Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Weekend? What is this 'weekend' you speak of?

*whew* What a busy couple of weeks! Sunday night going to the symphony then waking up stupid:early AM to jump on a plane to Hawaii for a week. A relaxing 5.5 days in sunny (and occasionally rainy) climes to get back late Saturday night...only to wake up early on Sunday to meet up with a few east coast friends in town for their vacation. Then back to the Day Jobbery on Monday. And with one major (but thankfully fixable) screwup, Emm and coworker have just been dropped off at SFO to head out to Manila again.

So yeah...lots of great times had over the past few weeks, but MAN OH MAN was it jam-packed! I do not want to do anything at all this weekend. Maybe some grocery shopping, but that's about it.

Well. Me being me, left to my own devices on a weekend, I will most likely be staying in Spare Oom and cranking out more pages for the final wrap-up of The Persistence of Memories.

Oh yeah! Not sure if you saw my cover mock-up that I posted elsewhere online a few days ago, but if not, here you go:



I think this one fits the theme of the book quite nicely! I knew I wanted a night image, or at least an earth/space one, given that I wanted stars visible. I downloaded the hi-res/no watermark picture from Shutterstock (same as last time) and will be using the same software as before. I'm aiming for a mid-April release for TPoM, so I will let you all know as soon as I have a hard date planned.

In fact, April is looking to be the first of a few busy spring/summer months for me. I have a lot of fun things planned for my blogs as well as other projects. Will let you know more when we get closer to the dates!

On that note, going to sit back, relax, and...not do much at all, really. :)

[Yup, I just referenced a Porcupine Tree lyric. I'm a dork.]

So all the music blogs and the alternative radio stations have been talking about how it's been 20 years since Radiohead's The Bends came out. I was still living in Allston at the time, working at the Sony Theater and hearing "High & Dry" on WFNX and WBCN on a daily basis. I didn't get the album right away due to my perpetual lack of any funds, but by September I finally ordered the cd through my Columbia House membership. I immediately fell in love with it--I did like Pablo Honey but felt that one was a bit disjointed, whereas The Bends was solid from start to finish. I pinched a blank tape from my then job at the radio station and dubbed it so I could listen to it on the go. It was on heavy rotation when I started writing down in the Belfry, and it was also a go-to album when Kris and I used to go on our weekend roadtrips. She made fun of the fact that I could hit Thom Yorke's notes, although with absolutely none of the musicality. [For those wondering, I can nail notes with reasonable accuracy, but my tone is similar to Peter Tork's--kind of bland and flat.] If you don't yet own The Bends, I'm sure you can find it relatively cheaply in used bins by now. It's well worth picking up.

So what else is going on? Day Job continues apace...there's been a bit of an internal shake-up and some people on my team are moving to a more client-facing new team (my team, in theory, would become more internal-facing). No one lost a job, but not everyone's happy with the news. I'm ambivalent, and my horses in this race would seem to be getting a bit of a reprieve--I'll be the only person focusing on two inboxes, but it also means I'll be relieved of other unrelated issues that would come up--but I'm waiting to see how it all unfolds in the next few weeks before I say anything.

In creative news: HOKEY SMOKES I'M WRITING LONGHAND! After hemming and hawing and delaying and goofing off, I made good on my plan to do so. It's a new story in the Mendaihu Universe, and I'm not entirely sure where it's going to go, but I have high hopes. I won't reveal too much yet, at least not until I get more situated here.

Also: the Daily 750 is working out as well with the semi-serious 'Lidwells Story' project. I say 'semi-serious' because I'm writing this completely for the fun of it. It's written like a fictional music biography in interview form, though there are moments outside of the interviews that are being used as a bit of framework. As for whether I'll release it or submit it somewhere, I'm not thinking about that at the moment. I just want to write the thing for the fun.

