Over At Wicasta.com

As you may have noticed, this blog was abandoned long ago. If you really want to keep up with what's going on, feel free to visit the current blog at wicasta.com.

Day One, Month One, Year 2008

We're getting ready to leave Kings Mountain and head back to St. Pete. I figured it's sort of traditional to jot something down on the first day of the new year, so here I am ... jotting.

I won't wax too philosophical about the day. I have a lot to be grateful for, but that'll all be commented upon in the posts I haven't put up yet. All I'll say is that I'm heading into 2008 feeling really positive. It's going to be a great year. And if it isn't, I'm going to kill puppies. So there.

I'm not one to make resolutions. I think they're pointless. But I made some this year. Three, in fact.

1) I'm going to try to be more positive. I became increasingly negative in the past few years. That's a poison I don't want inside of me anymore.

2) Keep busy and be productive. I want great things to happen in 2008, and that means working for it. Work, work, work.

3) Start a new religion.

I won't explain the last one. I don't figure I need to. I'm not looking for followers or anything. I'm not asking anyone to believe what I believe. And whether or not you disagree with my outlook on things doesn't enter into it. I'm right. You're wrong. Get with the program! ;-)

Well, I should finish getting ready. As usual Mama has gotten scarce. She always does that when I'm leaving. An unconscious delaying tactic, I assume (which can be frustrating). But it's good to be loved, right?

Okay. Time to git. Happy New Year, everybody. I hope 2008 is a good year for you. I don't want to hear you whining later on if mine goes well and yours doesn't. So just let it go and have a great year. :-)

Christmas Evening

It’s been a long day. I’m sitting in my room, tinkering on the computer. Victoria and Mama are watching a Lifetime movie in the den (kill me now). I don’t know what to do with myself, really, but will probably go in there and curl up beside Victoria and nap. That sounds like a plan.

I started to write because I wanted to report on the day, but now I feel kind of sleepy and the words just aren’t coming. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed Christmas breakfast with Mama, Victoria, Katie, Michelle and Ryan. It was fun to open presents. I won’t get into my angst about not being able to supply my loved ones with great gifts this year. I got some cool stuff. A fighting bo. A Blue Man Group DVD. A stunning two-volume retrospective on the life and work of Salvador Dali. But these were trinkets compared to the most wonderful gift of all; being in the company of most excellent and wonderful people, who have opened their lives to me and made me feel like I might actually belong somewhere again. Just being here was the most precious gift I could ask for. And, of course, I’m blessed to have another Christmas with Mama.

Lunch/Dinner was nice. Bruce (Victoria’s brother), his wife Mary, daughter Samantha, and mother-in-law Fay came over, as well as Victoria’s friend Jennifer and her son, Jason. We had a wonderful dinner. Everyone ate until they were stuffed, and then we all sat around and talked. Which is what you’re supposed to do at Christmas, I think. It was a little strange for me, I admit. I’m not used to doing the family thing at Christmas. I mean, Christmas has always just been me and Mama, and for some years Loretta and Tonya. Not a lot of people, in other words. But I think I commended myself well. Mama kept accusing me of being shy, but she was the one Victoria or I kept rounding up (because she had wandered off to some more socially comfortable position - like in another room by herself, or drifting just off the kitchen and out of the general melee). I admit that I’m not the most social of animals. That’s mostly because when I talk to someone for ten or fifteen minutes, they tend to realize that I’m a bit odd. So I watch what I say, and I seem “quiet” or “shy” because I don’t have the easy social graces. “How about those Buccaneers?” “How about that black hole that they just discovered that’s blasting matter into a nearby galaxy?” See what I mean?

After everyone left I hooked up Katie’s new X-Box to the entertainment system in the living room. That went well. I imagine there are worse ways to experience Halo 3 for the first time than on a 50″ plasma television and Bose surround-sound speaker system. Katie approved.

After the sun went down, Victoria, Mama and I drove around to check out the Christmas lights. We weren’t gone long. There wasn’t much to see. I’d noticed last week on the way up to get Mama that there just wasn’t a lot of Christmas decorations. Maybe the trend carried over here in Saint Petersburg? Either way, it didn’t take us long to get burned out and come back home. Since then we’ve all sort of wandered. Now Mama and Victoria are in the den watching television, and I’m in here typing away on my computer. Something seems wrong with that equation.

I don’t know if anything I’ve said here has made any sense. But that doesn’t matter. I’m tired and I just don’t care. I’ve had a nice day and a memorable Christmas. And while it may be true that we didn’t create anything worthy of the Waltons or Walt Disney, we still had a nice Christmas. It’s one I’ll remember and treasure. Soon we’ll be stumbling over into a new year and it will all begin again.

I’m so looking forward to that. I’ve been listless of late. I’m eager to bury this year and move on. Somehow I have a feeling that 2008 is going to be a good one. Mostly because I intend to make it a good one. Here I am. I’m in a good place, surrounded by good people. I have hope and a quiet resolve that I haven’t felt since I was young. I can’t explain it. I won’t try. But I know in my heart that good things are going to happen. I know that when I sit before my computer late on Christmas Day in 2008, I will be able to look back with some satisfaction at the progress I’ve made. I know this because I intend it. And I will not be denied.

