monkeyplus1

If that last post was dark, it was actually followed by an even darker one that was fortunately left in draft form.A little sunshine mixed with some solitary introspection goes a long way.    

hmm… let’s see.

reading, keeping my book list up to date on goodreads

one of my half-sisters is getting married in Texas. I’ve only met her once, but wish her well.

my house is officially up for sale. The official listing went up last week, but it was my posting on craigslist that brought the first potential buyers. At least a half-dozen people have come to take a look, but so far, no offers.

Something that caught me by surprise. If you go through a realtor, the selling and buying agents will split 5-6% of your selling price. That comes out of the amount of cash I have towards a new house, and in my case, roughly $10,000. POW! right in the ole wallet.

That reminds me, a new addition to words that people commonly mis-pronounce by adding an extra vowel:

so many people pronounce “realtor” as “ree-litter” instead of “realtor”.

like “nuclear” as “nu-kyoo-ler”,

“aluminium” instead of “aluminum”

Why the extra vowel?

We are still looking at a lot of houses. One house that we both like is still sitting on the market, so hopefully an offer will be made on our house, allowing us to make an offer on our next one. The equity we have in our “starter home” should be a great boon in getting a leg up to a much better house, but right now, very few houses are selling in Portland at any price-range.

still working on learning the bass guitar, trying to practice daily. I have had a very sore left-thumb for four or five weeks, hardly getting any better. I think I strained it one night practicing over at a friends’.

trying to get a job; my current one ends in mid-May. I’ve had a dozen phone interviews, and had to turn away one lucrative job due to its location in Beaverton, and another because the pay was only $60k. Lots of fringe benefits, like 75% off classes at the university, but I just can’t afford that much of a pay cut. Living in Portland is not cheap.

My parents are in town for the summer. They retired last year, and now spending their time camping in a luxurious 5th wheel trailer, but spending the summer here to see their grand-kids.

GTA IV comes out next Tuesday. Sounds like the fucking best-game-ever, the fantastic single-player I would have expected, and the 16-player multiplayer that is a great surprise. I’m not going to have much of a life this summer, thanks to this game. I’ve waited three long years for this, though my faith in the company has paid off very handsomely in stock trading (and now the IRS would like their cut).

I’ve got half a mind to call off this search for a new house.

I’m not sure the wife and I will be able to agree on anything, and even though we’re still a week from listing our current house, we’re already at each other’s throats stressing out. Or me stressing her out is more the case.

She’s friends with the realtor, and what the realtor says, becomes law in my wife’s mind. So if I have a different opinion, I’m wrong - I’m no realtor, I don’t know what I’m talking about.

The main problem is, I like new houses, I want something well built, modern, efficient. They see those as “cookie cutter” or “tupperware” houses with lower resale value.

They point out older houses with “updates”, and say those houses have “charm” and “character” and better resale. I see that charm and character as poor design, kooky, irritating, oddball rooms that are difficult to work with. I see the age and I think, that house has gone through how many wet Portland winters? Wood only lasts so long.

The house we own now is kooky, old, and irregular… I’m so done with it, you know?

After weeks of frustration, trying to find a FREE zip-code map of Portland Oregon, I finally struck gold.

why is it so freaking hard? Because some companies want to charge you for that information.  It’s not in the phone book (used to be), it’s not shown on google maps, or at least I don’t know how to see it.

This comes in handy when searching real estate listings by zip-code.  Well, I know the areas I want to look in, but gawddamn if I know the zip code.

Two weekends into recording AOM tracks with Des.  This is Des’ black-metal project, in which I’m contributing semi-musical noise / drone, etc.

There’s been some surprisingly good stuff to come from out, though I’m skeptical how much of it will see the light of day for three reasons.

One, the “Logic” recording software, which Des forked out big bucks to legally own, has killed at least four tracks, failing with a “disk too slow” error. Probably not Logic’s fault, there has to be some process consuming a lot of disk I/O while we’re trying to record. Not my computer to mess with, though - plus it’s running a new OS I’m not familiar with.

Two, failing to arm tracks while recording. Simple human error. This has only happened once, and fortunately, we were able to re-record the track, which sounded to me like a keeper, until …

Three, Des intentionally killing tracks. Probably a matter of his taste versus mine, and the assertion that it is his project after all. One time I was so happy with a track I’d done, as he kept playing the drums I just let my part go, which was a guitar-driven feedback loop. He finishes the drum track, gets up and reviews the recorded track, skips over the bulk, listens a bit to the end drone, says at least that part was kind of decent, and then without comment deletes my entire track. I was heartbroken, like meeting and falling in love with a girl who is leaving town the next day (happened to me once before).

—

This fucking winter is killing me. Seasonal affective bullshit. I have every reason to be happy, but just under the surface is a frightening amount of darkness. Some of it is black-hole introspection, lingering memories of bad shit, remorse for having been a fuckup at times, guilt for being a complete asshole at other times, etc, and some of it is scathing animosity, violently, bitterly angry at some people. It’s been giving me nightmares, too. I was awake last night from 3am to 4:30am, thinking about stuff that happened over a decade ago.

The last time I was so morose during the winter, a full-spectrum light did the trick. Time to go buy a new one.

yeah, good times. Aside from the seasonal funk, things are actually good. Learning to play the drums, forcing the ring and pinky finger muscles in my left hand to properly hold the frets on my bass.

happy new year, 2k8’s gonna be a good one.