Another day, another set of sidewalk stripes. This time we have yellow, to mark a gas line. It goes near the cherry tree that the wall folks were already going to have to be careful of. Lots of rain is forecast for this week though, so I don’t expect the wall construction will begin quite yet, and we don’t have a date for it yet.
The first company I reached out to about siding repair got back to me Friday and said they have a $1000 minimum repair fee and an 8 week lead time. (They could have started with that…!) It’s one strip of siding and I really don’t want to overpay for that. So I’m in the process of getting some other quotes; the next one will be April 9.
I finally recorded the first track for the next album project. For all that people claim that restrictions are good for creativity, I’m going to say that they can be good… or they can get in the way. There have been a few times where if it hadn’t been for the “must be bass” restriction I’d likely have recorded something. But sometimes I just don’t want to pick up the bass and start with that — the process is quite different with it. Important lesson learned already!
The track itself is okay, perhaps good (I need more distance to judge it). It’s not what I was imagining when I started. I had planned to use Multimod/Nearness to create some stereo spread and subtle detuning, and play something melancholy and slow. But I wound up smashing the “subtle” to go for equal-interval chords with random time jumps, a very granular-ish effect. Along with a deeper drone, it works.
“Regular” chords in Western music theory usually have mixed intervals — they are not symmetrical, and that asymmetry lets us very easily identify major and minor triads and their inversions. C-F-A is recognized as a major chord and the root is F. But C-F-Bâ™ has equal intervals, so there’s no identifiable root. Inversions like Bâ™-C-F seem asymmetrical, but they don’t decode to anything we recognize. So it’s very enigmatic and open-ended. Jazz hands!
I’ve been continuing to play Guild Wars 2. March brought discounts on various in-game cosmetic and utility stuff, and among other things I got myself a Shimmerwing skin for my skyscale — sort of a unicorn/dragonfly/dragon hybrid I guess. No actual money spent nor shady dealings. I’ve never been one to farm for gold, but several years of playing meant I had a lot of hoarded crafting materials, secondary currencies, weapon skins I never cared about etc. that could all be sold in-game for gold and then converted to gems. Enough for a nifty mount and fancy pants and a cool cape.
(The one thing I still want for my characters is a crossbow pistol, which converts the loud shooty sounds of other pistols to a satisfying, suitable sproing-whoosh-thunk. That requires 25 Black Lion Statuettes, and I have… 6, after kind of squandering them on armor skins that I wound up not using all that long anyway. You get one with every chest unlock, but the keys are rarer than they used to be — granted at particular Personal Story steps (with per-week per-account limits) or randomly on completing a map. This is to encourage people to spend actual cash on them. Feh.)
Today is the Transgender Day of Visibility. It’s also a work-at-the-office day, so I was pondering various things. I chose not to be as overt as I might have liked. I was going to at least wear a pink shirt with a blue undershirt, but then I spilled peanut butter on that.
So all I really did was add “The Shark” tarot card enamel pin, which I got as a random extra with an order of other pins, to my hoodie. It looks more than a little like BlÃ¥haj, which is probably just coincidence. I also have my nonbinary dragon pin on that hoodie anyway. And enby and trans pride flag stickers on my car, which given where I work, more people are going to see anyway. So I’m not completely invisible.
Among the other books mentioned by The Trans and Nonbinary Hero’s Journey was H.E. Edgmon’s The Witch King and its sequel Fae Keeper. A young transmasculine and gay witch, fated to wed a Faery king, had escaped to Earth but gets dragged back into all the horrible politics. It’s really a lot of fun. The MC’s problems are not from the relatively minimal transphobia and practically zero homophobia in the book, nor from dysphoria… but from traditionalist Fae bigotry against witches, serious doubts about marrying into royalty, jealousy, out-of-control magic (leaving physical and emotional scars), and general fish-out-of-water-ness. That’s enough for one character to have to deal with. I really enjoyed the first book and have started in on the second.
I’ve got another bunch of books on the way via Alibris: JES’ The Audible Past, as well as Life Isn’t Binary and some more nobinary, trans and queer fantasy.