December 6, besides being Lizzy's birthday, is the "official" release date for the long-delayed remix record Andre LaFosse put together for me. You can pre-order it now here and here. For those who don't do the Paypal thing, the album will be showing up at CD Baby any day now. I'll post an update when it comes. Andre and I are working on getting some press for this thing, you'll know about it as soon as I do. If you're really interested, Andre has posted the official "press bio" for the album here.

It's really cool that this thing is finally coming out. Thanks to those of you who have already ordered the album. Those orders are on their way to you now.

Sisters are one of the best inventions ever conceived. I'm surely grateful for mine. She was here over last weekend, which recedes now in my memory as a blazing supernova of activity - she harangued me the whole time about what a piss-poor job I'd done arranging the apartment. Up until five hours before she got on a plane back to LA, I had shot down as impractical every single suggestion to fix things that she had put forth. But, as I mentioned, she had a brainstorm five hours before we needed to leave for the airport, and we stayed up moving things, and now I have an apartment that I could actually entertain in. It's amazing what a little rearranging can do. I bow to the Master, my baby sis. Love you, kiddo.

I'm ducking into the studio this weekend for what will likely be the last bit of work I put in this calendar year on the next Half Zaftig album. Wish me luck and nimble fingers.

I myself am less enthralled. I am quite happy with my existing, "old school" XBox. For one thing, I don't have an HD TV, so there's one new aspect of the new XBox's technology that I can't take advantage of. I also don't have any kind of surround sound setup, so I can't use that feature. For another thing, there probably aren't going to be too many new games for the new unit - they don't have something like "Halo" that's the "killer app" that everyone needs right this very minute.

And then there's the issue of backwards-compatibility of the old games on the new console. SOME of the games will be compatible, some won't. I have a backlog of 10 or so titles I haven't even started playing yet - and I don't know if they'll run on the new box.

I also don't mind waiting a year to pick up the hot games - the price goes from $50 to $20 per game in that timespan.

Work was abuzz about this thing today - guys were making plans to go line up at Best Buy right after work. I'm just not geeky enough to care about this one - there's not enough "value add" for me this time around.

In a year, they'll be going for $200 (instead of $400). If it's a good console now, it'll still be good then. And there might be some good games by then. I can wait.

I've been hanging out a lot at home lately - though during the week the workdays have been long. Approaching the end of another project, and the ends of projects always tend to require long days. I've got the dogs lately as well, and this is how they spend their days:



Jealous yet? I am. Good and bad news is that I'm probably going to be needed at my current position right up until I leave for my winter vacation. Good in that more money is always good, bad in that I was hoping for a little time off before heading east. I do need to cram in some Christmas shopping sometime, after all. I mentioned a couple of days ago that I'm re-reading The Artist's Way again - and if you're familiar with that book, you're familiar with the main activity one is supposed to engage in to help encourage creative flow: The Morning Pages. I've re-started mine. I'm using them to try and work things out.

I just turned 36 last week. I don't know where my life is leading me, but I do know that avoidance of the issues I constantly turn over in my head won't get me to any destinations on the road. I'm using the MP's to work things out. It's not the sort of thing I'd post here, but it does help to try to put a finer point on things. That's what I'm looking for right now.

Oh, and as promised long ago, here's that photo of the first sunset I saw from my new building: