Monday Musical Madness

As they say in Utah, oh my heck! The show at Urban Lounge was easily our best yet, owing much to a greatly improved violin rig and a deft setup by the house's sound man. In case you were wondering, our fiddler used the pickup I got in Tucson and played through our drummer's amp, which was miked along with everything else and fed through the house PA. Other factors contributing to the high quality of the sound included miking the drums (the kick in particular), and the best monitor setup we've played through yet. Every member of the band had their own dedicated monitor wedge, and the engineer made specific mixes for each of us. For example: the drums and bass had mostly each other in their respective monitors, the makings of a tight rhythm section, while I had a little bit of everything and a lot of my own mic. I can't stress enough how great the sound was on stage; pretty much every other show I've played has found me straining to hear the band, and especially my place in it. In the past I haven't been able to hear my voice, resulting in my pushing it too far, hurting my throat and the audience's ears. Thank you so much, Urban Lounge, for your professional stage and sound!

We weren't the only ones who benefited from the exceptional audio. The bluesy band that followed us, Candy's River House, sounded just like the gun-slinging pros that they are. The Wild Ones, seeming to disregard the owner/soundman's concerns about recent noise complaints and excessive stage volume, blasted the crowd with a sonic assault more evocative of a festival or stadium than a nightclub. The next group was an amalgamation of recent transplant Ammon Waters, who was releasing a single, and The Red on Black, and they sounded great as well. Everyone involved had a good time, sounded great, and even got a little bit of pay.

While I am beginning my job search in earnest today, I am also going to continue working on my home recoding projects. Last week, on the eleventh anniversary of "9/11", I recorded and posted some of my songs relating to my military experience. There are several more, and I'd like to get them polished to a high sonic sheen, with hopes of releasing them this coming Veterans Day in November. Also in the works is a bumping, thumping, sardonic punk song to be performed with The Wild Ones' energetically bad-ass singer. Stay tuned for a demo!

Pre-Tour Decompression

I have been very busy these past few weeks, getting everything lined out for the "Greyhound Run-Around" bus tour, and doing a lot of work around the house and in the garden so that I'll have less to worry about while I am out on the road. This past weekend, with the trip looming ever closer and most of my preparations complete, I took off for the weekend on a whim. I hopped a ride with the Remodel Man up to the Uintas, which are a series of mountains and forests rising up from the mountain plains East of the Wasatch Front. It was a good little adventure, and certainly more relaxing and restorative that simply hanging out around the house feeling anxious. Above you can see our first campsite, in a nice meadow atop a ridge.

I also managed to capture some nice images of the sunset, which was a rich and fiery orange, probably due to the great plumes of smoke in the air from the half dozen or so wildfires burning throughout the state. It the fading twilight, after some experimenting and failed attempts, I managed to get the following panorama, with the moon and sunset both in the wide frame:

Our second day camping was filled mostly with driving, as we explored the high desert landscape surrounding Red Creek and its namesake reservoir, which we camped near on the second night. We did a few small bush-whacking, trailblazing hikes, especially around our campsite, situated in a spring-fed grove of cottonwood and other deciduous trees. I got up early yesterday morning to check out the wildflowers, then we both explored the highest part of the lonely copse. Now, I have one final busy day of packing, double checking, last-minute errands, and finally I will get on the bus this evening, bound for Lincoln and the beyond. I'll just have to think of this if I get too stressed out on the road:

Internet Magic!

Well, if everything goes as planned...this post will pop up, like magic, Thursday morning, while I am miles and miles away in the San Rafael desert. Back on Wednesday, Frog was incessantly pestering me to hurry up and get ready, hence the brevity.

Today we should be meeting up with our fellow campers in the afternoon, after a nice day of putting around looking for some nice stones. I've taken up 'rock-hounding' as a hobby; there is a lot of nice mineral material in Utah. There are gemstones, like topaz and garnet, and also lots of larger rock material to use for landscaping.

So not only is the internet magical enough to let me schedule blog posts for when I am away, it has cool sites like this interactive map that shows you all of the 'public pits' and landscaping material collection sites.

"This land is my land, this land is your land..."

Things I Like: Friday Unrelated Information Edition

* I like '90s Alternative music. I like it, big time. Probably this is because, like so many rock & roll youth, it was the first music that I felt was mine. It wasn't my parents' music that I also happened to like, it was mine. Alternative was the musical choice of most of my peers, but once I was listening to the then-awesome local radio station, I discovered and treasured a lot of music. Here are some awesome musical selections for today:

"Possum Kingdom" by The Toadies - I think every band needs a song with a part where you sing "Do you wanna die?" I wrote one!