So what, in fact am I really working on, projectwise? Everything, it seems. And I'm okay with that. :)

Re: the subject heading--last week when we stopped at Amoeba I finally got around to picking up Bob Mould's Workbook 25, the 25th Anniversary of his excellent 1989 album, and after much distraction and other things going on, I finally got around to ripping it to the drive and giving it a listen. MAN, this album still kicks ass after a quarter century. It's a gorgeous album, full of lovely acoustics and incredibly strong songwriting from a guy formerly known only a few years previous as one third of Hüsker Dü, the guy who tore into his heavily distorted Flying V and howl-screamed most of his lyrics. Well worth picking up and giving a listen.

So! What has been going on in JoncWorld? All sorts of fun things.

--Taxes. Finally did them the other day, and though we still owe for both the State and Federal (I know it's my job's fault--I may need to adjust how much is taken out), it's a little less than last year. And it dawned on me that, if I finally follow through with getting published, I'm going to need to start itemizing next year. Whee! That'll be fun. But yes...that bit of silliness is over and done with for another year.

--Work. Work is...work. It's not frustrating, but I did have a bit of ridiculousness to contend with. Long story short, if you have any nonspecific questions on how OFAC Sanctions work, I'm your man. Let's just say I had to school a few people on it last week. Much fun.

--Walking, Shopping, Eating. Another fun-filled weekend here in sunny SF, in which our intrepid heroes headed over the Castro and the Mission yesterday. After a very tasty brunch in the Castro (in which a hilarious couple asked us about whether their facial hair made them look Amish) (yeah, I don't know either, but it was damn funny), we walked down 18th Street, stopped briefly at ImagiKnit (one of A's favorite yarn stores) and then for some AWESOMELY TASTY ice cream at Bi-Rite. From there it was over to Valencia, where we stopped at this really fun gift shop that sells all sorts of silly cards, and then across the street to Borderlands Books, where we spent mumblemumble on books. And then today we headed over to Fillmore so A could get a haircut, and for me to spend some time at Browser Books, where we eventually spent mumblemumble on more books. Then it was down to Japantown for some okonomi-yaki! It was probably for the best that I didn't buy any manga at Kinokuniya, then...

--Reading. I finally finished Chang Rae-Lee's On Such a Full Sea and I have to say I was pleasantly entertained, especially given that it's been described as a post-apocalyptic novel. See, this book proves that not every post- climate failure/society failure/pandemic novel needs to be full of zombies, or a horror novel, or a suicide-inducing downer (Cormac McCarthy I'm looking at you). It was not only fascinating, it was quite true to life, extremely heartfelt, and *gasp* didn't exactly have a complete resolution! All in all, one of my favorite books I've read in a long time. Well worth it. And now, I'm reading Carter Alan's Radio Free Boston: The Rise and Fall of WBCN, which I'm finding equally as fascinating--let's face it, I love pretty much any book that tells the history of rock radio, but this one is great because I'm very familiar with not just the station, but many of the deejays involved.

--Writing. Yes, still plugging away at the revision of The Process of Belief. I'm on Chapter 8, and I seem to have gotten past some of the more tetchy "stage directions" parts into some tighter prose, so there's that. As I told A., I figured when I wrote that I was focusing more on the word count than the prose itself, and paid a little too much attention to the visual cues and not much else. Around 2002-4, that tended to happen whenever I was in the zone. In other writing news, I decided to put the 750 Words aside for now, as I want to try something slightly different. More on that later.

--Making plans for our vacation. We'll be in the Massachusetts area in a few weeks and so will hopefully be meeting up with friends and family at that time. Should be fun!


So yes...been a busy but productive week here! Hope everyone had a lovely weekend!

Let's try this again, shall we?

It's been a busy couple of weeks here in Spare Oom and elsewhere. We've had a busy schedule of things going on, including a double-header last Saturday of A Prairie Home Companion and Beethoven and Mason Bates at the SF Symphony. Work featured a new scanning program that's supposed to make my work easier but has instead turned the entire week into a giant clusterfuck of biblical proportions (not affecting me directly, but seriously affecting the workflow so much that it's affected clients' workflows--yeah, it ain't pretty). On Thursday I was out most of the morning getting a work PC refresh (and high time for it). Suffice it to say, the last two weeks have been filled with all sorts of WTFness and letting things slide so as to retain some semblance of sanity.

