I did get the stand-up pump, which was much easier as expected. I also had my bicycle tune-up done this past week. And today was a beautiful day, sunny with temperatures in the upper 60s. Even though I was out dancing last night from 11 pm to 5 am, I couldn't resist the opportunity for a long ride today, and ambitiously decided to go see the sun set from Alki Beach in West Seattle, getting there by way of going around Queen Anne on the Ship Canal Trail—Elliott Bay Trail combination.

En route I discovered the Jack Perry Memorial Park, a desolate dead-end street down in SoDo with a view of Harbor Island and part of Elliott Bay and the Seattle waterfront. There were some marching-band type people there practicing, which amused me; I suspected they might have been from Titanium Sporkestra, but I didn't ask. Just after I crossed the middle of the West Seattle Bridge and was wondering how it worked as a drawbridge (as it didn't look like the sections lifted), the warning bell started sounding to announce that the bridge was going to open. I was delighted that the universe was obliging by letting me see how it worked, and further delighted to discover that indeed the bridge does not raise at all, instead the central section pivots to clear space for ships to pass.

Although I initially thought that I was going to be at Alki Beach well in advance of sunset and have to wait around, in fact I didn't get to the end of the beach until about 8 pm, just as the sun was sinking behind the Olympic Mountains. I was amused to discover that Alki Beach really is a "proper" beach as there were a bunch of dudes cruising the strip in their fancy souped-up cars, although then it occurred to me that the beach is missing an arcade and therefore isn't quite what it should be. I looped around the tip of Alki Point, paused at the memorial obelisk thing at 63rd Ave SW to eat a snack bar, and headed back. I headed home by way of the SoDo Trail—4th Ave combination through downtown, then up 9th Ave and Westlake back to Fremont to stop at PCC for some much-needed dinner things before getting home.

Google Maps—28.1 miles, estimated time 2 hours 43 minutes, actual time closer to 3 hours 15 minutes due to pauses for water and the snack bar, as well as slower travel all along Alki due to foot traffic. Not that I care about the time in particular, I'm not trying to make any speed records, but it is good to know generally how long it actually takes so I can estimate for other trips. I believe this was my longest single trip since getting my bike last May; the trips will get longer.

Life continues to be very busy for me, a lot of that being due to paid work, which is mainly why I continue to neglect my journal. But I wanted to take note of my cycling today. 

I mentioned back in January that I had something of a financial collapse at the start of October due to a serious lack of work in the summer and seriously overextended use of credit, followed immediately by a sudden surge in work that carried on right through the winter (and hasn't let up yet), much to my relief. One thing I didn't think to mention in that post was how much bicycling I'd done in those three months. Because my ORCA bus pass was tied to one of my credit cards that had been cut off, I was trying to save it for emergencies, because I didn't know how soon I'd be able to afford to reload the ORCA account. (And it turned out that my credit card had been cut off just before the last time I'd tried to reload the account, so I actually owed ORCA money.) And with just a small stash of quarters available, I couldn't actually afford to ride the bus regularly, as I'd been doing.

Fortunately, I had my bicycle; so I just started cycling everywhere. That turned out to be surprisingly easy to do, even with wearing my laptop-holding backpack, even despite the very hilly terrain of Seattle. I'd say I was out on my bike at least five days a week, and probably averaging 50 miles a week. Just cycling from my place to Bauhaus, which I was often doing as I had so much work to do, meant about 8 miles round-trip. 

So that was actually rather fun most of the time, and I felt great about getting so much exercise. But finally by mid-December I was tired of cycling in the cold weather, and reluctant to cycle when it rained. And then one day when I got home and stepped off my bike, my lower back said Aaaah!, and I figured I'd better take some time for that to feel better. By that time, my finances had recovered enough that I could afford to ride the bus again. And then as it happened, in the week or so it took my back to feel better, we had a good snowfall, which settled the matter for me: time to put the bike away until spring.

Well, spring is finally here. Actually judging by how I've been suffering with allergies, it arrived about two weeks ago, right on schedule with the equinox. But yesterday I finally felt able to get through the day without taking allergy medication, and today was just too gorgeous, sunny and mid-60s, for me to pass up the chance to get back on my bike. So I went out for a ride along the Ship Canal Trail (which I'm so happy they finished back in October) into Magnolia and up through the Ballard locks to Golden Gardens Park. Then I went back through Magnolia (walking the bike up the footpath to Commodore Way) and along the Elliott Bay Trail to the Olympic Sculpture Garden, up Broad Street and 5th Ave past Seattle Center to Mercer Ave, and then over to Dexter Ave and home that way. Google Maps—15.7 miles, estimated 1 hour 39 minutes. I was actually gone about 2 hours 20 minutes, but I spent a little time walking through the locks (both ways) and around Golden Gardens. That was probably a longer trip than I should've done today, considering it's been over three months since I last did any cycling, but I felt good enough that I didn't want to head home just after the trip to Golden Gardens, and overall I still felt fairly good by the end of the ride. 