Christmas Morning

I know I should be leaping about shouting “Merry Christmas!” and “Happy Yule!”, but I don’t think that’s likely to happen. Not because I’m not in the mood or anything, but because it just ain’t my style. I’m in my room, keeping a low profile while Victoria’s kids open their presents. Well, and because I’m waiting on Mama. I don’t want her to feel left out. She’s still in the bedroom. I thought she was getting ready, but I just checked on her and she’s sitting on the side of the bed reading a book. She and I both want to give Victoria and her kids some room. Christmas is about family, and they should all have some quality time free of the inevitable strains of having new people in their midst. Next year Mama and I won’t be new quantities and things will be different. But right now we’re both reluctant to insert ourselves into their lives.

Well, Victoria just fetched Mama, so she’s up and about. I should join the fray, I guess. I’m happy to be here and to have Victoria in my life. I’m happy to have a new home and be surrounded by such wonderful, eclectic people. However it may sound, I’m not being standoff-ish today. More than anything, I’m just feeling reflective. Next year everything changes. Right now I just feel like I’m winding up this year, and waking up from a long, strange dream. I’m still trying to get used to being among the living again.

Back in Kings Mountain

I'm sort of hanging out, trying to figure out what to do with myself. I've come up here to pick up Mama. She's going to spend Christmas with us in Saint Petersburg. That'll be a trip. For all of us, I think. A totally new configuration. Mama's excited about having people to dote on, I think (I'm not very dotable), and she's looking forward to fattening us all up. She has a bin of fudge that takes up an entire shelf of her refrigerator. She made enough fudge for us to give the entire Tampa Bay area a sugar high.

I sort of enjoyed the trip up. Well, as much as I could. I missed Victoria the minute I rolled out of the driveway, and felt kinda of lost along the way. But after a while I sort of took a liking to roaring down the road. Victoria's Land Rover puts up a nice, manly hum that's well-suited to the highway. Figures I'd bond with a car, doesn't it?

Well, I'm going to find something to do with myself. I thought I'd sit down and write something witty, but I'm just spinning my wheels. I wish I'd brought my notebooks with me. I have a couple weeks' worth of posts (I know ... who puts pen to paper anymore? The horror ...) that I could be putting up. Not that I've written much of anything worth reading. Mostly I've bitched about this and that not working right when I've tried to get the recording gear to play nice. I wrote one funny post about the cats and the dog and the bandana torture experiment (don't ask). And I wrote about the first trial run with the new grill (oh, geez ... I just remembered that I forgot to clean the damned thing!). The truly funny thing is that when I put up those posts, you won't know they were posted after the fact, and this post won't make any damned sense. That appeals to me. Hail Eris!

Okay. I'm obviously bored. See ya.

Frustrated

Kind of frustrated today. I've reformatted the hard drive on my laptop, reinstalled Windows XP, and was generally looking forward to getting some things loaded and rolling. That's when I began wondering where my sound card for the laptop was. I looked high and low in the lair, and then it slowly began to dawn on me that it's very likely it was left in the box I brought my music goodies to St. Pete in. If so, that was foolishness on my part. We started dumping loose papers into that box while it still had stuff in it. I dug out my microphone, but I don't remember digging out the sound card. And since I can't seem to find it ... well, there's a natural assumption there.

If the sound card was in that box of trash and got thrown away, that was a damned expensive mistake. One that I could not afford to make. $150 down the drain, and no way to replace it. It also represents an end to my efforts. There's no point in trying to put the Amplitube 2, Ampeg SVX or GigaStudio software on the laptop if I can't get sound out of the damned thing. I haven't given up hope yet. For all I know the sound card is floating around and I just have to figure out where it is. So we'll see.

Another thing that kind of kicked me in the chest was finding out that my bank account is $167 in the hole. Holy crap. I didn't see that one coming. As usual, it's a few small charges, and a whole bunch of big overdraft fees from the bank. That kinda took my breath away. But I don't know what I expected. I couldn't just sit here on my ass and expect that those few bills wouldn't catch up to me sooner or later. I guess it's about high time I got off my ass and started trying to sell all those things that I've been wanting to put on the chopping block. I don't know what the hell I've been waiting for. Maybe I've just enjoyed being able to hide from reality for a little while.

In more upbeat news, I started tinkering with Dramatica Pro today. I mean really tinkering with it. Not just looking it over. I've started structuring a short story that I'm liking more and more. It started with just one line of dialogue, and now, with the help of Dramatica Pro, it's starting to shape up into a potentially interesting story. I haven't finished with shaping the story yet, but already the program has helped me flesh it out in interesting ways. I suspect that my assumptions were true, in that Dramatica Pro might help me offset my lack of formal training. It's certainly helped me structure this story in a very useful way. So who knows? Maybe in the long run I might be a writer after all.

