Partial to Grey

Screw the mug

"Now that is the first giant step towards long term understanding and friendship!"
~~ Robin Weigert (Calamity Jane) - in response to Aunt Lou's request for a "swig" of her whiskey
~~ "A Rich Find" - Season 3 - Deadwood

Juggle deesh!

It was a weird little weekend. Friday was our last day with our now former employer. We drove to Reston for our debrief. We had spent the week giving our "transitional replacements" a crash course. It became quickly apparent that we did a hell of a lot of work and that it required diverse and extensive skills to do it all. By the time we made out of the office to leave for Reston we were both wired and exhausted.

Saturday I decided to avoid working on the Booze Monkey tune that I had on the schedule. I am recording a Bass Guitar session with damned fine regional musician on the 22nd of this month and the scheduling of that session left me with a fairly loose weekend s'far as the studio was concerned. Consequently I decided to pursue another odd bit of inspiration.

I didn't finish because our little gay sheltie Bourbon experienced some sort of seizure. We rushed him to the emergency vet. By the time we arrived, less than 40 minutes after the problem started, Bourbon was out of it and stable. We plan to do the follow up testing with our usual vet, but we left relatively unworried.

By Saturday night, little had been "accomplished" at the Compound.

Sunday however was rather nice. We did a bunch of verifiable work (I like the verifiable work, it is easier to point to) around the house and despite the fact that I nearly melted the day felt pretty good.

Today marks the start of a new job with a new company in the very same office as before. We started our first day with a lengthy to-do-list. None of that wandering around on the first day for us!

There is a great deal going on, but so far things are managed. All of the balls are (currently) still in the air.

Yay!

Have a great week.

Theives, musicians, serial killers...

While Babble-on was offline earlier this year my pal nlinus started a new podcast called the kNOw Show. His third installment was The Simian Show and paid homage to my podcast The Simian Syndicate. He also uses (to my eternal delight) the Booze Monkey tune "Taylor Boogie" from "Good Luck Mr. Gorsky" as his show's theme song.

I dig the kNOw Show! I find it highly entertaining. I was inspired, flattered and amused by The Simian Show. As Babble-on was offline at the time, nlinus also mentioned the forum in his show. The Babble-on vibe was evident, methinks, throughout the episode. This makes sense as nlinus is a part of the Babble-on community - he is part of that vibe.

As I stated I was also inspired by his show. I decided to pursue this inspiration in the studio this past weekend. The result is a downtempo tune I've entitled "Theives, musicians, serial killers..." and I'm giving away for anyone who might be interested.

I've created a page at SanityCheck.net for the song and I've linked to it from the Simian Syndicate podcast page.

Thanks nlinus!

• Theives, musicians, serial killers... at the Simian Syndicate Site
• The Theives, musicians, serial killers... web page at SanityCheck.net

If you are interested, check it out at the links below. It's free, it's weird, it is best for those who drive around listening to XM's "Chill" station (Christina!).

Surprise a comin'

I had a fairly nice weekend. Yay! I spent all day Saturday and a few hours on Sunday morning in the studio.

The bulk of Sunday was spent working around the house - mowing, cutting down a fence, digging out old clothesline poles that we've never used and the like.

However we also smoked pork tenderloin while working outside on Sunday. Consequently the evening was spent feasting. Yay!

The aforementioned studio hours were fruitful. Instead of working on the new record, I followed a bit of inspiration down a quirky little path. I plan to make the new piece freely downloadable this week. Hopefully I'll have a page up with an mp3 by Wednesday or so.

This is our last week in our current jobs so Christina and I are both busy transitioning out. But it is a sweet kinda busy, methinks.

But it all seems less important now.

I apologize for the lack of recent updates. It's been a rough and introspective spring. I went through some health issues that generated serious decisions. Ultimately they turned out to be non-issues and I currently have a clean bill of health - arguably the cleanest of my near-forty years.

Ever since the release of South Mountain Magic in the beginning of April 2006 I've faced a non-stop barrage of issues, problems, ethical decisions and the standard hurdles of day to day existence. Nothing that every single person doesn't face, but the stuff that sucks nonetheless. It's just been a long run of bad.

Actually things appear to be looking up a bit, though mainly they appear "good" just because so much "bad" is now in the rear-view.

If I were a blogger of any caliber I would have posted about most of these issues as they were happening... but alas, I'm a bit of a fly-by-night blogger. I have been active in Babble-on since I finally managed to bring her back on-line. Can I have points for that?

So here we are, it's summer now. I was forced to change my name by the society that owns me because my real name wasn't average enough. As of 13 (fitting) June 2006 my name is legally Blue Ajay. I'm too tired to explain that again, the explanation is in Babble-on and can be found in this thread but please know that it resides in Babble-on, where no attempt whatsoever was made for politesse, political correctness or the ever-popular coating of sugar. The rage in the post should be clear and obvious. If it were me, I wouldn't read it.

Both Christina and I resigned from our jobs on 3 July 2006. We begin new jobs in two weeks. We will, however, remain in the same building, with the same customer and potentially the very same office. It was good to quit though. Christina quit for a new job opportunity, I quit on principal. We are hopeful about the new positions and the new company. Such a change always resides in the shadow of trepidation, but I'm choosing to remain hopeful as I bask in the temporary solace of resignation. Yeah that.

I've been working on the new Booze Monkey recordings, and I'm pleased with the results so far. I've changed up my approach a bit. In the past I've worked relentlessly to get albums recorded, usually in a furious burst confined by deadlines and leave from the day-gig. This time around I'm bringing in assorted guest musicians with whom I'm proud to be working, and I'm taking a great deal more time to record the songs. I'm re-recording parts as other parts enhance the dynamics and the like. I have one complete song in the can and a second is nearly finished, but I'm awaiting a guest appearance that is scheduled for a couple weeks from now. The second song, entitled Hope already boasts two guest musicians with the aforementioned third appearance scheduled.

I plan to document much of the process on video and release the results at SanityCheck.net. I've continued to work on the content for SanityCheck.net and hope to start making the progress freely downloadable soon. Yay!

Well, there is my overdue update. Now quit surfing and go outside. If you are going to stay inside in front of the computer, at least surf for porn like everyone else. Yay!