A Day in the Life: Wednesday

7:00 - 7:45 - I wake up from a night full of sick-dreams. Maybe you know the dreams I'm talking about; they have no plot or direction, just one element repeated over and over again, and you keep waking up slightly, promising yourself that you'll dream about something else, then falling asleep and dreaming the same thing all over again. This time it was something to do with a page full of numbers...I kept reading the same numbers. All night. That's exhausting. The Tylenol and the drowsy flu medication probably didn't help. Anyway, I get out of bed and cough up something that would have frightened H. P. Lovecraft. Eat tasteless Golden Grahams and read The New Yorker. Sometimes there's nothing interesting in The New Yorker. This is one of those times.

7:45 - 8:00 - I shower and wash my hair. I love buying shampoo from my hair salon, because it always makes me feel like I'm back in the salon, and the salon is nicer than my bathroom. I still have a hole in my ceiling from when the plumber had to fix a leak. I imagine it gives the spiders easier access to my apartment.

8:00 - 8:30 - Walk to work. The Bauer Loft construction is not appreciably changed. I'm listening to music on the way, which is something I prefer not to do; I'm worried about becoming detached from the world, and I'm already barely integrated with it. I see too many people walking around in their own little realities.

8:30 - 12:00 - It's hard to write anything interesting about what I do at work. Mostly I sit in my cubicle and work on whatever project is most urgent. In the morning I take screenshots and add arrows and labels to them. The receptionist sends an email telling people to request songs; I'm DJ'ing the Christmas party again this year. Somebody sends an email to me and the receptionist complaining that I didn't play the song he requested at last year's office Christmas Party. The receptionist -- who has even more spunk than Hariot Dufferin -- responds with "Suck it up, princess." I like our receptionist!

12:00 - 1:00 - Henning arrives and offers me the gift of P1, which is one of the many unhealthy meals served by "Sunshine," a local Chinese fast-food dive. The P1 is rice, sliced pork, an egg, onions, and salt. LOTS of salt. I enthusiastically accept his offer. I'll be thirsty for days.

1:00 - 4:30 - Screenshots, darn it.

4:30 - 5:00 - I stop at the grocery store on the way home. I live alone and have no car, so instead of loading up on a lot of things that I can't carry by myself, I make two or three trips a week. This is a cereal trip because I can't stand the Golden Grahams much longer. They ain't what they used to be. I also buy turkey cat food for the cat. I try to only buy her food that's made out of things she could have feasibly caught herself...she could kill a turkey or a chicken without much struggle, but there's no way she could kill a cow, not even in her prime. I carry my groceries home and note that somebody "toilet-papered" the group home next door. This isn't surprising because the group home is probably the most active youth-spot on the street. Fortunately the pre-teen girls who used to simulate orgasms on the front lawn are no longer there, which means I sleep with fewer interruptions.

5:00 - 7:00 - More Battlestar Galactica. Should I give excuses for why I'm hooked? It's partly because the cliffhangers are so effective, and partly because I really just want to sit on the couch and stare at something, and partly because I tell myself that there are only a limited number of episodes...the faster I watch them, the sooner I'll be able to get back to real work, like:

7:00 - 8:15 - Re-visiting an old track called "The Demeaning Power of Tequila," one that's never been finished enough to show up on the website. It's got a slow, extremely buzzy, 4/4 electronic vibe to it. Catchy, I think, but as always with "actual songs" (or any highly organized project) I struggle to find "the ending." An earlier version of the track ended quite nicely, but I decided that it was too effective to not evolve and get longer. In Logic Audio -- the program I'm using -- it isn't always easy to extend a song once you've organized it nicely, so the last few edits of the track have been about tweaking it so it's longer. Tonight I decided to add an ESQ-1 keyboard line. My intentions were good but I kept getting an "Unable to find file, result -43" error. I've never seen it before. Half an hour later I finally worked around the bug by reassigning the record path, but by then my enthusiasm was slipping away. I also can't figure out why my line in is so damn quiet. I've never had much patience for rooting around with cables, mixers, and levels. Anyway, I did make SOME progress so I can feel justified in rewarding myself: Tylenol and drowsy cold meds. Bye-bye, fever!