Category: Journal

A month or so ago, Nicole and I were driving to the HEB on 51st and we passed a pizza joint called “Pieology”. I’ve never been there, but I know that it’s one of those “make your own pizza” places, sort of like a Mongolian BBQ of pizza. For some reason, a jingle popped into my head: “Make your ownpizza at Pieology.If it sucksyou won’t get an apology.Coz you’re the one who made it…You’re the one who made it…SUCK!” I’m not certain precisely why, but it was ridiculously catchy. I’d find myself humming it. I’d catch Nicole humming it (usually after I did, but still…). So, I decided to record it. This turned out to be the most challenging thing I’ve recorded so far. It required a catchy, swinging drum line that I could have easily recorded using the Beatstep, but for some reason I used the motion sequencer on the Volca to do it and eventually figured it out. And then I found out that the sequencer doesn’t actually save the motion after you turn it off(I had to hit the “stutter” knob at exactly the right time to get the beat I wanted), so I had to do it again and record it immediately. This being a short jingle, there’s really not much to it…unless you’re a hopeless TMBG fanboy and feel like you need horns, strings, bells, drum fills, and, for some reason, a synth solo. It was a weird recording. Normally I do a rhythm track, then record all the parts all the way through the song. This was more a matter of recording two-bar parts for each instrument and then copying-and-pasting them to the part of the song where I needed them. Not my normal process, but it worked OK. My highly-professional system of charting the tracks. Then there was the matter of vocals. I am not a singer. When I sing, people usually think I’m trying to do a parody bad singing. Then, when the truth hits them, they give me a look that says “Aw, it’s great that you tried.” I played World of Warcraft for 8 years without ever speaking on my guild’s channel because I am just that microphone-shy. So I bought a mic, a cheap condenser. Then I had to, um, sing. I wound up double-tracking the vocals and discovered that a little equalization works wonders, but I would still describe the end result as “I get what you were going for” as opposed to “good”. It was fun to give it a shot, though. Anyway, the next step is to send the jingle, unsolicited, to the folks at Pieology. Nicole insists that the right way to do this is to transfer the jingle to cassette tape and send it over snail mail She’s more romantic than she let’s on. Having thought it over, I think she’s exactly right. Of course, I don’t have a cassette recorder, but hey, what’s one more electronic toy? So, here in all its glory, is the Pieology jingle I wrote: And, for the sake of completeness, here’s the full version which is more of a short song than a jingle: I don’t expect I’ll be doing anything like this again, but it was a lot of fun to do and maybe I’ll finally get this jingle out of my head. Probably not, though. -RK

I can’t sleep tonight because our country has gone mad and that sort of thing upsets my sensitive soul. I’ve been trying to avoid talking about the state of the state, but I don’t see any way around it tonight. It’s too much. So yes, this is yet another outsider commenting on the sad farce that took place in our nation’s capitol yesterday. If that’s not your thing, feel free to move along. I’m going to start by asking you to suspend disbelief here. For the purposes of this initial discussion, I’m going to propose that, in that very narrow matter of whether or not Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the Supreme Court, it does not matter whether or not Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations are true or not. Kavanaugh did enough to disqualify himself that, even if you were to find his denials credible, there is no reasonable way to draw the conclusion that he should be confirmed. Bluntly speaking, Brett Kavanaugh lied during the hearings in such an obvious fashion that no one could credibly claim otherwise. His lies were insulting and unmistakable. The word “boffing” has an accepted meaning, and that meaning is not related to passing gas. “The devil’s triangle” is not a drinking game. Labeling yourself a “Renate Alumnius” is not a way to honor a friend you “hang out with”. His explanations for these things were a slap in the face to the whole process. These are the kind of lies you tell when you don’t respect your accuser or the people who are going to vote on your confirmation. Everyone knew he was lying, and he didn’t care one bit. Everyone who votes for him today (and I fully expect him to pass committee and be confirmed sooner rather than later) knows that what he was saying was untrue and they don’t care either. It’s a bit much, coming from a man who fervently believed that the phrase “I did not have sexual relations with that one” was enough to remove a sitting president, but don’t mistake that for irony. Irony lives in opposition to expectations. This is just crass realpolitik, rank