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So I'm sitting here eating Nutella and feverishly trying to figure out bus schedules and bike parking and trying to avoid watching more episodes of Roseanne and I realized I never really updated some of you on the San Jose Saga. Rest assured, we did indeed find a place to live. And it is a nice place to live. It comes with a landlord who reminds me of Jeff Goldblum and a guy who rents out the garage and shares the same name with the landlord (no, it isn't Jeff though) and is a film major. And it's all hardwood floors, which the cat has great fun slipping across trying to chase her toys. And it's a bit smaller than our old place, and more money, but that's just the way it goes.
I kind of like it cozy, anyway.
I'm going to try my best to get back into gardening while we're here. The weather is absolutely fantastic here and I've inherited a bunch of plants, mostly succulent, from a friend who just moved to New Zealand. It was basically everything that didn't die from lack of watering between the time she left and I took the plants. I also got some new basil from Ken, in lieu of flowers, after I completed my first dance recital this month. So far it hasn't died, and I've even got to harvest a little, but there was a heat wave recently and it is starting to flower-- in other words, 'go to seed'. Which is BAAAD for harvesting purposes. I wonder if the Internet has any wisdom for me as far as preventing that. Then again, basil is an annual, so maybe seeds are a good idea.
If you're curious about my dance recital, you can see a vid of the rehearsal here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuPYFCtfUZ4 . The dance was choreographed by Pamela Trokanski, who is one of the few things about Davis I miss. She's a great teacher and I highly recommend her to anyone in the area who hasn't figured that out yet. She's just amazing. Luckily I think I've found pretty good candidates to substitute for the PTDW here, and I'll hopefully be checking one of them out this weekend.
The reason I'm looking up bus schedules is because tomorrow I am going to try to get into some film classes at De Anza College (where our garage-neighbor currently goes). I say 'try' because I am waitlisted for both of them (of course). But hopefully the instructor will take pity on me and I won't have taken an hour-long bus ride both ways for nothing (not to mention stayed on-campus for ten hours since both classes happen to be the same damn day). Oh but who am I kidding, there's an Indian buffet and a Quickly across the street from the college, so it's not like I haven't concocted my own delicious rewards for tomorrow's efforts.
On the music front, Ken and I are trying to finish a 'video song' (see Jack Conte's stuff on Youtube for examples of what the heck that is) for Hypermobility, for some contest he wants to enter. We recorded the piano tonight, and it was just.... oh god, we don't record enough, so it's rare I get to play without having to sing at the same time. It was so freeing to just embellish as I wished and really get into it and focus.
We recorded the strings before we left Davis, with the Dolancs (one half of the Dolanc String Quartet, and just an amazing amazing couple). We'd been subsisting on canned synth crap for so long that it was an absolute joy to hear live cello and violin in our house. I was in awe, and the recordings came out wonderfully. They'll be featured in the song, which hopefully will help all of us get a little more exposure with cross-marketing and such.
The cymbals are also real, since Ken's dad is slowly shipping his drum set to us now that we have a good place to set it up (did I mention this amazing house has a basement?? Well, in California that's a huge deal.). So Ken's learning how to play them as well :)
I'm really proud also of the lighting I've been doing for it. I know next to nothing about lighting, but we have a couple of lamps and bulbs with decent wattage these days, and some 'color gels' (they're really just sheets of colored plastic, wtf, oh yeah, and they MELT) so I've been experimenting and the results are really neat. Everyone has a two-color combination that's somewhat unique, and the lighting is dramatic and moody to match the song.
Anyway, all that's left to record is the guitar and vocals and then we have to put it all together. I can't wait til it's ready to show off.
Besides music I've been trying to draw more. I still have a couple of Art Exchange pieces for 500year_diary to do, which I'm woefully behind on. But then I also signed up for the best_enemies calendar project.... which is due at the end of this month. I started two different drawings before I came up with the idea I think I'm going to stick with. Er. Just in time I guess.
Oh, and I'm trying this all on tablet. It's amazing! I got it for Christmas, but hadn't gotten a chance to really play with it til now. I am probably going to work on the calendar piece some more on the hour-long bus ride tomorrow.
There's probably much more to tell. Time to go to bed, though. Big scary day tomorrow!
I kind of like it cozy, anyway.
I'm going to try my best to get back into gardening while we're here. The weather is absolutely fantastic here and I've inherited a bunch of plants, mostly succulent, from a friend who just moved to New Zealand. It was basically everything that didn't die from lack of watering between the time she left and I took the plants. I also got some new basil from Ken, in lieu of flowers, after I completed my first dance recital this month. So far it hasn't died, and I've even got to harvest a little, but there was a heat wave recently and it is starting to flower-- in other words, 'go to seed'. Which is BAAAD for harvesting purposes. I wonder if the Internet has any wisdom for me as far as preventing that. Then again, basil is an annual, so maybe seeds are a good idea.
If you're curious about my dance recital, you can see a vid of the rehearsal here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuPYFCtfUZ4 . The dance was choreographed by Pamela Trokanski, who is one of the few things about Davis I miss. She's a great teacher and I highly recommend her to anyone in the area who hasn't figured that out yet. She's just amazing. Luckily I think I've found pretty good candidates to substitute for the PTDW here, and I'll hopefully be checking one of them out this weekend.
The reason I'm looking up bus schedules is because tomorrow I am going to try to get into some film classes at De Anza College (where our garage-neighbor currently goes). I say 'try' because I am waitlisted for both of them (of course). But hopefully the instructor will take pity on me and I won't have taken an hour-long bus ride both ways for nothing (not to mention stayed on-campus for ten hours since both classes happen to be the same damn day). Oh but who am I kidding, there's an Indian buffet and a Quickly across the street from the college, so it's not like I haven't concocted my own delicious rewards for tomorrow's efforts.
On the music front, Ken and I are trying to finish a 'video song' (see Jack Conte's stuff on Youtube for examples of what the heck that is) for Hypermobility, for some contest he wants to enter. We recorded the piano tonight, and it was just.... oh god, we don't record enough, so it's rare I get to play without having to sing at the same time. It was so freeing to just embellish as I wished and really get into it and focus.
We recorded the strings before we left Davis, with the Dolancs (one half of the Dolanc String Quartet, and just an amazing amazing couple). We'd been subsisting on canned synth crap for so long that it was an absolute joy to hear live cello and violin in our house. I was in awe, and the recordings came out wonderfully. They'll be featured in the song, which hopefully will help all of us get a little more exposure with cross-marketing and such.
The cymbals are also real, since Ken's dad is slowly shipping his drum set to us now that we have a good place to set it up (did I mention this amazing house has a basement?? Well, in California that's a huge deal.). So Ken's learning how to play them as well :)
I'm really proud also of the lighting I've been doing for it. I know next to nothing about lighting, but we have a couple of lamps and bulbs with decent wattage these days, and some 'color gels' (they're really just sheets of colored plastic, wtf, oh yeah, and they MELT) so I've been experimenting and the results are really neat. Everyone has a two-color combination that's somewhat unique, and the lighting is dramatic and moody to match the song.
Anyway, all that's left to record is the guitar and vocals and then we have to put it all together. I can't wait til it's ready to show off.
Besides music I've been trying to draw more. I still have a couple of Art Exchange pieces for 500year_diary to do, which I'm woefully behind on. But then I also signed up for the best_enemies calendar project.... which is due at the end of this month. I started two different drawings before I came up with the idea I think I'm going to stick with. Er. Just in time I guess.
Oh, and I'm trying this all on tablet. It's amazing! I got it for Christmas, but hadn't gotten a chance to really play with it til now. I am probably going to work on the calendar piece some more on the hour-long bus ride tomorrow.
There's probably much more to tell. Time to go to bed, though. Big scary day tomorrow!
