[Fantasysci5]

Chester ran away.

Through a series of unfortunate events, he escaped the car when we were about a block away from the apartment. He bolted on Thursday evening, and although we've looked and looked, there's a lot of places for a cat to hide in the country.

I've been so depressed, it's so hard to get myself to do anything. We were on our way to a fun weekend with a friend, and now I find myself breaking out crying about once an hour, and it's so hard to do anything.

[stepurhan]

< thinks strongly "Chester go home. Chester go home".

Typing is somewhat painful this morning, when it comes to the letters E,D and C anyway. As some of you know, I ring church bells. The image of people flying up to the ceiling on the end of the rope is largely a false one, but under certain circumstances it can happen (PM me if you want a fuller explanation of the mechanism). These circumstances occurred yesterday. An experienced ringer knows to let go of the rope immediately when this happens, but unfortunately it happened while I was teaching a learner. I grabbed the rope to slow the bell long enough to be sure they had let go and wrenched both my hands in the process. With most of my fingers it was just an immediate pain from the sudden jerk that faded within half an hour or so. With the middle finger of my left hand the first joint from the hand has swollen up and I can't close it properly. It also hurts like the dickens when I do anything that bends it more than a little bit.

Bit of a pain that I have so much typing to do today.

[Fantasysci5]

Wow, Step: apparently all it needed was for the great Step to will him home.

I got up at 5am this morning to wait outside for him, because I heard cats come back very early in the morning, and something was telling me this was the day. 30 minutes later, he goes running past, and stopped and came over when I called his name.

Thanks so much, Step!

Oh, and I'm so sorry about your hand. I hope it gets better.

[Jelena]

Fantasy
What a relief to have Chester home again! It must have been awful not knowing where he was and if he was ever coming back again.

Step
I've seen church ringing on Midsomer Murders and it was fatal iirc.
Will you be ringing bells on the morning of Sunday 27th of May? It would be so cool to watch/listen in. (you might not bring in visitors in the bell tower)

[UPtimist]

Originally Posted by Jelena

Step
I've seen church ringing on Midsomer Murders and it was fatal iirc.
Will you be ringing bells on the morning of Sunday 27th of May? It would be so cool to watch/listen in. (you might not bring in visitors in the bell tower)

I saw those same episodes

And I'm glad Chesty's back, Sci! (I'm calling you Sci now, 'cause you said you go by your middle name Okay, I'll stop now) They're funny things, pets. Sometimes they can come back from incredible distances (there have stories of for example dogs who've come halfway across the country and found their way back home).

[Lee in Limbo]

Katie, I'm glad Chester came back.

Stephen, I'm immensely glad that you ONLY injured your hands. I don't know much about ringing bells, but I do know that large, heavy pieces of metal are not to be mishandled. I hope your hands heal soonest.

In other news, I'm still making music. The books aren't selling, the tee shirts aren't selling, and my debts are getting to the slightly alarming stage. I don't know why I'm making music at a time like this. My demos aren't polished nearly enough to actually sell them, and I know it. I could work on polishing them up to professional quality and try releasing them as a collection on iTunes or something, but somehow, that just feels like one more pie-in-the-sky plan that my wife will have to tolerate. I don't seem to have a lick of sense in me these days. I just keep reaching out for creative things to do in the hope that I'll create something that people will want to own a copy of. I know money is tight these days, but it kind of outlines how deluded I am that there are people out there who are making a respectable living using the same methods I am, and I haven't. I can't even get the meagre amount of money I've earned on Smashwords, because I have to get a bunch of forms filled out and get an American tax number before they'll actually pay me. *sigh*

Okay, that's it for my whining.

I've been listening to my demos a lot lately, and while I'm not sure I've got the whole thing conceived as well as it could be, I find myself anxious to get the whole thing done so I can hear it properly. I know most people prefer to buy singles, but I'm an album guy, so I need to hear an album before I know if a band or musician is good. That's probably the biggest reason I keep letting imperfections creep into the work; I'm getting impatient to hear the final product, and I'm willing to live with mistakes if it means I get to hear it sooner. Silly attitude, really. If the final product isn't polished enough, I'll just be disappointed and convinced it needs to be redone anyway, like the album I almost finished in 2010. I wind up doing so much of this myself, but I'd probably be a lot happier with the results if it weren't all down to me. At least, I think so...

I DO know that I can't wait to replace the last of these placeholder demos I've got. Some are really old demos that were recorded badly, and some are just these little vocal sketches I did with a digital dictaphone to give myself an idea of what the melodies sound like. Good enough for a rough guide to be listened to before commencing recording the 'real' demo, but really not meant to be listened to over and over.

Heh, this entry reads like one of my blog entries. I'm probably just procrastinating writing my blog because the lack of feedback on the blogs has been getting me down lately as well.

[stepurhan]

Originally Posted by Fantasysci5

Wow, Step: apparently all it needed was for the great Step to will him home.

Never underestimate my awesome powers. Glad that Chester is safely back home.

Originally Posted by Jelena

I've seen church ringing on Midsomer Murders and it was fatal iirc.

Don't get me started on all the things wrong with the Midsomer representation of bellringing (starting with how enormously difficult and dangerous ringing two bells at once is and working up.

