The Mandelbear's Musings

I didn't notice the zombies, but they appear to have snuck in and eaten my brain anyway. Or maybe it was little fuzzy telepaths.

I looked up my recent mood shift: I appear to have been mostly happy between September 24th and October 17th. For some reason it seems like much longer ago.

Things still aren't getting done -- realized this morning that I hadn't even put "splitting up concert recordings from Conflikt" on my to.do list. It really ought to get done before the next practice session, which is next weekend! That and splitting the last practice session, which was a month ago. And OVFF. And...

I've had some breakfast. I'll try going out for a walk soon, if it hasn't started raining. I don't think that will help get stuff done, but it might help a little with my mood. Maybe.

I've been awake since about 5am. Some good snuggle, but Colleen's back asleep now. Feeling lonely and discouraged and bored and restless. Yeah, I know -- all symptoms of depression. The happy pills can kick in any damned time now. And cold; I can fix that. Except I want to go out for a walk. Where it's even colder.

I see that I haven't posted anything substantial about Tres Gique's rehearsal "weekend" (which actually started Friday evening and will end tomorrow about 5pm). And I haven't unpacked and labeled the recordings, so I don't have a list of everything we've done. This is, therefore, basically an overview.

Friday cflute ended up getting in late and worn out due to airport stupidity. Fortunately I'd already decided that the day was likely to be mostly a write-off as far as actual rehearsal was concerned, and invited the Ugglas to come down for dinner, socializing, and planning. That worked well, and we got in a few songs into the bargain. The band's eminence grise, pocketnaomi, joined via Skype (on my Macbook) and IM (to cflute's laptop).

Saturday was our day for socializing, while the Ugglas were out of town. Fun, if a little tiring. But I've already posted about that.

Yesterday we went in to $COMPANY's office and set up in a conference room, in hopes of being able to rehearse there the next two days. It was a good session, but we spent about an hour in setup. The best part, by far, was having Naomi on the projector where we could all see what she was typing. Big win. Good session; ended about 5pm and left things mostly set up except for Callie's instruments.

I got a call this morning from $COMPANY asking us not to play in the conference room during business hours -- apparently the walls are paper-thin, which is something I hadn't known and hadn't bothered to check. So Dave and I trundled up a little before noon, packed up the remaining gear and put the room back pretty much the way we found it. Setup at the Starport didn't take nearly as long as yesterday, largely because my gear and Callie's were already in place, and we didn't have to figure out what to do with the conference table. We did have to move a few chairs and so on; most of them ended up in the office, where I no longer have room to swing a cat. That's OK; the Cat hasn't been able to square-dance in years.

I put my Macbook where it could be more-or-less seen; it wasn't perfect but it was halfway decent. With a bigger monitor (or younger eyes) it would have worked. The set-up will work out wonderfully tomorrow, since it's half an hour closer to the airport, Callie's luggage is already there, and I won't be needed to mind the door for packing up. We'll gain at least an hour on that one. It's also better because Callie and I won't have to spend half an hour commuting each way. (It's about a wash for the Ugglas.)

After the chaoswolf moves out, presumably taking her wedding presents and some of the furniture, we'll have a media room again. The wall where the couch is currently located is about the same length as a stage, and I'll be able to set up my guitar, a music stand, monitor speakers and a mixer and leave them there. That'll be a huge win logistically. We should also have a newer and bigger TV by then; it'll work for Naomi's backchannel and perhaps the occasional bit of whiteboard space.

With liberal amounts of Throat Coat and Emergen-C (which I find palatable only in hot water), my voice seems to be coming back; it was nearly gone yesterday, but I was able to sing lead on a couple of songs today.

It's not exactly logistics, but I also spent some time writing Emacs commands for adding chords to lead sheets: they make the job go much faster, and since most songs need chords on all the lines, that's a big win. I also need to write a transposer; that'll be pretty easy in Perl.

We have a cflute! She arrived around noon yesterday, having missed her 9am flight due to airport stupidity. The Ugglas (Joyce, Dave, and Jordan) arrived while she was still napping; then we had dinner and talked about what songs we wanted to add to our repertoire.

The Ugglas were out of town today, so this was our day for socializing with the Owl. We went up Highway 9 to Roaring Camp. Having gotten a late start we didn't expect to catch the steam train, which left at noon, but we found when we got there that they'd added another train at 2:00pm. So we did that. Fun trip, though we ended up separated after we found only room for one on the first car we climbed into, with Colleen unwilling to move. Good trip anyway, and we had a couple of hours in the car together in any case.

Dinner at Chicago Steak and Seafood, in Los Gatos. Yum; although I ended up letting Callie drive home -- their idea of a Tanqueray 10 up appears to involve at least two ounces of gin. I don't object, really, but...

We've been spending a quiet evening working on the occasional lead sheet and swapping songs with hvideo.

This is the second or third (depending on whether you count this one) post about last weekend's Tres Gique rehearsal session. The first was titled Weekend of Win, which sort of gives you the general idea. There will be one more, on the River aspects. You'll find the links for the weekend's music here. (There's also a technical report on issues of interest to some of my coworkers; I probably won't post it on LJ.)

cflute got in late Friday night, after nearly missing her flight because she believed the airline when they said it would be leaving two hours late. If I hadn't already had a flight tracker up when N. called from the car, ...

Saturday we went up to our secret mountain hide-out $COMPANY to use one of their conference rooms; ended up in a lobby/lounge area in the administrative half of the suite that offered a little more convenience, comfort, and space without having to move tables around.

We started out with a couple of songs that we all agreed we wanted to work up: "Gilda and the Dragon", and Fred Small's "Big Italian Rose" and "Everything Possible". Then a couple of older ones that we're all pretty familiar with: "Cicero" and "The Owl and the Pussycat". At which point I realized that I ought to have been recording, and hauled out the Zoom H2. We did "The River", "The Toolmakers", and "The Stuff That Dreams are Made Of".

The final chords of "Stuff" were interruped around 12:30 by Colleen and chaoswolf arriving with lunch, in the form of a big pot of chicken curry. Yum. Kat stayed for the afternoon, though I think she was mostly bored.

In the afternoon we did another run-through of "Stuff", worked pretty hard on "Millennium's Dawn", and finished on a high note with "Quiet Victories". That's the point where Joyce decided it was worth investing in a bass, which she'd been thinking of for a while.

Sunday we gathered at Joyce's place, which meant that Dave didn't have to schlep the sound equipment. The room is wonderful for sound; the four-footed denizens less so, between interruptions and allergies.

Sunday was awesome. It was clear from the first song ("Cicero" again) that Joyce has found her instrument of choice, and that the band is clearly a band and not just a bunch of random filkers getting together the Friday before a con.

OK, there's undoubtedly a lot of New {Instrument, Group} Energy involved, but we can put that to good use. There's still a little doubt about whether we can sustain a once-a-month practice schedule both logistically and financially, and whether we can do enough work, separately or in small groups, between sessions to make it work. But at this point it looks hopeful.

cflute left Sunday evening. The weekend was intense, highly productive, and way too short.