In case someone stumbles upon this page: 2008 had a happy ending, even if it took a bit into 2009. I now live in the lower Haight, having spent a good portion of the past year traveling, and have beat the economy by accepting a good position at a Bay Area biotech company. I’ve attached a picture of my kitchen.
I also bought my dream touring bike for 100$. Got it set up as a nice singlespeed now, and will try and tour on it this spring/summer. Picture attached.
I should have posted that my Sweden adventures are on another blog, http://jefftravels.wordpress.com. Check it out – it’s mainly just pictures of bike rides, including my now-complete bike tour to Stockholm.
In other news, no labs got back to me about volunteer work. Their loss, I suppose, however the experience would have been nice. In the meantime, I’m just riding bikes and ogling pretty Swedish girls, and watching a lot of soccer. Interesting – without even really thinking about it, I’m basically not drinking at all here. I went a few times in Stockholm, but other than that I can count the number of beers I’ve had since I’ve arrived on the fingers of one hand, possibly with some to spare. Might change when I visit Denmark.
I’ll be updating that blog most often, and will return to this private one to ensure I meet my moving-to-SF goals (only two months away now!).
TJ dog from the stand at 25th and C Streets.
For Home Made Carne Asada Fries.
With Guacamole.
Western Steakburger Deluxe (topped with gyro meat).
Noodles and meatballs.
SIA Glass Knäckebröd Ice Cream.
(By the way if the last two posts weren’t clues enough, I’m safe in Sweden).
This is a test run of how my fully loaded Novara Randonee will look. I’m gonna wrap up the tent in a few tarps, but this is basically it.
This is how you fit it in a box, with camping gear.
I owe a lot of help to the employees of Performance Bike Shop – they hooked me up with a full set of zip ties, fork stays and all sorts of derailleur protectors that they get with shipped bikes. Also to the dude at Adams Avenue Bicycles who had the relevation that it might not be fitting in my box because I haven’t turned the fork inwards. Bingo! Now, it all gets in there, and just in case there was a fear of all this + a box of pedals, seat, and tools weighing more than 50 lbs to get onto the airplane, let me tell you from first hand experience – it weighs exactly 49.5lbs. Sweet.
I went to Davis this weekend for Picnic Day. It’s the annual day that every college town has where townies show up on campus to learn and do family-oriented stuff, and all the students start drinking at dawn. It was pretty awesome, and officially my last Picnic Day ever, as I’m totally old now. In my 7 straight Picnic Days, this was only the 3rd or so that incorporated sunshine. Here’s some kickass snapshots of the weekend. (more…)
I’ve been recording a new song here and there for the past few days. Right now it’s a preliminary, instrumental bit, but if I can write decent lyrics (I’m having ideas already) and a vocal line, it’ll get that. I’ll probably add a short acoustic guitar outro.
That said, it’s a pretty complicated, burly song. I don’t really expected many people out there would be too into it. The first half is very organ-heavy – I had an idea a while back that I wanted to write something with a slow, brooding organ part floating on top of a distant maelstrom of blasting drums – something about the juxtaposition of vastly different speeds and tonal qualities appealed to me. I think I achieved close to what I was imagining.I also wanted to explore some heavy organ riffing – call it an experiment; those parts ended up sounding a little stoner-rocking.
The last half of it is an ambitious tribute to the jazzy math-rock I’ve been listening to lately. I wanted a more jazz-informed chord progression with tons of key modulation, changing but catchy time signatures, and tasteful tapped guitar parts.
The performances went pretty well, I think. The only glaring errors are in the drumming in the middle when the clicktrack was ramping up tempo. The guitar parts came together in only a few takes, and I wrote and recorded the final bass part in two hours. I’d like to point out that the tambourine took only one perfect take!
Anyways, here’s the song.
http://rapidshare.com/files/108144784/jeff_gist_-_your_favorite_moons.mp3.html
April’s been rad so far. Weekend before last, I went to Kobey’s Swap Meet with my friend Kari, and bought expired food products. Eat shit, FDA! Here’s her with some sweet-ass Pop Tarts.
I then helped my brother’s roomates hang up carpetting on their refinished garage. They turned an unpowered, bare drafty space into a pretty sweet practice space/studio with sound insulation everywhere.
And the finished product:
Not much happened during the mid-week, though – I “officially” put my notice in, is all.
The next weekend, some friends and I rocked some cheap beer and went to a house party show. Technical rock extravaganza. Here’s Witt. They’re all in high school, and they shred harder than most 60 year olds.
And Fever Sleeves just got some good news about some DC legend personally mixing their upcoming 7″. Here they are, destroying.
The next day I went to Balboa Park for the annual rummage sale. It was a zoo – I could only deal long enough to pick up some sweet old Swedish pint glasses (I don’t think Norrlands Bryggeriet is in business anymore) and a puzzle. Here was the 1/4 mile long line to get in:
I then went to IKEA for meatballs (call it a practice session), and then to the beach for a hang out session. There was some rad paraglider surfing happening. We played bocce ball and did flips off of sand dunes.
I bought a pair of glasses for the beach. Here’s Cassie and myself modelling them today at the pizzeria. And I made a new addition to the tip jar.