hypocrisy, and precisely what one would expect for a man of Kavanaugh’s ilk. I haven’t even discussed his temperament (volatile and angry) or his partisanship (which calls into question his ability to function as an impartial arbiter on the court), because these, too, aren’t necessary to disqualify him from the job. The bottom line is, regardless of whether or not you accept Dr. Ford’s testimony, Brett Kavanaugh has no business being anywhere near the Supreme Court. Of course, Dr. Ford’s testimony does matter and I can’t imagine anyone watching the proceedings and not coming out of them with a stronger belief that she is telling the truth. Her testimony was immaculate. She provided precision where she could, and was honest as to where she couldn’t. Contrast that with Kavanaugh’s testimony, which was riddled with ridiculous lies and inconsistencies, the vast majority of which had to do with his sexual history. If he couldn’t be honest about what the word “boffing” means, I don’t see any reason why we should presume he was honest about much else. So, yes, I think her accusations are credible and his denials are not. Maybe that’s not fair, but when you lie as easily and as blatantly as Brett Kavanaugh? You lose the benefit of the doubt. I’ll close this out with some speculation about what I see as the meta-thread running through these hearings. When I hear the Lindsey Grahams and Donald Trumps of the vociferously defending Brett Kavanaugh, I don’t hear men who really believe that Dr. Ford is falsely accusing him. I don’t even hear partisan hacks who are going to support “their guy” through thick or thin. I hear something much deeper and darker: I hear men of privilege who genuinely don’t believe that the things Kavanaugh is accused of doing are wrong. I think way too many of these men standing up for Kavanaugh feel personally attacked by the accusations. What I think, and again, I am speculating, but I am speculating with a great deal of “this rings true to me”. These men grew up treating women exactly the way Brett Kavanaugh is accused of doing and they’re thinking “We all acted like that in school, because that’s how ‘men’ act, and this is where we draw the line against women calling what they think of as normal boyhood behavior ‘assault’. I think they feel like, if what Kavanaugh did was sexual assault, then most of them are guilty as well. A reach? It could be. But consider this: They could have withdrawn Kavanaugh from consideration, found another justice fresh of the Federalist factory floor, and very likely got the same sort of candidate without having to go through these hearing. Why did it have to be Kavanaugh? Why was he the line in the sand, the hill to die on? I think, too, that this is why this is such an incredibly important moment for the feminist movement. As unlikely as it sounds, the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings have become a referendum on the matter of “boys will be boys” vs. “#MeToo”. It’s white (and let’s not kid ourselves about that) male privilege trying to stem the tide of accountability for their actions. So, if Brett Kavanaugh is ultimately confirmed, not only are we stuck with a lifetime appointment for a mediocre man who has demonstrated amply that he has no business on the bench, it’s a symbolic slap in the face to anyone who has ever been sexually assaulted. They won’t be confirming Kavanaugh because they believe him; they’re doing it because they think he did it and they don’t think he did anything wrong. And that, my friends, is why I can’t sleep tonight.

So, here’s the thing: I feel great, I mean like “the best I have felt in years”, but I’m not sure I understand or trust the reasons for it. The steroids? Sure, that could be it, but I’ve been on a prednisone taper before and it I don’t recall it making me feel anything other than normal. Is it getting over a really scary disease that’s driving me? That doesn’t seem right, does it? Whatever it is, I feel light and energetic and happy and smart and even borderline-attractive. It’s nice. I’ve had a really great weekend, the best-feeling weekend I’ve had in ages. Maybe I’ve had some sort of low-grade ick dragging me down for months (years?) that’s been sapping my energy and making me live in a fog and this knocked the shit out of it and now I’m just back to a normal I only vaguely remembered. Regardless, whether this is the new normal or if it’s just some temporary side-effect of some treatment, I’m enjoying it. I feel more present, too, more capable of concentration. Whether the sky will always be this blue and the wind this soft and the ground this warm or not, there’s not reason not to take a deep breath and just be happy to be right here. (I’ve just been reliably informed that it’s dark out, there’s no wind indoors, and the floors in here are cold. So much for figurative language in this day and age.) One of the highlights of the weekend was a visit to a new bookstore literally across the street from us. It’s not just any bookstore, it’s an Japanese