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Had a pretty active day yesterday. After doing grocery shopping, I went to Outdoors Inc. and bought myself a fuckin' bicycle! Big moment, made possible by the birthday money my dad gave me (intended to go towards getting a bike). And other glamorous things like a helmet and a pump. My weight was referenced when talking about tire pressure in the context of "big guys such as yourself need to be careful...". Well, maybe if I actually use the damn thing regularly it'll help bring my weight back down. Haven't really used it yet other than test riding it around a parking lot. When I got home I was just pouring sweat from standing around in that hot ass goddamn sun. Jacques came over for a few minutes yesterday and he gave me a copy of Bippp: French Synth Wave 1979-85 as he had a duplicate copy 'cuz he got this one with the case cracked. Okay, then I went up to the grand opening celebration of the Crosstown Concourse. I knew there'd be a lot of people but goddamn it was way more packed than I'd even anticipated. I mean, just wall-to-wall people thronging in this huge space and outside and in different rooms and areas and floors. Black Lodge had a tent outside and I stopped by and they were talking about the new space that actually is going to open this time. No longer Cooper-Young but in a space in crosstown across the street from the Hi-Tone. Hopefully should be pretty awesome. They'll have a music performance space and I'm hoping a theater and it'll be an actual dedicated indie theater in Memphis. We'll see how and if it goes. Saw a few people around. I mainly went over to the Crosstown Arts area. That stage had the acts I'd come to see. First was Blueshift Ensemble. They were backing Harlan T. Bobo so it was really more of his show. Never really listened before. Soft country music. It wasn't bad but it wasn't particularly thrilling either. And the strings were mostly just used as barely-audible backup faintly reinforcing the acoustic guitar in the background. After a while I wandered to the balcony outside nearby and caught the very very end of I Make Mad Beats (like, the last two or three minutes of his set). It was pretty damn good and I'd wished I'd come earlier for more. After that I came back for Ben Bauermeister's set. It was good, similar to what he played at Memphis Concrète (this time I had more ability to watch and focus and notice the way the live percussion was robotically controlled, also forgot he has an all Make Noise system). And I was watching and didn't notice right away that, behind me, the Urban Ballet group had started dancing and doing a thing to his music. When I finally (well, who know how long it took maybe it wasn't long at all) noticed people paying attention to something in the other direction, I turned around to watch and it was pretty awesome. Crosstown Arts's spaces are still unfinished but you could look into the rooms and see what they'll be. Aside from the galleries there's going to be a listening room (for music and all) and that's going to be really exciting. Then back home. Anyway, was pretty fun. Alright, I guess that's about it for now.

Today was We Serve Day at ServiceMaster. Showed up to work a little early for it. I'd signed up for a thing at Overton Park. Initially, the description was to clean the trails. Got a message a few days ago that it was being changed to laying out mulch in the dog park. Goddamn. I must say it was definitely not one of those fluff assignments. (Technically it's not "mulch" but some sort of "engineered" wood chips or something that's possible to turn a wheelchair around on.) I started off with the wheelbarrows then got asked to do raking. So I raked a little while until it seemed like there were too many people on rake duty so I picked up the wheelbarrow again. Man, that wheelbarrowing was pretty tough. Also, we started by the entryway and so as it went on you had to roll the barrow over more and more freshly laid mulch, which was much harder to push the barrow over than the regular hard ground. That storm a few months back had taken down the huge tree over the entrance of the dog park and you could really feel its absence. There were lots of places with shade, but there was a lot less shade than there used to be. I think my neck got burnt a bit. By the end my legs were pretty damn sore from the barrow pushing work (they're still pretty damn sore). Though I get a pretty nice OP water bottle out of the deal. So we got back and they had food trucks and I got some barbecue nachos from Smurfey's Smokehouse and afterwards a goddamn Arnold Palmer popsicle from Mempops (goddamn that was good). There was another Make a Wish thing, where the girl went through all stories of the building. I think the thing she'd wanted this year is a trip to Italy. And then I went home early! Now I'm trying to just not move as much as possible and collapse or whatever. Ah, good to be home.

