Tuesday 10th of March, 2009
a perhaps slightly drunken version of my run
Up, sit, breakfast, H => work, I dither, dress and leave as well, after sorting out some invoice stuff.
Maisying, of course. I don't have any credit left on my Oyster card, so I have to walk, which probably does me good.
After Maisying, lunch, then more Maisying, then I go home early, after dithering in Ben's vicinity, hassling him in a time of distress. Then home.
I go out and run around, having located a GPS app for my iPhone. On returning home, it has - amazingly- recorded a perhaps slightly drunken version of my run. Gosh.
Shower, dinner then spend the evening improvising string arrangements.
(I'm still entering the date as 2008 rather than 2009, even though it's already March. That must mean something, though I'm nervous to speculate what it might be.)
Monday 10th of March, 2008
And I wouldn't have liked that. No.
6:00 - Get up, yoga, shave/shower, sitting, breakfast, guitar.
To Walker.
As last week, then. Except with warnings of Biblically bad weather.
Oddly, it seems to be light later than last week, though. Perhaps 2008 has thought better of it and is trying to backtrack.
I finish off some Maisy stuff, and stay to lunch, which is cut short, distressingly. After waiting for the rain to abate, I walk home, and have some food there.
In the afternoon I finally set to the work I should have done over the weekend. Luckily, really, as I was talking to my sister, the editor, at the time and if I hadn't been we wouldn't have noticed a bad glitch, which would have meant I'd have had to do it all over again. And I wouldn't have liked that. No.
At 18:15 to the last Movements class of the term.
Back in the flat at 10:30. I almost send a reply regarding one complaint to a completely unrelated complainant; if I'd not noticed I'd have been very psychologically distressed. Oh yes.
Eat veg curry and watch the last episode of series one of Life on Mars
To bed, then.
Friday 10th of March, 2006
I suddenly feel quite connected
7:20 - Rise, Sitting, Breakfast.
9:30 - Guitar work. Primaries and lots of Bach.
Hanging wet shirts, folding dry shirts and putting them away.
11:00 - To the supermarket with my father for a big-ish shop. Then to Gosh! near the British Museum to buy The Authority Vol. 2 for my nephew's birthday, and to Pro-Tape to buy printable CD-Rs. It appears Pro-Tape no longer to a price list. I notice the difference in my personality when in the shop to when I last went in there to buy media (over two years ago).
I notice that the area at the top of Oxford Street (Charlotte Street down to Wardour Street) doesn't change, and has the same characters wandering through it as it did twenty-five years ago when I first started roaming that area. My father comments that it hasn't changed in forty years. I wonder whether the area attracts particular characters or shapes those who wander into it to its will.
Get back to the flat just in time for Lunch at 13:00.
After lunch I read the Authority book before passing it on.
I finally connect up the photograph printer to the desktop computer and install the drivers on it.
Then some more work on the sound file, which takes me through to Dinner.
Burning a CD of the work I've done today and listening to it. Also writing emails.
I have a newer Powerbook and an older one in my possession - the former will be replacing the latter. I find that the RAM from the older one won't fit in the newer one, the hard way. I also migrate the user from the older Powerbook to the newer one. Tomorrow the older one goes to my sister. The migration process is startlingly painless.
We watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I know one of the actors in a small role. I suddenly feel quite connected, especially as my sister is going out with the editor of Wallace and Gromit. And my father said in the car that his body from the neck down appeared on the cover of Private Eye in the early sixties. From the neck up it was Harold Macmillan (pre-Photoshop days, too).
Watch the extras on Charlie..., I write this and soon to bed.
(I just found the cover on the internet - it was Sir Alec Douglas Home's head on my father's neck.)
Thursday 10th of March, 2005
momentarily awestruck
Up at 6:45-ish; shower; Sitting, then breakfast and to the computer. a number of bits and pieces throughout the day. The morning is full of stuff. I remember thinking I didn't have many spare moments at the time; now I can't remember in detail what I did. Stuff. Dani left for Madrid just after breakfast.
I tend the tea and coffee station at 12:00.
After lunch I feel very tired and crash out for an hour. When I wake up I find that the washing up is waiting for me, so I do it.
Preparing for tea- I put out some of the biscuits that arrived from England with the Guildhall proofs - Hobnobs, Jammy Dodgers, penny sweets and caramel biscuits (from, it is noted, Scotland). Then washing up after tea.
At five, a circle with Ignacio - we run through the various bits we've been working on (with detail work on Vroom) and give B major a shot. After the circle I compare notes on Vroom with Haru.
Dinner is pasta with a sauce containing peas and carrots, which is eminently Kondorisch to my sense.
After dinner I wash up, then it's an evening off. I spend it watching DVDs with Haru - a couple of animations, including one (a very affecting one from Holland); where I get a sudden sense of the work that goes into a slight gesture of the character on screen - a girl's foot slipping on her bicycle pedal - and the amount of patience and control and understanding of the medium and the process that this must entail, and I'm momentarily awestruck.
We also watch an Old Grey Whistle Test DVD.
Just completed tea and coffee; on breakfast tomorrow.
Wednesday 10th of March, 2004
before I start winnowing properly
With the time difference and everything, I don't know whether I'm waking up early or late, but at about 9:00 I'm showered, sat and breakfasted.
My first task is to take a selection of books that I don't like, will not read again and (in some cases) have never read and put them in plastic bags ready for the Charity Shop. That's six plastic bags before I start winnowing properly.
Then I begin to have panic attacks relating to forthcoming penury, and react in the only way I know how (by planning to spend vast quantities of money). Eventually in the evening I get through to Ben who allays some of my fears, sort of confirms others and once again suggests the solution to many of my problems that he has patiently been urging on me for at least twenty years. It's simple, affordable and, as it were, at my fingertips. It's also quite insane in a lot of ways. I must try it.
Creative Studio is lovely, but I notice they stopped putting any genuinely useful new features into it a couple of revisions ago.
Monday 10th of March, 2003
wherever possible avoid scraping
Back to the dentist for a scrape, and also a long lesson in cleaning my teeth, which these days is mainly cleaning the gums - it's a lot more involved than the simple up-'n'down movements that they instilled us with in childhood. There must be research teams and journals dedicated exclusively to brushing techniques. Memo to self: wherever possible avoid scraping.
At home I catch up with bits and pieces and then wander over to Walkers to deliver the Hares stuff. My left foot is hurting quite a bit now. I mention this to Amanda on reception who, in her line of work, sees a lot of ill people. She suggests that it might be a trapped nerve, and I'll go with that until corrected by someone with more traditional medical qualifications. I also travel on the shiny new 360, which goes up Black Prince Road and is a major contribution to public transport in the area. Now there are two buses to wait forlornly for in hopes that one will carry me to Walker.
When I get home the pain is actually quite bad, so I take some pills and lie on the sofa, then do some more bits.
After that it's jazz jam night, and there's no ringer tonight, although there is someone who borrows my bass and plays a bassline interminably and eventually intones something incomprehensible while other people noodle tentatively around him. It sounds like Malcolm Mooney-era Can, and I ought to enjoy it more than I in fact do.
Roland requires more general on-the-toes-ness as usual, which has to be a good thing. I try to keep my eyes on him rather than the score. There is one moment when my concentration slips - a song has been jumping between slow ballad and double time and I drift off and stay in double time when it goes back to slow and come to with Roland stabbing the air in an attempt to get me to slow down. I feel chastened.
I'm winging it more than at other times. I'm not sure what my strike rate is - not that many really bum notes, perhaps not getting the optimum number of roots in.
My solos are good, though.
Sunday 10th of March, 2002
my legs invariably beg to differ
I have to admit, there's something of the shock troop about Gelong Thubten. If there is such a thing in Tibetan Buddhism. And for future reference the answer is "meditate". And I don't need to know what the question is. Things got a bit hard when the question of Karma came up - why is there suffering on a grand scale throughout the world? Well, um karma. Does that mean all the dreadful things that happen to folks are all their own fault Um.
The thing is, other people's karma is none of our business, and if their karma starts to happent o us, well, then its our karma. Or something. And Thubten is a question handler as much as a question answerer. And yes a thought did well up within me. and yes I got exactly the response I suggested yesterday.
Still, meditate more. Sounds like a good suggestion, even if my legs invariably beg to differ.
In the evening I can feel them twitching and complaining, plotting a revenge (probably along the lines of making me walk very slowly for the next few days. Ha! I'll walk very slowly on purpose, and they'll be doing just what I want them to. They'll fall right into my trap.
Ha ha ha!)
How Buddhism drove me into a bloody war with my own legs.
Which I'm not winning.
I also watch a lot of Simpsons episodes and laugh upraoriously.
Hurrah for Korean-made animated entertainment.
Oh, and this years Grand Sacrificial Purchase is underway.
More disappointment from the referrer logs:
#reqs: search term
-----: -----------
1: ciigarette
1: lazerquest edinburgh
1: clip art hoovering
Saturday 10th of March, 2001
Not much to report, really. I get up at the normal time, do my sitting and have breakfast and then start playing with the keyboard. I'm writing strange formless little post-rock/techno things, adding plugins until Cubase crashes and I can't open the file again. This takes me all the way to lunch.
After lunch I just sit around like a zombie. I listen to disc one of Heavy ConstrucKtion - some of the versions have a sort of directness that the album version doesn't. It's all very dark though, particularly knowning that they aren't very dark people. It's probably very good to have a record of this experimental digital rock band - after the European tour on which it was recorded, the strict use of digital drums was slackened somewhat (also, the band expanded the repertoire to include Red and tracks from Discipline). The sound we hear on this album is, effectively, what came through the PA and monitors - it's been tweaked and edited, but not recorded over microphones. So - one set of signals, into the mixer and distributed equally to the PA, monitors and the ADATS the were used to record the live sound. I'm surprised more has not been made of this.
You can hear more of Mastellotto's electronica stylings. I hope they go further in that direction for the new material.
I check out websites that explain Zen Sitting Meditation, to try to improve my morning Sitting. First, I need a cushion. Second I need to find better diagrams - I stare at these for a very long time, but they don't tell me anything new. I can't see what the people in the pictures are doing that I'm not (or nt doing that I am). If I sit cross-legged, after a relatively short time - five or ten minutes - one of my legs goes to sleep. I was hoping that zen could help me in this. But apparantly not.
People ringing my buzzer - my buzzer has always been (by some mysterious selection process that I wasn't party to) the "generic" buzzer for the flats. If there is any doubt, people hassle me. So I've taken to ignoring it. So they either buzz more or go away. Today was a "buzzing more" day. I checked - it was a "wrong number".
Pah.
I debate whether to put the television on, watch the
DVD of Gladiator with Ridley Scott Explaining Everything (like how much
Historical Accuracy they had to make up) or not. Not wins out.