Now I need to get my bike into the shop for a tune-up. I also need to get some bungee cords and figure out how to strap my backpack down to the carrying rack I had installed when I got the bike, so that I don't have to lug it on my back and possibly hurt myself again. And I need to get a stand-up pump, because it turns out that trying to reinflate my tires with a handheld pump is a really hard workout that I could do without. But once those things are done, I can start riding regularly again. I'm looking forward to it.

Boston to Seattle trip log
Tuesday, March 12, 2002

Approximately 11:00 am PST: Left Mullan without refueling.

11:15 am PST: Stop for gas and breakfast at a service station, Wallace, ID, added 6.3 gallons. Odometer: 2,778 miles. Doug's note: "French fries and Street Fighter II (Champion Edition)".

2:10 pm PST: Stop for gas in Moses Lake, WA, added 5.6 gallons. Odometer: 2,962 miles. Eat at Bob's for lunch. 

3:15 pm PST: Left Moses Lake.

3:45 pm PST: Approximately 143 miles to Seattle, crossed the 3,000 miles mark on the odometer.

5:55 pm PST: Arrive at 920 13th Avenue, Seattle, WA. Odometer: 3,144 miles.

That was a total of 96.495 gallons of gas, for an average of 32.58 miles per gallon, which, considering how heavily laden my car was, is actually fairly decent mileage for my car.

One iPod = 3,000 miles of music
Listed in alphabetical order by artist, but not played in any particular order, though I did choose certain albums to play at specific times for specific reasons, as noted.

• American Music Club, San Francisco
• An April March, Impatiens
• Belly, Star (played early Friday morning to help keep Doug awake while driving)
• Ben Folds Five: Whatever & Ever Amen
• Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
• Blue Man Group, Audio
• Bows, Blush
• Cocteau Twins, Stars & Topsoil
• The Dambuilders, Encendedor (Doug actually chose to play this, wasn't expecting that)
• The Dismemberment Plan, Change
• Robyn Hitchcock, Jewels for Sophia (played Thursday afternoon, the first album of the trip—skipped the first two tracks in order to start the trip off with "Viva Sea-Tac!")
• Hooverphonic, A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular
• The Housemartins, Now That's What I Call Quite Good
• Hum, Downward Is Heavenward
• Joe Jackson, Big World (played Sunday as we left Eldy's in Minnesota… seemed appropriate)
• Joe Jackson, I'm the Man (played Friday afternoon because of the final track, "Friday")
• Joe Jackson, Jumpin' Jive
• Joe Jackson, Look Sharp!
• Joe Jackson, Two Rainy Nights (played Tuesday afternoon in Washington, as it's a live album recorded in Seattle and Portland, Oregon)
• Jimmy Eat World, Bleed American
• Kitchens of Distinction, Strange Free World (Doug said it'd been something like 8 years since he'd heard this)
• The KLF, The White Room (played Friday evening, while driving through Minneapolis / St. Paul on I-94 in the rain, trying not to get lost while finding Eldy's home)
• Man or Astro-man?, Destroy All Astromen! (not actually played on the trip proper, but rather while en route to SeaTac International Airport to drop Doug off for his flight home, truly the final stage of the trip)
• The Ocean Blue, The Ocean Blue (played Thursday night / Friday morning while in Pennsylvania, as I recalled they were from there)
• Tara Jane ONeil, In the Sun Lines
• Tara Jane ONeil, Peregrine (I'm pretty sure we played this early Friday morning, but we were so tired, I'm not really certain)
• Papas Fritas, Buildings and Grounds
• Papas Fritas, pApAs fritAs (played Thursday night, I think)
• Public Image, Ltd., The Greatest Hits, so far (played Thursday evening, the second album of the trip, for the song "Seattle", of course)
• Reflecting Skin, Haley (played Tuesday morning, the first album, for the trek through Idaho; the dramatic music seemed specially suited for traveling through the Rockies)
• Retsin, Sweet Luck of Amaryllis (played Monday night during the snow and rain-washed descent through the Montana Rockies; Doug liked the last song so much, he played it again and made up lyrics about alterna-chicks being in love with him)
• Sleater-Kinney, The Hot Rock (played very late/early Friday morning; I dozed through half of it, something that seems to happen far too often for an album I like so much)
• The The, Soul Mining
• They Might Be Giants, John Henry (played Monday night during the Montana Rockies descent; Doug started playing Apollo 18, deliberately skipping "Dig My Grave", but then I asked him to switch to this album after "I Palindrome I". Of course, the first track on this album, "Subliminal", begins by talking about a car crash; not the most auspicious music for that point in the trip.)
• They Might Be Giants, Live in NYC (last album played Monday night, left unfinished)
• They Might Be Giants, Severe Tire Damage (played Thursday night I think, for the road trip and leaving Massachusetts)
• Throwing Muses, The Real Ramona (played Tuesday, entering Washington; a suitable follow-up to Reflecting Skin)
• Tones on Tail, Everything! (played all of disc 1, maybe half of disc 2)
• Too Much Joy, Cereal Killers (played Friday while driving through Ohio, for "Goodbye Ohio" of course)
• Trash Can Sinatras, Cake
• Various Artists, The Eighties Mix (all of disc 1, some of disc 2, played Friday while going through Chicago; I didn't know Doug hated Blondie, but there were other tracks he liked)
• Wade, Wade (played Monday evening, I think)
• The Wonderstuff, Never Loved Elvis
• Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts, Cowboy Bebop Original Soundtrack 
• Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts, Cowboy Bebop Remixes: Music for Freelance (played both of these Cowboy Bebop albums in a row on Thursday night)
• Zuntata, Darius: the Omnibus (played Friday evening while driving into St. Paul / Minneapolis, in honor of Eldy)

