Things to be done

January is almost come to pass and with it any excuse to make a list of things to do this year will pass too. This first month has already been pretty stellar, with the exception of being sick for nearly all of it. It's taken a bite out of my running this past week, but I suppose I can afford a week off.

Last night's recording session was great. It was very nice to work so fast, we cut four songs from the ground up in five hours using all live instruments. No one is going to win a grammy for what we did but it was a blast and I'm excited to hear the results. It was odd to be a bit removed from the production end, I didn't feel totally comfortable asking questions like I have in the past, thats I suppose a downside to the pace.

Without further ado, things to be done in 2009

1. Move to a new apartment with Angela and only Angela
2. set up all my guitars and get them in tip top shape
3. Record a Solo Album
4. Continue to run and excercise regularly
5. Start a fun dance project
6. Learn more about chess and play with other people
7. Stay in book club
8. Explore more of Los Angeles and the surrounding areas
9. Finish my novella
10. Forgive more and love better.

Cheers, 2009! I love you!

Vocals a trackin

Robin is cutting the vocals, this has been a real whirl wind session. In the end I'm glad that robin forced me into doing it. Its always a better idea to do something than to not do it.

Get my money

Buy my medicine

Jack daniels and medical maryjane

Bubba kush

Vidie

Will video work?

Robin and nick in control

Jasten is rockin on bass now

Finished drums

Devin and robin celebrate as we have just wrapped up scratch tracks and final drum takes. Each song got about two passes with the exception of the happy song which we nailed in one.

Jasten texts

Nick mixes

Robin gestures

These pics were taken here

Must have been some time ago

Platinum record for the wallflowers

Our producer/engineer for the night, nick, had a grandfather who cut steel guitar on the record.

More toys

Wall oddities.

Me and oscar

Live room

Devin rocks the kit

Ozzy toy.

Freedom studio.

Control room

Recording

In the valley, recording with robin devin and jasten. Here is a hendrix toy.

Good show

The bette midler show just curtained. It was wonderful. I love to see an ensemble band back up a great entertainer. As I watched the entire show I listened to excellent musicians perform on top of the line sound reinforcement. I found myself joyed. I thought a lot about my uncle ronnie and how he would have been filled with the thrill of a child to hear such sounds. It made me realize how often in life I take my cues of behavior from him. I also thought of devin and how he is a musician capable of playing in a band like that. I could never. I am not so exact, he is. I could maybe on my best day write a song that might belong in a show like I saw tonight but I could never play it live note for error free note.

What a great night. I love you all.

Bette

Stage

Still humping the american dream.

Its showtime

Once

From the Sahara window. Here is the hilton. Devin and I once slept on the floor of one of these rooms. My cousin andrea and her husband dallas were staying there for some bowling function. Devin and I drove out from los angeles and crashed the room. We saw jay leno out front and that always makes a person feel good.

At the end of the night, very drunk, dallas and I stood looking out the window at the lights. Dallas commented on how beautiful it was. I agreed. Its been almost 10 years since that night. Tonight I will look out the window before bed and remember.

Classy!

View

Oh my

Angela is checking into the room. I'm sitting in the lobby enjoying the uniquely american train wreck that is las vegas. People come from all over our fine country to make fools of themselves here. From places like north dakota and south colorado. They love to carry around large headache inducing frozen drinks. In five minutes I've seen seven people stumble.

I love how bored children look here. I would think vegas would be like crack for a childs imagination. Perhaps they sense though that the fun to be had isn't really for them and it makes them jealous. Brats.

Our purpose

Service

Construction

Ny ny

Lux

Veggy

Nevada

Gold

State line

60

Eye drive

Ty ty

One hour out

Bill boring

Last word

Progress!

Bette here we come!

Sleeping passenger

Bored driver

Skew

Roadscape

Driver winner

So pretty out here

On the way to vegas

Now Does Compute

My poor computer was savaged by the evil beast called spy ware. It was shut down, hopeless and feeling withdrawn from other computers. It could barely play a DVD, which passes for our television. It was a sad state of affairs and I wasn't exactly certain how much it was going to cost to fix, or how financially possible it would be to fix it in a timely manner. I was very very unhappy with the situation, particularly because I did it, and I know better. Way better. I had trouble publicly admitting it happened to me because I felt like a tool, but that gets no one anywhere does it.
Self admonishment aside this is not a sad story. It had been a sad story though, and the story was nearly a month old. I think it took a month to address the problem properly because I was so pissed at myself I couldn't properly think about my options. Once I could I soberly assessed the situation. I have a nice powerful PC with very little on it in the way of crucial programs or documents. Since the computer had recently been sabotaged by an Ex, I had to reinstall most of my programs anyway, so I knew they were all in one handy place. There was a question of could I safely remove the documents I wished to salvage. I answered this question on Sunday by moving them all to a USB Drive.
Finally this is a slight tale of redemption. I had decided that I would wipe my hard drive, reinstall windows and then just load my programs drivers and documents in again. My last obstacle was finding the XP system disc which came with my computer. Sunday I went through all of my boxes and tried to no successful outcome. As a last desperate resort before buying a new copy or begging one off my boss I sent an email to the computer sabotaging ex. Shockingly she found the disc and returned it to me the next day. I spent last night going through the motions. in three hours I had a clean computer, good as new!
I'm thrilled. I love to compute.

If you have similar problems and don't mind starting from scratch, check out this how to link, I highly recommend it.

One more useful tip. Tired of RoboCalls? Got a Fax Machine Calling your phone over and over? When you answer one of these calls dial 9 nine times. it tells the computer to leave you alone. Handy!

2009: The Year of 12 Tooth Brushes

Yesterday as I was brushing with a new tooth brush I suddenly found myself enjoying it a great deal more than I usually enjoy brushing my teeth. I stepped out of the bathroom after completing my cleaning and mentioned to Angela how much I enjoyed my new tooth brush. She echoed my sentiment, for we both got a new tooth brush at the same time, it happens like that when you live together. She then said we should get a new tooth brush every month, in fact she said, that should be our new years resolution.
There you have it folks. My resolution for the new year. A new tooth brush every month.

I'm off to pick up Devin and Dylan at the airport. I'm glad it's a Friday afternoon in 2009.