bone in sub

i burned my belly button today, cooking bacon shirtless…less than 24 hours after someone anecdotally told me about something similar happening to them! weird.

yesterday at work, i asked a coworker if she would cut my hair again. she did before and it looked great, and giving her a couple beers is cheaper than going to a salon. she asked if i would let her dye my hair if she bought the dye. i figured why not. now my hair is black and so is the skin under my sideburns, and i smell like chemicals. i kind of regret it, oh well

the same girl bought an electric fly swatter and brought it to work. it looks like a small tennis raquet, except it’s got 3 layers of metal mesh on it. i touched it while it was on, thinking it wouldn’t affect big things like Human Fingers, but instead there was a huge blue spark and my hand went numb. felt exactly like when i was 12 and accidentally plugged something in while touching the prongs on the plug – i can’t believe an 8 dollar fly swatter can put out that much voltage! it totally works though, making a huge pop when you hit a mosquito with it.

another little barbeque last night – pretty nice. last time someone had suggested recording a cover of the tv edit of “little mouse” from look around you, so i made a pretty sweet backing track. it didn’t turn out well, the musical people wanted to play their instruments (piano, guitars) and the non-musical folks didn’t know the song so they couldn’t sing it and just played tambourine and shaker. at least i can sing along to little mouse by myself whenever i want now.

a game of kings happened last night, whatever, standard deal. nobody remembered an entire ruleset so we had to write down an amalgamation, and 7 was “slap”, in which you slap the face of the person to your right and so on until one person refuses to be slapped, and they have to drink. the funny part is nobody liked what happened on J (i forget) so J became slap too. eventually we were all just hitting each other in the face and enjoying it.

i’ve been feeling really good in a lot of ways in the last week, not sure why. maybe because i’m living in a big house and sleeping in a big bed? or just because such a dramatic “upgrade” is just psychologically pleasing? another big part of it, i think, is because i can sit on the sofa and read or nap here, where at my old place the only things i could do were sleep, cook, eat, or sit at the computer. not a very healthy lifestyle. i hope i continue to feel this healthy when i move in a couple weeks.

i’m watching deadwood right now, and this kidney stone scene is awful. they run in my family!

i finally just watched last monday’s Weeds (s4e9), and it was a pretty good episode. the weird split monologue was dumb at first but ended up being interesting, and the cinematography at the very end after silas walks away was making me think “all right it’s the end of the episode, something Messed Up is going to happen…”. it did, but not plot-wise…i hear the beginning of the first movement of gordon stout‘s two mexican dances for marimba. (as an aside, there are 0 good performances of it on youtube. youtube marimba players are horrible, except this one i guess)
i thought i had accidentally opened an mp3 or something, because i have never once heard a piece from the marimba solo repertoire outside that subculture (with the exception of dj yoda sampling evelyn glennie’s cover of maple leaf rag in how to cut and paste). it’s a pretty big deal to me to hear something from a subgenre of classical music that is very important to me in a real tv show for the first time. not only that, but that piece is kind of a big part of my life. it’s the last piece i ever worked on with my old teacher before he died. it was my biggest audition piece for U of T, and i also played it in my first jury at this school. it’s totally because i’m hugely biased and i love the piece, but that was maybe my favorite minute of television so far this summer!

i woke up this morning, perfectly remembering an awesome dream. that’s really cool when it happens but i sat in bed thinking about it for a while, then fell back asleep. when i woke up again, i still remembered it! now i’m taking my time writing it down because it’s going to be 3 or 4 pages long.

i’ve been working all day every day this week. it’s awesome doing music work and getting paid well, but monday through wednesday i would wake up, eat, do some mixing on my own songs, and then the band would show up. we work for 4 or 8 hours, then they go home, and i eat dinner. i then go record myself and make stuff until about 1am. that’s around 15 hours a day in the studio! i didn’t really do anything that wasn’t music or work until last night. last night was a pot-luck & barbeque with a few people from work that turned into a recording session featuring 3 nonmusicians singing “rhymenocerous” and “baby got back”. yep

i have to start recording soon, so i need to go finish writing this dream down!

