Check Baby, Check Baby, One Two Three

Yep, I'm starting off with a reference to that timeless classic, "Rump Shaker." It came to mind as I thought about my adventures in audio recording. I never actually said into a microphone, "check check, one two, one two." Perhaps I should have. It may have improved my audio quality if I'd done some testing and experimenting before recording my first interview.

And that picture of my cat up there really has nothing to do with anything. I just like it.

Maybe I should start again.

I've been busy lately, at work, in my love life, in my parenting life. I'm struggling on the physical fitness front, but as Chucky used to say on Sons of Anarchy, "I accept that." It'll come back around. Life is cyclical. Busy as I've been, I haven't had much to say here, or the time to say it. I am feeling some joyful sparks of creativity, though. I've written a couple more tales for live storytelling, and I told one at Story Department, a monthly fundraising event for Austin Bat Cave, a creative writing program for kids. I had a great time, and was surprised to find that I wasn't nervous before the show at all. Right after I told my story, though, when I sat down, my hands started shaking, and I was freezing like the place was refrigerated. I loved it, and I can't wait to do it again. Hopefully next time I'll remember to record it.

I've also been working on another storytelling project that I'll debut soon. I've recorded my first interview, learning how my equipment and techniques as a sound engineer need improvement. I'm about a third of the way through editing that interview, discovering how hard it is to seamlessly cut and splice audio when the sound quality of the original recording isn't that great. I'm learning about music licensing, logo design, website management, and more! I'm operating on the philosophy that my first product will be amateurish, but it will teach me a bucketful of lessons. And that's OK. I can only go up from here! And I'm having fun. What else can one ask from a hobby?

In the meantime, I took a lovely trip to Dallas with my brother for what is always a highlight of the year, the Texas vs. OU game at the Cotton Bowl during the Texas State Fair. Texas lost, but delightfully kept the possibility of winning alive all the way through the last play of the game. Better than the game were hours of catching up with him during the drives there and back. We live in close proximity but don't see each other much. We talked and talked and talked, and you know how much I love words, and words about words, and words about feelings. It was a fabulous time. So I marked the occasion by collecting the historical marker for the Texas Centennial Exposition. It's a charming little tale of building projects employing the folk during the Depression, a sort of mini TVA story, and how it impacted the development of Dallas. I grew up in a suburb of Dallas, have been to the State Fair many times over the years, and never read this story before.

And here's another one from my stroll across my beautiful campus at lunch today. It's a joy every year to emerge from the brutality of the Central Texas summer, with 6 months of unrelenting heat, to remember that really it can be quite lovely here. It was a beautiful day for a stroll, and a campus full of youth and dotted with art and architecture makes an uplifting setting for a midday walk. So there's that. For the last two years of not-summers, I've walked past the All Saints' Episcopal Church and the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (aren't all seminaries theological?) many times, but never read the marker. I like seeing stories of the people who bore the names that now mean something completely different around here: RL Thornton is a freeway. Lamar is a boulevard. Kinsolving is a building.

Anyway. New projects are coming, and I'm having fun. I hope that you are, too.

Welcome back, not-summer! I've missed you.