Will you be ringing bells on the morning of Sunday 27th of May? It would be so cool to watch/listen in. (you might not bring in visitors in the bell tower)

I shall almost certainly be ringing the Sunday morning. It's a little bit of a walk from the town centre to where I normally ring but I'm sure any who wished to come up would be welcome. If you're good I might even show you the bells themselves.

Originally Posted by Lee in Limbo

Stephen, I'm immensely glad that you ONLY injured your hands. I don't know much about ringing bells, but I do know that large, heavy pieces of metal are not to be mishandled. I hope your hands heal soonest.

Handled correctly, bells are actually very safe. The mechanism does most of the work of handling the large chunks of metal (some weighing more than a car) for you. Teaching is all about training someone to handle the bells correctly and making sure they are safe, hence my injury ensuring the learner was protected.

Sorry to hear things are not going well for you otherwise. I shall try some positive thinking in your direction as well.

[Jelena]

Originally Posted by stepurhan

I shall almost certainly be ringing the Sunday morning. It's a little bit of a walk from the town centre to where I normally ring but I'm sure any who wished to come up would be welcome. If you're good I might even show you the bells themselves.

I'd love to come and I'm always a good girl.
If tsa wishes to come as well we just go by taxi.

[tsa]

That would be cool!

[Intense Degree]

I'm glad that the cat came back Fantasy!

[TimovieMan]

@ Fantasy: good to hear you got Chester back!

@ Step: sorry to hear about your hand, is the finger healing ok?

@ Lee: bummer, dude. But it seems to me like you already know what you should be doing to improve the situation somewhat. But I understand that the hard part is actually doing that...

[Hammerite]

Hello Bleurgh,

Just posting here as I really feel the need, after another fit of health-related panicking, to put my thoughts in words and feel better knowing someone's paying attention.

I need to stop looking on the Internet whenever something is slightly wrong: I noticed a bit of blood in my ear tonight.

The basic assumption was I'd scratched my ear, and accidentally made a little cut which started to bleed (my fingernails do need cutting, my ear tends to itch quite often, I could feel where specifically in the ear the bleeding was coming from)... but, of course, a bit of trawling around the Internet for bleeding ear...

...

...

A lot of reassurance! Probably just scratched too hard! Huzzah!
... but then I see it...
... One mention - in a comment - of someone having had a brain haemorrage. This was an anecdote about somebody finding blood in their ear and having a headache and realising that was the cause of it.

I've spent the last half an hour calming myself down. This is the last stage of that process, and I'm still slightly on edge.

Thanks for reading, though I don't mind if you didn't because this is literally just me writing stuff down to tell myself to make sense of everything.

-- Hammerite

p.s. If I was having a fucking brain haemorrage, I wouldn't be so articulate right here now, would I?

Goodnight!

[Jelena]

Originally Posted by Hammerite

p.s. If I was having a fucking brain haemorrage, I wouldn't be so articulate right here now, would I?

No you wouldn't!

[Hammerite]

Whoa.
I can really tell how little sleep I was running on when I wrote that. :/

[Trumgottist]

Originally Posted by stepurhan

Don't get me started on all the things wrong with the Midsomer representation of bellringing

Have you read The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers? To a non-ringer like me, that book appears thoroughly researched. (And I enjoy her books in general.)

Edit: Never mind. I did a forum search when I started suspecting we might have had this conversation before, and…

Originally Posted by stepurhan

The Nine Tailors perchance? Never read it by the way.

[Hammerite]

Bit of a long shot... but would anyone here with a copy of season 6 of The Simpsons on DVD be able to do me a bit of a favour?

PM me if you're willing!

[Lee in Limbo]

Sorry, Hammie, no Simpsons DVDs in Limbo.

In other news, I'm STILL still recording. Only now, I'm working towards a semi-hard deadline: June 5th, 2012 It is my intention to have this album completed and ready for my brother's 43rd birthday. This gives me a couple of months, but I'm pretty sure those months will dwindle away pretty quickly. Fortunately, I'm only really worried about two or three tracks, which should prove to be challenging. Mind you, one of them is a prog rock suite of over 30 minutes of music, which I'll be assembling into a full piece once I get the individual songs recorded and uploaded to my computer.

Ambitious? Me? Nah!

Anyway, aside from that, it's been really quiet and tense around the homestead because money has been non-existent for days. We're going to have to do a lot of emergency grocery shopping once the money comes in. Dawn lost her iPod, and really wants a replacement, which will cost about $300 CAD. And I'm still panicking about the bills. I need to bring in money, stat!

Right, that's enough from me. Hope everyone else is doing alright today.

[Lee in Limbo]

New Blog Smell

[Jazhara7]

Just came back from watching "Iron Sky" with an added phase of questioning the two german actors and the one director afterwards. It was great.


I can highly recommend it, go and watch it.



-

[UPtimist]

Originally Posted by Jazhara7

Just came back from watching "Iron Sky" with an added phase of questioning the two german actors and the one director afterwards. It was great.


I can highly recommend it, go and watch it.

Go Finns!

It's a pretty amazing feat, to be honest...