I did my discoging last night. So that's caught up. Woo! More work today. Not a whole lot to share. But there you go. There's my life now that I'm not running around the country.

Had a pretty awesome vacation with Mary Beth! Unsurprisingly, it primarily consisted of chillin' and buying a massive amount of cds in surprising places. Yeah so we got on the road alright and started driving up to the north. I don't think much of consequence happened that first Friday. We stopped off somewhere along the road in Virginia and woke up and made good time to get up to Massachusetts and Cape Ann before sundown. Managed to get the trip split up pretty evenly in two ten to ten and a half hour days. The house Mary Beth's parents rented was, as her mom put it, "rustic." Kinda weirdly complex, in that old house retrofitted to do stuff it didn't initially do and get stuff added on. It had a weird arcing floor plan, little single steps into different rooms up to the middle and then back down to the other end. It was all stone and had that stone country manor sort of feel. There was also this little arched bridge that was off-limits attached to one of the back doors. It was kinda picturesque though a shame we couldn't get on it. The driveway was also stone which is kinda quaint until you realize that bees or wasps or something had built a nest in the ground between the stones. And this is right by where we had our cars parked so you get out and they're swarming all around you. I was fine that first day (night, really), but coming back from the grocery store the second day, I went back out to get something from the car and got stung. It was really annoying 'cuz it took days to heal, til we were almost off the cape and heading back home. That first whole day there, we mostly took it pretty easy in Gloucester ("glosster"). Wasn't expecting there to be a record store right there in town, but there was! A Mystery Train. After all, Cape Ann isn't nearly as big and isn't nearly as deep and insular as Cape Cod. Had a little look-see in, they had a bunch of stuff (not all good, but within that I made some finds) and it was all especially cheap so that was nice. I ended up with: Amon Tobin: Chaos Theory, Windsor for the Derby: How We Lost, The Velvet Underground: The Boston Tea Party July 11th 1969, Stereolab: Margerine Eclipse, Owls: Two, Oxbow: The Narcotic Story, Low: One More Reason to Forget, William Hooker: Armageddon, Cul de Sac: China Gate, and Caribou: The Milk of Human Kindness. We had lunch at Lobsta Land (really good lobster rolls! and ciopinno that was delicious). It was our low key day and we didn't do a whole lot else. I'd brought my chromecast so I'd be able to watch Twin Peaks that night! Sadly getting it set up was a damn ordeal that took forever and it was almost an hour before I got it working right! But Twin peaks was watched and all was well.

Monday was our beach day and we did a few beaches right on the cape. First was Good Harbor. I did my best to keep the sun off me until the end and then I got in the ocean and swam a little. It irritated my sting so I stayed out of the water the rest of the trip. We had lunch at Farnham's with some really deliciously sweet fried clams. After that we went right over to Wingaersheek. It started to rain a little and we jumped on outta there. We'd had a pretty good run by that point though.

Tuesday we took a trip up to Maine. We went just south of Portland to this park area around Portland Head Lighthouse. Very beautiful rocky coast and lots of old shells of buildings and stuff. It was some of the most memorable scenery of the trip for me. There was also Ram Island Ledge Lighthouse (I had to look that up, at the time it was just an old decrepit lighthouse on an island barely big enough for itself out across the water) off in the distance. Then we went south down to the Two Lights area to The Lobster Shack. Talk about a goddamn location! They're right there on this rocky ledge on the water. We had our food outside (I had a clamburger) at these picnic tables with the waves crashing right below. We took a little time walking out on the rocks. Pretty damn scenic lunch. Then we went up to Portland. Didn't do a whole lot up there. Mostly just to wander around and see the city. It was a little more than I'd expected. Not the hugest city, obviously but it definitely felt like you could find some stuff to do there. I found a small record store called Strange Maine and found a couple cds: Chicha Libre: ¡Sonido Amazonico! and Thurston Moore: Flipped Out Bride. Mostly a bit of driving around and enjoying the city. On the way back, in the southern part of Maine, we stopped off at a couple of beaches: York Beach and Long Sands Beach. They kind of blend together a little for me. At one of the beaches I finished reading The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy which I enjoyed. Again, I was still out of the water. Just hanging out on the beach, reading and looking at seagulls.

