(dc) youth congress

so the reason i've been quiet is that i've been slammed (in a good way) doing music and sound for this year's dc Baha'i congress for youth and young adults. devon and i rushed to finish his cd so it would be ready in time for the congress, and we started rehearsing the moment he arrived in dc 10 days ago. sara solstice showed up on tuesday, devon's brother, collin came on wednesday morning, then the other guitar player showed up late wednesday night. our show was thursday. we recruited local drummer and friend of mine, jake summers, to play with us. we were in a bit of a panic becuase we didn't have anyone to run the sound board thursday night until i saw john and jenni hicks in line at registration thursday afternoon. who knew john could run a soundboard? i thought he was just a killer mandolin player. anyway, the show went off without major incident, then it was time to focus on the sound for the rest of the weekend. i made a few glaring sound mistakes resulting in massive amounts of deafening feedback once or twice (not during any musical performances - mostly due to the way the speakers used the mics - one speaker got up there and pushed the mic so far away from his face there was no way to bump up the gain enough to hear him properly, and then he shoo'd away the stagehand who tried to go fix the problem), but overall made it through the weekend and made the bands sound good.

we were all exhausted but happy.


devon and sara are still in town, and adam lives just up in baltimore, so we're working on recording all the stuff we've been working on for the last week. and i'm finally back at work to do some science.

coming up:
* science conference in SF next week
* baha'i social and economic development conference in florida dec 15-18
* baha'i conference in arizona dec 22-26 (not sure if i can go to this)

(greenbelt) goddard culture photoessay pt. 4

this is always empty (except for lint):

(dc) goddard culture photoessay pt 3

(greenbelt) goddard culture photoessay pt. 2

(dc) the crucial peoples

i'm enjoying spam more and more these days:

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Please go here to decide this phase of the agreement.

Hoping on the best for you all.

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(greenbelt) goddard culture photoessay pt. 1

brought to you by the people who put stuff up in the hallways of nasa goddard space flight center.

(dc) wow

this is awesome.

(dc) i'm all blogged out

i dunno what it is. so much is happening, yet i'm feeling all blogged out, like none of it is really interesting enough to share with the world. but i should at least try. a friend wrote me from amsterdam and said she appreciated my frequent updates and that reading people's blogs made her feel more connected to home. so, for this reason i will try to be more diligent again.

let's see...where was i?

i will definitely go back and fill in my recent houston trip because this "feature" i've included in my blog wherein i indicate my location has proven to be the most useful thing to me. the second most useful, as it turns out, is the picture of my spunky toyota that i posted a few months ago, as today i needed to order a replacement window for the one that someone kindly smashed out so they could steal my detachable stereo face (but not the stereo itself), and i couldn't quite remember what the car looked like. the previous runon sentence is dedicated to justin.

i am gearing up for a new photo essay. at some point when i was at NASA JSC i did a photo essay (i can't remember if i posted it here) of the 25 or so safety-related messages posted between my office and the bathroom in building 31. my next photo-essay is going to give you all a taste of the kinds of things one sees while walking from the front door of my building to my office. there really are endless minutes of entertainment there. they will give you a tiny window into the culture of NASA astrophysicists. i might also include sound clips, if any jump out at me.

lots of exciting things are happening on the music front, but i can't really talk about them yet. stay tuned.

more tomorrow, promise.

(dc) little red riding cart

today i took my red shopping cart to whole foods. oh, i know this doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was. it was such a deliciously simple domestic task. walk from u st to p st in the beautiful afternoon sun to buy groceries. buy groceries in between snarfing down the free samples. put groceries directly in red grocery cart bag. no paper or plastic necessary. walk back home. put groceries away. eat groceries.

i soaked up every minute of it. it was one of the highlights of my month so far. i need to spend more time at home.

(houston -> dc) happy birthday, Bahá'u'lláh!

i cut my trip short...

oh man

i'm laughing out loud

little typos can be so funny...

as i was typing that first sentence,
i originally typed,
"i cut my shit"

bbwaaa haa haa

anyway

i cut my trip short so that i could make it back for the celebration of the Birthday of Bahá'u'lláh that the members of my study circle had planned for the DC community. i was torn because it meant missing the deerhoof show that justin had tickets to. the baha'i center was packed, and it seemed to make a difference to people that i was there. kat and i sang the prayer for the southern states and the other members of the study circle told stories from Bahá'u'lláh's life (without reading). there was lots of food and a great spirit. i wore my green dress and my red hair. the deerhoof concert would have been great too...but there are only so many great things one can do at one time, and usually one can only do them in one city at a time. i hope to have another opportunity to see deerhoof. but i'm glad i came home. i like it here. i enjoy less and less being away from home. i don't want to travel much anymore. i would like the world to come to me, please. thanks. god bless.

