I'm not dead!

I'm not dead. Really. I'm still here.

Life just hasn't found me at the poker table recently, nor at the poker forums, or IRC, or anything else related to poker. Call me "inactive."

Basically, to sound like a broken record: life has done a good job of kicking my ass.

I have this tendency... When life gives me lemons, I don't do the obvious. I take the lemons and chuck them as far as I can throw them, accompanied with a big, loud, "Fuck you, life, I wanted orange juice!" To understate, let's just say that this course of action isn't always very productive.

I've spent a good portion of the past few weeks in some sort of a daze, doing an unprecedented amount of nothing. All the while I've been simultaneously reveling in it, and loathing it. Though definitionally impossible, I assure you that it's precisely what's happening.

If I have any readers that don't actually know me through any medium other than the magic of blogolonia: don't worry, I haven't literally fallen off the face of the Earth. Only in principle.

If I have any readers at all, that might care, here's what has actually happened in this almost eremitic stupor:

I've been doing a lot of musical nonsense. Lots of experimenting and a good deal of writing. (I've actually stumbled onto something quite fascinating... I won't bore ya'll with the details, especially since I don't know the nitty gritty details of the process myself, but one audio source is 'multiplied' with another, in a process called Convolution, which is most often used to simulate the effects of Room Ambience, Reverbs, etc. Instead of the typical "Impulse Responses" used for these purposes, I've been experimenting with substituting all sorts of crazy things, and the results have been astoundingly interesting... and occasionally, actually cool to listen to.)

I won't put anything in stone here, but that vague "someday I'd like to put these songs together, maybe do an album" thing I've been kicking around since 2003 is actually coming together. I'd be shocked if I don't have it completely finished this year, probably in the next month or two (except, being the overbearing perfectionist I tend to be, I'll probably re-mix it five times, get it mastered two different places, etc. etc.. we shall see)

I've also committed to having the Mellon Swedish Days live show mixed by next weekend, not finalized, but the "first mix" sort of thing. That's been going pretty well, I hope to have that in a "final" state in a few months too, hopefully by summer (I think we're going to 'release' it officially, in hopes to at least cover the costs of recording/repro... and because we haven't had a CD for people to buy since like, August 2003.)

It's not 100% set as of yet, but maybe 95% (gotta wait for the applications to clear, and all the rest of the assorted nonsense.. hope that it doesn't turn out my future roommate is ya know, a convicted felon) but I went up to Madison, and we've found a reasonably nice apartment up there (Technically in Middleton, I think) that we've set a rough target move-in date of April 1st for.

I've got me a new car (though I may have mentioned it before), which is pretty nice. My Grand Am just wasn't cuttin' it in "Chariot for Super Awesome Guy" role anymore. Initially I was looking into picking up an Acura TL, but a close friend of my brother was offering a deal on a 2001 Sebring, with 48000 miles on it, that I just could not pass up. Not quite as nice as what I was originally gunnin for, but it's still a pretty nice ride, and for like, 20% of what I was intending on spending on the Acura, it's hard to complain. Though it's the sort of thing that I care about more than anybody who reads this, I'll probably end up snapping some pics and posting them. Then you have to look at them. So, nyeah.

Of course, through all of this, poker has been nowhere near my mind... which is equal parts good thing, and bad thing. It's hard to tell where I'm gonna be going with any of this stuff: music, poker, school, whatever... so the likelihood of really getting back into poker hard, attacking it, blogging about it, and everything else, is pretty much impossible to estimate. It wouldn't shock me if I get a hair up my ass to go all out, be the "next big thing" and do the poker "young gun" schtick like I used to have in my head back in the day. It also wouldn't shock me if I barely play at all. As far as foresight is concerned, I'm more than a little bit cloudy. I will keep you, my like, one reader, updated.