Wednesday was our day to go up to New Hampshire (that's really two new states I've spent some time in, and Maine I've never even been to at all, New Hampshire I think I once drove into and turned around way way way back in the day). We took the scenic road up and back. We stopped at Plum Island (still in Massachusetts) on the way. It was pretty nice and isolated but it's full of these damn flies that bite and kinda hurt a bit. So the whole time we're walking around I'm making these exaggerated movements with my legs and arms to shoo them away. We went to Portsmouth. It was also a little more than I was expecting. It's a little bit touristy, but there's still a bit of citiness about it (not like Portland but still more than a chintzy cape town). We had oysters at a place there and then wandered around some. On the main strip we found a game store. Mary Beth picked up a few things and I got Boss Monster 2: the Next Level (a card game based on being the bad guy in an old nes game, sweet!). We hopped in a couple of bars. I noticed a record store that's a regional chain called Bull Moose. I didn't think it'd be much of anything but I was surprised by their selection. I mean, they had a lot of stuff crammed in, but within sections they had some well chosen items. I got: Oneohtrix Point Never: Garden of Delete, Piano Magic: Open Cast Heart E.P., Hans-Joachim Roedelius: Durch Die Wüste, Tangerine Dream: Atem, Klaus Schulze: Moondawn, Klaus Schulze: Mirage, John Cage: Works for Piano & Prepared Piano • Vol. II, Karlheinz Stockhausen: Mantra, Coil: Ape of Naples, and Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band: Lick My Decals Off, Baby. We also happened to run into Mary Beth's parents who were also making the trip separately that day so I guess it reflects some of the smalltown vibe Portsmouth still has. We'd kept our eyes open for beaches on the coastal drive up so on the way back we stopped at Wallis Sands Beach and Mary Beth enjoyed it! I sat on a bench and enjoyed the atmosphere. Also, on the drive up and back I enjoyed all the touristy but anachronistic boardwalk areas. They'd probably be lame to be in, but they were a treat to look at. At night we played a little of my new game.

Thursday was our other "nearby" day. We passed through Manchester-by-the-Sea with its fancy name and fancy people. Then we spent most of the day in Salem. Given Salem's whole thing, I thought it'd be more tourist-trappy but it wasn't as bad (I mean, there is a little bit of cheesiness, but not as omnipresent as I thought it might be and it was really pretty enjoyable). We went up to the House of the Seven Gables but didn't go in. We admired it from the outside though. We walked around some. Had tea in a pretty cool place and I got some tea leaves for my manager as a thank-you for letting me go on vacation. We went in a wiccan shop Mary Beth wanted to go to. I found a record store nearby (I know, I'm sick!), Record Exchange, and picked up a few used things: Swans: Filth (the three-disc reissue so now I have three damn versions of the damn thing at least I didn't have to give money to get this one new), Orange Juice: The Glasgow School, Cabaret Voltaire: The Conversation, Bardo Pond: On the Ellipse, Pharoah Sanders: Pharoah's First, and The Temptations: Psychedelic Soul. Okay, so then we hoof it back. We end up picking lobsters up from the grocery store for our dinner with the family and the Connors. I really didn't mention any of that, but every day we made sure to wake up real early to go out and get a start doing our stuff and got back early in time for dinner with everyone which was cooked at "home." That night Mary Beth and I played Elevenses, a card game she'd picked up at that store that's tea themed.

Friday we got up and just started on our voyage back home! I'm pretty annoyed that in New York I got a damn speeding ticket. At least it was coming back and not a week early when I was coming up and going even faster. Well, I kept it lower the rest of the trip anyway, damnit. We made pretty good time and made it into Pittsburgh (ironically the biggest city of our trip and the one I didn't do any record shopping in!, the stores all closed just a bit earlier than we got in town for, for the best though really considering the rest of everything). We did get in early enough to go eat some rabbit pasta for dinner at Piccolo Forno (we'd eaten there when we were in town before). Then it was straight back to the hotel to crash relatively early.

