My mood has really been all over the place this week. I don’t know why. It’s probably just staying busy and tired, and holding on to a bit more stress than I should be. I’m actually feeling rather good today, which is odd. I got even less sleep than I have been getting and I’m busier than I was even in the first two days of this week. I think my brain just got bored with being pissed off and stressed or something. Regardless it is a welcome change.
Let’s see, new stuff…
I got a new digital camera last weekend. I already have a big clunky SLR that I love but I wanted something I could carry around with me whenever. I haven’t really played with it much yet though. And the couple of pictures I have taken were rather disappointing. I’m hoping it is just a settings problem and that I haven’t wasted my money.
Last night was our last band practice before our recording on Saturday. We cleaned up some little parts and made some last minute changes here and there. I think it sounds good for the most part. I still don’t have my confidence level up to where I want it, but I am going back into the studio with Masato the day before recording and I’m hoping that should make the difference.
And, um… Oh, the wifey and I met up with another international couple here in Tokyo last weekend. We went out to eat at a lovely French restaurant and then went to their house and ate all their cookies. They were both really sweet. I’m really hoping we get the chance to hang out more in the near future.
Due to an utter lack of energy last night, I ended up laying on my bed and reading through almost all of “Cell.” Which of course was entertaining enough, but ended up royally sucking considering it was 1:00 in the morning by the time I got into the final 50 pages, and being that I have pretty much been without sleep all this week as it is, I had to force myself to retire right as I got myself all caught up into it.
Tonight it is off to dinner with some friends, tomorrow we got “baby school,” and Sunday we have some plans with some other peoples so my weekend is already pretty populated. I got a million other little chores and what not I want to try to cut into, but I also really, really, really want some sleep. I’m fucking dead and my brain doesn’t work. Which is nothing out of the ordinary now that I think about it.
I just downloaded the Sage plug-in for Firefox 2 because I wanted to play around with the idea of using a feed reader, and I realized I already have an RSS feed setup on this site. I’m assuming it is set up by default with WordPress. Anyways, if you are one of those people still using IE, I would suggest giving Firefox 2 a try. It’s a fantastic browser. And I really like Sage so far. It is really easy to use. And then you can of course add my feed. Because I have one. And because it would make me happy. And because it would probably make my blog happy too.
Speaking of browsers, I found out that IE is having major issues with my photo gallery template. No other browsers are, but that is to be expected I guess. I have converted the gallery back to a more standard format and it seems to be working for the most part. I just don’t like how it looks very much. I will probably play around with it a bit more when I get time.
Oh, and I crushed my USB Flash Drive yet again. And then fixed it, kind of, yet again. I seem to have very bad luck with these things.
And in my final bit of nerdy news about shit that no one really cares about (including myself), I incorporated the RSS feed from this site into my profile on mixi, which is kind of like the horrendous train wreck that is MySpace — only in Japanese. So if anyone is coming here from over on that side of the planet (and actually reading this even though it is in English), um, hello there. I promise I will write some Japanese entries every now and again. And everybody else will just have to put up with the occasional post with lots of weird junk characters. Either that or install Japanese fonts and learn Japanese, which of course I don’t think is too much to ask for.
Anyhow, i’m about to go to band practice in another hour. This is going to be the last of two rehearsals, three counting a session I plan on doing with Masato, the bassist, before our recording on the 30th. I still have a couple of rough spots I want to work through but generally speaking, I think everything is coming together. I’ll have more updates soon.
I had to wait in line for close to an hour but I finally got my BK chicken sandwich.
Yum.
Well, I finished with “A Farewell to Arms” about a week ago and started reading Stephen King’s “Cell,” which is quite a change of pace. I have always had a place in my heart for Stephen King. I remember “It” being what really got me into reading on my own back in high school. Funny book to get me hooked, I know, but whatever works. I still absolutely adore “The Stand.” Probably sits up there among some of my favorite books, and I love to read classics so that’s really saying something.
