...

...

Ever just have one of those days? I can't wait until things are settled.

Woohoo

Full weekend ahead! And somehow it just hasn't been the intensely stressful, crazy week that I thought it was going to be. Funny how some things can punctuate a week and turn it into an exclamation.

The six new songs are ready... but the set list isn't....gah I hate making set lists. There's logic, reasoning, and timing that goes into where every damn song on the list goes, and why I do what where and when. Most people think "hey it's just a set list", but a poorly arranged set list can break a band.... I know. Anyway, the new songs are:

• Devo - Whip It
• Britney Spears (she's a closet SMiRK fan) - Toxic
• New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle
• Fatboy Slim - Magic Carpet Ride
• Modern English - Melt With You
• The Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star

At least this means I can scrap some of the songs that had no momentum, like Lovesong, from our active gigging list. We'll play it on request but there's a few that I'd like to dump from our active setlist.

Muay Thai was FANTASTIC on Tuesday night. I completely loved it. I'm also completely sore. Sore sore sore sore sore. But it's a good hurt. Don't ask me how I'm going to even hold a mic tonight though. And it's FREEZING!!! Load out's just gonna be fun today and tonight (uhm, NOT). Speaking of load-in -- Wade, if yer reading my blog, load-in's at 6pm at the house tonight, I'll give you a shout around 3:30 or so :)

Now if I could just wipe the silly grin off my face and get a few good solid hours of work in before I go ice skating I'll be in biz.

It Begins.

My first Muay Thai class is tonight. I watched it last night and realized that I really did miss taking tae kwon do. If I'd realized it was going to be that fun, I'dve just brought along my workout gear and hopped right in. And workout it was, it looked pretty grueling.

I don't know how I'm going to get all the work done today that I need to, sneak in some tanning, mail presents to Dad & Josh, get my butt kicked in Muay Thai, then turn around and rehearse the six new songs the band's doing this weekend and next. GAH.

Never mind, you know I'm happiest when my schedule's overextended. ;)

IMAT

By the way, I'm starting Muay Thai over at IMAT (International Martial Arts of Tulsa) hopefully either this week or next week. With the holidays, things have been crazy (more from a gig standpoint than a shopping standpoint), and I'm ready to get settled back into a fun sport.

I took a few years of Tae Kwon Do, but never finished because I got disillusioned by seeing little five year olds promoted in the ranks to black belt, etc. I am of the belief that martial arts are a discipline that takes YEARS to master. It takes time, discipline, self-control, and maturity. I just don't think you see all those qualities in a five year old, I'm sorry.

I'm not one of those types that can stand on a treadmill in a gym day after day. The boredom would make me keel over and get caught in the rollers of the treadmill, ugh. So I'm looking forward to challenging myself with a disciplined sport that requires balance, patience, skill, instinct and strength. Maybe I'll learn something about myself in the process.

Long Week Ahead

I've got quite the week ahead. It's staring me back in the face, eyes unblinking, waiting for me to screw up so it can devour me.

First off.... shopping. Ugh. I am SO NOT A GIRL when it comes to shopping. I hate shopping!! Unless it's CompUSA, BestBuy, or Hot Topic, you won't catch me at a store. So Christmas and I don't always get along. I've gotta finish shopping for Dad & Josh over lunch, and then send it off to Hawaii this afternoon. I'm hoping it'll get there by Friday, but I'm not even sure if the mail runs this Friday.

Next......songs. SMiRK's working on a BUNCH of new songs for the New Year's Eve KHit's party. I think we've got "Video Killed the Radio Star", "Toxic", "Magic Carpet Ride", "Melt With You", "Bizarre Love Triangle", and "Whip It". I *so* have my work cut out for me. Practice is tomorrow night. I don't know the words to "Toxic". Um. At all.

Next.... gigs. SMiRK is gigging three nights in a row this week. Can we say, "bye bye vocal cords?" The 23rd is at Fishbonz, the 24th is at Sidelines, and the 25th is at the Scene. I have no idea if we're going to have crowds or not, it's just kinda unprecedented for us to play that kind of schedule. The Sidelines is a new club for us, although they've been around a long time. It should be interesting.

Drifting

Concentration.
That's been difficult today.
I'm hour counting today.
The seconds are drifting ether in space,
Just numbers floating by in front of my face
but barely seem to move.