bookstore/office supply store/pop culture extravaganza. It’s called Kinokinuya and it might just be my favorite place to go and give in to all of my wicked consumer impulse urges. I’m trying to think of a good way to properly describe this place and I’m struggling because there’s not really a good point of reference. It’s a big place and the books may take up a third or so of it, making it about as big as the old mall book stores. The are all manner of writing utensils (I have never seen so many mechanical pencils), papers, notebooks, and accessories. There’s an entire Studio Ghibli section because it would feel weird if there weren’t. There’s an extensive selection of anime, plastic figures, plush figures, other toys, pins, temporary tattoos, reading glasses (swoon), and literally countless other ways to separate me from my money. I picked up a little pocked notebook because I’d like to find out if I’m the kind of person that carries one of those around and makes notes on my clever musings and droll observations. I may not be, but it was an excuse to get a beautiful Horizon mechanical pencil. I may not be, but it’ll be fun to find out. Nicole also encouraged me to get a Yamamoto Paper “paper tasting” kit to test which type of papers my fountain pen likes the best. Yes, it’s that kind of place, and I’m not sure how my life was ever complete without it. Shiny aluminum pencil! Oh, and real big spender on that notebook, Ridley… As a kid, I always loved office supply stores because, well, they were fun! I got that same buzz going in to Kinokinuya: I felt like a kid. If you’re in the neighborhood, or you have one in your home town, I cannot recommend it highly enough. We had a little gathering over here on Saturday. The events which took place during the gathering will not be recounted here. If you believe you have heard rumor of any of said events, you are mistaken and that is a hill on which I am prepared to shed significant blood. Nothing of any importance happened, nothing was broken, no secrets were revealed, no, or at least very little, witchcraft was performed, most clothing that came in to our abode left the same evening (and mostly on the same person who originally wore it). It was not unlike most nights in any significant fashion. The food was good. Goodnight and sweet dreams, RK

You know that feeling when you’re skidding out of control, or you blew a deadline, or it’s coming right for you! and you just narrowly avoid taking the hit. You’re unscathed when you could (and probably should) have been a bloodied mess? It’s an exhilarating feeling, that sense of escape, of being back on the upswing. Beowulf Shaeffer pulled out of the spin into the neutron star and can see it diminishing into the GP hull-equivalent of the rear view mirror. That’s where I am now. I’ve gone from being really, really not well to feeling incredible in less than a week. It turns out MRSA was involved, and that’s not one to joke with. My doctor didn’t fuck about and went with the right antibiotics and we killed it dead, but we did so right before things would have become Serious. And now, that sense of release, of escape, of having cheated a deserved fate, plus some 60mg of prednisone a day, have left me feeling like everything is wonderful. My brain has worked better the last couple of days than it has in months. I’m even (gasp) productive at work. Who knew that was even in the cards? This is, of course, not a sustainable model for improving my mood and my acuity. I’m in no hurry to do it again any time soon. My doctor agrees, so we’re working to prevent this going forward and to find alternatives for the steroids, which are marvelous in their efficacy, but they will eventually exact an unacceptable toll. So, yay. I got lucky. It feels amazing. I will enjoy it for as long as it lasts, and do all within my power to ensure I don’t have to be lucky next time.

So, yes, what I posted yesterday was pretty unpleasant, but life isn’t without its pleasures these days. This new apartment we’re in has the most extraordinary views of, well, mostly sky, but it’s a fantastic sky. The living room has an almost 180 degree field of view, meaning that was can see the old airport and the lights of the new airport to the east. We can see the west stand of the football stadium, the tower, and downtown to the south, and the TV towers on the hills to the west.  And we get pretty decent sunsets, too. Google recommended a pretty extreme filter for this, but I think it came out ok without it. While I was basking in this marvelous sunset, Nicole called me to have me take a look at the other side of the sky, which was festooned in rainbow plumage. Again, not a bad view from the porch, eh? This is a relaxing place to live. It still feels more like a resort we’re leasing than home, and that’s not a bad thing at all. I’m sleeping better than I have in years for…well, I’m not sure why, but I am. Maybe it’s orientation of the window in the bedroom with respect to the sunrise, maybe it’s that we’re keeping the room free of felines for most of the day. I really don’t know. Another little “huh” thing: The floors feel so different than those in our old first floor apartment. The solidity of the ground floor tiles, affixed directly to the concrete foundation, has been replaced by something with a little more give. It’s subtle, but it’s far more pleasant to walk barefoot on upper floors.  