*(houston) goodbyes and thank-yous

holiday.

goodbye brunch @mamacitas with friends from the old jsc exploration office (or EX13, as we affectionatly called ourselves). afternoon tea with juliet. then final backup of work computer, which will no doubt be wiped next week. labeling of boxes. writing of goodbye notes. last eating of secretary's candy.

and as i left my office for the last time today, it really felt like the Last Time. there are lots of times in one's life when one does something for the last time. but rarely does one realize it as it's happening. it's a strange and nostalgic feeling.

*(dc->houston) last day at JSC

traffic down 14th street at 4:30am is a breeze.

today was my last working day as a JSC civil servant. it is fitting that i spent the day doing no work, but rather collecting signatures and filling out forms.

should there be a comma in the above sentence after rather?

*(dc) lethal cement truck

last week the father of a friend of mine was killed by a cement truck. i don't think i want to go into the details, but it involved him working on the brakes and getting crushed by it. i have been thinking hard about whether or not i can continue being so enamored and excited by cement trucks. but, today i talked to my friend and he said i shouldn't change this blog or anything else because of this. i want to just take a moment to honor his father, whose entire (huge) company of thousands of people (nationwide?) shut down after his death.

it just hasn't been the same feeling cement truck watching since then.

so to my friend, i'm so so sorry. you and your father and your family will be in my thoughts.

(dc) ok go

i wish i would have snapped a photo last night during rufus wainwright's theatrics toward the end of his 2-hour show. i won't spoil it for the (maybe one) reader in NYC that might be seeing him tonight, but it was fun. a little bit rough, but it added to the charm. this was the opening show of rufus's tour, which has only a few shows on the east coast before leaving the country.

adding to the delights was the opening band, ok go, whose expertly choreographed (by the lead singer's sister) homemade video has been sweeping the internet. they were tight and fun.

probably the most fun part of the evening was hearing them talk backstage afterwards about how they thought it went. damian was sick and doped up on meds, but he felt good about it. his sister, trish (the choreographer), who had been hired to choreograph (not to spoil it, but just a little teaser) a similar dance for rufus's band, seemed satisfied and pleased, too. ok go is opening only one of the two NYC shows. if you're gonna see them in NY, try to go to that one. i think everyone was tired, and the bands and crew piled into two vans in the alleyway and waited for rufus to sign autographs and take pictures with fans in halloween costumes, one of whom i'd noticed during the show because he was about 6'10" tall. he told rufus that he'd driven all the way from some western or midwestern state (new mexico?) to see him. rufus said, "wow, that's far! was it worth it?," and the guy gushed with such adoration i thought his head might melt.

my friends and i were all there due to the generosity of my friend barry, who manages both rufus and moby. before the show, george treated me and stephen attenborough to dinner at the hotel george. all praise to the georges! stephen has possibly the coolest job ever: "vice president, astronaut relations" for virgin galactic. he's the one to talk to if you've got a hankering for space travel i have a feeling stephen will be meeting up again with barry in london to strategize about getting moby into space. my other friend stephen from the cassettes was also there as barry's guest. we think barry should manage the cassettes, of course, but so far i'm not sure barry has heard them. we did, however, give a copy of their new CD to stephen attenborough, with some animated discussion of the cassettes being the first band in space. i remarked that he must promise that to all the bands he talked to, but as of yet, there is apparently no claim on "first band in space." george and loretta have put their money down on the "first honeymooners in space," with a launch date set for sometime in 2008.

as we were walking out the back door, i saw some flowers that a fan had given rufus during the show. they were abandoned on top of his costume trunk. i said, "awww, those are so pretty, and they're just gonna die." barry said, "do you want them? take them!" so i did.



all this is really an embarassment of riches, confirmed this morning in this link that will marshall sent me. try it.