I’m going to try to hnker down and write as much music as possible over the next two weeks, when I’m not tying up loose ends at the ol’ job.
I put my notice in today. I was nervous to the point of sweating. It’s all good. My last day is the 25th.
I paid rent for an apartment in Sweden today. I also decided to buy a new front rack that can accomodate my brakes on my bike.
I think these are good signs that I’m reaching my goals.
I still need panniers, bike tools, and apparently a new hard drive (so I can achieve my music goals).
I’m looking up stock form letters for giving notice. I’ll print one out tomorrow and throw it in an envelope before visiting my boss. Scary!
I remembered why I haven’t been recording music lately – my DAW’s harddrive is screwed. It won’t load Windows, and it’s constantly trying to spin up whenever I try to power on. I’m kind of sad that I had most of my personal pictures from the past year or so unbacked up, but if they aren’t salvageable, 2007 wasn’t that great anyways. I’m taking a camera with me everywhere this year, and am even considering a flickr account. A huge consolation is that I’m basically a genius and have all my recorded music on a seperate harddrive, so I hopefully haven’t lost any projects. I’m going to nab a 80 dollar Fry’s special and throw Windows on it, and reinstall what I need, and I should be back to where I started, minus a few pictures here and there.
Today I went to the Turf Club for dinner, an institution in my neighborhood. Knowing how rarely I’ve been visiting lately, I can’t say if I’ll ever be back (last week I went to my first bar in about a month and a half), but I’ll miss it and my friends who work there and stay smiling no matter how much attitude the greased-hair, striped-shirt, lost Gaslampers give them. Keep on trucking!
I spent about three hours trying to send my rent money to my new Swedish roomate today – Western Union is a terrible institution. I visited a location, and the teller had never HEARD of Sweden. It’s not like I’m trying to send money to Bhutan or anything! He couldn’t understand that I wanted to send an amount in Swedish Kroner rather than US Dollars. Failing that, the internet transfer back at home didn’t work for the third time in as many days. After an hour on the phone (how 1980s), talking with 5 different people, I was getting hopeful before I was instructed to hang up so they could call me back – of course they called the WRONG NUMBER, and according to policy, I didn’t pick up the phone, so they promptly cancelled my payment. Another call, talking to 3 more people, explaining the situation yet again. It would have gone through perfectly this time, except they told me after everything that the transfer was not authorized, and could tell me nothing else, except to try in person at a Western Union location. My two options are the gentleman down the street who has never heard of Sweden and cannot figure out why I want to send money in a currency other than the powerful USD, or the friendly corner liquor store down in the ghetto with a crudely handpainted shop sign reading “David’s FREINDLY Liquor”. I’ll try to find a reputable agent in the suburbs tomorrow after work.
Can’t wait to start recording!
I’ve been really slacking on recording music lately. Having a laptop and being able to lounge around the living room slugging back a Diet Coke WHILE TOTALLY SURFIN’ THE WEB is too appealing, so my drum parts sit unfinished (I’m having trouble with a particular blastbeat that’s going to be doubled in stereo and distorted and thrown under a slow, growling organ, that’s right). I even watched some UNIVERSAL SOLDIER last night instead of compositing takes like I said I would.
I have plane tickets. I’m leaving on the 7th and arriving in Lund on the 8th. The first thing I do after dropping stuff off at my place (all confirmed, just need Western Union to take my money) is head up the street to Willy’s to buy milk, yogurt, granola, ice cream, and candy. Here’s what’s in store for me:
When I get a wild hair up my ass and decide to for once pay the exorbitant prices for milk here, I am faced with a conundrum: refreshing but admittedly watered-down 1%? Or creamy, delicious, frothy 2% that sits like some liquid kind of rock in your stomach for the rest of the day? Once again, Sweden destroys all other countries, EVER, in the dairy field. Introducing 1,5% Fetthalt. That comma is the same thing as a decimal, in case you’re wondering. They found the perfect balance of 1 and 2 percentage milks, while the rest of the western world is twiddling their thumbs and complaining about lactose intolerance.
For some reason, Sweden is the only country that does fruit-mixed yogurt right. Yoggi’s “light” yogurt doesn’t have the sweetener aftertaste that the Dannon’s does here. The current US dairy culture (YES I JUST SAID THAT) decrees that the health-conscious yogurt buyer may have either that artificially sweetened, “light” variety of yogurt, or a fat free yogurt bursting with high-glycemic index sugars. Yoggi takes the best of both worlds, takes away any shortcomings or compromises, and delivers the best yogurt known to man. Note the ingenious Tetra-Pak-ing of the product. Real talk.
Sia are ice cream masters. Their knäckebröd ice cream is the most perfect dairy confection known to man. I’d bring everybody back some on the plane if it were possible.
See that yellow piece in the corner? The red ones are strawberry, the center is a creamy marshmallow-type candy, and by eating one you are looking down the flavor barrel of a JORDGUBB PISTOL. A Strawberry Pistol. I will (and have in the past) be eating these by the pounds. My favorite candy ever.
Other than that, I’ll be putting in my notice for sure on Friday. Nervous and happy (after today’s 16.75 hour work day).