Oh, and I’m still just a couple of minutes (6, to be exact) walk to the train station, which was a non-negotiable for us. It’s funny to think that, when we first moved near a train station, I expected to ride the train once or twice a week and drive on other days. It’s took maybe two days to become completely hooked on taking the train. After a year or so of riding, started carrying books to read as a way to alleviate the stress of checking email and because I like reading books. That initiative has worked out swimmingly. It’s “found time” that I’m fortunate enough to have and to put to good use. Which is all a long way of saying that, in spite of the fact that I look like a troll (which is a slight improvement on “Deadpool”) and that I have a chronic condition the cure for which is nowhere in site, things really aren’t bad. I appreciate all the support I received yesterday when I was writing about the worst of things; I just wanted to let y’all know that pretty much everything else? Pretty darned good. -RK

Let’s start this one off with a content warning for body horror descriptions.  I was going to make this a P.S., but I wanted it right here at the top of the post: Nicole has been a goddamned angel of mercy this weekend. She’s taken such incredibly good care of me and taken care of all the house things and even prodded me when I wasn’t doing the best thing for myself. The fermented cabbage juice/probiotic was a bit much, but in the big scheme of things, it does nothing to reduce my gratitude. She loves me, even when my face is such a mess. I’m terribly lucky. For those of you who haven’t followed my general well-being with rapt attention, good on you. I’m presuming you have a rich, full life that in no way involves memorizing the peculiar ailments of strangers. However, a little bit of backstory is required for this to make any sense, so bear with me. I have a Skin Thing. I can’t put a proper label on it as three doctors have yet to make heads or tails of why my skin will just stop being skin and start being a collection of portals linking the dermis with the outside world. It started happening years ago and all we’ve determined with any certainty is that, while I am allergic to p-phenylene diamine, that alone doesn’t explain what’s going on. The allergist says it’s a skin condition. The dermatologist says it is likely one or more allergies. The GP’s guesses are best left unsaid.  The other thing is that my condition goes away for about 2-3 months after getting a steroid shot. So, that’s what I’ve been doing to keep it in check. This past Tuesday, I went in for my shot which is by now a routine. Wednesday and Thursday, I felt unusually warm and had started to develop tiny bumps on my elbows. By Friday evening, both arms were covered, as was my trunk and parts of my legs. More worryingly, my face had some of those tiny bumps and was slightly swollen. Saturday was bad. By Saturday, my face resembled Deadpool’s -swollen, bumpy, seeping, and….yuck. I contacted my dermatologist, who, suspecting a bacterial infection (steroids leave you prone to infections), put me on a pretty serious antibiotic; the kind you take with a meal every 12 hours like clockwork.  Today was….worse. The whole of my face was covered in seeping gunk and the tried bits of it after they’d done their seeping. It was bad enough that I contacted my doctor again with one of the most appalling selfies I’ve ever taken. She regarded it as a Not-At-All-Good Condition and called in a prescription for some prednisone, which is, as they say in the business, serious shit. So here it is Sunday night. I’m not going to work tomorrow for obvious reasons. I’ll be in the doctor’s office by 9 AM-ish after what I expect to be a poor night’s rest. The tide seems to have been stemmed; I don’t see my face or any other part of me getting worse. There’s no improvement, either. The weird thing is that I feel fine. My skin is just garbage right now and I do not feel pretty.  P.S. I’d intended to turn my enforced housebound state into some overly dramatic, sentimental music but alas and dammit, my audio interface seems to have completely stopped doing anything beyond powering up. My computer doesn’t recognize the USB connection, and none of my instruments can make the line-level lights dance at all. It’s under warranty, or it would be, had I registered it. We’ll see what Behringer has to say about it. Maybe there’s a magic reset switch, but I doubt it. Of all the soul-destroying events of the weekend, this was probably the worst. I just wanted to sit in front of my shattered interface and mumble “It’s not fair….it’s not fair.” Oh well, at least my glasses still work.

