Been a busy year, I am in fact still alive and still writing things that will eventually appear here, but the career – and this is generally a good thing – is keeping me busy. I’ve spent a lot of time writing for the blog on my business website, but I greatly prefer to keep my personal and business life separate, at least as far as the internet is concerned, so nothing here links to there. If you know me and interested enough to want to look at lighting crap, you know the web address where you can read that blog.
Yesterday was Thanksgiving day, and we spent it at Girlbert’s grandparent’s house. The food isn’t the best, but her grandparents are some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, and quite lovely to be around. Me and Girlbert spent some time together watching one of her cousins, which was…not fun. Her cousin is twelve, and pretty overweight, and not really, er, engaged in any kind of way. She just sat at stared at the TV, then took a nap, then ate a bag of marshmallows. GB didn’t know how to interact with her, I certainly didn’t, despite the fact that interacting with kids is kind of my thing. Her parents are in the midst of a particularly nasty divorce, which I’m sure is taking its toll, so perhaps it was a good experience for her to be able to simply sit and enjoy some peace and low-key quiet time with her cousin and myself. Yeah, I’ll go with that.
I spent some time at the Touring Career Workshop last month, and met one of my heroes in the industry, Chris Lisle, who paid me several flattering compliments about the work I performed for him / them that night, and I was able to give him my business card so hopefully that will lead somewhere awesome. I don’t know that I’d necessarily leave the tour that I’m currently on for anything less than a full-on designer position, but if – as the year wears on – this tour’s schedule doesn’t start really picking up for the 25th Anniversary thing, I’ll more strongly consider making a move, if one were to become available. I have a friend on the inside of a tour that is currently designed by Smug Jerk, so we’ll see if I can work that contact and make it go somewhere cool. Probably not, since the production company I work for is big on this guy, and only this guy, and once told me that “[VP] doesn’t consider designers other than [Smug Jerk]”. Well, great for them, I guess, but we’ll see how long that lasts.
In other news, I recently completed my latest musical work, March of the Puppies, and you can hear it by clicking that link, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m finally getting to the point of “not super duper happy with Logic’s built-in orchestral percussion sounds”. They’re not horrible, but neither are they really meant for what I’m using them for. There are some really nice sample libraries that have been released, but I’m not willing to shell out $500 for a percussion-only library. What I’ll probably do is save several hundred dollars and buy a lesser library that will still work with my old Mac Pro for my next composition, which I’ve already started writing. We’ll see.
Exit, stage left.
Sparks