i woke up this morning to my alarm going off at 9am, and got out of the big bed i get to sleep in while i’m housesitting…and felt out of place, because i had gotten only 7 hours of sleep, but felt really nice and rested. this had not happened to me in a really long time. i think what it means is that sleeping in a tiny loft bed in a tiny room is just bad for you – i regularly feel more tired after 11 hours of sleep in my current room. good thing i only have to sleep there for one more week! i’ll be at this house until saturday, then back home for a week, then up at lake simcoe for my grandparents’ 50th anniversary week. as soon as i get back i’ll be moving to my new place!

yesterday was great – i came out to my uncle’s place, helped him pack for his vacation and set up some of my stuff. a band came over and i recorded them for four hours – i was going to go to an advance of some chick flick i had tickets for, but any time i have the opportunity to work for $32/hr i’d rather be working than seeing a chick flick!

i made this song last night. that’s not a final mix but i’m still incredibly happy with how it turned out. i was talking a while ago with some people about when we were kids and we would make up lyrics to video game music – this was somebody’s and it had been stuck in my head for a long time. i have a couple songs, but i don’t know if they’re as perfect as that one. that’s also ALL sampled except for my voice!

last night i went back to my place to put out the garbage and pick up some food from my place, i didn’t have enough room in my backpack in the morning to bring over clothes AND food. on my way back here a really cute girl tried to jaywalk and almost jumped right in front of my bike, she was all “i’m sorry!! i’m sorry!!!” and i didn’t mind at all. it’s pretty messed up how much someone’s attractiveness affects their situation. if it had been an old homeless guy i might have yelled at him. even if it was just an unattractive girl my age i probably wouldn’t have smiled and said “it’s ok!”. the thing is i didn’t even THINK about whether she was cute or not, i just reacted naturally, and i wasn’t angry solely because she had a cute face and voice.

when i got home i made bacon & eggs at 1 in the morning, some intense breakfast for dinner. i really love bacon.

at work on saturday, towards the end of the day a co-worker found a very small mitten, like for a baby, on the floor. it had a Virgin Mobile logo on it. someone asked if they could keep it (because it was cute?), and said to wait until sunday night, see if anyone comes back to claim it.

today i was up at the cash registers, where i had left the glove, and picked it up to look at it. i hadn’t touched it yet, and i could feel something inside it. i open it and it is totally full of pot. well! we were all pretty amused by that one.

i got a place!!! it’s a bachelor apartment, a little north of bloor on bartlett. big bedroom, decent kitchen, a bathroom bigger than this place (and in this place it’s for 3 people!), and a bit of a sitting room. i’m really excited to get out of this tiny room with weird/anal roommates and a loft bed and no floor space! i think i’m going to have to wait a while for an internet connection to get installed though…

it happened really fast – thursday night i was all pissed after seeing a horrible place, and i checked craigslist after just listening to music for a while. i saw an ad for this place and i liked the wording of the post, so i called right away (15 minutes after the ad was posted). i saw it on friday night after work, and liked it a lot. they called my weekend job for a reference, and evidently my boss must have said really nice things, because they called me at around noon and offered me the apartment. i withdrew some cash for the deposit on my break and went over there after work and paid & signed the lease. my uncle’s giving me his car (a station wagon!) for the day on september first, so everything is taken care of.

when i say “withdrew some cash” i mean “took $200 from my visa and emptied my bank account”, because that’s what it took. whatever, next week is going to be very lucrative. until then, though, i have $15 in my wallet and $3 in chequing. this place is still really, really cheap for what it is, and the landlord knows that – she said she likes to have a very large pool of potential tenants so she can pick who she thinks is the most honest and reliable. flattering, i guess. evidently there was ridiculous competition, and the phone was still ringing regarding the place while i was signing the lease. makes sense though, an unsketchy ad about a cheap place in a good neighborhood in this city? rare and highly desirable.

this whole week i’m housesitting for my uncle & aunt a little to the west over in the lansdowne/college area. i did the same thing last year and it was great, living by myself in a big 3-story house, basically pretending to be a successful adult. this time though, i’m working in the studio the whole week, something i always love to do. i’ll do a bunch of work with a band over the week, and hopefully some of my own stuff if i’m not too busy enjoying a backyard and quiet neighborhood.