If I sing for you would you come for me?
If I dance for you would you smile for me?
Show me that smile that smolders like molten rock
Dust off the ashes collected on my heart.

I thought I might start putting some creative writing blah blah stuff in my blogs instead of plain old journal type entries. Maybe a few short snippets of stuff, even a lyric or two thrown in for good measure (although if you want the rest you'll hafta buy the cd) :D

SO...
distracted.

I did some surfing on Epicor's website and checked out their forthcoming Vista 8.0. I'm impressed! Looks like it took to rev 8 but maybe they got it right this time :) It supports Visual Studio .NET 2003, .NET Framework, and all SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) based. NICE! It's also got support for wireless, CE devices, and a bunch of SLICK integration programs that I'd have had to write myself and customize. Good work, Epicor. Now to convince my company that the upgrade IS a necessary growing pain.

I left my ipod USB Sync 'n Charge at home. My ipod is on its last leg (battery-wise). DYING to listen to music today. ARRGH!

I had SO MUCH FUN over lunch today, I finally got out and went skating. It was part of the reason I took this job was so I could go skate 3x a week and get buff again (ha ha). Now if I could just break these freaking skates in.

Evaluated some software at CompanyX today for their manufacturing. The software they're using has NO relational database, and STILL USES COBOL! Um, eww! Hello? Anyone ever heard of *y2k*? How about going 20 years in the past with your software with no hope of ever pushing data out via xml or asp.net to a website? Insane in the membrane.

My brain's kinda been working on autopilot lately. I've been in a really good mood. Of course I'm usually pretty upbeat anyway... but I've been happier than usual the past.... oh, we'll say 10 days or so. Maybe it's just the season.

Speaking of season, it was a seasonable 20 degrees today. I need some hot chocolate tonight while I work. :)

Quick blog tonight cause I'm pretty sleepy. I didn't get into bed Sunday night until about 2am because I stayed up WAY too late watching the latest Harry Potter flick on DVD. It's kinda nice having the Blockbuster Unlimited Plan where you can have 2 movies out at a time, for as long as you want... I've never been really good with getting movies back on time, heh heh.

So I was about 30 min late to work today because I overslept (as usual). It seems like 7:30am is my sweet spot for having to wake up during the week. Unfortunately I'm supposed to be at work at 7:30am, so it makes that kinda tough :) I reset my alerts on MSN so the weather and news arrive at 6:15 and 6:30am now instead of 8am and 9am... maybe the alert will get me out of the sack. I have a bad habit of getting accustomed to my alarms and then merrily sleeping right through them... grr.

I've been trying to sketch fairly regularly, even if it's a few random loose sketches or scribbles in Alias Sketchbook Pro for 10 or 15 minutes just so I can keep improving. As soon as I redo my site (ha ha) I'll create a link that'll have a bunch more drawings... right now the only way to get to all of them pretty quickly is to navigate to My Art Directory and click on 'em from there.

I took the tablet to bed around 9:30pm to work on some Vista Manufacturing stuff, watched one of their installation training videos. I woke up around 11:30pm. I think I found the cure for insomnia *grins*

Tomorrow night I *MUST* update pics on the SMiRK site. I think I've got several gigs worth of photos queued up that I haven't had time to pull into PhotoshopCS, batch resize, and upload. It'll be nice to be off from gigging this weekend, my voice sorely (ha ha) needs it. I've got the Lufthansa Technik Composite Tulsa Christmas Party (gads that's a mouthful) this Saturday. It's nice belonging somewhere where I actually GET invited to a Christmas party, lol. Kinda weird after having been contractor-pariah for the last 7 years... we never get invited to anything, hahaha!

Ok sleep beckons. Maybe I'll get a whopping 5.5 hours tonight. That's gotta be a record :P

Why can't people seem to discern the difference in spelling between ROGUE and ROUGE? It's one of those things that really drives me bananas! ROUGE is makeup! You know, like BLUSH? ROGUE (from http://www.hyperdictionary.com) means "a deceitful and unreliable scoundrel". It also is a common class to play in D&D or RPG's -- rogues are generally thieves, stealthy, out for their own means, don't follow the pack, etc. HOW IS THIS BLUSH? *snort* Or if someone says "that is a rather rogue app", they mean "it doesn't shut down properly" or "it hogs system usage and doesn't give it back", and so on. Same meaning.

Hmm. That was rather a rant, lol. I've been working too hard again it seems.