my long day of toil is nearly at an end. sighÉ i let the massive wash over me. computer hum still, and periodic beeps, but it's clear the sucker is winding down. rebecca is poised in hesitant sleep across the table from me, her wrists bent away from me making it possible for me to imagine them as stumps if i think about too much. okay, i'm going to stop that now, it's creepy.

this work-week, though only three days long, has been much more consistently workful than the rest of my internship thus far. in a good way, for sure. due to a combination of things - a number of tiny intuitive steps i've finally come around to about how it all fits together, studio-wise; me and dan getting slightly fed up with each other and communicating to sort things out; the realization that a sizable chunk of the summer is left and there are still plenty of discrete identifiable goals that we have yet to achieve.

so, each day this week has been quite full of activity. monday there was that cable-soldering business to deal with, along with some other studio-maintenance type things and other ends. yesterday i attended to a number of tasks: checking the mic preamps on the Neve, reracking some midi interfaces, more studio cleanup, and transferring some of mike cantor's old records onto cd. that last one ended up taking rather more time than expected, and has in fact been my project for essentially all of today.

in preparation, yesterday, we refitted my computer to make it all shiny and happy: a new 512 MB ram chip, a new 32-gig hard drive, and all-new software. the amount of MacNerding that goes on around here is unparalleled in my experience, but it certainly has its perqs.

so, to get things started this morning, i recorded four sides of an out-of-print LP Benny Goodman in Moscow into my computer using Peak (about the only program on the computer at that point - my attempts from yesterday had to be scotched because the files refused to open on my retooled computer.) then i edited them, fending off a series of bizarre crashes and system screw-ups in the process, some of which forced me to repeat my work. it took most of the evening (from 7:00 until around midnight - around here, that's "most of the evening") to figure out how to actually make a cd, with separate tracks, with nice smooth transitions, out of my edited peak files - despite the help text making it sound so durn easy to do.

finally emerging successful from that battle (sweet success like zabby described in her entry today - hilarious bit about the knot, by the way), which was trebly annoying because rebecca had been around for most of it, after i promised her that it wouldn't take too long for me to finish my work, i set forth on the next little project, which is only now (3:05) nearing completion - making a mix CD for Martha. Her birthday is this coming Monday (when I will be in Saranac to bestow it upon her), and I've just stuck the Best of the Crystals in my drive to transfer what will be the final track of the mix: "What a nice way to turn 17."

ahh, that beautiful ping! one of the most satisfying sounds in the world. it sounds an awful lot like the triangle part in this mad professor dub, incidentally. okay, so, cd's done. cool! now i'm going to burn some MagFields for Rebecca, even though i could just as easily go to bed.

tomorrow i will take a chinatown bus (fung wah, or another) into new york city. then there will be fun.

fun! (more like a rocket trip and nnnot so much like a relationship)