not falling down

So, um, this looks a little different. In case you didn’t notice.

Short Story rode (rode) again last night, for thefirst time since, um, last May. It was impromptu, and it wasn’t all of us–Darren was tutoring and Garret was in this”other city”–but we picked up instruments together for the first time in almost a year, and we sounded fine.The MC girl called for a second round of applause, and later that night there was a post clamoring for a Short Storyreturn on the Centre phorums. I think people liked it.

The thing is, though, that’s not what felt best about it. I’ve tried my hands at a lot of different ways of makingmusic–choir, piano lessons, snare–and the fact is I’m not a natural. I accept that. But within what ability I have,it’s about the best high I can get. Saying “I play bongos” sounds a bit silly, which is why I try to class it up by saying “percussion,” but either way it’s raw andvisceral and soulful and cool. I love acting because it entertains people. I love writing code when it’s fordesigns like this, or for games, because they entertain people too. But beating the hell out of my hands on rawhide issomething I could just do forever, for no audience but four other guys on guitars.

That’s what felt good last night, down in the basement, guessing at how to play “Psycho Killer” and doing it live ten minutes later. The pretty girls in the dark didn’t matter.The applause didn’t matter. What mattered was that playing with my band still feels like dancing and knowing how.

I like reading Drew a lot. Even so, it’s hard not to raise aneyebrow when he or Emma make fun of LiveJournal users just because they’re LiveJournal users. BothDrew and Emma use variants of blogger software to post theirnews, and at the heart they’re very similar programs. It’s kind of like sneering at someone who drives a Saturn becauseyou can change the oil in your Camry yourself. I built the software for this journal from scratch–does that make meeven more 1337er? I hope not.

I just typed “Drew and Emma,” coincidentally, for the first time in a long time, and… well. Our head RAs this past summer were also named Drew and Emma. I won’t blather on here, becausethey know how I felt (feel) about them, and that’s what matters. But. It’s been almost exactly a year since I met themfor the first time, and suddenly I miss them rather a lot.

(ahem ahem)

I spent about eight hours today building the skeleton code for the new Xorph look; if any of it works out the way I’mhoping, it will be a pretty, pretty thing. It’s looking to be more server-involved than I anticipated, but that stillwon’t be much, and in some cases it’ll actually reduce the workload (*coughjournalcough*). Just about every page isgoing to have more functionality, too, which is the important thing. I should market this shit.

This really is a challenge, if an enjoyable one. I put together the original design with almost nothing butplaceholders; now that I’ve got a bit of content, it’s starting to shape itself, at least code-wise. The graphic designheavy lifting starts tomorrow, and that’s going to make this code stuff look like… uh, something easy.

I was going to say “I can’t believe I’m spending my spring break like this,” except that I can. But now Sports Night is on in five minutes. Thereare advantages to staying up way the hell too late!

seven-up I touched her thumband
she knew it was me