i worked the whole last week, i’m working all this week, and three more days the week after (and i always work weekends). that’s a lot of work! perfect timing though, immediately before school starts again – i think i’ll actually have MORE free time once the school year starts and i’m only working weekends and some evenings. i’ve noticed in the last few weeks that my routine is totally work-based. i really just wake up, shower, eat, maybe watch something, and go to work all day. i get home, make dinner, watch a tv show, read for a while, then watch a replay (always makes me sleepy) and go to bed. i picked out which tv shows i’m watching this season on the pogdesign cat and set them up to download via utorrent rss, but between all the good shows airing now and the other stuff i’m slowly watching (deadwood, the wire), combined with not really spending much time at home anymore, i’m totally accumulating a backlog. i guess that’s a good thing, i’ve never really not had time to watch tv, even during the school year.

i was reading my favorite torrent forum and someone posted in a helvetica fontpack thread:
“Be careful with these, one wouldn’t want to induce.. THE HELVETICA SCENARIO“. yep

in the last few months i’ve gotten a lot done mentally and productively, played some really fun gigs, traveled a bit, and now i finally get to live by myself. this is an amazing summer!!!

i went to see another apartment after work today. it’s a basement around bloor & dovercourt, and it’s actually really nice – has more windows than i would expect in a basement, and it’s CHEAP! the horrible place i saw yesterday was $500 for a 6×10 bedroom and a tiny kitchen and bathroom…this place is $550 for a bedroom that’s way, way bigger, plus a kitchen, bathroom, and sitting area. i could actually afford it and not have to borrow money during the school year!!! really hope i get it.

when i was talking to my prospective landlord, she asked what i’m doing, i said i’m going into my fourth year at U of T, and she replies “oh wow, you look young!”. yesterday, i had already told the landlord that i go to U of T, and she asked me right away “so you’re in second year?”. a couple weeks ago my uncle’s (very nice) portuguese neighbor told me in a strong accent “you have the face of a 17-year-old!”. i don’t really get carded much (i think that’s attitude?), but almost everyone seems to think i’m 2 or 3 years younger than i really am. that’s nothing for people in their mid-twenties, but for all these people to think i’m a teenager is a little insulting! i think i look 20. i’m 21, maybe i should grow a beard now. i guess i’ll try it this winter.

went to see an apartment today. the bedroom was actually smaller than my current place, which i was not expecting. the kitchen and bathroom are also tiny, and there is no closet and zero storage space. i have my hockey equipment and marimba here, plus i own things like Clothes that you Hang Up. so, i was pissed that it turned out to be worthless, because i was excited about it being cheap and in a great neighborhood. going to see another one tomorrow in the annex

my cell phone’s interference is insane – maybe other modern phones are the same, i’ve had this one for about 2 and half years and the older ones i had weren’t as bad. whenever it refreshes the network, recieves a text, or i get a call, crazy things happen. obviously, my unshielded computer speakers with no ferrites make gsm interference noise like crazy, but i’m used to that by now. if it’s near my keyboard, the num/caps/scroll lights all light up and i can’t use it anymore until i reconnect it. if it’s near my external hard drive, it resets itself, forcing this 36gb torrent i’m seeding from it to re-hash itself. that takes about an hour! it makes my clock radio play whatever station it’s tuned to, in addition to the gsm buzz. when i went to upload that gsm interference mp3, there was already a gsm.mp3 in that folder…busta rhymes’ ‘gimme some more’. i love that song, but i had no idea why it was uploaded.

i chopped two of my favorite songs together, i like how it sounds, but that’s because it’s two of my favorite songs! the only reasons i could do this were a) that famous bootleg drum master from ‘in through the out door’ and b) Odyssey and Oracle is mixed with the silly ’60s “Pan Mix”. if i had any vocal masters i could make a sweet mashup out of it.

in the car with my 2½ year old cousin, who is eating a blueberry muffin:
“it’s a little bit spicy”
“what?!”
(ridiculous italian accent by a two year old) “IT A LITTLE BIT-A SPICY!”

also; this video i found on a cd while packing up the stuff in my closet:

an anniversary e-card for my grandparents taken september 3, 2001, i was 14 years old and had been attending Virginia Commonwealth University for 2 weeks. this video makes me realize how ridiculous that was – imagine having that kid in your class! kind of explains why i turned out this way. also two parents who haven’t practiced their instruments in at least a decade and three children ages 14, 11, and 6 hold it to a solid 110bpm for most of the song – that is wicked.

this is kind of goofy:

haven’t even been trying – it just hasn’t crashed!

I JUST SAW MAGIC EYE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE