Dyniss

Squirrel Seeks Burial Plot

During my veggies-and-hummus lunch munching outdoors today, I intently watched a squirrel foraging for his lunch. This was behind Old City Hall in Toronto, where there is minimal greenery. There are some trees, but they are the type which are small and surrounded by concrete except for openings just around the base of the tree trunks. And there’s no green at the bottoms, just wood chips to help retain water for the water-starved trees.
Anyway, this squirrel was doing a fine job of retrieving nuts out of one tree across the street and then making his way back to find places to bury them. I was all of fascinated, happy and sad at the sight of him trying to do so. He went from one isolated tree to another, sniffing at “nature”, but concluding that he couldn’t bury a nut in the wimpy wood chips (Acidic? Poor consistency?). He paused once where there was a crack in the sidewalk, as if he could smell the earth below and somehow stuff his nut down there. After much meandering each time, the final resting place for the nuts was always in the 4-foot-high concrete plant holders in front of the building on whose steps I sat. I could tell the squirrel was reluctant each time. The planters were filled with weird “plants”.
Did the squirrel succeed or fail?

Vegetarian Food Fair

Yesterday I volunteered at the Toronto Vegetarian Food Fair. I’ve attended this fine show at Toronto’s Harbourfront for many years. What a great event for somebody like me! The volunteer part was easy — you can choose to do a 3 hour shift doing any number of things as a minimum contribution. That’s what I did, selling the Toronto Vegetarian Association‘s t-shirts, buttons, stickers, and paraphenalia at one of their tables. They were super-organized, including supplying our table with a cell phone with key people’s phone numbers properly programmed in for you to buzz in case you needed help. And everything was labeled brilliantly. Actually, it was pretty anal. Perhaps being anal comes with being a vegetarian? I can be an anal vegetarian sometimes. Hmm…
Many veggie-minded vendors and attendees were there, and I sampled a lot of food.
Oh yeah, I was asked to be a performing musician at the Fair a couple of months previously. But even though they had planned to have a lot of things set up, they did NOT include a sound system. I decided not to play because nobody would be able to hear me playing my meek little songs unplugged outdoors. So much for playing my 4 veggie-oriented songs to a target audience.

Beatles Cover Night

Tonight I went out to see Bullseye Records‘ live performance of a new double-cd of all Beatles covers. It was a pretty pleasant night — nice to see a big Beatles band with genuine horn section. I bought the $20 cd. It looks like a kooky compilation. 50 covers! I’ll let you know how good it is…

New Blog is UP!

Yay, my new blog is alive! Holy crap, I spent so much frigging time making this thing — and it’s not even fancy. No drag-and-drop options for building this puppy — I had to type some frigging CODE and stuff! *shudder*
But it’s neato-mosquito. Anything written previous to this date had to be imported from my online “diary” I was keeping as a blog.
Thanks to whoever the hell is involved with WordPress for creating a basic template to work from, and having what seems to be a cool community with a helpful forum. But I wouldn’t recommend undertaking building your own blog from it if you’re only good at using word-processors and such things.

Ejected from The Fortunates

A few weeks ago I got the boot from The Fortunates. Lucky for me, it wasn’t because I was an ass or anything. The reasoning I was given was, “It’s just not going in the direction we originally planned. We wanna be a rock band with a lead guitarist.”
Eh? Tell me this 8 months into the band? (I was the acoustic rhythm guitarist and one-third frontperson.)
Everything in the band was going fine I thought, up until the moment the band got some free recording time. My songs were excluded from the band’s recordings, which was dandy — I was spending my time on my own new recordings at home. I was, however, a wee bit upset when it turned out I wasn’t even going to cut any guitars or backup vocals with the band. But no matter. When I was asked by Maindude for his electric guitar back, the way he asked for it felt all wrong.
Suspicions were correct — a few days later, I was ejected.
When I e-mailed the band after (only one member replied), I said that I wasn’t pissed, just pretty sad. But as I told Maindude, I’ve been in many bands before, and we’re adults, yadda-yadda. It was a fun time — I had a LOT of laughs — but now I move on! It was a very memorable musical chapter in my life. I will miss the rehearsals and the guys. *sniff*

Bad Blog

I’ve submitted my new record for a couple of record reviews, been writing new songs, and working on my new website. I’m no longer part of The Fortunates. *sniff, sniff* I’ll probably have an entry on that relatively big musical change with my new blog page soon. Perhaps — just PERHAPS — you will not see another blog entry until I have a REAL blog happening here. I realized just how lame any blog can be unless there’s some interaction. In fact, I don’t even think this is a real blog. I’ve just been spewing crap at random. This is very irresponsible of me.

Health Matters

Unbelievably, I am bed-ridden at home today with the flu. I say “unbelievably”, because I have literally not been sick enough to want to stay in bed since the dreaded Norwalk Virus Ontario outbreak I suffered from a year-and-a-half ago.
A YEAR-AND-A-HALF-AGO!!
It made me sort of think, “Hmm, everybody else around me has been sick way more often. How can that be?”
Perhaps it is because of my clean-ass lifestyle with no drugs, no booze, no smoking, vegetarian or vegan eating, and as much organic food as I can get my hands on. I mean, wouldn’t that make some sense? I have not too many other explanations.

Prep Details

This is going to end up being a blog about the million things you have to do after you’ve recorded your album! Over the last week, I’ve been spending my free time trying to get a few things happening: a photographer, a graphic designer, and a bunch of miscellaneous things regarding the physical construction of my album. Putting the music together is one thing, but all the other stuff you have to deal with is another.

Mastering

After about a year-and-a-half of intermittent effort, I put the final touches on my 15 songs yesterday. This process is also known as mastering. I did it myself at The Lacquer Channel. I used to do mastering for a living, along with recording, mixing, and various other audio-oriented things. (But that’s another story!)
When you master an album, you’ve made a final version of the cd with the right song order and sounds. This is an exciting moment, because it’s when your long hours of effort come together cohesively in the form of an album. The only other thing to do now is the packaging — but I might be doing something weird with that, as I’ve said.

Crushed Glass

Tonight I thought I’d write something much more interesting than my last entry but it’s too late at night and I’m about to pass out so so much for that bright idea.
But I do have one tidbit of news: I’m thinking about doing some bizarre but cheap packaging for the CD, so I’m investigating how to get bulk micro-crushed pieces of glass. I’m starting with the recycling facilities here in Toronto. Ooo, aren’t you curious?