The past few weeks at work have been intense: 60 hour work weeks are typical, I’ve barely left the office, and Dead Moon’s Echoes of the Past has been on constant rotation. Is it bad to have a soundtrack of Pacific NW punk rock ennui when the mind is in this state? I think I was chanting “D! E! A! D! M! O! O! N! Dead moon night!” in my sleep, which is still better than dreaming in Perl, which I’ve done before.

Tre Orsi update: got the test pressings, label art is sent off, still need to finish the cover. Also managed to move forward on some new material. Very exciting stuff.

Recorded a few songs for a couple of very nice fellows last weekend. Very much modern guitar pop, ala Weezer, Fountains of Wayne, etc. Considering how much heavy, doomy music I’ve recorded this year, it’s a nice change of pace.

Projects for later this year: new Shearwater album, mixing a new New Year album. Again, very exciting.

BTW, I also started a work blog to write about the geeky crap I do at UNT. Feel free to read if you really want hear a punk rocker complain about the state of IT in higher education.

One of a few videos of the Fry St. fire from last night. Martin Iles, as usual, has an interesting perspective.

Last night, Tre Orsi was in the studio tracking vocals and additional overdubs for the two songs that will be our first single. Howard was first up, doing his vocals for “The Illustrator”. He got in a few takes before Bubba (our producer) showed up and began tweaking things for the better.

After they were settled in, I ran off to the lounge to re-work the lyrics to “Faulkner’s Blues”. I had such a clear idea in my head of what I wanted to say when I first wrote the thing, but over time the lyrics became a jumbled mess of imagery that stopped making sense. I did what I could with them, swapping a few cringe-worthy phrases for more innocuous ones, but before I knew it, t’was time to sing. I did three takes and will comp them together when I mix the thing tonight or tomorrow. Bubba and Bryan also worked out a tiny little chimey guitar thing for the 2nd verse, which I think is really nice.

When on a bit of a buying spree these past two weeks, picking up the new Shellac, Dan Higgs, and A Hawk and a Hacksaw @ Good Records. Have a couple of good-sized orders on hold at Aquarius and Forced Exposure, including the Ex/Getachew record (finally!).

The new Shellac is really doing it for me — funny, rocking, weird, all in the right doses. “Be Prepared” might be my favorite Shellac song ever.

Had my first real assignments and quizzes for my art class, my first college course in a decade. Very, very nerve-wracking, I must say. Studying is such an unfamiliar process to me now, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. Honestly, the writing is the hardest part, because I’m used to short, descriptive bursts of writing, rather than longer, well-formed and composed essays.

Leaving for the Shearwater/TNY dates on Saturday. Hell drive to Tucson on Sunday, but it’s better than stopping in New Mexico for the night. Meeting up w/ my New Year brothers in LA, and leaving Shearwater to fend for themselves the rest of the way up the coast. I will meet back up with them in New York on July 5th for the big ol’ Castle Clinton show.

I’m a big fan of Merlin Mann’s geeky personal productivity web site, 43 Folders. His “Inbox Zero” series, in particular helped me get (almost totally) on top of my email, a problem that’s plagued me ever since I’ve had an email account. (Granted, the root cause of this is my own lack of organization, combined with chronic procrastination, but I’m not quite ready for that level of analysis.)

One of the biggest problems I’ve had is keeping to-do lists. For years I just used the notepad in the back of my Day Runner planners, and that worked fine. Then Yahoo! Calendar (and now Google Calendar) supplanted my Day Runner, and I generally stopped carrying around notebooks. The to-do lists I made on Yahoo! never seemed to go anywhere, because of the general slowness of doing such things pre-Ajax.

While on tour with the Baptist Generals a few years ago, Jason Reimer introduced me to the Moleskine notebook, and ever since, it’s been my main point of idea capture and to-do lists. (I use their bigger Cahier notebooks for recording session notes.) Still, while my online calendar kept me on track for meetings, sessions, and general planning, the afore-mentioned lack of organization and chronic procrastination meant that I was still slacking on crossing of to-do’s. Mastering projects would sit in on my desk for weeks, waiting for my psyche to finally kick my ass into gear. It sucked!

What I’ve come to realize is that the calendar, in my mind, is inflexible. There’s usually a person involved is that appointment, someone to keep my lazy ass in check. If I don’t feel like having band practice, too fucking bad — Gcal just paged me, I have 30 minutes to get over there. I’ve also realized that a lot of these to-do’s sitting around for weeks in my Moleskine take more than just a few minutes to accomplish, which is why they sit around. I need to make time — specific time — to take care of this shit.

So I took all of those to-do’s, figured out basically how long each would take, and scheduled them in my calendar. Now my Google Calendar is bursting with all of these things I used to let sit in my notebook. I even scheduled 30 minutes every Monday to tear through the to-do list in my notebook. This is basic project management stuff, but it’s done in a way that integrates nicely with the rest of my life. I feel better already.

If I hadn’t stood in line for an hour at the student accounts desk yesterday I wouldn’t believe it either: I’m back in college.

My last attempt was less-than-stellar, leaving me on academic probation with a 1.45 GPA. None of this really mattered to me at the time, as I had an interesting job that paid really well and I was about to start a studio with Matt Pence. Why be in school (for a philsophy degree, no less) when everything I want is in front of me?

10 years later, the studio is going great and I’m an employee at UNT working on some really interesting projects. I also have a lot of interest in renewable energy, sustainable development, and economics in general, so I’m taking advantage of my employee discount on tuition to take care of some core classes before deciding what to do next.

Katey and I attended the Mariners/Rangers game this past Monday, her first ever trip to the Ballpark here, and my first in, what, five years? (Jeez, has it been that long? Now that the Frisco RoughRiders are closeby, I’ll definitely be taking in more games.) Rangers lost 5-4, giving up 4 runs in one inning early on, and never making it up despite a 3-run homer in the 5th. Good times, though.

Leaving Monday for the Vanderslice tour, meeting up with JV and DD in ATL, where they bid adieu to current FOH guy/TM, Dan Brennan. Still have a lot of prep-work to do today, mostly finishing up the advances for a few shows and making sure I have all the gear I’ll need. Very much looking forward to it: JV is playing as a 2-piece, and I get to mix the opener, St. Vincent. Good hotels, good food, good shows — sounds lovely.

Tre Orsi will be recording our first 7″ on 13 May, with Bubba Kadane producing. Shit! Artwork plans are still up in the air! What are we going to do? I dunno!

I have mentioned how much I love my Moleskine notebook? And Google Calendar? I had been thinking about getting Treo phone for keeping up with my calendar and various lists, but I’ve found the notebook/regular cellphone (w/ Gcal SMS alerts) much more usable. Thanks so much to geek productivity wizard, Merlin Mann for his collection of Moleskine hacks and other infinitely useful lifehackery.