Happy Birthday To Me

Last year on this date, I was listening to Dire Straits' "Lady Writer" and waxing poetic about the goals I wanted to reach between 05/04/05 and 05/04/06. I wanted to get my book published. That happened. I wanted to get the CD done. That almost happened (and will happen within the next two weeks or so). I wanted to graduate. That will happen in ten days. I wanted my business to take off. That one's negligable. With that in mind, my goals to accomplish between 05/04/06 and 05/04/07:

Write the sequel to Night Cries, A Night Borrowed
Write another book about something else.
Start working on the two non-fiction projects I have simmering in my head.
Write material for the second CD.
Sell at least 500 more copies of Night Cries
Sell out every copy of the band's record, "Too Much To Dream."
Get at least 5 new clients for my business.
Add some new services to my business.
Buy a house and a little property.
Fix up my car.

Busy Me

Today, I cleaned my house some more and then went out and drank rum and played cards.

Tuesday, I have to go to the cellular phone store and change my cell phone number and add Kenny to my cell phone plan. Then, I have to go to Coeur d'Alene for my last class!! Yay me!

Wednesday, I am cleaning and re-arranging the house in preparation for the party. I also have band practice that night.

Thursday is my birthday, and the day's pretty much up in the air. I do know that I am doing the second episode of my podcast.

Friday is the party.

Saturday, I am going out with my aunt and uncle.

Sunday looks like the only day I'll have to finish up the last class I have in school... online.

Next Monday, it's more of the same again until the 14th, when there is graduation, which is an event that I am not too hip on attending, but that my Mom REEEEEEAAAALLLLLLY wants me to go to.

It Is Finished

I got the mixes back from the engineer today.It sounds amazing.

So good, that I almost cried listening to "Hush Now" and again listening to "Riding The Bell." "Hush Now" gives me shivers to listen to. (Apropos, no?)

Bleh

I have a really bad headache. It feels like an icepick being pounded in above my left eyebrow. It sucks.

Went to see my teacher on Tuesday, and talked with the statistician about my data analysis, which I should have tomorrow, so I can get that done and out of the way. Tomorrow, I am going to catch up on all the forum postings I have to do, and then on Friday I am going to do a couple of papers that are due. On Monday, I am going out. On Tuesday, I will write my paper and get my presentation ready. And a week from today, there won't be any practice because my bassist is visiting family in Seattle and New Mexico.

We are playing at The Blue Dolphin in the Spokane Valley on June 2. Starts at 9:30 PM. We play for an hour. Come out and see us. We SHOULD have the CD by then, but the way things are going, I just don't know.

Been Busy And Stuff

Did some more work for the photographer, but my e-mail was down, so I couldn't tell him. Did some vocal lessons. We had scheduled a band practice, but that didn't happen because the drummer didn't show up.

We scheduled another practice, and went over all the songs that the drummer's uncomfortable with. It went fairly well. We played until midnight when we got the cops called on us. We didn't get a ticket, but we did quit.

Whew!

After several grueling hours, I have completed the data compilation for my senior capstone course. All that remains is analyzing it, putting the data into graphs and charts, and writing up the presentation, which very well could take up one whole week of my life, especially if I don't get my butt in gear and just do it and not wait until it The End Of The World. ::insert eye rolling here::

Have to go to class tomorrow, and I ought to be in bed. But I am not, because of school work. Is that ironic? Or wut?

Oh! News!

I got mixes of five of the songs today.

More Recording Stuff

Went in and recorded my Dad's backing vocals on the record today. He did backing vocals on 4 songs, which was very cool. He was really worried that he didn't do a good job, but it sounds great, and we're almost done. Just a little more recording to do, and we can start the replication process. That starts, actually, after the mixing and mastering process, which we still have to do, too. I'm thinking I'll actually have copies od the CD the first week of April or so. The next step after that is to send out the pre-orders and send copies to promoters, booking agents, radio stations (Internet, college, and traditional), and to CDBaby.com, a company who will take a copy of the CD and get it ready fo online distribution with 41 distributors. We're on the way to the BIG TIME!!! Woo hoo!

More Recording

We recorded some more tonight. Kenny re-did guitar parts on "Riding The Bell," "Love, Love, Love," and "Down To You." He did his vocal parts on "Wicked Ways," "Down To You," and "Love, Love, Love." We started working on some back-up vocals for him on "I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night," but that didn't work out as well as I'd hoped. We'll try again next time. I still need to do the keyboard parts, and we still need to get all the background vocals together. I figure that, since my Dad and me and the kids and Kenny are all going over to my Aunt's to watch the Pro Bowl, it might be a good time to go over what I want to do as far as background vocals go, since my Dad and my Aunt and one of my cousins and my bassist are all going to do some background vocals on the record.Lawyer also said he'd make sure I got paid. Woo Hoo! Money!

