Still around…

First of all, this Parts and Labor video is incredible.

This week has been deceptively exhausting. I’ve started work on the “Insider’s Guide to Beijing,” which is a yearly-updated guidebook. It’s a pretty cool project to have, and I’m in charge of both the music section and the adult education chapter (studying at universities in China, etc). There’s a lot of material that’s re-used from year to year, so by no means is it an insurmountable task. The only thing is, it can be excruciating arriving at the office in the morning, sitting down at the computer, and basically just saying to yourself “I’m going to make progress on the chapters.” I’ve read over previous issues of the book so many times that I think I might go crazy. It’s hard to not feel compelled to change the chapters a lot to keep them interesting, but after 4 years of being published, sometimes it doesn’t make any sense to reinvent the wheel. So basically: this past week = a lot of thinking, a few odd pages of hopefully useful notes. A little bit tiresome.

Hot and Cold played Thursday at D-22, to probably about 10 people. There was no applause; complete dead silence between songs. Simon and I were both pretty tired, and I felt as though it went terribly in a legendary sort of way.

The day after, though, I listened to a recording of the set that Caitlin had helped us make, using our Fisher-Price “My first cassette player.” And thankfully, it was pretty great. Or pretty less-bad. Either way, much more enjoyable at a second listen. We’re now trying to transfer the cassette onto Simon’s computer…

Did I mention last weekend we played on a boat? Like, the floating kind. Moored on a scummy green canal not far from our house. There were love seats in the lifeboats. I attacked the drum set with an inflatable pink dolphin.

A good time was had by all.