Double team

XM Radio and iTunes pulled a wicked 1-2 punch this week on my pocketbook. My XM receiver has a "Memory" button, which allows me to save the name of a song and artist, up to twelve or fifteen stored at once. So earlier in the week I transcribed my list since I figured I was getting close to filling it and I didn't want to lose anything to FIFO. Then I hit up the iTunes Music Store. Oh yeah.

I got an interesting mix of music. Mostly full albums actually, a few singles, and then a few singles that had been on K's mind some time ago. I also put a few songs on my wish list, waiting to decide whether I might want to get the album or only the single. So for the rundown of what I got and what I want, here goes:

• Samantha Stollenwerck's album Square One is pretty darn catchy. XM Cafe (Channel 45 for those of you lucky enough to get satellite radio) has been playing "Missed the Sunset" and "Frank Sinatra," both of which are quite pop-y, but I like 'em, and some of her other stuff is pretty soulful a-la-Alicia-Keys. In fact, Samantha (only her first name is on iTunes) described her own music as "Cali-Soul."
• Glen Phillips used to head Toad the Wet Sprocket. Recently he and Nickel Creek put together an album under the name Mutual Admiration Society. Winter Pays For Summer is his second solo album I think, and since a few of the tracks were playing on 89.1 back in St. Louis and XM Cafe now, I decided to get the whole thing. Overall good album, though after one listen and another time having it play in the background I can't think of a single song that stands out strikingly. Well worth the purchase though.
• I don't know what's up with my taste lately, but I've really gotten into a few songs by Jem and decided to get her Finally Woken album. Very listenable, though it makes me feel like I'm shopping at The Limited.
• Picked up Darden Smith's album Circo after hearing "What are we gonna do" on XM. Chill. Very chill. Just the right amount of Americana without crossing the border into Country. Not that Country is bad...
• Another pop-like bouncity song is astroPuppees "Firecracker Boys." Apparently astroPuppees is one person (Kelley Ryan), not a group, but she records under the astroPuppees name not only because it is a darn-cool name but because she often brings in guest musicians of mild fame. Her website is particularly suited to name-dropping, as all the artists she's recorded with or covered or who have done covers of the same songs she's covered are boldfaced. But, I must say, the song got in my head and stayed there, and it brings a smile to my face every time I hear it. It's just plain fun.
• I want to get Lucid 3 and I believe that I'll probably get the whole album All Moments Leading to This. The New Zealand trio's "A.M. Radio" has been heard on XM Radio quite a bit lately, and I think I may have heard but just not "memory buttoned" some other stuff of theirs. So this is up on my wishlist now.
• Matt Duke has a song "Focus" that I heard and like enough to push the button, but can't for the life of me remember what it sounded like. Unfortunately, this one's not on iTunes for now, so I guess I'll have to live without it.
• Oh, and I bought a real CD! Willy Porter re-released an old, no-longer-available disc titled "Dog Eared Dream," which I purchased Tuesday on his website. It came in the mail today and is excellent. He does some great stuff on the guitar, and is just all-around a good listen.

So that's my latest music list. There were a few other tracks I picked up, but some of them are a surprise for K so I can't post them here yet. Meanwhile, check some of the tunes I pointed out above. If you like good music, you won't be let down.

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Running away

Or rather, running to get away. I had a rather unproductive morning: aside from getting my apartment good-n-clean, I had a few errands that didn't get done by no fault of my own--the bank ordered the wrong checks, so I couldn't pick mine up, and the grocery store's digital photo printing station was broken so I couldn't make my pictures. So to de-stress and to work off all those extra calories from eating late, I decided to trail run. Not really knowing where I could go nearby, I figured I'd try a place that someone from work had suggested for hiking. O'Melveny Park had some steep trails, and in fact it wasn't quite ideal for running--though I spent a good 45 minutes running there--but did give me a spectacular view over the north part of the city, got me away from the noise of the freeway, and let me take some much-needed alone time. After sucking down an entire dromedary bag and half a Nalgene bottle, I went home feeling refreshed and well-exercised, though not overly-tired. And despite signs at the park warning of rattlesnakes and mountain lions, the most dangerous thing I encountered was some poison oak and some slippery rocks at stream crossings. This made me remember just how much I love running in nature.

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My morning, summed up in two lines.

