Voodoo Dick

Thursday: Up around 9. Email. Shower. Breakfast. Hello to Oscar. Down basement and morning practices. Some hanging around and drums. ST stopped in and conversation. Headed to work, across town. Slow going... lots of traffic. A somewhat short day in the office. Confirmed my new alt in stuff was working, with an actual add-on. Ripped out some debug code, and checked my stuff in. MB had made me a lunch. Headed home earlyish, around 8. Watched Lost on the treadmill. MB came home, and hello. Some food. She told me a joke that Taylor had told her: A pirate walks into a bar with a steering-wheel protruding from his pants fly. The bartender says "Hey buddy, did you know you have a steering-wheel in your shorts?" to which the Pirate replies: "Arrrgh, matie, its drivin' me nuts!" I told her about "Voodoo Dick". Guitar. Working on some arrangements of classic instrumental rock music. Now down basement to complete the day.

Departure plans

Woke around 8, back to bed until 9. Downstairs and email. MB working at home today. Shower. Made breakfast for us (mushrooms red-pepper and eggs). A bit of guitar, then down basement. Morning practices. Drums. Reconfigured the wires around the music room computer.
Off to work, the long way. A sunny day.
Productive day at the office. I got the alt in feature up and running. Lots of little details. To the pharmacy, and picked up a burrito. B and Al continue scheming about Cocoa. MB wrote with details about her departure. Most of her belongings will leave on the 14th, and then she herself will head off on the 25th. The last day I'll see her for now is Thanksgiving.
IMing with Ann, she had concern about a recent dream. Worked until about 10:30. On the way back home, stopped at the bank. Hello to MB. Putting out the garbage, recycling and compost. Down basement and watched an episode of Lost while walking on the treadmill. Now to complete the day.

Fred's Gas

Tuesday: Bad dreams about work and home life, waking me around 4am. Back to sleep, and some disturbing dreams, but not of the previous magnitude. Woke around 9am. Email. Shower. Downstairs and breakfast with Oscar. Guitar practice. Down basement, morning practice, brief drums, and some tidying.
Headed out stopping to have my car inspected. No problems. Then, over to Porter Sq. Finally settled up with the music shop that gave me only half the number of strings I ordered. Friendly guy gave me strings.
In to work and continuing with the new side-input project. Nachos. By the end of the day I'd connected up almost everything... a fair slog. Al and B discussing plans for moving to Cocoa. Enjoying the new Siouxsie CD. Left just after 7pm.
Over to Deerheart's house and a brief meeting with him and An. Realized there was a time conflict with next week, so good thing I wasn't feeling called to co-lead.
Back home, email and IM. Now to complete the day.

Dentist and slog

Monday: Woke around 9. Slept well, but feeling groggy. Brief email. Shower. Fed Oscar (who didn't want to come in, despite the cold). It took 20 minutes to cook eat and clean-up breakfast. Down basement, morning practices. Headed out.
At the dentist's by 11. Waiting, listening to the Moody Blues piped in over the sound system. Cleaning. The dentist said my teeth are in pretty good shape.
In to work, and a long slogging day hooking up a new system for add-ons. Got quite a bit of it done. Mid-day took a walk around, picking up Yerba, black licorice cats for MB, and some chocolate, as well as a burrito for lunch. Sunny and chilly. B bought a copy of Leopard. I installed this on my spare computer at the end of the night. Headed home around 10pm.
At the house: personal practice in the basement. MB came home from her language class. Some hanging out, and discussing her plans. Guitar for about 40 minutes. Soon bed.

Lovelock

Thursday: Woke in the am. Email. Back to bed, sleeping until around 1pm. Much needed. Email, shower. Downstairs and fed Oscar. Some cereal and tea. Reading about James Lovelock's distressing assement of the future of humanity, while they talked about the California wildfires and Huricane Katrina on NPR. Frightening. Down basement. Morning practices, drums. Loaded up the car and headed out. Across town to work.
Again not a terribly productive day. Checked in the window opening work from yesterday, and did some research on a feature that I may soon implement. Got some nachos. Dev came by and picked up my old Ovation to be used as a spare on the LoCG tour. Headed out around 7:30. Met Shawn at the DD in Porter.
Arlington, and rehearsing with Shawn. Using the new Echoplex to mostly good effect. World of difference just being able to begin and end recording with the foot pedal. Some other rehearsing. We're at the point where rehearsing isn't what's really necessary. Dropped Shawn-o at his place. Back home, MB got in just after I did. We hung out a bit, eating a little. Then down basement and email. Soon to complete the day.

