Am I Overdoing This?

Just wondering… am I over doing this?

12/29/12

1/16/13

2/8/13

Am I beating a dead horse?

RPM Day 11

It is official… I am a Mac user again! I just opened up this page to write my daily RPM entry and I couldn’t remember the date. I looked down at my task bar, expecting to see the calendar icon with today’s date on it (as I would if I were on a Macintosh) but it wasn’t there. Why wasn’t it there? I’m on a Windows 7 box at work.

Yesterday was mostly spent celebrating my step son’s 10th birthday. He had a party for friends scheduled on Saturday but it was postponed by the blizzard. Yesterday was a little gathering for my and Jen’s families. We had a lot of fun. The niece and nephews are a blast. We were only missing one nephew as my sister had to stay home with him due to a fever. We celebrate his birthday next week though.

There was cake and presents and food and fun and no sign of the RPM challenge other than my guitar sitting there in the living room… throwing off waves and waves of guilt. “You should be playing me,” it was telepathically telling me. “You should be recording rhythm guitar parts right now.” No, I thought back. You are no longer the most important thing in my life like you were in my youth. Now you take a back seat to my family and friends. You are still special, oh Mister Guitar, but you are no longer #1.

That being said, after the party was over and the fun was done, I doodled out another song idea on my iPhone and then recorded the rhythm guitar for that project and two others that were sitting on my iPad. There are still two unfinished things on the iPad, but I am going to scrap them. Considering how bad most of my crap is, these must be really horrible if I am scrapping them so soon.

I currently have nine songs arranged with rhythm guitars recorded, and three sets of phrases that are not yet arranged. That’s 12 potential songs. Two more and I am set to complete FAWM. I just need to write lyrics and melodies and get all of the various into the can, as they say.

There are 17 days left. It should be easy, right?

Did I mention I woke up with another cold this morning?

Time to panic!

Hipsta-Blizzard

Just using hipstamatic to help me procrastinate.

Time to Celebrate

This is a happy day! Today is the first time this year I saw Cadbury Mini Eggs for sale! Lets celebrate!

Now She Uses It

We were talking about getting rid of the cat’s scratching post because she never uses it. Then she does this.

RPM Day 10

February ninth was spent up to my elbows in blizzard clean up. I did manage to squeeze one more idea project thingie on my iPad before passing out with snow removal exhaustion. That’s about it. Today will mostly be spent on a certain 10 year old’s family birthday party so I doubt i’ll get much done today. I will just have to crank that much harder to catch up next week.

Still thinking extremely positive.

Shoveling

Given the choice between surgery without anesthetic and shoveling after two feet of snow…

I’d have to think about it.

Guess what wouldn’t start.

I’m six feet five inches tall. The drift over the mini van was at least two feet taller than I.

I did the unthinkable today. I shoveled the driveway without pulling either car into the street. How?

I used the garage! Today was the first major storm since we bought the house where the garage was clean enough to hide a car while I shoveled. It was a sublime experience (not really).

There are two heavenly moments when shoveling your driveway. One is obvious… its the moment you are finally finished. The other is more subtle. The other is that moment when you first break through the into the plowed road beyond the edge of the driveway. It’s a sweet moment.

Remember, if you have a fire hydrant on your property it is up to you to shovel it out so that any emergency personel who might need it can get to it. Don’t be the jack ass who thinks it’s the city/town’s job. Just do it.

I’m still trying to decide if shoveling would be preferable to surgery sans anesthesia.

Karma

Any positive energy that karma had banked up for me was just cashed in.

The snowblower won’t start. I grudgingly picked up the shovel and went to it. I was almost done digging out the first car when a guy driving a pickup with a plow came out of the blue and plowed out the huge snow bank at the end of our driveway. He didn’t stop, but he rolled down his window and said he hoped that would help.

In our house we have a new hero.

Karma is real, kids. Be nice to everyone. Always.

RPM Day Nine

Last night we were all sitting in the living room. My step son was watching Disney Channel. My step daughter was reading on her iPad. My beautiful wife whom I love with all my heart was playing World of Warcraft. I hadn’t done any musical anything all day so I took out my MacBook Pro and my little USB piano keyboard and threw something together. iOS be damned, right?

The new song contains two of my mini goals for this month. One, the song is in 7/8 time. The prog fan in me feels good about that. Two, there is a drum fill that includes 32nd notes. The iOS version of GarageBand can quantized tracks to 32nd notes but you can’t edit individual notes. That means I have to play it close enough to in time to have the not-quite perfect notes pull to the correct time slot. I often get close to getting fills right, but there are always one or two notes that pull the wrong way. In the Mac version of GarageBand I can shift those notes to the correct time slot without using the quantize function.

I added the new song to the soundcloud playlist I posted yesterday. That makes nine songs in the works and today is still only February 9th.

Thinking and feeling very positive indeed.