just because

the students are coming... the students are coming...
the more independent ones are already here. the ones who get apartments and live on their own, the returning ones, etc. but i'm not talking about them- i'm talking about the new ones. i saw someone giving a tour to a bunch of fresh-faced kids. they're coming. station wagons and minivans here we come. moronic suburban parents see you soon. probably this week i'd guess.
we are getting an astronomical number of hits on our website these days. well, for us anyway- usually it's just a random handful of people who look at a few things.
i have practically nothing to do today. i was up until 3am last night writing sheet music out. i made a list of all of the stuff that needs to be recorded and played live (hopefully) and since it was so daunting i just got started. i am having trouble finding my cheat sheet for alto clef that brandon gave me. it basically just told me what the lowest note on a viola is and the highest and where they are written out in the sheet music. that's all the info i need to be able to figure out how to do the rest myself. so far i've written out the sheet music that i need chris to record, done two arrangements for 'to the sky' that i want to do at one or both of the shows with strings (dependent on which ones actually work out) and then a handful of other things. if i'm feeling really industrious today i should get some scratch tracks recorded. i worked out an arrangement for 'windsong' that kind of surprised me. that's actually what took me so long to get my ass into bed- i was sitting working it out on the guitar before i went to bed. it's really simple harmonically but somehow quite odd and totally fitting for the song. kind of nice because i was really sweating it over what to do for that song and what i came up with is way beyond my expectations, which is rare. i really love writing string parts so much- it's so fascinating how to get everything to work together and even better to get it to work together and really bring out some unexpected results. i'm quite excited to get to work on the strings for the next record. very excited. i think that they're going to be quite nice and such a good time to do something that's really involved with strings because the songs are so stark and open- they will be the perfect vehicle for emphasizing that element.
i'm getting a bit nervous because the reception to 'down to sleep' is starting to go so well that i'm worried that we're going to blow it with the next two releases that we're already working on. i know that it's kind of pointless to get worried about, but nonetheless i think that'd really be a shame for us to blow something good right when it started happening. nevertheless i am going to stick to what i'm working on. if i think that it's good and worth doing then i feel like the rest will take care of itself.
in other ground-breaking news- we have already booked our christmas flights to kansas city. we managed to get a thoroughly decent deal that i am quite happy with. it does kind of suck that we'll be flying in on christmas eve again, but it made quite a sizable difference in the cost. almost $120 for the both of us. we will fly home on christmas eve and fly back on dec. 29th. i think that it might be nicer because we'll be able to relax a bit after the christmas craziness and there's less lead up to it. i'm going to try and plan on playing a show possibly the night before we leave and i'd really only like to do a day's worth of practise with the string players (or just billy as the case may be). if it doesn't work out it's definitely not the end of the world- especially if the show we're planning here works out. i would like to be very careful not to make it a stressful thing. short set- 45 minutes max. relaxed place with decent sound would be nice, or even something with no p.a. would probably work.
for some reason i don't really have much more to say at this point. i'm trying to scrimp quite a bit. unfortunately tips have gone way down lately- they are just nowhere near as good as they used to be. i guess that that's just the joy of being in a recession. la-dee-dah. liz got a massage job, so she's kind of gone now, which is weird. it's good in the sense that it's much easier and fun to be at work without someone that abrasive and negative. it's bad in the sense that she worked tons of shifts and now they are all open and who knows what's going to happen now. there were only three of us on wednesday and it was quite a to-do to get everything done. we had a busy lunch as well. two people cooking and then just me on the register and making drinks. it was tough to juggle the two. i think i did a good job, but i think that my boss thinks that if i'm not running around like a chicken with its head cut off and harried to no end that i'm not really doing anything fast enough. i just try to keep a cool head during times like that. things i can do quickly i do quickly, but most times i just try to multi-task in an efficient way.
going back to chase looms before me. it's on my mind a lot. i'm going to have to get some days off. i don't know why i'm worried about something like that- it's never been a problem there at all. i really shouldn't be dreading it- it's not a terribly difficult job. hopefully they've worked the kinks out of the problems that they had last time and things will be more laid-back. i'm also not sure what they'd have me doing- it definitely won't be the same things as i was doing last time- that stuff was kind of a special case. i also have to get some kind of a walkman and start listening to tapes again because they don't allow mp3 players there anymore. hee hee- listening to tapes again- it makes me laugh. so ridiculous. i think i'd most like to do more data entry type stuff, although i'm sure that they won't need anyone to do that kind of stuff. it'd be nice if i could just go back and do what i was doing before because i didn't really mind it- it was kind of fun actually.
i obviously have spent a long time not saying much of anything in particular, so i think i'm going to end this here.