other hand, did not tend to, kind of at all. The folks i was staying with, the student worked many of the non-school days, so it left me in kind of a odd situation with needing to excavate what little german i did get from class, in order to communicate with the parents.

What was interesting, was, in that situation, without really having a choice or an easy out, i actually quickly became very comfortable understanding just about everything, and with just enough flexibility to speak in what must have been an amusing caveman/german/english pidgin/hybrid, in such a fashion as to be generally understood, well enough.

Trial by fire with the German language in this fashion actually seemed to result in an awful lot of it sticking, and remaining accessible to my brain for quite a few years after, which was swell. Eventually, without any use for it in daily activity though, much of it did fade back out. Now i just remember how to say offensive things in broken phrases, and how to ask for a pen or calculator, the former being essentially the end result of what must have been one of the German students' most self-amusing past-times, and the latter which must have been Day One, Page One in German class or something.

I work at Sam Ash now.

Congratulations, Mr. Dev.

Do we have an emoticon of pistols being fired up into the air? 'Cause we should.

My life is taking another turn for a not-where-I would-have-expected-it. Things Happen.

Are you turning into a wolf snaxo?

That would be too pedestrian. I'm thinking more a large armadillo or a dimetrodon.

Oooh, dimetrodon would be the shit. Though, i don't think they were vegetarians?

Looking out the window just now i saw two things, one interesting, one typical.

Interesting: looks like the neighborhood has a raptor. Don't know exactly what it was, coopers hawk, some sort of falcon, or what, but i have seen it before and i am seeing it again, so this must be a spot they like.

Typical: just noticed a large pile of dirt and rocks, like directly in the center of my driveway.

Look again, and this fucking chipmunk is excavating the fucking place:



Went outside and there are two distinct tunnels the little bastard has begun. No, no, this won't do.

Maybe i can get the raptor to hang around a bit longer.