Some Things I Haven’t Written About In A While …

Kiah – The bird. Remember her? Shortly after we got her, I took her down to the avian vet for a check-out. It seemed to the vet that she was generally healthy, but, a bit under-weight. She weighed about 76 grams that day, and a bird her age should weigh at least 85 grams. Well, I’m happy to report that Kiah now tips the scales at 92 grams.

Kiah’s favorite thing now is attempting to rip the keys off the laptop keyboard.

Fish – Remember the aquarium on the dresser in the bedroom? Well, it’s not there any more. The whole crew (8 Tiger Barbs, 2 Dwarf Cichlids, 3 Corydoras and a Pleco) spent a couple of days in a resort tank in the kitchen pass-through, and are now settled in to their new permanent home in the dining room (in their tank, of course, not on the table. There’s not even enough meat there for hors d’oeuvres!).

The bedroom was becoming a problem for a couple of reasons. The dresser was beginning to show the strain a bit more than I had hoped (no “I told you so” needed, please and thank you), and it was difficult to maintain a good environment for the tank there. The bedroom has a southern exposure, and so it tends to be very bright and warm. Bright and warm, coupled with water, makes a great recipe for runaway algae, among other things.

The dining room is where the thermostat for the whole house is, and the aquarium has been placed directly beneath the thermostat. The temperature there never varies by more than a couple of degrees, and the light is quite a bit more subdued, so, control should be much easier.

Model Trains – Still on my sabbatical from the hobby. I am going out to play with some fellows on Saturday. But, there’s still just no inclination to wander into the basement. I have been thinking about it, and I am keeping up with what’s going on in the world of On30 model trains, at least somewhat. But, still, no real activity on my part.

Work (GTV) – Yeah, I do a bunch of that. TV-land is, as always, just a little crazy. And, working for a government TV station makes it all the stranger. I think the last I said anything about this was that we were getting ready to be picked up on Verizon’s FiOS network here in Howard County. Well, we’re on. But there are some issues still to be worked out. Specifically, our closed captioning is being stripped out somewhere. Discussions with Verizon’s people and with engineers at other local TV stations have brought some conflicting information. It boils down to Verizon handling the caption data in a completely non-standard way, and it’s likely to cost us (meaning the station) a chunk of change to compensate for the fact that Verizon insists on doing something that is completely non-standard. And, in the mean time, we’re beginning a transition to digital and at the same time, adding web streaming to our mix!

More Work (Orchard Studios) – Orchard Studios is undergoing some changes, it seems. We’re becoming more wedding- and portrait-centric than I really wanted it to be. Subsequently, the web site is going to have to be completely re-designed — something that I just have all kinds of time to do. Yeah, right. Nevertheless, I’ll be starting in on it soon, along with new marketing strategies. Gotta pay off all that new gear (past and future) somehow.

Yet More Work (AcoustiSoundâ„¢) – No, I don’t really sleep all that much. AcoustiSoundâ„¢ is getting busier and busier doing exactly the things that AcoustiSoundâ„¢ was intended to do — live sound and recording for acoustic musicians! But, we decided last night that it’s time to sorta duplicate some services from Orchard Studios at AcoustiSoundâ„¢ — specifically making AcoustiSoundâ„¢ a one-stop-shop for the acoustic musician’s sound, recording and collateral needs.

Huh? What’s that?

The thought is that it may be confusing for me to be handing out multiple business cards when talking to a musician (not that musicians are inherently more easily confused than other folks) about all the things I can offer — sound, recording, photography, artwork, web site, etc. This, essentially, means that AcoustiSoundâ„¢ will start to be what I wanted my old AudioGenix Productions to be. The problem then was that I was severely under-funded (not to be confused with the rather under-funded that AcoustiSoundâ„¢ is). That, of course, means a re-vamping of the AcoustiSoundâ„¢ web site, too.

Music – (Not to be confused with AcoustiSoundâ„¢ [see above]) Moving the aquarium displaced the [digital] piano from the dining room, which really wasn’t all that good a place for it anyway. I’ve been entertaining the idea of playing some keyboards with some folks again, but, my gawd, when??? I even went so far as to start looking at a second keyboard. What was I thinking?

Of course, this kind of thinking always opens up the whole “I could just kick myself” thinking. Over the years, I’ve had some really nice instruments — and sold them all off. I regret selling almost every one of them — there might be two that I really don’t miss at all.

Anyway, the keyboard’s getting moved upstairs to my little, tiny office, which I share with Kiah. I may get an inexpensive controller so play with software synthesizers, and do a little composing again. But, I think that would be enough. More than enough.

Which brings me to the subject of guitar playing. I can’t. Basically, my wrists are shot. Specifically, the carpal tunnel issues are so bad that I can’t hold the instrument for more than about 5 minutes without my left hand going numb, then going into spasms, then severe shooting pain. So, the guitar lives in its case in a corner of the living room, next to Donna’s viola. Fat lot of good that’s doing.

Miscellany – I still hate the post office, for all the same reasons.

I can’t really think of anything else to ramble on about, except maybe things that you, as readers, really don’t care about, don’t want to know about, or shouldn’t know about. So there. I’ve written about something other than toys and site hacks. But then, this was really never intended to be one of those really heavy statement-driven things. It’s a “this is our life” blog — what blogs were supposed to be in the first place.