I’ve found it difficult to write while we’re in the process of moving to a new apartment. My brain, body, and whatever evil little bit somewhere inside me that compels me to spill out what’s going on in my life in this increasingly-archaic fashion haven’t been in a state that allows me to sit down and write about it. I’m trying to steal little bits here and there when I can jot things down, but I’ve found that I’m seldom able to make sense of my notes, so here it is in one go.  It turns out that I don’t enjoy moving. It’s a cataclysmic event that feeds me nothing but stress before, during, and…well, ok, not so much after, but you get the idea. It wrecks me physically and mentally and I may not be the dynamo of energy I used to be. I’ve heard about people who will pack and move your stuff for you, but that seems like an unthinkable luxury reserved for people who have made much better life decisions than I have. That said, the new place is awfully nice. We’re at the top of the not-especially-tall-but-still-the-tallest-building-in-the-area, so we get a great view, especially since the living room offers nearly 180 degrees of windows. It doesn’t quite feel like home yet, but it’s getting there. I think I’m gonna like it. The view from my desk ain’t bad. I’ve just finished reading Henning Mankell’s Sidetracked, which was an absolutely delightful read about a serial killer and the policeman (Kurt Wallender) who is trying to stop him. The plot is fine, I suppose. I don’t really read that much crime fiction and that which I do, I don’t read for the plot. The writing, and most especially the characterizations, are what make Sidetracked such a page turned.  I’ve determined that what I really enjoy about crime fiction is the writing. It tends towards sparseness, but not in the “I’m going to be an ass about it” way that Hemingway and, sometimes, Cormac McCarthy write. There’s not much else that tie Hammett, Chandler, and Mankell together: Hammett is the more playful of the three, Chandler starts out obviously influenced by Hammett but finding his own, more philosophical voice, later on. Mankell is several generations removed, but his style is recognizably similar to his predecessors, but it’s more…human? Wallender is grumpy and makes mistakes.  Anyway, the lot of them are great fun to read even when I struggle to care about the crimes they’re solving. I’m late to the party on this, but Google Cloud Print is pretty magical, isn’t it? I needed to figure out a way for Nicole to print to an old Brother printer from her iPad and it took something like 15 seconds to set up. That seems wrong; the central tenet of IT support is that printers are awful and difficult to share. This particular bit of functionality seems like it should be getting a lot more attention than it has. I have a lot more, but it’s not bubbling up to the surface right now, so I’ll leave you with this. Lasagna is amazingly fun to make when you stop worrying about what a lasagna is supposed to be. We made a sorta-lasagna last night that I’m reasonably sure would earn me a failing grade from any Italian chef worth their while, but ya know what? It tasted great. Don’t like ricotta (and I don’t)? Don’t use it! You want to make it with green chiles, chicken, and Alfredo sauce? Go for it! There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere, but I’m not about it. I mean this literally. Don’t let any bossy people tell you what a lasagna is supposed to be because, if you make it the way you like it, it’ll be awesome.    

Well hello there. I’ve got a lot of little things on my mind right now and I’m not sleeping any time soon, so I thought that this would be a good time to unload a few of them.    Tell The Machine Goodnight is a curious novel that I tore through as quickly as anything I’ve read of late. It’s by Katie Williams, and it batted around my expectations like a cat playing with a catnip-filled toy. The inside cover description made me think of a Terry Gilliam-ish dystopia, but that’s not really it at all. The first chapter left me thinking I had the rest of the novel neatly figured out, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.  I’m not certain what I think of the ending, but that’s true of a lot of my favorite speculative stories. It’s science fiction, but it’s more so in the manner of The Twilight Zone than space opera, which, I should point out, was at its best when the endings were a little ambiguous. It’s also nothing at all like The Twilight Zone. It’s an interesting, thoughtful book and it’s a great read.  Speaking of The Twilight Zone, we watched one of the less-famous Richard Donner-directed episodes last night: “Come Wander With Me”. Nicole pointed out just how pitch-perfect the casting was, and how this was so often the case with The Twilight Zone. The other thing that stood out were the production values and, yes, the direction. I’ve seen films that weren’t as tightly constructed as “Come Wander With Me”. It’s a delight to see the craftsmanship involved in telling these stories, even when the stories themselves don’t always hold up. The big downside of this episode? The song is an evil, evil ear worm. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. We’re going to be moving to a new apartment next week, so things are a little untidy around here. We’re going to be staying in the same area; I’m pretty sure the distance between the front doors is around 50 yards. The new place is a little larger, a lot newer (we’ll be the first occupants), and we’re hoping the management and maintenance will be a little more to our liking.  We’ll won’t be on the first floor anymore, which means we won’t have our garden which, for all intents and purposes, has served more as a snail sanctuary than a proper garden. That was fine, as we weren’t going to eat anything we grew. This left us with a bit of a dilemma: What to do with the little creatures who depended on us for food and shelter? Simply leaving would put them in a bad situation as snails are generally considered to be pests.  You can probably guess what we decided.  A little bit of zucchini, some lettuces, and a cuttlebone and our new guests seem quite happy indeed. They’re marvelous little creatures, very relaxing to watching and as gentle as you could want. Given the likely result had we left them, I’m certain we made the best choice for them in bringing them in. I hope they have lovely lives. Maybe one of the reasons that I’m not sleeping so well is that I go “on call” tomorrow. “On call” is the worst. It’s pitched as a benefit to the people who are part of the rotation. No, really. The line of thinking is “At least it’s only one week out of four that you’re expected to be available 24/7 if (when) something comes up.” That’s a fiction, of course, in two ways. One is that you’re expected to be available at all times anyway, at least to some degree. In addition, it’s not really “if something comes up”. There’s no making plans when you’re “on call”. No being away from your computer for more than an hour at the most, so no movies, fast food if you dine out, and no real weekend. It comes with the gig, and the gig is well-compensated, but that doesn’t mean I’m a fan. I recently re-played on of my favorite old PS2 games, Final Fantasy X. It was ported, largely successfully, to PC and I’ve been eager to see if it lived up to my memories. It did in almost every respect. The gameplay itself is not particularly challenging and it’s possible, through a little judicious grinding, to remove most of what challenge there is. It’s still fun, though. The “sphere grid” system for advancing the characters is ludicrous, beautiful, and kind of delightful. The combat is 100% turn based, so once you get your head around it, it’s not especially difficult to get your tactics right. Of course, Final Fantasy games are only tangentially about gameplay, and that’s as true of FFX as any of them. You’re playing a story, a story that’s told with beautiful art, and with some wildly inconsistent voice acting. It all makes a sort of sense that would make you sound like a madman if you tried to describe it to someone, and it’s deeply, deeply sad. The pacing is near-perfect and the ending will give you feels. The only bit that was different than what I remembered is that I had a key part of the story backwards in my head. It’s no less melancholy than I recalled, just for slightly different reasons. And, honestly, it’s just gorgeous to look at. Worth a play (or replay) if you’re in to that sort of thing. I’ve been dreaming of spending some time in a little cabin, somewhere remote, somewhere rainy, and taking a week to get my head on straight. It’s cruel, then, that there’s been a little unseasonable rain this weekend. Not enough to do much of anything beyond make it too humid to go outside, not that we were going to do much of that. There’s packing to be done. In case there was any doubt in your mind, the cliche is true: It’s not the heat, it is the humidity. 100 dry degrees is a cakewalk compared to 90 degrees and moisture in the air.  I guess that’s about it for now. One of these days I’ll get back in the rhythm of writing shorter posts about a single thing. That’s not going to happen until after we settle in at the soonest.  Goodnight all. Sweet dreams….

It’s been some while since I’ve posted anything here. That’s primarily due to the fact that I’ve been enjoying my time on holiday. A sand beach and the smell of the surf are hard to compete with and… You’re not buying any of this, are you? I’ll be honest this time. Watching the country spiral into darkness is taking a toll on me. I have a vague recollection of the Watergate era and this is so much worse that I don’t believe I have the capacity to explain it. Breaking things goes so much more quickly than building them. We’re now having to watch cherished, hard-fought victories discarded literally without a thought.  It’s not just the politicians, of course. The very worst of us feel emboldened to display their racism, misogyny, and…we need a better word than “homophobia”, but you get the idea, without any sense of shame. They gave us the alt-right, gamergate, the sad and rabid puppies, and now comicsgate. It’s largely the same people making the same arguments, trying to cloak their views in a poor imitation of rationality and in unscientific appeals to nature. I wrote a long post about comicsgate a couple of weeks ago and decided not to post it on account of the fact that I’m just tired of it.  Work has managed to get its tendrils into my nights and weekends as well. I put in 4-5 hours today and likely will again tomorrow. I understand that, in part, this is because I let it do so. It’s also just a matter of there being a lot of work to do and not terribly many people to do it. It happens, it’s part of the gig, but it’s one more thing just wearing me out. One of our snails passed this week, too: Poor little Lucky. Lucky had a tough life, surviving unbeknownst to us outside of the tank without any food or care. He was less than a centimeter long when we found him and brought him in to the tank. Tough little guy, The snail groups warn you not to get attached to the runts because they’re not going to live that long, but you don’t always get to choose what you get attached to, do you? Poor guy. I hope he had a good life.  I did manage to get a song in the can., but, appropriately, it’s a 5 minute drone that’s essentially one note and a fractured drum line.  It’s not especially musical, but I’m pretty happy with the sounds. I’ll write more about it later, but I’m currently reading Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep and, halfway through, I’d say I’ve probably learned more important and interesting information that I have from any other book. The TL/DR would be: “Sleeping is important. It affects the health of your mind and body in ways you aren’t aware of, and you need 8 hours of sleep every night. Yes you do. No, really, you’re not special. Get your sleep.”  Which is exactly what I’m going to do now. Good night all. -RK