In the meantime, I have to figure out a way to plug that hole in the dike. And that means soon.

Tinkering & Kinda Tired

Tinkering. Kinda tired. Been wrestling with the stereo and television hookups today. I know. Hard job, huh? But someone had to do it.

Mostly I'm waiting for Windows XP to finish reformatting my laptop's hard drive (again). I screwed up something when I tried to install that damned USB guitar cable, and could never get the system working right again. It was slow as Christmas. So ... when in doubt, reformat. That's an improvement over the impulse to smash it against the wall.

I'm going to have to use the laptop for the Amplitube 2 and Ampeg SVX software. They won't work on 64-bit Windows. Neither will my copy of GigaStudio. So the laptop is going to have a second life after all. I kinda like that. At one point I'd thought that if I could get everything to work on my desktop, the laptop would just wind up in a closet or something. Fate had other plans, though. Fine with me. Whatever. As long as I can get it done.

I haven't tinkered much with the recording yet. Or the writing. Or much of anything, really. Mostly I've been trying to remember what it's like to be a human being. That sounds melodramatic, I know, but I really mean it. I had sort of shut down while in the truck. I did my job and didn't reflect much on how miserable I was. But in order to not think about it, I had stopped feeling anything. Now I'm trying to remember how. What does it say about me that whenever I spontaneously hug Victoria, some part of me feels like a needy child that wants attention? It's like every time I feel some genuine impulse or emotion, I scold myself for wanting it. Or maybe for allowing it. But I keep reminding myself that I'm not alone on a truck anymore. Not only do I need to be human for my own sake, but the people I live with now need me to be human, too.

Well, I didn't start writing to get into all this. I was going to talk about recording, dammit. Or at least how slow it was going getting things up to speed. I had to order an AC adapter for my Axiom keyboard because its software wouldn't run on my computer's operating system. That took awhile. Then I realized that the FireWire cable for my audio interface is about five feet too short to reach my computer (still haven't solved that one). Then I realized that my entire box of guitar cables and patch-cords is gone (I suspect it was pilfered when I allowed the locusts to swarm the house in Kings Mountain), which means I can't hook up everything anyway. And then I realized that something had to be done about the laptop.

But ... I'm confident that I'll get all this rolling one of these days. You'd think I'd be breathless to get started. But I'm not. I think I'm a little afraid of it. I've been telling myself for years that one of these days I'll have all the equipment I need to create wonderful things. Now that I do, I'm afraid of it. I'm afraid that all of that confidence and bluster won't amount to anything. I'm afraid I'll give it a go and it'll all suck. This has defined me for so long. Who am I if not the frustrated artist? What if it all sucks? What if it turns out that I'm just so painfully ordinary, that buying all this equipment was just an exercise in ego inflation? What if instead of the mighty Wicasta, I'm just plain old Kevin?

Not that there's anything wrong with being plain old Kevin, per se. I have people in my life who love plain old Kevin very much. And I could very easily see Kevin sitting on a beach watching the sun set, sipping sangria and just being happy to be alive. The only problem is that Wicasta would be humming tunes in his ear, and he'd be itching to sing them. I'm supposed to be something special. “The Lord has big things in mind for that boy.” But what if I'm not?

Better to not try at all than to find out that I'm just plainfully ordinary after all. But, in the end, I'll give it a go because I really don't know what else to do with myself.

Saturday Ruminations

I sat down to recount the last week or so, but realized that I just don't want to. Sometimes I think I'm losing interest in jotting everything down. Who really cares? Oh, yeah. I went to the store today and bought a drink. Then I drank it. Aren't you suitably impressed with my exciting existence?

I shouldn't say that. I feel like my existence has taken a turn for the interesting thanks to Victoria. I just increasingly feel like jotting it all down takes away from the experience of living. The moment you start putting words down to chronicle what you've experienced, you're living in the past and not the present. I don't want to spend my days obsessed with who I am or might be, and what I've done or have thought of doing. I'd much rather post a story that I've written than ruminate about an idea for a story that I never get around to putting down in words.

I don't know why all this is going through my head today. It's a bit late to start second-guessing the habit of keeping a journal. I mean, I've had one going on since December of 1986. I've been doing this for almost twenty one years. And now I'm wondering if it's such a good idea?

Well, anyway, I do want to mention our trip down from Kings Mountain yesterday. I enjoyed the trip. Ten hours doesn't seem like so much when you're in good company. I was with Victoria and her daughter Katie. That was fun for me. However much I'd like to think otherwise, there's a layer of discomfort between Katie and I. Which is understandable. I'm just some guy who showed up and is now living in her home. She's gracious and kind, but there are the inevitable awkward silences. Those didn't happen so much yesterday. I was thankful for that. Hopefully Katie's beginning to get some idea of who I am as a person. I admit that, being shy and having a tendency to keep my head down, I haven't given her much to base her assumptions upon.

Anyway, I enjoyed the drive. But it's damned good to be back home in St. Pete. Now if I could just work these kinks out of my shoulder, I might sallie forth and have a great day.