Dim dblPi As Double
dblPi = Application.WorksheetFunction.Pi()

I was trying to model left ventricular activation, and I would have been much more comfortable using Matlab, but alas, I do not yet have a copy on my work computer. So for lack of a more appropriate tool, I tried it in Excel. A piece of the pressure-versus-time plot looks like a sinusoid, but the rest does not, so rather than nest some complex If() statements in one of the Excel cells, I opted to write a function in Visual Basic for Applications that describes the curve piecewise. With little true experience programming in VBA, and that which I had largely self-taught, how was I supposed to know that π was not a built-in constant? A whole block of time in the middle was flat-line when is should have been a sine, and without knowledge of how to use Microsoft's debugger I was forced to manually test each piece of the expression until I realized that Excel's Pi() did not translate directly into VBA. I still don't know what programmer would invent a language that had trig functions but no π!

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Life is a highway

Travelling 80 miles an hour, graduation appeared far away, but as I approached it, the day seemed to accelerate toward me. Good thing I didn't blink, otherwise I would have missed it. As is, it was like the sign that passes so quickly and then recedes into the distance behind.

After covering 1800 actual miles in 30 hours straight, my dad and I in our not-so-trusty U-Haul arrived at my new home in California. It looks like graduation was indeed not an exit ramp but rather the merging lane onto a new freeway that I've never been. I've relinquished my Illinois driver license in favor of a California license, and the 93XRT static decal is the only reminder of "sweet home Chicago," the Washington University and Beta Theta Pi decals as well as the never-to-be-removed WU residential parking passes are evidence that I spent time in St. Louis. My Cavalier officially sports a randomly-assigned license plate from the Golden State, having by some miracle passed the rigorous smog check required within 10 days of importing an auto.

I am seriously surprised that I haven't given myself a stroke over the traffic here. I haven't been gridlocked in L.A. yet, but the 14 does travel rather slowly mornings on my way to work. Perhaps I had just prepared for the worst and so when it's just slightly better I can feel happy or lucky or optimistic. I still haven't adjusted to the fact that my friends no longer live 5 minutes away, but I do know that I can't just roll out of bed and hop on my bike to be at work in less than 10 minutes like I used to go to class. Weekends have been heavy on the driving, heading my first weekend to Long Beach with my folks to hang out with K's family at a BBQ, the next weekend being D.D. in Westwood with some friends then riding passenger the next day to Malibu for a hike, and this weekend going to Santa Monica after work for dinner with a buddy and sitting shotgun while heading to Huntington Beach earlier today for harbor kayaking. Part of the reason I moved to where I did was because I felt like I had everything nearby that I'd need; funny that it turns out to be true but that I still go pretty far to hang with friends.

Motorcyclists here are lunatics. The dashed lines on the freeways are motorcycle lanes: yes, they squeeze between cars and trucks, five lanes wide, all moving 70+, bikers with a death wish sneaking past.

Thankfully (at least, I think it's something to be thankful for) I've reverted to a sleep schedule similar to the one I had junior year of college. Generally less than 6 hours of sleep a night, generally more than 4 except maybe on weekends. Going to bed late, tired, passing out seconds after hitting the pillow, waking up early, having half a pot of coffee, feeling pretty good all day, exercise and enjoy the afternoon/evening, stay up late again. If I'd get 8 hours of sleep every day I wouldn't have time to do anything at all. But now I feel pleasantly busy, and I like the fact that I don't need to feel obliged to dwell on work when I'm on my own time. Although I have been spending a lot of time outside of work with St. Jude people.

Indeed, I realized the other day (and have already told about a half dozen people) that my situation feels like one of those week-long leadership-type retreats of yore. My time is fairly well occupied but I still manage to find some time for myself when I need it. I've been hanging out a lot with people I knew from school but had only limited time outside of class and structured activities (i.e. EnCouncil). I've been having a blast with said people. And with them, through them, I've met a number of equally fun, friendly people, and am spending a lot of time with them as well. Developing strong friendships very quickly with many people. And all having something in common, namely work, to strike up conversation. And talk about work turns into talk about stuff other than work. I don't know, on paper this doesn't sound as enlightening as it felt when it first hit me. Either way, it's a good feeling, this sort of "I don't know exactly what is going down next, but I'm pretty sure it'll be good, and I've got good people to share it with, and I really want to share it with old friends and family but it's hard to explain it to them unless they could see it and experience for themselves."

I like it here. Although you can make a U-turn pretty much everywhere in this great state, I think I'll ride this road out for a while. I miss my family, I miss K, I miss my Wheeling friends, I miss my Wash U friends. The road calls me, and I have a caravan to keep with here. Focus on the drive, let the destination approach whenever it may.

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The persistence of memory

I caught myself tonight trying to toss kitchen trash into a phantom garbage can: in my old apartment in St. Louis, the trash was to the left of the sink-bearing counter, while in my new apartment it's on the right. But other than mirror-world trash cans, I'd venture to say that I'm adjusting pretty well to life and work in California.

More coming soon....if you're lucky...

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