I Woke Her Up

I was trying to sneak in a picture while she was sleeping, but she woke up as I was lining it up. Sorry, cat.

Back to Work

My long weekend is over. I am back to work. Today is Tuesday but it totally feels like Monday. Bring on the confusion!

I have a coworker here at my work from home desk. She’s a little bit of a distraction, but she sleeps pretty much all day long so I won’t be distracted for long.

New Ottoman Day

Do you like it? I like it. I had to screw the legs on, but otherwise it came assembled. Thankfully.

The cats were fascinated by the construction process.

On an unrelated cat note, I caught both cats sitting in the little house on the new cat tree. Both of them!

It’s hard to see, but Lilly is definitely in there

Like Some Kind of Lame Canary

I did some RPM Challenge work this morning after finishing my exercise and my breakfast and my daily writing prompt. What did I do? Vocals. I drove off to an empty parking lot in town and recorded the vocal tracks for four songs while sitting out in the cold. I really wish I wasn’t so shy about recording myself singing. It would be so much easier to just do this at home. The negative then would be all the noise I make and how annoying it would be to my wife, rather than me just being a wimp who is too shy to sing when other people can hear me. I’m fine singing with the band, but in those cases there is enough noise that I can trick myself into thinking I am hiding behind it. Also, I am playing guitar at the same time and for some illogical reason that makes a difference. Why? Who knows.

The only interesting thing about today’s car music is that I only had three songs prepared with a melody and lyrics. After I cranked out the vocal tracks for those three songs I wrote the lyrics and melody to the fourth song while I was recording. I wouldn’t say I improvised the vocal parts, but they are lame enough that you might think they were improvised. Who cares. I sure don’t. This means I have 11 songs with vocals, and the RPM Challenge definition of an album is 10 songs or 35 minutes… which means that even if I don’t record another vocal track for the rest of the month, I can still finish a full album. Nice.

Here are some pics from my “studio” for today.

Can you guess where the snowplows dump the snow when they clear the mall parking lot? I can.

Also, here’s the obligatory down town clock, because reasons…

Also, because I can’t resist, I happened to catch the cats sitting together on the old cat tree just before I left the house, so you get that picture too.

Mom and Daughter

Robin is Lily’s mother. Lily is Robin’s kitten. We adopted the whole family.

I’ve Got a Feeling

I’ve got a feeling, a feeling deep inside… that today is going to be one of those days when I post a metric ton or two of updates to the ol’ blog. I’m not sure where that feeling is coming from (apart from The Beatles and it being one of only two Beatles songs that any band I’ve played in has ever covered) but it’s there so you’ve been warned.

I did not get up early enough to pull off car music today, but I will try again tomorrow. I have been out of the house once already (it is 9:38am) so enjoy some classic views…

Why yes, yes I do live in New England. Massachusetts, to be exact. How did you know?

In closing, here’s a cat near a window, just after dawn:

More to come, kids. More errands outside of the house and hopefully lots of music today. That’s the plan at least.

Co-Worker

I have a co-worker with me at my desk right now.

In other news, my stomach is in revolt at the moment. Fun. It’s a gastric bypass side effect kind of thing and it will pass, but I just gagged up some icky stuff and had a full blown case of “the foamies” (look it up). Having said that, there is no complaint here. I ate my lunch too fast and my new redesigned digestive system slapped me on the wrist for it. Post operation side effects like this are 100% worth it, I promise you. Trust me, it’s not an issue at all.

In other other news, I checked the bookfayce page of the Luthier I brought my guitar to last Saturday and earlier today he posted a bunch of pictures showing the progress he’s made. There are pictures of my beloved Gibson ES-335 Pro without any frets, pictures of it with some new frets, and a picture of the neck with a full boat’s worth of lovely, shiny new frets. It still needs a new nut and a new bridge, and he didn’t mention anything about cleaning out the electronics (which is a major bitch of a job to do on an ES-335 as you have to squeeze everything in and out through the F-hole), but the new frets are in! I don’t know if I will share any of the photos he posted. I think I did when he worked on my Les Paul Custom, but not until a few days had past. We’ll see.

Try to picture this guitar with shiny new frets:

In other other other news, I am listening to Steve Hackett’s new album, which was released today. It is called The Circus and the Nightwhale. I am listening while I work and therefore not able to give it my full attention. My initial gut reaction though is this: Steve Hackett’s guitar playing gets exponentially better with each passing day. His songwriting improves in a similar manner. His singing… yeah, he’s better than he used to be but sometimes I still wish he’d hire a full time singer for his recording line up. I’m enjoying the new album. Check it out.

Okay, that’s it for this post. Lunch break is over. My stomach is settling down. Get back to work, Red Head!