Additionally, we played the following cassettes:

• New Order, Substance Disc 1 plus three extra tracks (dubbed to cassette by me)
• The Smiths, Louder than Bombs (dubbed to cassette by me; played a little more than half)
• "Canadian Friends" mix tape, featuring selections from the IndieCan '92 Sampler
• "Give Me My Bottle, Bitch!" mix tape created by Brendan Murray

Finally, I also had the following albums on my iPod:

• An April March, Lessons in Vengeance
• The B-52's, The B-52's
• Belly, King
• Freezepop, Fashion Impression Function
• Freezepop, Freezepop Forever
• Joe Jackson, Live 1980/86
• Joe Jackson, Night & Day
• Joe Jackson, Night & Day II
• Joe Jackson, Tucker: The Man and His Dream soundtrack
• Lazlo Bane, 11 Transistor
• Mind Science of the Mind, Mind Science of the Mind
• The Police, Message in a Box
• Rainer Maria, A Better Version of Me
• Red House Painters, Retrospective (disc 1)
• Reflecting Skin, Agony Star
• The Sonora Pine, The Sonora Pine
• The Sonora Pine, II
• Stereolab, Dots and Loops
• The Sundays, Blind
• The Sundays, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic
• The Sundays, Static & Silence
• The The, Mind Bomb
• They Might Be Giants, Apollo 18
• They Might Be Giants, Flood
• They Might Be Giants, Then: The Earlier Years
• Throwing Muses, House Tornado / The Fat Skier

Boston to Seattle trip log
Monday, March 11, 2002

12:15 am MST: Stop for the night at the Buckboard Inn, in Beach, ND, right on the border with Montana. Odometer: 2,040 miles. (Repeating the last entry I posted yesterday on the journal, as it technically belongs to today.)

11:00 am MST: Added 7.0 gallons of gas at the service station in Beach, ND, and hit the road.

2:45 pm MST: Stop for gas in Billings, MT, added 8.8 gallons. Odometer: 2,302 miles.

3:00 pm – 4:00 pm MST: Had lunch at Pizza Hut in Billings. A lot of bowling pros were present, apparently for some kind of convention. Called Mom.

7:38 pm MST: Crossed the continental divide just east of Butte, MT, at an altitude of 6,368 feet. Odometer: 2,525 miles.

8:00 pm MST: Stop for gas in Butte, MT, added 8.0 gallons. Odometer: 2,535 miles. Called my soon-to-be landlord and also called Farida Dowler to let them know of our progress and expectation to arrive late in the afternoon the next day.

11:15 pm PST / 12:15 am MST Tuesday March 12: Crossed into Idaho and the PST time zone. Odometer: 2,769 miles. Stopped at the Lookout Motel in Mullan, ID, for the night—as Doug wrote, "for a good time, don't stop here." We probably should've gone just a bit farther, as the next day we passed a much better-looking hotel right off the highway, but we didn't know, and the last 100+ miles of the Montana was the worst driving of the trip: all downhill from Butte on the twisty mountain highway, with rain, snow, fog, and large tractor-trailers.

