Went out for a walk this morning before breakfast. This is not my usual MO – I generally prefer breakfast and coffee before anything else. But I figured the day would get warm enough that I didn’t want to muck about in the heat.

As I was heading out into the morning haze, the neighbour’s dog decided to join me. I couldn’t remember his name, and he’s a bit pudgy, so I named him Pot Roast. We walked for about 5 miles, which was quite pleasant. At one point I thought we were in trouble – in rural Arkansas, when someone comes out their door shouting “Excuse me!” it generally means they’re going to be carrying a gun… this time it turned out it was someone who wanted to know if I was a dog trainer, because I was able to walk the dog without a leash. Apparently she was having trouble with her new rescue Alsatian. Wish I could have helped, but I just like dogs (and speak dog reasonably well), I don’t really have any experience in training or that sort of thing. But I wished her well, because adopting rescue dogs is one of those Good Things.

And now to get things organized for the day. Overdubs, maybe a little mixing, and possibly a trip to the thrift shop! How exciting 🙂 Oh and listening to crickets, I still like that bit.

Have spent the last few days in Dallas staying with friends & playing at FenCon – which was awesome – and meeting new folks – which was awesome, even if too many people make me want to hide under a rock.  And it’s been so damn hot (by my standards) that it’s only after dark that I can go outside. But hey.

Now I’m in Arkansas with Sooj and Ryan, which is so awesome. The crickets are loud enough to drown out conversations. The spiders are big enough to eat people. And apparently there are water moccasins and cottonmouths! The only downside is that Our Drummer John isn’t here with us, so our ordinary Designated Victim isn’t here… guess I’ll have to keep an eye out myself.

Wish I’d brought my good camera. There was an orb weaver the size of my thumb earlier!

Tomorrow I’m hoping to get Sooj’s bass and vocal parts for the solo project done. And walking. And playing with dogs. And napping…

I tend to work on a bunch of projects & problems simultaneously over the course of months or years, letting my subconscious churn away at things, coming up with new ideas gradually, researching things piecemeal. This means that sometimes I forget I was working on something, and don’t realize that I’ve found the solution to the problem when I’ve found it.

I was working on making the e-reader experience more pleasant for myself – poorly formatted ebooks drive me around the bend – and I just realized that I now have all the tools & knowledge assembled to do what I want to do with ebooks. 

Now I have to remember just what it was that I wanted to do… I think it had to do with fixing spelling errors, chapter divisions, and unnecessary hyphenation. I’m sure if I can just make a list of the things I wanted to knock off, I can script them all in a few minutes…