Um... well...

So, you see, I had a pretty funny day. It actually started on Monday, when I stayed up all night and didn't go to bed until 9:30 AM Tuesday morning. I was then rousted out of bed to go to Coeur d'Alene for a stupid class that is so pointless, it might as well be a rubber ball. (The teacher talks about nothing, save to hear his head rattle, and then is egotistical enough to think that anyone gives a rusty rat's behind. But I digress.) Anyway, so I was rousted out of bed and took a shower and left the house at 2:00 PM. Kenny was driving my car, which puts my nerves on edge as he breaks his car every other day, it seems (his latest breakage was somehow breaking the clutch pedal in his car). He speeds something awful. (Again, I digress: I'm freaking TIRED.) So, we're driving to Coeur d'Alene and suddenly, I turn to Kenny and I say:

"Do you suppose that CAMO-MEAL is when you're on a diet and you don't want anyone to know what you're eating?"

I have band practice tomorrow with a new drummer who is filling in for this gig. **sigh** I have so much to do.

Last night, I finished up the CD inserts, got the UPC code for the CD, and registered for the ISRC codes. Oh, and I am now an official member of BMI. Woo hoo!

i hate people

I was supposed to interview a drummer today. Well, I get to his house, and I hear people inside, and I hear a dog barking inside, but no matter how much I ring the doorbell or knock on the door, no one answers. Then, I leave and go to lunch ('cause this was about an hour earlier than we were supposed to be there) and then I come back just at 1 (the meeting time) and another car is there that wasn't there before, so I figure that he is home now. Well, I knock and I ring, and I hear people talking inside, but no one answers the door. I go around back and look and there's nothing there. I knock and ring some more, hear more noises, but no one answers. Finally I wait in the car for 10 more minutes, no one shows, no one opens the door or anything, so we leave.

You know a drummer is flaky when he can't even be bothered to be at HIS OWN HOUSE on time.

Grr

The band got a gig for the 28th. We're going to work with a fill-in drummer for this one. We're interviewing a drummer replacement Saturday afternoon. We'll see. Record sounds good. It's not mixed or mastered yet.

I have client troubles. The client I quit begged me to work for him again, so I agreed... on one condition: that he never talk to me again. LOL. Yup. That's the deal. And he took it. Another client is the client that I took on for credit in one of my classes last semester. I did the site for free, and put up EVERYTHING they gave me. They told me this week that the site was "never completed" and that they had "higher expectations for it." And that they're not going to pay me for this round of edits. Kenny has other ideas and is planning on forcing the issue at a meeting tomorrow (he is pretending to be my boss). I am going to try to dissuade him from that before we get there.

I am working on the CD inserts and traycards. I am working on three sites (the two mentioned above and one other). I am working on school work. I am working on Book Two. I am working on putting together a press kit. I am working on a new magazine. I am working to replace the drummer. I am working to get the record finished. I am working on the lawyer's stuff to get money for the CD replication and silk screening.

Drummers Suck

Well, today has been a long day.

The drummer left a note on the porch today saying that he was giving his one-month notice. He wanted out of the band. Then, while we were away, he broke into the house and took his drums... with the $100 worth of drum heads I bought STILL ON THEM!!! Wee little bastard is too chicken shit to come talk to us and tell us 1) why he wanted out of the band; and 2) why he BROKE INTO THE HOUSE!!!!

If he doesn't come talk to me tomorrow, I am reporting it to the police.

In the meantime... if you know of any good drummers....

More Stuff

I had the cap put on the root canal today. I didn't feel up to singing, so we switched band practice to Friday night.

Monday, we're in the studio doing vocals. Tuesday, school starts again. I have to get a survey/poll thing done by then so that I can get it approved by the board before I go ahead with it.

NO WAY!!!

I was trolling the Internet after work. Seemed like a normal trip 'round the way, at the time. But then, it happened.

I ended up on some band's site, which linked me to the entertainment area of the local paper. So, I went. While there, I ran across an old-ish article about this singer-songwriter. And I read some about her, and I am about to scroll down the page when I see that she has a song called "Love, Love, Love," just like I do.

So, out of curiousity, I Google her.

I end up on her web page. I check out the song. At first, nothing memorable. Kind of a boring song.

And then... it happens. She sings: "Should have seen it comin'..."

What?!?!? That's a little hard to swallow: two songs with the same title and with that line in them?

Then, later in the song, she starts singing about dreams, about crying, about mistakes... et cetera. There is just WAY too many similarities for this to be a coinicidence. Of course, no one believes me, but, just like a mother knows that her child needs her even when they are miles apart, a songwriter knows her own material.

And this was MY song, redone, rehashed, and ruined.