Paperwork 2

Woke at 8:30, MB up also. Down basement for morning practices. Rainy out. We drove up to the bank. After a minor eternity (half an hour) she signed some papers. As her pen met the paper, Sting's "If you love someone (set them free)" played on the bank's canned music system. Hugs. I said goodbye as she left for work, then walked back home. Drove over to Everett and dropped off the papers, then back home. Breakfast, eggs and so on. Fed Oscar. Shower. Decimated a pile of papers, and scanned some photos of my (no-longer-with-us) cats from when they were kittens.
Made a deposit back at the bank. In to work. Not terribly productive. Feeling sleepy, and my hands hurting. Had another phone conversation with the 3rd party people. Consolidated some changes on two different branches. Reformed a bit of window opening code.
Back home, and down basement. MB had a belly-dance class upstairs. I took a nap.
Later, she had gone out. I walked out and picked up an eggplant sub and a piece of pizza, which I ate back at the ranch, flipping between game 1 of the World Series, and an episode of Lost. The Red Sox trounced the Rockies 13-1. MB came home, and a little hanging out. I went through the lead of Askesis checking with her if there was anything I was missing. Some more guitar practice, then down basement to complete the day.

Paperwork

Tuesday: Woke around 7:30... which seemed much too early. The alarm monitoring company was supposed to come by and replace part of the system between 8 and noon. MB headed to work. Down basement and morning practices. Moved stuff around to give the technicians access when they arrived. Shower. Email. Breakfast of eggs and such. Lost. Worked on learning the lead line to Askesis... All quite familiar. I must have learned this before. It was noon, and nobody had shown up. I called to assess the situation. They said "he's on his way." Spent an hour fussing around. At 1 pm the guy shows up. He told me he had no idea how long the job would take (in spite of the fact that every single house is having this unit replaced... so you'd think there'd be a rough estimate). I told him to leave and cancel the work order. Then I called the business and gave them a piece of my mind. I'll just do without that feature, the bastards. Feeling sleep deprived, and in a lousy mood, I set off for Everett.
Arrived with time to spare. Walked up the street and got a protein shake at a convenience store. Then back to the office. I was briefed on some paperwork, and signed my name a few times. Went to the drug-store and bought hand sanitizer. All the talk of staph infections in the news lately is triggering my OCD. Avoid doorknobs.
In H Sq, a parking spot opened up so I got a burrito. As I was heading back to my car, Al showed up. We talked about how someone had left the company without any mention being made of it. Not a terribly productive day in the office. I bought some gear for a friend. Worked on addressing a couple of other issues for a 3-rd party. Yerba. Stayed until around 9:30. I was the last one out.
Back home, and going over paperwork with MB... which brought up a bunch of stuff. But somehow it all got resolved in the end. Goodnight and down basement. Email. Now to complete the day.

Echoplex

Tuesday: Woke around 7:30. Called J Mackey. Not in yet. Back to bed for a bit, but not much sleep. Called him again around 8:10, and we spoke. MB headed to work. No getting back to sleep. Email. Shower. Eggs with mixed greens for breakfast and hello to Oscar. Watched "Lost." Down basement for morning practices and drums. Some tidying. Drove the long way around to work: a lovely day.
In at the office, spent the day trying to reproduce, and deduce a crash in the OS. Finally decided it must be an OS bug involving custom window definitions. Lots of talking today... Al and B. The three of us. Me and B. MB made me a lunch. A box containing a toy I purchased on Ebay arrived today.
Back home, worked on spooling off old video for Shawn. Some practices, then installing my toy in my rack while talking to D. MB returned home, so hanging out with her. Had some toast with Brie and mixed greens. Back down basement and playing with the toy. Fun! Now to complete the day.

Orange Cupcakes

Sunday: Woke around 8. Shower. Bowl of cereal. Down basement and morning practices. Said goodbye to MB as she headed off to church. Back down basement, and a nap. Strange dreams of people canceling appointments and rescheduling.

Took a walk out to the store and bought some stuff for the gathering. People began arriving a little before 1:30. Began around 2... And a lovely time. Snacks and beverages afterwards, people staying until almost 6. Cleaning up...

Showed MB a bit of Flying Home. Down basement and some practices.
A little after 7, off to circle.
Martin, Victor, Chris, Alex, MB and myself. My hands continue to hurt. Some discussion at the end about goals and aims.

Back home, noodles with stewed cherry tomatoes. Down basement to complete the day.

