Into February
Sunday, February 2nd, 2025 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio |
42F and partly cloudy tonight, going down to 36F
After another lazy, no-pants Saturday, February's off to a good start today.
First thing with my coffeee, I sat down and paid all the bills.
Then I ran out for groceries, gas, and smokes.
Then back here, I vacuumed, did a bit of cleaning, and hung up my Valentine door hanging on the window with a suction cup hook.
There was $820.00 less in the bank this morning than on the first of the month for Jauary, December, and November.
I'm still doing fine, but that's concerning.
I only spent about $150.00 on Amazon in January, and maybe another $150.00 on the car, so that's $300.00.
All I can think is that the other $500.00 went to cigarettes? Because I did smoke WAY more than normal through January.
That's what happens to me, when I get into the groove of just sitting at home all weekend in my long underwear, painting or doing other creative projects.
I tend to chain smoke, and blow through a whole pack in the blink of an eye.
For the past couple years, I was smoking about two packs a day, and occasionally I'd have to buy a third pack for the day, but that would even things back out for another few weeks.
And I had an emergency pack that was almost never used, but once in a blue moon I might have to smoke two or three out of that.
But this past month I kept running out so fast that I'd be buying third and fourth packs every few days, and also blew through, like three emergency packs!
So... I need to cut that shit out!
But January was a pretty intense month... with a fairly severe, two-week cold snap, the TikTok craziness, and the bullshit that's been going down since Trump took office.
It's normal to be in, introspective hybernation mode, in any January... but this one gave me more reason to stay in my shell... and smoke.
Also, there's just the general lack of, on-my-feet projects to do anymore.
No house or yard to maintain, and no pets to walk or worry about.
When I first moved here, I was in and out all the time... not yet comfortable to spend a whole day in the flat.
And for months I had little projects around here to take care of.
So... Yeah...
January 2025 lead me to an unusual level of solitude, for a lot of different reasons.
And that lead to a lot of chain smoking.
Okay, I'm all clean & shiny, and the laundry is done, and put away.
I've been working on, Bed in the Suburbs tonight.
This was one I still hadn't strummed the guitars for, so I had to do that first, before working on the dynamics.
The drums got some tweeks, while going through each pattern to adjust the dynamics.
And it's sounding pretty good, but now I need crickets for the background in the verse parts.
It's possible I can use a track from Snoozefest.
Out of all of them, there's one where I managed to get only field crickets, without any annoying bush crickets.
It was an overdub of two different recordings in the front yard... what was it called?..
Oh yeah!.. Milky Way!..
"Possibly the single best cricket recording I've ever produced!.. Milky Way has a nice orchestra of field crickets in the foreground, as recorded in the front yard, where the monotonous trill of the bush crickets is not nearly so loud.
Field crickets seem to prefer hanging out near the street, and I think it's because they evolved to sing in open spaces, with grass intermixed with rocky patches... and also like to sing by the light of the Milky Way, which, 30 million years ago, was pretty bright on a clear night, all night long.
My theory here, is that field crickets think that the street lights and porch lights ARE the Milky Way.
This track was a mix of recordings done on August 16th, and August 25th 2022, when the field crickets were at their best (other nights, because of temprature and rain, they weren't so good)."
This should work for, Suburbs.
But damn! does this take me back!.. because this was the fateful August of 2022 where I not only adopted Snoop & Prowly as kittens, but when Dad spent a week in the hospital, nearly dead from a combination of kidney issues and a lung infection.
Right before I sought out the job with GeoStaff.
That's a whole lost world now!
Two and a half years later, and Dad's gone... house is gone... cats & dog are gone... Trump's back in power... and I'm living downtown, working at a high school, and recording an album?
The future really is, impossible to predict!
Speaking of time, we're in the middle of 7 Spades week, meaning it's mid-winter!
Today was Groundhog Day, the secular counterpart to Imbolc, or, the mid-winter celebration.
To me, the past seven weeks have flown by!
Seems like the winter solstice was just yesterday.
Now I'm suddenly under the gun to get the car to pass emissions before month's end!
We're gonna be back into the suit of Hearts in no time!
°¦}