Merry (Belated) Christmas

Well, Merry Christmas, peoples. :)I'm late, I know. Things were weird-crazy around here. Between band practices, the end of school, selling my laptop, Christmas shopping, getting ready to record (AGAIN!!!), and typical life stuff (re: dental work), I haven't had time to post.

Biggest news: I supposedly failed one of my courses last semester. It wasn't my work, though: I got all 100s on my tests, did all the papers... et cetera. No, the problem was that the professor was locked out the class (it was online) and he didn't make everything available to people, so he cancelled 12 of the tests, 9 of the papers, blah, blah, blah. I thought that everything would be fine, but, it wasn't, 'cause the software that runs the class is flawed, and, instead of knowing that it was supposed to disregard the tests and papers he cancelled, it counted them and gave both me and Kenny (who was also taking the class) an F. It sucks, but I figure that they'll figure it out. *sigh*

Anyway, I am now back to work. I feel like taking this week off, too, but I may do some stuff. I am still waiting for a payment from a client who has been promising to pay me for weeks. I could REALLY use the money now. Instead, I will fall back on some work for another client who ACTUALLY PAYS!!!!!

I Don't Know...

The dentist did more work on the tooth that they did the root canal on... finishing it up, so to speak. It is not finished. They just drilled some more and packed it today and then put on another temporary filling like the old one. The caps that they did earlier still hurt when I chew. It's stupid.

I am kinda pissed off at the drummer. He whines and moans about being lonely, and then, when I offer to have him hang out with me and my family (at my Mom's or at my house with my cousins), he declines, saying, "I want my OLD friends!" And I am thinking, "WHY?!?! These are people who took you for everything you were worth (especially the girls), did drugs around you, drank around you (all while you were trying to stay clean), and got you fired from your job. Then, when you moved, they took EVERYTHING you left! And you want to be with these people WHY?" To top that off, he is mooning over some girl who, one minute, he claims to love, the next, he claims is not worth his time. One minute, she is desperately in love with him (he says); the next, she is sleeping around with anyone who will feed her. WHICH IS IT?!?!? And why should you CARE?!?! This is why I am anti-social. People SUCK!

I wrote a new song and showed it to the band. The drummer likes it (which is why I haven't beheaded him re: above comments). Guitarist and bassist seem like they don't like it, which annoys me because it is a really interesting song. It is called "Riding the Bell." The title is a metaphor for anything that you use as an excuse for your failures or anything that you use as a crutch. It could also be taken as That One Moment, That Choice that you make, whatever... but, using an analogy, like when, in days of old, events and happenings were signalled by the ringing of the bells. Anyway. I wanted to play it at the New Year's Eve gig, but I have just dropped it. No one else wants to. **sigh**

Last Day

Today is my last day of school for the semester. I don't have to do any school work until the 18th of January (or something like that). I am relieved. Tired, but relieved. I finished up all my postings, tests, and papers in my online class; the NPO web site is as good as done (I'll be finishing it up Tuesday or Wednesday) and I finished writing the paper for it last night; my Bachelor's research project is done, and I finished the last paper in it tonight.

I got two more teeth fixed last Tuesday (forgot to mention that, I think). I feel like I got punched in the face. On Wednesday, they finish the root canal, and then I only have four fillings and a cap left and I am done. What a relief. I am so thankful that my grandma and grandpa decided to help with this. I could never have gotten a better gift. Ever.

The band will be recording on Thursday, January 5. THIS WILL BE THE LAST TIME (she swears).

I am REALLY tired.

Yeah, Well, Whatever

The last couple of days have been busy. I finished up my literature review for my Bachelor's thesis. It ended up being 25 pages. If anyone wants to see it, I'll show it to you. Basically, I had to review all the relevant literature I could find regarding my topic: morality as a basis for voting patterns in US presidential elections, particularly, the 2004 national election. Anyway, that's done.

Got in touch with the NPO leader today. We went over the web site templates. She ran out of time and said she'd get back to me. She never did.

Worked on the lawyer's site again today. I've been posting here for weeks that I needed some help, but no one replied. Finally got a few spare minutes to work on it, so I did. Just have to send him an e-mail now with info and review of his statistics. But I need the money.

Got started on my grouchy client's site. What a pain in the ass this guy is! My God. I don't think I have ever met someone who thinks that they know as much as this guy thinks he does, and then to be so rude and bombastic about it... totally pisses me off.

We're going to put some songs up on the web site for the band. They were recorded at our last gig.

Research

I just finished printing out over 500 pages of research for my Bachelor's research project. It weighs more than my book manuscript did. Well, maybe not. My book was 7 pounds, 15 ounces when the manuscript was printed. Kinda like having a kid. I've seen that analogy used metaphorically before (as in: "This book is like my child, a child of brain." What drivel.), but not quite in this sense.

Speaking of my book... have you bought it yet?