it's like Siberia up in this beeotch. i wake up this morning, after about a week or two of on/off snow to find...you guessed it, more snow.
i love snow, so i'm okay with this. however, now that i'm sitting up on my office with a thin glass pane between me and the elements, the wind seemingly rocking the building, the electric flickering off and on and seemingly about to go out at any moment, my trusty laptop and wi-fi my ONLY CONNECTION TO CIVILIZATION...
okay, i'm overreacting. but i still have a 20 minute hike in the snow back to the apartment which i've heard through the rumor mill might be on the side of town that currently doesn't have electricity. i am "certified" in winter survival techniques, so i guess if it comes down to it i could strangle a grad student and sleep inside of their body until the snow lets up.
today, i've been trying to put the finishing touches on these statements of goals for the newest round of graduate applications. pretty much what that means is i've been sitting around, playing guitar, blogging, and messing with my facebook profile. in my defense, i do have a writing sample pinned down now (and a pretty good one if i do say so myself), and i've also got just about everything else lined up with the exception of one university whose application process has been causing a few gray hairs (but it's about half my fault, so i have no right to complain). it's just daunting to think that i have something like 9 days to get everything arranged and mailed out before i fly out of here. i'd prolong it for longer (what else do you prolong it for?) but the truth is with portfolios to fly home and all the equipment i'm going to be trying to get home, i may just utterly fail at having room to transport anything but a few changes of clothes. that means applications are either done by the 12th of december or not done at all.
i prefer done by the 12th. but that brings me back to the statements of goals. i have many goals, and to talk about them within the confines of 2 pages and five different departments' detailed ideas of exactly what they want to know is a little daunting. this is always the hardest part of the process for me, and this time is no exception. nine days should be plenty of time, right?
on other fronts that have had a dearth of blog-related information lately, i'm still working (sort of) on the EP, though the new LP is totally not even under consideration at the moment. i came up with a few new riffs the other day and briefly considered putting some words down for them, but the truth is there's so much else going on right now musically and otherwise that i just didn't feel like branching out in another direction just yet. the amp problem turns out to be completely in my apartment wiring/interference from other apartment things, as i took it down to atom heart and the guy there plugged it in and played the most pristine, dirty-ass blues riff i've ever heard from a non-professional-band amplifier. i was stunned. let's just say that power of amplifierage i have in my possession was a) totally worth the 600 bucks b) will be absolutely nuclear if i ever live somewhere that i can play it clean. if. ever.
the good news (that was the bad news; my apartment sucks) is that i've found a way to at least semi-effectively record without much static from the amp, and i'll likely be using this recording method from here on out for the EP. it's obviously going to get done after christmas, but right now i'm looking at something like four weeks until the Susan's gig and i still don't even know all the songs i'm planning on playing. so, while learning 25 songs in the space of four weeks might be easy if that was all i was doing, it's not all i'm doing. and so i've pretty much (sadly) put new projects on hold until the show is over, or at least until i'm comfortable enough with these songs to not feel like i have to spend every second of guitar-time memorizing them. i'm planning on recording the show and uploading it somewhere, so here's hoping it doesn't totally suck.
well, i'm going to sit here in avery until either i finish a few of these goal-statements or until i run out of caffeine and resolve, or until the armor-clad, polar-bear riding Siberian warriors crash the front door and drive me out into the cold night on foot.
or until i remember there are tons of DVDs in my office, conveniently located next to my bookshelf...
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