JUNE BEGINS
Sunday, June 1st, 2025 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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76F and mostly sunny today, going down to 50F tonight.
I slept in until 1PM, awaking naturally with no alarm.
After making coffee, I sat down to pay the bills.
Happily, I was able to pay all the bills, with money to spare, and I'm getting paid on Tuesday, so June's looking good!
Summer in general is looking good, because I'll get two paychecks here in June with a third hitting right on July 1st. But then July is a 3 paycheck month, so two more will follow in July, after the 1st... which means August should also be good!
We get Juneteenth off paid now, thanks to the new contract negotiated last August, and since it hit's on a Thursday this month, I put in for FRI 20 off, and that was approved.
So I've got two, 5-day work weeks ahead, and then the third is only a 3-day work week, with a 4-day weekend!
And, after getting my gas, beer, and groceries today, I'm back at home, and I've booked two hours in Studio C for next Saturday; 3PM-5PM.
Yesterday's session in Studio C was;
- The 4th session ever.
- The 3rd in a row.
- The 2nd in a row with no technical issues.
In other words, my first session was on April 12th, with the song, Reavis 309, which went well, but my pass code didn't work!
Then I went almost a month before booking again, because I was working on the Hughes Energizer, and had to show up at work on Sunday, three weeks in a row.
But after I finally processed those vocals from the APR 12 session, I realized the guerilla stack recording technique was effective, and booked an hour session on SAT MAY 17, which was ruined by my PYLE of shit interface box crapping out.
The first good session with the new MOTU M2 was on SUN MAY 25, when I recorded, Never Rains. Pass code working. No technical issues.
And yesterday was the second good session, in which I recorded vocals for, Magic Monday.
So, it was good to get up on a Saturday, pack my gear, do the walk, climb the stairs, and spend another 90 minutes in C, wrestling the angel of my younger self, through vocal contortions.
And afterward, I did have that feeling again, like I'd just gotten out of the gym... with the endorphins going through my system, as I walked back home to the tower, on a sunny, spring afternoon.
I thought, Magic Monday was gonna be easier to nail than, Never Rains, because it's a more laid back song in a lower key, but... lower notes can also be tricky sometimes, and... there is a part in the end where I'm belting the word, "MONDAY," which was giving me some grief.
It wasn't as high a note as, "RAIN," last week, but I still had to resort to several takes of the word sung in isolation.
I thought 90 minutes would be plenty of time, but as things were, I was recording right up until the last minute... rushing to pack my things at 4:27PM, and walking out the door at 4:31PM.
So, because it's now the start of a new month, and I seem to have a bit of money, I booked 2 hours again, for this coming Saturday.
I will say this; that now that I've made the little treck over to Elgym to record, for three weeks in a row... even though the first of the three was fruitless... I'm finding that I suddenly like my studio apartment a lot more!
There are other factors at play, with that, too... from just the sheer amount of time I've been here, to the fact that summer's come back around without any of the crises and drama that was going on last year.
But finally making progress on the vocals for the album is a big deal to me, and something about walking three blocks, slightly uphill, with a heavy backpack, to another old building in the downtown, to do that work in a little room... and then walking back to the tower again... has changed my mood and my mindset about 1106.
It finally feels like, "home," to me.
Not in the sense of previous homes, like the year I had at Melody Manor after Dad died, or the 12 years I lived at AutumnWood, in a nice little ranch unit, with Jet & Mauli.
Instead it feels like the much older sense of, "home," I used to know in my teens and twenties of... "my room!"
I'm sure I've talked about this in different ways, since moving in here... but it's only recently that I'm actually feeling it!
Feeling that this room I have here, really is my room, like my room at home used to be in the 1990s, or how the back room used to be, in the 1980s, as a teenager.
For example, it no longer seems strange or wrong to have a twin bed right here, in the same room as my computer desk.
Instead it feels perfectly normal, because that's how it always was in, "my room!"
I slept on a twin bed most of my life, before living with Sabrina, where we shared a full bed.
But then I switched to a fold-out couch bed for a while, before finally living with Patti, and the introduction of a queen bed, which she left behind in 2007, and I continued to sleep on all the way up to last July!
Even upstairs at Melody Manor, in Dad's final years, the bed, that big queen bed, was in the front room, with the dresser, while I spent all my waking hours in the back room, with the computer desk, mini-fridge, micro-wave, and little bathroom.
That was like a very small 2BR apartment, simply because I still had my huge bed, in it's own room!
But after living in 1106 for 11 months now, and after having bought the good, comfortable twin mattress last September, I've been sleeping perfectly great on the twin, and it no longer seems strange to have it in, "my room."
It also doesn't seem odd to have a kitchenette in, "my room," either.
Instead it feels like this really cool thing that I never had in, "my room," before!
And the bathroom, of course, is nicer than even the one at Autumnwood had been.
My brain has accepted 1106 as being, "my room," because it's also accepted Allerton Tower as being, "my house."
I mingle with other's occasionally in the shared spaces of, "the house," such as the laundry room, the mail room, the trash room, and the front lobby.
But this new feeling, of being comfortable here, was cemented by these new weekly trecks to Elgym Studios, because that now constitutes a 2nd space, downtown here, that I walk to and from, regularly, with my backpack.
The first of those spaces, is of course, the parking garage, one block away... which I pass on my way to Elgym.
Walking back & forth from, "my house," to two nearby destinations in the downtown, regularly, now makes it feel much more like downtown is an extention of the house... the way a campus is an extention of your dorm building.
And though PVHS isn't within walking distance of home, it's the academic vibe there, that helps to reiforce the idea of my living this campus lifestyle.
And I think being surrounded by teenagers all year, and seeing them do high school things, like sporting matches, and chorus rehearsals, plays, and art shows... has had it's part in connecting me back to that teen/early 20s era when, "my room," was everything!
So, yeah!.. that's where I'm at as June starts, in 2025.
The weekly sessions in Studio C are definitely good for my mental health, as well as being essential for making progress on the album.
So, I'm quite determined to keep going back every week for the whole summer, to imprint the routine, and these memories, into my psyche.
Because it not only makes for pleasant nostalgia... but will also overwrite the shitty, traumatic imprints of last summer!
But I'm good to go, now, in 1106 for as long as it takes.
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