We got up early Saturday morning and went over to Rachel and Rachel's house (one of the Rachel's is an old friend of Mary Beth's from back in Rochester, we went to their wedding a few years ago). They now have a baby named Ruth who's super damn cute. Also I really liked their cat Poe who was hanging out. We hung around and chatted for an hour or so before Rachel went to work at the library. Then we went down to the strip and had some a mung bean pancake and an egg roll for breakfast from this stand. Popped in a few shops. We picked up a sandwich from Primanti Brothers to share for the rest of lunch (still so goddamn good). Then it was time to hit the road again. We stopped in Wheeling, WV for pizza at Di Carlo's as is our wont and enjoyed a few squares of that back on the road. We made it into Louisville just in time for me to do some more record shopping, ha ha ha ha ha. Modern Cult, the place I went to last year that was so incredibly amazing, does not seem to be in business anymore (apparently it'd had a reputation for being weird about being open anyway). But Underground Sounds was my second favorite in town and literally around the corner so I went there and picked up: Earth: Phase 3 Thrones and Dominions, Tortoise + The Ex: In the Fishtank, The Velvet Underground: La Cave 1968, Black Flag: Family Man, Brigitte Fontaine: Comme à la Radio, The Haters: These Things Happen Volume 1: 7-Inch EPs, The Haters: These Things Happen Volume 2: Compilations, Sun Ra: The Creator of the Universe, Sun Ra: Intergalactic Research, and Sun Ra: Untitled Recordings. The guy at the checkout said it was a very eclectic purchase. Then we had fancy ham and cheese selection at Garage Bar and I enjoyed Ale-8-One in the lovely evening weather. Again we're tired and just head back to the hotel after that.

We got up a little less early on Sunday before the drive back. We got breakfast coffee from Sunegros and doughnuts and things from Nord's Bakery right next door (almost didn't but I saw all these doughnut bags and had to check it out, and really Nord's is the locally famous one it turns out). We'd parked half on the curb (low as the curb was) and thought we were low on air so we made sure to check our air when we got gas. Stopped at a Kroger so we could also pick up some Ale-8-One to take back home (oh, and we got Moxie in Massachusetts too!) while filling up the gas and air. The air wasn't really bad but I reinforced it nice and good anyway. I love that the two sodas I came away with in bulk are kinda polar opposites. Fine drive back. We stopped in Nashville for some of those amazing burgers at Riverside Grillshack. Then much to Mary Beth's chagrin there was one final record stop at Grimey's. First was the used side and I got: Harmonium: Deluxe, Laurie Anderson: Mister Heartbreak, Brian Eno: The Drop, Grifters: One Sock Missing, The Knife: Silent Shout, Mogwai: Earth Division EP, Portastatic: Scrapbook EP, Public Image Ltd.: Flowers of Romance (some reissue with bonus tracks, okay!), and The Stranglers: The Raven (which was dumb 'cuz I have that one in a two-album package with La Folie but the cover art's different and I only remembered that La Folie was in it for some reason, maybe because it has "Golden Brown" to triumph, at least I spent very little on it). Then over at the new side I got: John Carpenter: Lost Themes, Cluster: Konzerte 1972/1977, Pauline Oliveros + Musiques Nouvelles: Four Meditations/Sound Geometries, Tristan Perich: Noise Patterns, Pharmakon: Bestial Burden, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Suzanne Ciani: Sunergy, Com Truise: Iteration, Arca: s/t, and Raymond Scott: Three Willow Park: Electronic Music from Inner Space, 1961-1971. Then I bought so much they gave me a free shirt (and that's only based on the new side!). Do I have a problem? Uh, no comment. Then we went back home and all was well. Aside from two days of sporadically reading about the crazy nazi shit in Virginia between long bursts of driving. But we get home and settle in and watch the last episode of Twin Peaks last night (and damn it was a good one, a real good one and they're all real good and the week before was real good, but this was damn!). Oh, also I came home to a couple pieces of mail. One was from the Numero Group getting-rid-of-cds clearance sale (sad prospect): Bedhead: Live 1998, Eccentric Soul: the Capsoul Label, Antena: Camino del Sol, Eccentric Soul: the Bandit Label, and Eccentric Soul: the Deep City Label (and had initially ordered a live Codeine thing but was later informed they were out of stock, sadness). Also had a cd in the mail I'd preordered a while back: Allen Ravenstine + Albert Dennis: Terminal Drive.

Okay, and back to work today and it was all fine and dandy. I did forget my badge though. Gotta find it. I seem to recall realizing I was still wearing it as we took to the road at the beginning of our trip so it may be somewhere in Mary Beth's car. We'll see. Now I've got so much work to do cataloging my cds! And I haven't even finished cataloging the damn hundred I got from Important Records! Yeah, the problem's becoming apparent, but fuck it. I went a long time not getting much. Hopefully I didn't forget anything. If I did maybe I'll remember it up later.

I was very productive last night. Worked for four hours and got the majority of work for this ticket I'm working on done. Back to work today to work on it some more and almost wrap it up. Our team moved seats. We're in the area I used to be in with the Integration team at the end of last year. It's a much nicer area. Less in the middle of stuff and I don't have that damn pillar right next to me. Also, the new ceo of the company was going around today and came and talked to my team for like ten minutes. He was being very amicable but it is a slightly nerve-wracking thing. They were giving away free italian ices outside this afternoon. Yeah. I guess that's about it for now and I'll shut up now.

Last night I had the fun of installing my new module in my case. Along with taking most of it and reorganizing. I think I overall ended up with a better flow than I'd had in my previous iteration. And a little bit of time playing with my new module. It's pretty easy and nice and intuitive, packing a good punch for being a small module (as far as sequencers go). Work today was big room planning. It was pretty good. Didn't do a whole lot. We came in pretty prepared (especially compared to last time) so we hit it mostly ready-to-go. A few minor shuffling of things and a few conversations but mostly pretty light. There were some other teams that had all of their stuff upended so it was mostly sitting around waiting for them. Which I guess is better than having to be the one who's scrambling. It was a pretty exciting mail day to come home to...I got my box of one hundred cds from Important Records' kickstarter! That's right! One hundred cds! I got: Citay: s/t, The Weird World of Henry Jacobs: The Fine Art of Goofing Off, Kawabata Makoto: O Si Amos a Sighire a Essere Duas Umbras?, Kimya Dawson: Knock-Knock Who?, C. Spencer Yeh and Paul Flaherty (w/ Greg Kelley): New York Nuts & Boston Beans, Henry Jacobs: Around the World with Henry Jacobs, Dominique Leone: Abstract Expression, v/a: Viva Negativa!: a Tribute to the New Blockaders Vol. III, Wooley•Lytton•Grubbs: The Seven Storey Mountain, Suishou No Fune: The Shining Star - Live, Duane Pitre/Pilotram Ensemble: Organized Pitches Occurring in Time, Kurt Weisman: Spiritual Sci-Fi, Asa Irons and Swaan Miller: s/t, The Bark Haze: Total Joke Era, Wooley•Corsano•Yeh: The Seven Storey Mountain, Christina Kubisch: Magnetic Flights, Christina Kubisch: Mono Fluido, Smegma: Mirage, Absolut Null Punkt: Metacompound, Rivulets: You Are My Home, v/a: Belly of the Whale, Daniel Johnston & Jack Medicine: The Electric Ghosts, Pestrepeller: Isle of Dark Magick, Stefan Wesołowski: Liebestod, Emily Jane White: Blood/Lines, Marisa Anderson: Mercury, Marisa Anderson: The Golden Hour, Xiu Xiu Larsen: ¿Spicchiology?, XBXRX: Sounds, Holy Sons: My Only Warm Coals Expanded, Major Stars: Decibels of Gratitude, Folke Rabe: What??, Machinefabriek: Secret Photographs soundtrack, Gezan: Katsute Uta Tolwaretasore, James Blackshaw: Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death, John Fahey: The Mill Pond EP & Collected Paintings, Anoice: Rennings, Aidan Baker: Triptychs: Variations on a Melody, Ashley Paul: Heat Source, Duane Pitre: Bayou Electric, Anoice: The Black Rain, The Thirteenth Assembly: Station Direct, Beequeen: Port Out Starboard Home, Miminokoto: Hitoyogiri, Roberto Opalio: Chants from Isolated Ghosts, Alumbrados: A Generation of Vipers, Jozef van Wissem: The Joy That Never Ends, Larsen + Z'ev: In V.tro, Arnold Dreyblatt: Turntable History, Larsen: Cool Cruel Mouth, Maurizio Bianchi & Francisco López: KRMN, Xiu Xiu + Eugene S. Robinson: Sal Mineo, Else Marie Pade +Jacob Kirkegaard: Svævninger, Nadja+Vampillia: The Perfect World, Ocean: Pantheon of the Lesser, Cave: Psychic Psummer, Mi and L'au: If Beauty Is a Crime, Aun: VII, Gaspar Claus: Jo Ha Kyū, Duane Pitre: Bridges, Born of Six: Svapiti, Cluster: Berlin 07, 3 Day Band: s/t, Tecumseh: Avalanche and Inundation, Strings of Consciousness & Angel: s/t, Merzbow: Tsubame: 13 Japanese Birds Pt. 12, Merzbow: Shirasagi: 13 Japanese Birds Pt. 11, Chord: Progression, v/a: New Songs of the Humpback Whale, Mark Lyken: The Terrestrial Sea, My Cat Is an Alien: Leave Me in the Black No-Thing, Larsen: Musm II, The Vanishing Voice: Nordic Visions, Jessica Rylan: Interior Designs, Sky City: s/t, Acid Mothers Guru Guru: Psychedelic Navigator, Mani Neumeier: Sketches, Merzbow: Merzbear, Fe-Mail and Carlos Giffoni: Northern Stains, (r): In Pink, Mudsuckers: s/t, Merzbow: Minazo Vol. 1, Merzbow: Merzbuta, Xiu Xiu Larsen: ¡Ciaütisctico!, Tom Carter/Robert Horton: Lunar Eclipse, Barbez: Insignificance, King Missile III: Royal Lunch, Slomo: The Bog, Tom Carter: Shots at Infinity 1, Andrea Parkins: Faulty (Broken Orbit), Hototogisu: Floating Japanese Oof! Gardens of the 21st Century, Vanishing Voice: Stone Tablet, Merzbow: Niwatori: 13 Japanese Birds Pt. 10, Merzbow: Hiyodori: 13 Japanese Birds Pt. 9, Merzbow: Chabo: 13 Japanese Birds Pt. 13, Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.: s/t, Dan Friel: Ghost Town, and Plastic Crimewave Sound: Painted Shadows. (So that's I guess 97, as there were three that I did previously own (not bad odds considering I have a lot of records from this label and this was a ton, I passed 'em off to Jacaques: Kluster: Admira, Merzbow: Dolphin Sonar, and William Hooker with Eyvind Kang & Bill Horist: The Seasons Fire). Wow! That's a fuckin' mouthful. Now it's gonna take some time to listen through all this!...

