The Monthly Round-Up

Welcome to the first official Monthly Round-Up

I wanted to put together something for friends, family and everyone in-between to check in on. I’ve largely stepped back from social media (remarkable how quick you forget about Instagram once you’ve taken the app off your phone and went full hermit), but I don’t want everyone to think I’ve stopped thinking about them or that we don’t want to keep up with folks.

Erin, Buzz, MIDI and I are all hunkered down waiting out the last of the summer heat. The sunflowers out front are toast (the mammoth variety is anyways). I chopped them down with my new scythe (I’ve decided I’m over lawnmowers). A few things are still in bloom: Anise Hyssop, the odd Purple Coneflower, Black Eyed Susans etc. but the giant purple hyssop has been dying back and the broom corn has gone to seed. Autumn approacheth!

Where We Are

Mid-September has brought some quiet joys, I’m chugging along on the next Big Bluestem record (an alt-country colored classic rock move). We’re still getting MIDI and Buzz acquainted, and that’s going much better (hopefully we’ll have both of them out and hanging out all the time soon). MIDI continues to be exceedingly cute and both Erin and I are in love with her. Buzz, well, Buzz will get there lol.

We’ve spent a lot of our time watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and various maker YouTube channels. Went through a stint of “behind the scenes”/“Making of” videos on Laika Studios movies and bought some clay to make some little maquettes for around the house.

We recently also watched the Mary Oliver documentary and a documentary called Flood together. Some real PBS-core entertainment.

Erin went up to the Rennasiance faire with her work friends! (I had been a few times before so I sat this one out).

I’ve finally been able to put some work into cleaning up the yard, cut up our old washer and dryer with our new angle grinder (the parts I didn’t keep were taken by the alley scrap trucks within 20 minutes). I also installed an air conditioner in the basement window (better late than never I suppose). I really need it to just be a fan, cause it gets stuffy down there.

Electronics side: I finished work on another guitar pedal clone: a Lovetone Big Cheese fuzz circuit. This is a pretty neat little topology! It’s somewhere in-between a Tone Bender and a Big Muff. It’s a low key favorite of a bunch of “big time” guitarists. Thus fulfilling my dream of getting Zeppelin/Wilco/Pavement/Radiohead fuzz tones. I’ll probably put a post up about that later this month. I built it to look like a early 90’s computer (even color matched the exterior of an old Macintosh). I still want to put some waterslide decals and a badge on it though, so it might be a little while. I also had to take a brief break from recording because my Estey amp from 1966 finally kicked the bucket. It’s a particularly unique and scrappy circuit, in ways both cool and annoying. They used a fan motor capacitor for power filtering, so I had to jerry-rig a new section together (didn’t wanna drop $50 on the bespoke legacy part.)

In the past couple weeks we spent some time with Daham at Best Intentions before heading to see Local Memory (great work Matt & Nico, big ups to Amy and the rest of the band). We also hung out with Michael and Caitlin. (Michael then came over the next day to bum around the neighborhood with me.)

As usual, we’ve been popping in at Ludlow from time to time. We’ve also been enjoying spending time at (coffee shop & record store) Turn Back Time over off Irving Park. Occasionally we’ll do a work date there.

Otherwise September has continued in the same tradition that August and July has: Erin has been working four days a week at the Crate and Barrel photo studio. I’ve been continuing dev work at PrintNinja (we’re so close to unveiling the project I’ve been on for the past year and a half). My daily commutes are a combination of listening to the You’ll Hear It podcast, Behind The Bastards and Hardcore History as well as doing vocal exercises in preparation for final vocal takes. With the exception of this week, I’m regularly hitting 12,000 steps a day whenever I go into the office (shoutout to the office treadmill, you’re the real mvp.)

Where We’re Going

I need to finish our banquette/bench/booth for the dining room. I’ve drawn up plans and bought the bulk of the materials, but now I need to y’know… actually do it. I have dreams of friends laughing and tipsy crammed on top of it in warm light on snowy days, so I better make it happen.

Both Erin and I made “incense holder cats” (Buzz and MIDI), but we need to bake and paint them, not really much of a rush there, but it’d be fun to get them done and add to the ever expanding “knick-knackery” around here.

I would certainly like to finish this record within the next month or so, only time will tell if I decide to hold off on releasing it until next spring though! I’m quite happy with it so far, but it is definitely a Spring record. I’m also gonna be GMing a game of Blades In The Dark (that’s a tabletop role playing game (like Dungeons and Dragons)) for friends and I’ve been doing a lot of writing for that, so site updates might be a bit slow while that’s ramping up.

Excited to see some hometown friends next month for Rosh Hashanah and gasp at how big all the kids have gotten since we saw them last. Feels a bit like watching everyone move in a strobe light. Sometimes I feel like Erin and I are a bit boring compared with all the exciting happenings for everyone else, but I’d guess that most of us feel that about each other haha.

Finally, I’ve taken the time to add a bunch of film photography to this very website. I promised myself that I’d keep most of my film shots on physical media only, but I still want to share some bits so you can now find all that under the photography tab!

Life (seems to be) quieting down in many respects, and I’m grateful. Summer is often very busy at work and very busy at home and I’m extremely happy to get some peace in both.

Good luck out there and I hope to see you soon.