One Month. One Man. Some Madness. Utter Exhaustion.

Where to begin? The last many weeks are one long blur.

Basically, for the last four weeks straight, I've worked. Including weekends. Most recently having spent from 0800 Thursday to 0700 Monday on a marathon storage administration session. Gack.

I can't even remember the exact order in which some of the craziness has happened, so really I'm just going to skip around...

Weekend From Hell. That's really the only words I have for one of the weekends. After a long work week (without a weekend prior), Smacky and I decided to spend some alone-time together...so we went to see 300. What we saw of the movie was fricking amazing...but about an hour into the show...well, to put it succinctly, there was a medical emergency. We're not certain if the guy survived...my guess is that he didn't. But seeing that eight feet from you shakes you up more than a little. So we wound up at Rich O's with a couple co-workers of mine...to drown the horrific experience with lots of beer.

Fine, I thought. One horrific experience...no big deal. I'll just work my 9PM to 9AM shift on Saturday/Sunday, and go home and recuperate. No such luck. What was supposed to be between an eight to twelve hour maintenance outage turned into a NINETEEN hour maintenance-turned-recovery session. Luckily, the outage was not related to my work that night, but recovery none the less... I had to have Smacky come get me from the Park and drive me home...I wouldn't have made it on my own. Weekend From Hell...gack!

Nothing has been repaired at the house in ages...tons of work to do, and no time at home to do it. My goal is to finish one little project per weekend from here on out...we'll see if I can stick to that.

I've not been able to meet with the cabinet maker, so the whole kitchen renovation is on hold. Which is super frustrating since I'm dying to get the new appliances and cabinets. Particularly since we have the money...it's just a matter of me having enough free time to actually get the plan made and get going with it. GRRR.

Our taxes aren't done. Didn't even have all the paperwork until after this four-weeks of hell on earth began. Got to get to it. Must get our return...help pay off the kitchen renovation loan...

Every recent weekend has been destroyed either by midnight change work, or by four days straight of mucking with storage. I feel like I haven't seen Smacky in weeks, even though I've been home every night. And a regular sleep schedule?! Forget about it.

Not that all of it has been horrible...there have been nice moments. Recup-ing at Rich O's over beer with co-workers was nice. And we have had time to watch a couple more Riff Trax. We've spent a little time with friends. Smacky has spent some time at health and well-being fairs lately, what with our working at creating a small geek and all. Smacky's concert was fricking amazing. So while there has been nice bits, I'm more than ready for the four-week long work-week to end. Blah.

Another Delayed Dinner Announcement

3RD is on. Seriously. I've just been so screaming busy I couldn't even update the website. It's a general pot-luck...but throw a bit of Irish flavor in if you want seeing as how it's that time of year. We'll be making a shepherd's pie, enough for a handful of folks. Plan accordingly. Usual routine.

Stretching Boundaries

The Voces Novae/Harry Pickens collaboration concert was this past Sunday. We sang to a sold out crowd (about 500 peeps!) and even got a great review in the CJ.

The rehearsal process was difficult (terrifying, even) for some of our members, myself included. I like to think I am more accepting of change than most people. I am, but not right away. I hated and loved it all at once from the beginning. As we progressed, the hate faded and by Sunday, I adored what we were doing. Harry wrote or arranged all the pieces we sang. Several peices he wrote just for us - using our style of singing and featuring the things we do best. He came to our rehearsals and even did extra weekend workshops to help us learn to improvise and to "trust the music within" oursleves. I think that in addition to a fabulous concert on Sunday, we have become better musicians in the process.

We choral singers are used to having the music in front of us, knowing what the notes and rhythms and words are. In fact, in a chorus it is vital that everyone know what is expected and what everyone else is doing or it's just a big jumbled mess. That's what I used to think. Harry taught us to make it up, let it flow, let it change and be what it is right now. To let all this happen as a group. It might not be the same thing it was yesterday and it won't be the same thing tomorrow. This is true to some degree with all music. The page looks the same, but the performance is never the same thing twice. In the weekend workshops he would give us a note, tell us to harmonize it and then sing our own song. It was interesting how a group of 10 individuals could make a song that ebbed and flowed as a single piece and ended on its own without any one person in charge. Really cool.

I have trouble being present - here and now and not thinking about last week, 5 minutes ago or tomorrow. I think a gift I got from this experience was the ability to just be where and when I am. It's something I have been trying to learn for years. Funny that something I have been doing for most of my life (singing) is what provided the opportunity to get there.

I have always believed it's important to stretch our boundaries - to do things that make us uncomfortable. I have also always tried to avoid actually doing that myself. I am so grateful for the experiences of the last couple months. I am a more confident singer, more aware of the moment, more conscious of my creativity. I am a better person.

Crash & Burn

No, it isn't what I did due to the crazy work hours I've been putting in. No, it isn't what happened most recently to our much-in-need-of-attention house. Eru, the server that runs dour.org, decided to crap out in the middle of the night just before March.

After spending a few hours one night trying to resurrect what I thought was a failed drive, I took some much-needed time off work the next day...only instead of relaxing, I spent the time trying to repair the server. Well, all hope was lost...the server just decided to outright fail.

Luckily, it is still one year within warranty (amazing thing, five-year warranties). But it means I have to ship it to them on my dime for repair or replacement. So either it gets repaired for free and I get the same server back, or I get an upgraded more recently built server at a slight cost. All the while I would've been without a server. Ichtsnay I say.

So I spent the rest of Friday night and Saturday morning trying to find a short-term replacement server. All I could come up with was our oldest notebook in the house. Since that notebook was set to be reinstalled anyway, I put the latest version of my favorite distribution on it and set to making it the replacement Eru.

Amazingly, since I prefer a lean and simple distribution, it took little more than two hours to create a fully-functional replica of Eru once I had restored my data from backup. All the custom-compiled software I use to run the site ran almost without issue. I had to recompile Open-SSL, turn off one of the more recent versions of a library that the distribution included, and then re-install the hordes of stuff from CPAN that I used in my perl development.

So the notebook is now sitting in Eru's place at the colocation data center. Eru is sitting in my basement being readied for shipment to California. And we're back on the net (albeit with less processor and memory than before). Yay!

I tell you, it was a weird two days without a constant flow of email to my blackberry...