Journaling has become an increasingly-difficult endeavor, and one for which I've lost a great deal of enthusiasm. It really wasn't that long ago that I was having a hard time going 2 days without putting something up in this space, so I'm now hoping that I've simply hit the doldrums of my writing cycle and I'll eventually get back to posting an entry on a regular basis. Right now, though, about all I can do is sit back and passively wait on fate...

(A bit on the overly-dramatic side that last sentence, but what the hell...)

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It looks like I've joined a band, having signed on last Wednesday night to play percussion (mostly bongos and djembe) for a little quartet of weirdos. Our lead singer is a five foot, one inch music therapist who can sing her white ass off (and likes to yell out "my thighs hurt" at odd intervals), our guitarist is a rock 'n roll god, and Jay, our bassist and one of my workmates, is a Zen master on his instrument as well as in life (and he's got great stories of a 10-day meditation retreat that nearly took a psychologically cataclysmic end.) I'm not sure how I, the least-talented of the bunch, fit in, but I strive to provide a solid rhythm track behind the only two tunes we're working on so far: Midnight Train to Georgia and I Will Survive. Regardless of how good we get, we're having fun, and that's about all that counts at this point.

No name for the group yet, but in past conversations with Jay, I had brought up Candy-Coated Crap as a possibility...

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Reading, I suspect, has taken over the spot of enthusiasm I had a while back for journaling. I've already come close to having read as much as I did all last year, recently finishing Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife as well as an interesting murder-piece by the Mormon writer, Brian Evenson, who definitely seems to have an uncharacteristically Latter-Day-Saint dark side in the novella The Sanza Affair and the short story "Altman's Tongue."

With all the contact I've had with Mormons of late, I truly am surprised that Evenson could justify writing the kind of psychological and physical violence found in his collection. One of my coworkers, a devout Mormon, makes no bones about eschewing academic courses involving vampires and films which are R-rated (or non-rated European films dealing with homosexual themes.) Sometimes its hard to see how Academics and Mormonism can even coexist...(Perhaps the subject of a later journal entry?)

Currently I'm reading Leiber's Our Lady of Darkness, another supernatural/witchcraft "horror" novel that isn't quite as captivating as Conjure Wife. Still, I expect to have this one finished up sometime tomorrow...

(Oh, and I nearly forgot (this is ex post "publicito") to mention having read John O'Hara's Andrea and Camus' pitifully forgettable preaching-piece The Fall, which I think I struggled through simply to be able to say that I've actually read something by the oft-quoted and sage Frenchman.)

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On the creative side, I'm beginning design work for a potter/cermacist friend of mine's website. Additionally, I guess I'd qualify as the consultant/project-manager for the entire assignment, as I've advised her on site-hosting, domain-name registration, and other technical odds and ends. Sometimes it's hard to comprehend where I am now - professionally, for the most part - compared to four and a half years ago.

This past weekend Steffi and I drove up to Hillsborough to have lunch with this potter and see her studio. While Steffi prepared her lesson plan for a 90-minute tutoring session later that evening, Heather and I "set up her shop" so I could rattle off about 150 images of her workspace and ceramics.

The coming weekend I think I'll spend developing some basic visuals for the website -- either before or after doing taxes...

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Well, that'll do it. The journaling-blood has been let -- nothing left but ill-humours. Or something like that.