Yep, thats a "Grunge" pedal. Don't laugh. It sounds great for my purposes. why should I spend $100 on a "good" distortion. I don't sound "good" anyway. You can now hear my stuff on myspace if you wish to hear it. This setup will not be heard on line for a little while, because I have no place to set up and record now. Small apartment 2 rooms. Need too much time. The recorded stuff was done with the DOD preamp and a Line 6 Echo Park.

Why is it so hard?

I find myself needing a cigarette sometimes still. Usually when it is cold outside and I have just had some spicy food. This time of year is gonna be hard for me. I kept the smoking thing a secret from my parents and other family members because I had quit years ago due to almost dying. Shame. Anyway, the holidays are hard because of so much stress, but I hope that the lack of nicotine in my body will make me feel less stress than before... We shall see!

Hello again

It has been far too long. Jennifer and I have started the whole diet thing seriously. It has been a week now. I figured it would be best not to mention a diet till I knew we were gonna be on it for more than a week. We are both happy with it. We know that we have made the right decision. I feel very good about this now. I feel better and have more energy. I now realize that I thought I felt better after quitting smoking. We are doing the whole "Weight Watchers" flex plan with the counting points. It is fun and I find that I only eat a little less than I used to. Yay! Pants are loose! Let's celebrate with cheese!

Thanksgiving

The Holidays. Dieting. Yeah right! Fat chance! I love eating stuffing so much I can't stand it! There is no way that I can do it now. I have to though. I am going to have to really work hard. This means A LOT of exercise including cardio. God I hate cardio. I also plan to do a lot of yoga too. Maybe this will help with the eating thing as well. Who knows?

Here it comes again. When it gets cold outside...this was my favorite time to smoke. Especially after dinner. So far, so good, but I was tested the other day with a lot of traffic and a long wait. Ran into an old friend that smokes like a chimney. The way I used to. Actually did not bother me too much. I DID have body aches after being exposed to the smoke for a while. This is a reminder that it IS a toxin and it IS killing us. Not that I am a Nazi about it. Hell, I smell all kinds of bad things besides cigarette smoke that is just as harmful or worse. I just am having problems lately. That's all. I just got over a bad cold, and I can see where I was going wrong before. I get better when I don't go outside to smoke a cigarette while I am sick. Somehow I would not see this simple logic when I was a smoker.

Uhhhhhhhhhh....Richard!

I meant to post this a couple of days ago...I think that it is SOOOO funny when some guy calls in and is really mean and rude and then when I get their name, it is "Richard". This makes me smile every time. Hell, I laugh before I get to the name because I am wondering if their name really is "Richard". BTW, I have always wondered why you would be called "Dick" when your name is "Richard". I understand "Rich" (well, maybe not...), "Rick", "Ricky", but not "Dick". Most importantly, why would you choose to go by the name "Dick" when your name is "Richard" (I hate quoties) anyway?

Bingo! I have actually got something accomplished. I got a "light snake" and transferred my 3 tapes to our computer. Today, I cut out a few songs and converted them from wmv to MP3 and edited them with Audacity. I then uploaded them to myspace. The tracks I uploaded were called Knee Jerk, OM alone, and Shelly. These tracks replaced a few of my least favorite ones that were recorded on a cell phone's voice note recorder. I am happy enough with the results to post them to myspace. I did a little editing with audacity. Adding reverb and quantizing any off time delay effects. I felt compelled to layer in some sounds I have collected including some from "SETI". Shelly has no lyrics at this time because Jennifer and I are still working on them, but Knee Jerk does. The lyrics are posted on myspace as well. Jennifer sings on one of my recordings of Knee Jerk. It is a song about recognizing the power of fear in our lives and attempting to avoid avoidance. I am truly proud of OM alone which was a one shot deal. I was really in a trance or something and this noise just came out. I was really honing in on some extra terrestrial transmittions then. I think I had a string of drool about a yard long too...I cried after this one.