Drunken Owls and Other Delights

I've been a lazy sod all week, and I don't feel guilty about that one bit. Yay, vacation! :)

Well, that's not entirely true. I kept up on the blogs, and I've finally gotten caught up in cleaning up my personal emails. [Work emails is another thing entirely. I'll be checking that tomorrow.] But no, I didn't do any writing work. No editing, no formatting work for The Balance of Light, no work on the Lidwells project. No personal journal entries.

All I've been doing is enjoying our vacation the way I should: by not having anything prodding me on the shoulder screaming for attention. Road trips, shopping, just enjoying the day.

That'll probably change tomorrow as both A. and I dig our way through work email detritus and prepare for heading back to our Day Jobs. I'm sure I'll have a backlog of stuff to do (including five or six compliance courses due at the end of the month), which is irritating but part of the script. I'm just hoping that the items I wasn't able to get to were reassigned and weren't just sitting there all week.

That said...I'm looking forward to getting back into the creative groove. I want to get back into the Daily 750 (again), do some serious plot building for the Lidwells Project (time to break out the index cards!), and start planning out what I need to do for BayCon on Memorial Day Weekend!

In other news...our internets are now running at breakneck speed, thanks to switching over to Sonic. The IT guy came in and installed the wiring, the router, and had everything up and running in a matter of a few hours. [He was also a big geek and we had a fun conversation about anime and Doctor Who while he was working! :p ] But yeah...our speed went from a snail's pace to OH HEY I HAD NO IDEA THIS SPEED EXISTED. Like that day, way back in the stone age, when my family went from dial-up to DSL. Heh.

That said...yes, it's been a wonderfully relaxing staycation this week, and I can't complain. We had fun, went on roadtrips, did some fun shopping, and got caught up on sleep. Woot!

Another week over, and here we are on a wet Saturday morning here in SF. To us that's actually news, as we've been dangerously rain-free for the most part this past winter (not including that three-day storm a while back). I'm so not used to hearing the rain at night that it kept me up last night! The birds seem to be happy though, as they seem quite chatty outside our living room window.

Hmm, what else to report? There's not too much going on, as I've been focusing mostly on the new Mendaihu Universe story. I'm purposely not paying attention to the page or word count, though I can say that I'm still averaging around two handwritten pages a day. I haven't even come up with a title for this one yet, which is also interesting--I usually have a working title (or at least a title stolen from a song) as a placeholder at this point. It's been an interesting experience so far, returning to this old-school way of writing a book, but I'm really enjoying it, and I'm more than tempted to keep it as a permanent change.

The whole internet detox thing seems to be working well, actually. That was part of the deal for this longhand writing experiment. I had to think about it less as a temporary sacrifice and more as a semi-permanent thing...an 'I don't need this anymore' instead of an 'until further notice'. It also took me a while to get used to letting it go from a social perspective, but on the other hand that showed me just how prevalent it had become to me, and not always in a good way.

Am I finding myself with more time on my hands? Well, yes and no. Most of the time wasted online is now used for more creative or restful things--watching a show with A, doing some cleaning around the house, reading...and of course even playing a few rounds of FreeCell now and again if I'm tempted. I don't feel as rushed, don't feel like I've wasted time doing pointless things. And the best part? I'm actually feeling healthier. Boggles the mind, I tell you.

So what's going on this weekend? Well, not too much. We're planning on heading to Balboa Theater today to watch a film about Gustav Klimt, maybe have lunch in that neighborhood, and maybe hit the farmer's market at the other end of Clement tomorrow. And that's about it.

Yay, relaxing weekends!

That's a phrase you don't hear much anymore, do you?

With the large number of terrestrial stations picking up satellite feeds or having overnight shows (pre-recorded or otherwise), and all the internet and satellite stations (at least the ones not run out of someone's basement) running twenty-four seven, it's kind of strange in this day and age to hear a station read out the end-of-day legal sign-off. You know, the one that says the above phrase, followed by the technical jargon of where the station is broadcast from, where their tower is, and what frequency they're at.

Even rarer nowadays is hearing the station go off the air, followed by the hiss of static.

I've been listening via internet to WAMH, Amherst College's radio station and the one I've been listening to since 1987, especially on the weekends with their Potted Plant countdown. I could be listening to any other station here in the Bay Area, or even Save Alternative (which in my opinion is doing a great job of resurrecting the freeform radio format), but you all know my love for college radio, so I try to listen to it as much as I can while it's on the air. Since WAMH usually goes off the air about 10 or 11pm Eastern time, I get to hear the sign-off at 8pm out here on the west coast.

The funny thing is that I remember as a kid hearing the sign-off all the time, and for a brief stretch I knew WCAT's by heart when I worked there in 1987-88 and again in 1995-96. I was hired for weekends back in the 80s (I thank head58 for that position), back when it was only an AM station that went off the air at sundown. I had to play a prerecorded cart of the owner reading off the same legal sign-off, played exactly fifteen seconds before shutting down, so that I could power down right on time. I had to do the same thing as well at my college radio station, when I had a late night show on WECB, and again at the other college station when I had the alternative show on WERS. By the time I returned back to WCAT in my last radio gig, that station was broadcasting on both AM and FM frequencies, but I only had to play it for the AM station.

There's something melancholic about hearing a radio station sign-off, at least for me. When I was a kid--and even as a teenager--radio was my link to the real outside world, past my family and past the small town I lived in. I think that, more than anything else, was what pulled me towards radio in the first place, even more so than the idea of playing all my favorite songs and sharing them with other listeners. I liked the community aspect to it, a sort of etheric connection that kept everyone informed and entertained. Of course, the internet is a hyped-up, jacked-in, overloaded version of that idea, but somehow it isn't the same...where the internet is aural and visual, terrestrial radio is only aural and therefore more personal--the deejay is talking to you, informing you, playing you music for your enjoyment. The internet, while it can also do that, sadly also has the effect of turning you into a five year-old with a sweet tooth let loose in Wonka's Chocolate Factory--if you have no self-control, you end up overindulging.

Hearing that sign-off always leaves me with a sense of sadness, that I've reached the end of a performance, leaving me to make my way back to the real world again. I've been entertained by the deejays and the music, I may have even learned a few things, but their job is over for the day. Hearing it today reminded me that the school year is almost over, and this station will soon be off the air for the summer, leaving me to my own devices. It also reminded me that today is Sunday, and my relaxing weekend is almost over. This time, instead of needing to go back to school the next day, I have to go to work.

Still...I'm glad radio is still out there, whether it's online or terrestrial. Even if it is a fleeting entertainment, it's a sound salvation (as Elvis Costello sang), and still my favorite way of relaxing. Even when it's the end of the broadcast day.