A Weekend of Triumph and Lame Semi-Tragedy

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There are times in life when I really want a “do over.” Remember when you were a kid and you’d hit a ball on the roof for a bug would fly in your face when you were shooting a basket and you’d immediately yell “do over!”?

Well, that certainly appliesd to Friday. Fortunately, friends and fun made up the rest of a nice weekend.

Friday

I’d been working on the orange is in CD for two weeks straight – pulling 10 and 12-hour days to get done. We spent a few days last week mixing with decidedly “mixed” results (all puns intended).

My ears were shot and when I got to the studio on Friday, it became clear fairly quickly that things just weren’t working.

To quote Real Genius, “In my preparations to committ Hari Kari…” I made the decision to just stop and we collectively decided to push back our CD release and take more time to finish.

Best move made in a month.

By this point, I was completely and totally exhausted. Rebecca bought me dinner – that rocked – and I bought a copy of Batman Begins and watched it before falling into bed. It was the end of a very, VERY long week.

I learned a lot about recording and mixing and I know I’m better prepared for how to move forward. Fortunately, the lame semi-tragedy that was my Friday didn’t kill my weekend.

Saturday

I got up early and headed for Dallas. I was visiting my friend, Laura, and going to see Wayne Dyer with my other friend, Kate.

After arriving and having some lunch with Laura, Kate, her friend and I met up at the Dallas Convention Center to see Wayne Dyer. Dyer is a motivational, self-help guru type I’ve seen a few times. I’ve read a few of his books and he’s a really interesting person.

It was good timing for me. Friday would’ve been my 10-year wedding anniversary (oh, yeah, forgot to mention that) and the stress from all the recording and regular work was wearing on me.

Dyer was great and introduced a Ruwandan woman for whom he helped publish a book that will be released in February called Left to Tell. This woman is going to be all over the talk shows – my bet is Oprah will be first.

She spent 90 days living in a 3 foot by 3 foot bathroom with six other women hiding from marauding bands of killers bent of ethnically cleansing the country of her race – the Tutsies. The account was as moving as it was terrifying and she is an amazing woman. There were very few dry eyes in the house.

That whole thing was a pretty uplifting experience and definitely right on the money in terms of timing.

After the show, we all met up with Laura at a cool little cafe near downtown for dinner. Later, we met up and went to see a band called Millicent Friendly. I heard these guys a while back and their manager also manages local acts Arthur Yoria and Pale. They were very cool and it was their CD release so I picked up a disc. Chris Holt also played and was a really pleasant surprise. Great drummer.

Sunday

Laura and I had breakfast at this really cool little place called Bread Winner in the morning. They had pastires just lined up in cases at the front. Yum.

I headed out around noon and got back to Houston around 4pm. I spent most of the night just vegging and catching up on sleep.

I had a lot of fun in Dallas – it isn’t nearly as bad as I had remembered, but it still isn’t H-Town. 🙂 After the experiences of the past couple of weeks, it felt good to do something that had nothing to do with work or music.

Now, I just need a much more extended version of that.

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