I did a little bit of Memphis Concrète set editing yesterday. Getting pretty close to the end of that. Not many more artists left. I played around a little with the module Nate lent me. It makes glitchy percussion-ish sounds. It was the most fun when I triggered it with my Mikrophonie so it was kinda like a synth drum. Mary Beth and I did some movie watching at home. We watched that Rogue One star wars movie. It was pretty good for a star wars movie. Some decent things about it, some cheesy things. Speaking of cheese, I ate a whole bunch of chips and cheese dip (las delicias and panchos). Then after that we watched Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! which I hadn't seen since college. It'd been so long I'd remembered almost nothing about it and what I thought I'd remembered was wires crossed with another Spanish movie I saw around the same time (probably for the same entry-level spanish class). Not sure what to think about it right now. Need to think about it some more. There were some I liked about it (especially visually), but the end is kinda, hm. There are some subtler things happening that make me think about it a little differently beneath the surface, but watching some interviews with the people who made it and it makes me think that they're not really there and I'm just projecting what I want it to be. Aside from paying for yesterday's cheese crimes this morning, that's about it.

Did some more editing and cleaning up and getting out of sets from Memphis Concrète last night and got quite a few taken care of. Now I'm more than halfway there and don't have too too many left. That'll be a nice thing to be done with! Today at work was it appreciation day so there were the shout outs and lots and lots of doughnuts. I ate way too many fucking doughnuts but it was awesome. I did a few shout outs and they have you make the powerpoint slide ahead of time and I included a picture in one of 'em: those dudes from malco's don't-pirate-movies warning they show before all movies and that everyone laughs at every time (also didn't realize they'd shopped in a smartphone to replace the original video camera). I got some laughs too, so that was swell. I ate four doughnuts there and then ate another one after lunch. Then later in the afternoon someone brought out leftover tacos from a meeting and I made myself eat one even though I was full and then I had yet another fucking doughnut since they were almost all gone. Yeah, I'm a goddamn pig but my decadence was alright. Alright by me! Also this thing that's been weighing down forever 'cuz it wasn't getting done got fucking done! We'd had this proxy made to make calls to sendgrid and it just wasn't fucking working for some reason. The guy who set up the proxy wasn't helping, just being like "that's weird it should work." And I was trying to google shit to figure it out but I don't know nginx and servers and shit like that much to at all. Finally got Mike to look into it and he's a goddamn nginx wizard (or genius or whatever) and he got it taken care of. And the guy who set it up was on vacation today and no one else seemed to have the key to access the server but he still persisted and got it done! I owe him big! Well, what else? This cd I got new at the show and it seems to have like a dent in it or some shit. Got a place where it really skips and the disc is warped and I don't think it's repairable. Darn.

I finished that Qemist remix last night. Well, since it was due today I guess whatever I had met that criterion by necessity. But I think it's pretty good. I mean, I didn't spend a whole lot of time editing stuff together, or I could have spent more. I mostly just chopped it up into bits and crammed them together randomly. With a few exceptions. I also edited Belly Full of Stars's Memphis Concrète recording (Amy added her to the list of interviewees). Luckily her set was pretty easy. Work was a little surreal today. Everyone comes in to find out that AHS is splitting apart from ServiceMaster (American Home Shield is one of the two biggest, core parts of svm along with Terminix, they're also who I primarily did work for for well over a year when I started with the jboss being middleware for their old database). Also there's a new ceo. The split will probably be final after a year or thereabouts. Toby gave a talk to everyone, things should be okay but no one really knows what's going on as a plan doesn't exist yet and it's just a bit on the weird side. Fun way to start work for my new company.

Spent some time yesterday working on my remix for this Qemist song. I took all the stem tracks and ran them through effects (fancy setup, ran files from one handheld recorder to the other), mostly modular but on drum track went through a boss half-rack delay and the main musical track went through the digitech whammy pedal (the song's called "Summer Bath" and I'm doing a little homage to "Summer Madness" where I iteratively ran it up an octave in tribute to that famous synth line, ran it a few times to simulate multiple octave glides). Mary Beth and I went over to my parents' house. I helped my dad move this old busted tv downstairs so he could dispose of it. Then we went and had dinner at Central bbq with them and my sister and the nephews. Afterwards back home and I finished the processing all the tracks. Now all that's left is to actually do the mixing part and mash 'em all together somehow. We watched the latest episode of Twin Peaks. It was a good un! Anything other than that? I think that's gotcha good for now.