Three Frogs, Combinations of Rubbings

Saturday: Up around 10. Hello to MB. Down basement and morning practices. Breakfast with MB (scrambled eggs and mushrooms. Waffles). MB and I re-installed the attic stairs in the basement, again featuring her famous isometric stretch. I bolted the bottom part of the ladder back on, trimmed the ladder, and then devised a way for it to rest on the landing. The first trip up and back down was take. It was about 3 PM by this point.
Wnd arrived with her reflexology chair. I took the first spin while MB did audio recording. Nice catching up with Wnd. My feet felt crampy, probably due to the green-tea. MB had her turn, and I went out, to the bank, then picked up some ice-cream and a few other things at the store. Pizza. Back at the ranch, MB was still having her feet massaged. Down basement. A little later, we shared some of the spinach calzone I'd picked up. Then, and improvised apple pie/crumble that MB had created earlier in the day. Dee-licious. Gave Wnd a massage while MB got back to audio recording. More hanging out with MB, talking. We took a spin through the house. For some reason, a lot of emotion about a statue of three frogs. Liberation. We carried the ficus tree outside so it could rid itself of some dust, and soak up some water. Down basement, and to play guitar and complete the day.

Rain, last one at work

Friday:
Breakfast, eggs, and some rice -pudding. Debugging a reference count problem in an add-on. Sometimes reference count schemes are more of a pain in the neck than simple allocation, IMHO. Raining. Some pizza, waiting for things to build. Still can't figure out the bug... Beginning to think it's an OS problem. A pedestrian almost jumped in front of my car, but thought better of it. I stepped on the brakes, and was almost rear-ended. Drove the long way around. Two cars facing the wrong direction.
Earlier than usual evening practices. Hello to MB. Back down basement. Guitar. More practices. Working on video importing. One DVD was bad. Somehow, still up quite late.

Filming with ST

Thursday: Woke around 9. Not really enough sleep, lazed until 10. Email. Shower. A bowl of cereal. Gave Oscar a brushing, since MB had already fed him. Down basement, and morning practices. Drums. ST left me voice mail that she wanted to wait an hour before getting together. Setting up video equipment. At 1, picked her up, and was introduced to a house-guest named G who was familiar with the work of Osho. Back at my place, filming and hanging out. Dropped ST back at her place (well, near), and headed for work. Burrito. M was strangely complimentary, as if he felt bad about being negative yesterday. Spoke with G from an add-on company and tried to figure out some crashing behavior. Hard time getting their stuff installed, as usual. Cleaned up my virtual desktop. Ridiculous number of test files I've made over the years. Had to leave at 7:30 to meet Shawn. On the ride to Arlington I talked about maybe shifting the focus of the band. He wasn't so keen on the idea. A sloppy rehearsal on my part. Lack of sleep is not good for accuracy. Dropped him back at the supermarket near his house. Back at the ranch, hello to MB. Talking about her plans. Watching the funny shredder guitar with overdubbed horrible noodling that is making the rounds. Email. Hoping to make an early night of it and catch up on sleep.

Returned pop-tarts, a small act of quality

Wednesday: Up around 10. Email. Shower. Eggs with Oscar. Down basement, morning practices, drums. Headed out stopping at the P.O. to pick up a package, and mail another. Stopped at the music store in Porter Sq, and got a refund on some strings. Turns out, I had been short-changed even more than I thought. In to work... Spent most of the day running the program in sludge-mode trying to find a memory trasher. Eventually I did. Some code was using a fixed size array, and running off the end. It hadn't been expecting the vertical size to change. Some talk with M and B about icons. M made a scowly face. Wrapped up the feature by the end of the day and checked it in. Back home around 10:30. Hello to MB, who was waxing. Some soup and a cheese/avocado sandwich. The house smelled strongly of perfume from one of MB's belly-dance students. Down basement. Email. Now guitar and to complete the day.

Long day at work 2

Tuesday: Up around 9, but lazing. Email. Shower. Eggs, hanging with Oscar in the kitchen.
Down basement morning practices, drums, email. Headed out the long way around. Clear and cool today. Not quite as productive today, but still good progress working on my resizing feature. At the end of the day, working on tracking down a crash bug. Some sort of memory dart or double deletion. Connected with someone who had some interesting religious experiences early in life. MB called asking for more tech support. Back home: Zoomed too far out so the wiper was not obviously moving. A frozen burrito, rice pudding. Down basement, changing guitar strings. Now to complete the day.