That's not to say it hasn't been a complete wash, though!

--750 Words: I've let this slide on multiple days this past week due to the work issue or simple exhaustion, but I aim to pick right back up where I left off. My 750 have been meandering as of late, though, a lot of random babbling about things. Now that things have quieted down a bit (sort of), I'd like to return to the daily morning words as an ongoing exercise in attempting short story writing. I'd written two examples earlier of dialogue-only scenes and enjoyed it immensely, so I'd like to continue with that. I've always complained about being unable to write short stories, and I think this is a good way for me to change that.

--Journaling: I think doing this has definitely helped on a personal level...I'm forcing myself to channel any frustrations or personal thoughts into a notebook rather than on Twitter or here on LJ, and in effect it's given me an outlet where I don't have to worry about editing or censoring myself. Not that I'm known to curse a blue streak or think impure thoughts on a normal basis, mind you--more like I've given myself free rein to say whatever's on my mind without the worry of what others may think about it. And hey, no trolls! And in the process, I think it's cleared up a lot of my other writing...if I write in my journal early in the day, the inner frustrations and distracting thoughts are already purged, leaving me with a clean slate for other projects.

I've also been making sure I keep my desk calendar updated as well--I have one of those hardbound "engagement calendar" books that I picked up from Green Apple and have been making it a point to write down what I did that day creatively, however big or small. I'm doing this as another exercise, this time to gauge my creative output and see where I may need adjusting or if I'm doing better than expected. I haven't done this in ages, and it's actually kind of fun. I don't have any set goals for word count (other than the daily 750), so it's more like a creative diary for me.

--Revision: Almost done with the 2013/4 revision run for The Persistence of Memories! I may want to run through this novel one more time on my tablet after it's done, just to give it a once-over, but this revision run for the most part has been pretty smooth. A few changes and rewrites here and there, but for the most part a lot of it has been surface cleaning, mostly changes in grammar and phrasing. Two more chapters and I'm done with this pass! Then to start on the revision of The Process of Belief. That one's going to need a lot of work, but I'm looking forward to it.

--Submission: No word yet on the Angry Robot submission, but I did happen to hear back from the JABberwocky Literary Agency after sending something to them some months ago. It was a rejection, but hey--it was something!

--Blogs: Due to busy weekends and crazy weekdays, I'm a little behind on these, but I hope to get caught up again once everything calms down again. I'm about halfway through the next-to-last Blogging the Beatles post at Walk in Silence, and may write something new for Welcome to Bridgetown soon. I noticed that I don't have much daily traffic on those blogs, but I'm happy to say it does go up a bit when I do post, so that's a good sign.

--Music: Been making it a point to pick up one of my guitars and noodling around during slow moments. Or more to the point, creating slow moments in the day, and using said noodling as a way to unwind. Haven't written anything new other than a few riffs, but hey, it's something. Plus, it's keeping me calm, which is good. I have a habit of going straight out some days and exhausting myself in the process. Music has charms to soothe the savage breast, as Congreve says.


...and that's been the last two weeks!

Today's update? Had a nice long walk to Q and back, and will be heading down to the symphony again tonight to see another Mason Bates piece ("Liquid Interface") and a few Beethoven pieces. We may drive this time, as it's an 8pm show and I'm sure we'll both be too tired and irritable to wait for the buses at the end of the night. Saturday night in downtown San Francisco can get a bit silly. And WOO! Long weekend! Hoping to get a caught up with stuff that fell by the wayside, maybe post a few things, and maybe even relax a bit.

The Randstad interview went swimmingly. I pretty much aced the tests and I can now tell all the interviewers who have been asking me that my typing speed is about 70wpm. I was rather amused by the guy who interviewed me who was so impressed by me that he said after a comical pause, "...so what's the catch?" :p Heh! What could I say that wouldn't screw up any chances of getting jobs? I pretty much said I'm starting off with a clean slate out here so I am totally open for employment.

Anyway, it went well.

Now all I need to do is zip over to Safeway and get some quarters...our laundry is seriously backing up here...

OH! And I hit 1079 words last night! w00000t! *does happy dance*