It's only been 162 days....that's not even half a year (10/9/18)

Hey look, a wild blog update appears.

It's been only 162 days since I last had the gumption to write on this pseudo-narcissistic echo chamber of a blog wall/website, and a few things have changed in my life. First, I'm gaining weight again, damn these American cities and their predisposition of a design to need to own and drive your own vehicle to get from place to place, forget about any "walking" or "unintended exercise." I'll have to start going out of my way to keep slimming down, although not all the pounds added have been just pure Awful Awful.

Some of that swoll-ness (or swollen-ness if you prefer) is due to the job I have had and continue to be a part of since last May. In short, I life heavy things, take direction, wear exclusively black (yes, even my undies), and play with various amounts and lengths of cord. No, I don't work at a saucy, black leather, house of ill repute, I am in fact the sound guy. Yeah, you know the one. You go see a live show somewhere and you set your drink next to one of lights, only to realize its being operated by some dude in black. The show ends, or is in-between acts, and you seem teams of these seemingly innocuous darkly clad clansmen rush the stage and quickly throw things at one another, including cheeky insults. Yep, that's me.

Thankfully, after a few months of fairly pure grunt work, (and some re-learning about some cord wrapping), I was asked to stay on through the slower season and get trained to be upgraded to Grunt+. Now I also touch faders and knobs, plug in more delicate cords, and bang stuff with a hammer, in addition to lifting heavy things. Neat.

In all seriousness however, I'm deeply grateful for this job and what I'm learning there. This is pretty big potatoes compared to what I did in high school, running the sound board and management for the various gigs our choir and fine arts department had to do. Now I'm feet away from some pretty well known names, Ice Cube, The Village People, Billy Ray Cyrus, B-52s, and I'm getting to meet their sound engineers and experience the whole behind-the-scenes aspect of large live shows, from first setup to last take-down. Not to mention, some pretty smart mentors, allowing me to figure things out on my own, most of the time, and being supportive of my questions and my occasional inadequacy in order to mold me into a better engineer. My ear for design is getting stronger, my arms and back are getting some use, and the best part is that I really do enjoy going to work. That, of course, begins largely with the wonderful people I work with, who luckily have the same amount, if not more, of the dark humor, laughter, and energy that I feel. Next mission is to get as smart as them, and I'll get there as soon as I can figure out what half the words they say actually mean. Seriously, you want me to plug the what into the who now? And then check the whatsit for any schnog-morfs, after I have set the transivitifier to nominal?.....Okay, yeah, I'll get right on that.

Secondly, on the composition side of things, I've just finished a project with my uncle from Sweden to arrange some songs for his jazz ensemble + Voices Without Borders, an organization that gives refugees the chance to share their culture through music. I've really been able to cut my teeth with it, and I'm happy with how it turned out. On the coolest note, I might be able to actually journey to Sweden for a couple days and see the performance! So, we'll see where that leads.

All in all, I'm in a good place. Oh, I also went to Europe for a 2 week choir tour, where I did sound and performed. European beer man, and I met some lovely people that turned out could stand me for that long, so that's awesome. Got hit on by some German grandmas, who were impressed I decided to come back to the same pub twice after being pretty embarrassed at my lack of German, learning like two new phrases in between.

Life things can wait until another time. I'm still figuring out how much to write on this thing, but suffice to say, I'm doing okay.