brykmantra.com

I didn’t post last night because I was busy cramming for a job interview that I had today.

Yes, I’m such a nerd I study for interviews.

Anyway, I won’t go into detail at this point, but it was actually an enjoyable interview, because they seemed to really be impressed with my wide variety of experience.

It’s good to have your abilities respected every now and then, especially when I’m job hunting, and especially after I was having to do all this random stuff that had nothing to do with my skills for my last two years at my previous job.

Also, it’s a great little company with smart, friendly people, and I learned a lot of fascinating things about the business they’re in. Bonus points: The owners love dogs, and often have their poodle at the office. Unfortunately, they don’t have a health plan, so I don’t know if we would be able to work out enough to pay compensate, but it would be a chance to use both my creative abilities and my office skills.

Anyway, there’s my obligatory post, and now I’ve got to get back to working on the music thing …

For the first three days of the challenge, I put together one good tune beginning each day, and the third day was the best one.

That third one got me overconfident, apparently. On the evening of the fourth, I sat on the back porch with my guitar and pounded out a couple of hopeful-sounding chord progressions … but alas, when I got them punched into my music software, hopeful turned to hopeless.

So the next night, I was too dispirited to try to start from scratch again, so instead I went back to what I started on the 3rd … and I’ve got to say, what I ended up with, after tinkering with it again today, is pretty cool. Kind of Bruce Springsteen/Tom Petty sounding, except I don’t really like their stuff a lot.

(And BTW, thanks much to Yay-Kim for her tips and pointers!)

Still, though, I really need to pick up the pace if I’m going to compile another 9 of those boogers before this short month is through — and if I’m going to do any vocals at all, it’ll require a personal effort comparable to D-Day and class-picture-day all rolled into one.

And another area in which I’m lacking is the song-naming arena; the song that I’ve pretty much finished is called “A Minor F C Chords 2-5-08″, for lack of anything more descriptive. Another song is called “Simple Tune 2-2-08″.

Somewhere, Springsteen is laughing his butt off.

Anyway, I just keep on plugging, and maybe along the way I’ll learn enough survival skills to be able to churn through these chores a little faster.

And now for something completely different, here’s a really, really fat guy, firing a gun really, really fast:

(Via Attack of the Show)

Hmm, that’s a catchy little rhythm … I think I’ll download it and build a song around it …

… or rather TRYING to be musicking, and failing miserably.

But still I need to post, so here’s a picture I took yesterday of my exercise buddy, Gracie:

Gracie is a sweet little doggie on my walking route, a couple of blocks south of my street. I met her just less than two years ago when I had to start my walks to rebuild my lung power, and now she usually runs to the fence when she sees me coming, so I can pet her through the links (she’s too short for me to reach her over the fence).

I got to see her again today, since it was extra-warm again (record heat for this date! 84F!) and it might be the last warm day for a walk for a while. This time when I stood up after I petted her, she stood up too, and whined for more petting, and leaned against the fence so I could scratch behind her ears.

Yeah, I’m a sucker for puppies. But look at those beautiful brown eyes! Isn’t she sweet?

(BTW, I’ve talked to her owner a couple of times, that’s how I know Gracie’s name. I’m not going pet psychic or Dr. Doolittle or anything.)

Anyway, that oughta hold ya; now I’m going back to not being any good at doing music.

UPDATE: Welcome, new visitors from Pam’s Carnival of the Canines! Please bookmark the main page here and keep coming back!

It was almost 80 freaking degrees today!

Okay, okay, that’s not the announcement. But it was unseasonably warm for a February 3 (thus the word “unseasonably”), so I had to point that out now.

Seriously, it was warm. I went on my lung-walk without having to wait for it to warm up first, and afterward I got out in the back yard, put on a Cherish the Ladies CD, and trimmed the rose bushes for probably the first time since before my surgery (2 years ago next month!).

But I digress once again.

Here’s the major point here:

Even though it was probably inevitable, it feels like an announcement is in order:

I’ve decided to do the RPM Challenge that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

And after three days of noodling around on my Cakewalk software, I have come to an inescapable conclusion:

I am so over my head.

What have I gotten myself into??

I blame you, Yay-Kim! You got me into this!

No, but seriously: Everything I’ve ever accomplished seemed hopeless at one point or another: My karate test, my first time onstage doing comedy, my A+ Certification — Those things all looked totally out of reach, after I committed to them, but I pulled them all off.

How?

By panicking like an idiot.

Seriously. Panicking like an idiot is highly underrated.

I’ll just learn the program better, and study a little music theory, and practice writing tons of music of which I’ll only use ten percent, and when it’s all over, I feel confident that I will have risen to acceptable mediocrity, with minimal worldwide humiliation.

Let’s hope.

Until I can get a chance to post what I need to, here’s something cool that The Spook sent us this today:

Cows With Guns!

And in case that wasn’t enough, go to the Cows With Guns homepage, where there’s a stop-motion version of the same thing, plus other stuff like like Raging Rodent t-shirts, and The Right to Arm Bears.

You heard me.