"Not An Addict" by Kay's Choice - One of my great regrets from that time in my life (no, there isn't some kind of addiction sob story, relax!) is that I didn't go to a dream lineup show featuring Tonic, The Verve Pipe, and the late edition of Kay's Choice.

"Semi Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind - Who can forget this song? It is almost more 'Top 40' than alternative, but then I don't like genre labels; that is part of what was so cool about the KFMA in Tucson in the '90s, they played all kinds of different new music.

* I like finding fashion treasure at thrift stores, having it come to me as gifts, or especially getting hand-me-downs. Here is SLC, we've got the trusty " D. I. ", and of course Savers and other thrift stores, as well as a robust consignment shop scene. There is even a small but awesome thrift store literally down the block and around the corner from my house - "Ben's Closet Gently Used Clothes". There is no online listing or review that I can find...maybe I should make one? Below is an outfit for tonight that is made entirely of those items:

The camel hair jacket is from the DI, as is the shirt;

The trousers are inherited from my paternal grandfather;

The pocket square was a gift this past Christmas (and matches my paint and school colors).

* I am dressing up a little for a loft-warming dinner party that I am hosting tonight. I am going to make this, it is the best dish I know how to cook reliably. I am also going to shave my project honor-beard; I started letting my beard grow when we started putting in the loft, and while the whole house isn't done, I did some of the last stuff that needed done in the loft today - installed a bathroom mirror, a robe hook, and wooden pegs to hold my belts in the custom closet that is also part of the 1/2 bathroom. Now I think the time has come to call the loft officially done, welcome my friends with a nice meal and some chillin', and shave off this itchy beard.

Get Dressed, Do Nothing

Well, I am pretty bored. No school anymore, my friends around the neighborhood are giving me the cold shoulder, the work around the house depends on things besides my motivation. Finally, and perhaps worst of all, my left forearm an fret hand are sore - dear god let it not be tendonitis - so I can't play guitar at all. It is this kind of restless boredom that inspired this:

Holes in sheet-rock beaten in rage, want that power but I'm too afraid

To escape these four walls, nowhere to go but down the hall

No one to call, nothing to say, that you haven't heard a hundred better ways

Putting on my finest clothes, all dressed up, nowhere to go

And I want to say something so true

It drives the hook right on through

But I stumble on my words again

The truth is so damn hard to bend

Flip on the tube just to see what I'm missing out on the street

It's nothing much I'd care to do if I can't spend that time with you

And I want to say something so true

I've not atoned for my crimes except to write these rhymes

But it sounds good, to me, a better waste of time than sleep

I want to say something so true

So why can't I even try to drag myself outside?

Into the sun, have some fun, before it all comes undone

'Cause when I come out, all about, I see the shadow of your doubt

Stalking the streets, haunting our sleep, like the ghost I was born to be

I want to say something so true

It drives the hook right on through

But I stumble on my words again

Oh no, I lost another friend

Things I Like: Plants

I've been thinking that I would like to get some houseplants for the loft. I may be able to put together a cool indoor herb garden just by taking some cuttings from the garden. I think that would be pretty easy...to just cut an aggressively perennial herb like oregano in half and grow a small clone indoors. That would be what one would call a 'clone', right? It used to be one plant, now it is two living independently, but they still have identical DNA? For all of my practical knowledge about gardening and growing all kinds of plants, I feel like my deeper scientific and biological understanding is stuck at around a high school level, sustained by nature and science documentaries.

Having small versions of plants from outside being in the loft would be better than no plants, but, part of what is so cool about growing plants indoors is that you get to grow awesome plants that would never make it a varied and sometimes harsh climate like the one in SLC.

Plants are so cool! Exempli Gratia - I've seen a thirty or forty year old christmas cactus that had grown 3'-4' around, necessitating transplant into a big five gallon pot. Humans get old and feeble somewhat early in their lifespan, while many plants will only be growing and growing and gaining new strength all the time for most of their life, which can be thousands of years. Wow! Yeah, I like plants.

Things I Like: Accounting

I am in the second semester of my junior year as an accounting major, and I after some recent reflection, I'd like to reaffirm my happiness with my selection. Textbooks often refer to accounting as "the language of business", and I think that as a well-established scientific system, it also functions as the rules of business. Knowing the rules enables one to effectively play the game.

When my enlistment in the Marine Corps ended several years ago, I knew that I wanted to do something in business. I had come to this realization when it occurred to me that every job out there belongs to some kind of business. Further, almost everything in life functions like a business, at least on some level or in certain ways. I was pretty ignorant when I started college, and without a lot of direction; "business" is, like I've said, broad and far-reaching. So those first few classes definitely informed my choice, one of which happened to be Financial Accounting 1.