Went into the studio again on Wednesday and we popped out yet another new song, this one in about maybe 15 minuets. I’ve noticed that whenever we make something that fast, we usually never feel the need to touch it later and it normally ends up being one of our better songs. “Escape These Moments” was the exact same pattern. The cool thing is that every song we have made lately I have been really happy about. We are going in all different directions musically, but the new songs are all so much fun to play. And I think they are much better than what we have done so far. I was honestly a bit worried around the time of our first recording because things were coming out so easily, and I had this scary feeling that it couldn’t last forever. Like we were getting to the point were we wern’t going to be able to top ourselves and then just sort of slam head first into a brick wall. So far that isn’t the case. Hopefully it will stay that way.
And I have been slowly adding some new pictures up as I get time. I just got up pictures from our Halloween Party last year. They really don’t do the Halloween thing over here very seriously, so we invited some friends and some friends of friends over for some good spirited debauchery. I think some people enjoyed themselves a little too much though. I thought I was going to have an orgy in my living room at one point.
So, my mood is still all over the place and I’m tired as hell from work and other miscellaneous responsibilities but all is well for the most part. I have two different software applications I want to get started on some time, a million photos I want to take, and a novel that I really want to continue working on. It is just so hard to find the time. And the energy.
Ugh, I am in a total daze today. I was up late doing one thing or another and by the time I finally got around to getting some sleep, F1 was on so I ended up watching that for another hour. I think I ended up getting to sleep somewhere around 3:30 or 4:00. Always fun.
And I think I really need to keep myself from thinking. I’m way too good at getting myself into a shitty mood for no real reason whatsoever. That’s how I was all morning anyways. I’m doing a bit better as of now though, mainly because I am just half-assing everything. Then again with me being such an unbearable perfectionist, it probably means that I am at about normal. Hopefully.
It stopped raining so we went to Shinjuku after all. After the wifey finished getting her fake money exchanged, we went by the Krispy Kreme that opened a couple of months ago to see if the lines had finally cooled down a bit. No dice though. There were still people lined up all the way around the block.
So it was off to Burger King. I hadn’t eaten all day so I was utterly starving to the point of being delusional. You know, like when you start making up songs about chicken sandwiches and sing them over and over again in your head, which of course sucks because it just makes you all the more hungry.
Fuck.
The scary part is that I probably would have actually waited in line for over an hour for Burger King if I wasn’t so damn hungry. We got some Indonesian food at a restaurant nearby instead.
Aw, I really want a chicken sandwich.
It seems like I have been on the computer all weekend, which is partly because I have I guess. I spent most of yesterday fixing some IE problems with this blog, searching for some extra hosting, and uploading old mp3s that I had sitting on my hard drive. I have them up on the music page now. Some of them are alright, but most of them are horrid. It’s OK though, it’s all for nostalgia sake.
I had planned to go to Shinjyuku today with the wifey, mainly because she needs to exchange some fake money for a different type of fake money at a department store or something like that, and also because they just opened a Burger King there and I really fucking want one of those chicken sandwiches. It’s funny, I really couldn’t give a crap about BK when I was in the states but after you haven’t had it for close to five years, it starts seeming really appetizing. I guess that could be said for everything in life though.
I did manage to get off the computer today for a couple of hours to play around with the filter set my brother bought me for my camera last Christmas. They have kind of been siting there and I hadn’t had the time to play around and learn to use them until today. All in all they work well. I realized that you can only use them for really extreme close-up shots though. If the lens is too far away from the subject it just can’t grab focus. I imagine that that’s how they were designed but that’s just because I don’t know any better.
I really want to organize a mustard fight. You know, drag out some of those big blue tarps in a park somewhere and just go at it. And maybe it could double as a BBQ. You know, considering we would have all that mustard and all.
Wow, I miss grass so much.
No, not that grass.
OK, maybe that grass too.