I'll admit, at first I didn't get it. I was perplexed by the double-entry system, wherein every transaction is recorded twice, effecting two different accounts. This is the system of debits and credits...am I losing you already? Further complicating the matter, transactions are recorded in a journal, a chronological list, and then later posted to a ledger, a collection of all the different accounts and their balances. Still not getting it, eh? Okay, so here is the thing - some accounts (usually assets, like cash or a house, and expenses, like your electricity bill) have a debit balance, while others (liabilities, like your mortgage loan; equity, your net worth as an individual or the book value of owners' stakes in a business; and revenues, like your paycheck or sales) have a credit balance. Wow...you sure look confused - I did too!

This is where it all fits together: the entire system is based on the accounting equation, which states that:

Assets = Liabilities + Equity

So...those double entries each effect, in some way, both sides of the equations. Therefore, the equation stays balanced. Okay, so I know that no one except people familiar with accounting have any idea what I'm talking about. But that's okay, I don't think anyone is reading this blog anyway (*wink*). Still, when all of this finally clicked in my head, I knew that I had found my education path and my place in the world of business. Why? Because the equation has to balance. Everything is assigned values, and though these change, the equation stays balanced. You can be relatively sure that everything is at least mostly right if your accounts all balance out.

This is all very basic stuff; I think I have just poorly explained the first two days of class. It gets so much better. These accounts and their balances are used to prepare financial statements, which tell you all sorts of things about how a business (or, say, your personal finances) are operating. You can then do all manner of analysis with the data, giving you even more valuable information. Management and the marketing department can talk all day about pricing strategies and their big new global initiative (and I don't mean to downplay those people and disciplines; they are extremely important), but the financial statements lay it out plainly to see for those who know how to read them. The "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" book series by Robert Kiyosaki, though mostly a giant fluff piece by a hustling snake oil salesman, did contain one great piece of advice: "Learn to think in financial statements". If more businesses stopped to think about exactly how that decision they're making is going to impact not just the bottom line, but the intermediary steps on the financial statements, and how that is going to impact all the various means of analyzing and comparing and projecting...well, I think we'd get far less stupid decisions.

So there you go, world. I like accounting. It works.

Things I like: Cufflinks

Okay, so I proposed to share my limited knowledge about fine mens clothing, and the single item that launched me into the wide world of tailored suits and custom shirts was french cuffs and cufflinks. I received my first french-cuffed shirt and cufflinks as a birthday present some years back from Better Living, and so began my 'fancification'.

Okay, let's start at the very beginning. French cuffs have a "double cuff" - twice the amount of fabric at the cuff that is folded back on itself. Also, french cuffs have no buttons, just button holes, and must be fastened in some manner. Enter the cufflinks. So why do I like french cuffs and links? Well, there are two main reasons, which are both actually very practical. The first is, a french cuff seems to me to more properly fill a suit sleeve. It just seems made to fit; it takes up the whole space and makes the sleeve conform nicely. A french cuff sitting rightly in the sleeve will provide a nice skeleton for the jacket sleeves, making the buttons and their little flap of fabric actually stand up. The second reason is that good cufflinks (mine are sterling silver and pretty chunky) weigh the shirt sleeve down so it doesn't ever get stuck up in the suit jacket; it hangs perfectly on your wrist at all times.

Now, there are some choices when it comes to what kind of links you want. The cheapest option, and I think it is pretty fashionable, is "silk knots". These are little fabric knots which take the place of proper cufflinks; I like them and would probably buy some if I ever saw them in a shop. They allow a dash of color to get added in, which does admittedly perplex me a tad, but I've seen them around and they look handsome enough. Then there are the double-stud style of metal cufflinks; these have a larger stud that goes on the outside of the cuff connected by a curved metal band to a smaller stud on the inside. Now, some people prefer these as you get "double the mileage" out of your links as there are flashy studs on the inside of your cuff as well as the outside. I prefer the final option, toggle cufflinks, over the double-stud style for a number of reasons. First, they are the most plainly obvious. There is no doubt that yes, those are in fact cufflinks, not elaborate buttons or snaps or some such. Second, the straight metal bar and the toggle really make the cuffs take a nice shape: a nice, crisp "kissing cuff" where the two sides of the cuff are snug and flat against one another. The curve in the metal link on the double-stud style (necessary because otherwise the link would be really short and difficult to get between those four buttonholes) tends to, in my opinion, leave the cuff rather loose and unshapely, letting the extra fabric puff out to each side. This makes them look, to me, sort of like unbuttoned barrel cuffs. This loss of definition defeats, for me, one of the major advantages of the french cuff I espoused above: the shape.

Alright, that's all for now. I'll try to get some fun pictures up in the future.