Some highlights of 2010

• Did a series of 40 push-ups a day for 250 days, 10,000 push-ups in all.
• Started going out to a weekly trivia night, making some new friends as a result.
• Once again attended the Sasquatch! Music Festival and Decibel Festival as a blogger for KEXP, and both were fantastic again.
• Started going out dancing monthly at Sweatbox-hosted events at the Electric Tea Garden, and later added TRUST at the Baltic Room to my monthly dance night.
• Had a great time attending the Capitol Hill Block Party as a volunteer for KEXP, and saw some amazing performances.
• Had a very serious car crash that totaled my car—which isn't really a "highlight" as such, but surviving the accident with relatively little damage (a broken knee being the worst of it) certainly counts.

Some highlights of 2011

• Got a new bicycle, my first since I was a teenager, in part with a generous birthday gift from my brother.
• After hitting a real slump in work that broke my finances (definitely not a highlight), work more than rebounded, it kept me consistently busier than ever for the last four months of the year and into the new one, which also helped me break the downward spiral of relying on credit to keep going (though much of the accumulated debt remains to be paid off).
• Attended Bumbershoot as a volunteer for the KEXP media team, posting updates about the Music Lounge performances as well as blogging about some of the evening performances.

Boston to Seattle trip log
Sunday, March 10, 2002

3:30 pm CST: After a rather late brunch with Eldy and Priscilla, said goodbye to them, added 4.5 gallons of gas, and hit the road.

7:00 pm CST: Stop for gas in West Fargo, ND, added 7.5 gallons. Odometer: 1,686 miles.

9:45 pm CST: Stop for dinner at an Applebee's in Bismarck, ND. We closed the place out; it felt like old times. The waitress had an adorable accent.

10:30 pm CST: Stop for gas in Bismarck before heading onward, added 6.27 gallons. Odometer: 1,878 miles.

Approximately 10:45 pm CST: Crossed into Mountain Standard Time just outside Bismarck.

11:30 pm MST: Just outside Billings County, ND, at mile 41 on I-94, crossed the 2,000 miles mark on the odometer.

Monda, March 11, 2002

12:15 am MST: Stop for the night at the Buckboard Inn, in Beach, ND, right on the border with Montana. Odometer: 2,040 miles.

Some highlights of 2008

• Having made some offhand remark about how I should learn how to make ice cream, Tony and Farida got me an ice cream mixer for my (2007) birthday, and I started making homemade ice cream.
• My friend Dawn talked me into trying out swing dancing, which was fun but not really for me.
• I had good visits from my sister Andrea and her partner Jen, and my brother Jeremy. (Family visits are always good; I haven't mentioned all the previous ones because I'm not sure when some of them happened.)
• I went to all three days of Bumbershoot this year, my second time attending, and really enjoyed it.
• I went home to New Hampshire at Thanksgiving time in order to attend my high school's 20-year reunion. I also had Thanksgiving with my family for the first time since moving to Seattle.

Some highlights of 2009

• I was asked to take on a long-term data entry project at KEXP, which involved me being at the station on a weekly basis in order to do the work, and thus marked my transition from "volunteer" to "intern".
• I was also hired by KEXP for a week-long contract to audit the data entry for the spring membership drive, which has turned into a regular contract gig and technically qualifies me as "staff".
• I also volunteered to write a review of Hotels' then-new album for the KEXP Blog, which began my volunteer work as a blogger for the station. 
• Because of being a KEXP blogger, I attended the Sasquatch! Music Festival for the first time, and also the Decibel Festival, as well as a few other concerts I otherwise would've missed, such as My Bloody Valentine.
• At the very end of the year, I turned 40 years old; to mark the occasion, I wrote a series of posts called "40 Topics, 40 Days, 40 Years Old" about my life to date, starting with this post in November.

Boston to Seattle trip log
Saturday, March 9, 2002

Caught up on much-needed sleep, visited the Mall of America, and generally hung out with Eldy and Priscilla.

…that's it for that day! So let me write a little bit about music for the trip. Conveniently and fortunately, the original iPod had been released back in October 2001, and I'd purchased one right away. I loaded it up as full as possible with a carefully-selected set of albums, totaling 1,103 songs, or 2 days, 19 hours, 39 minutes, and 55 seconds worth of music contained in 4.55 GB. Out of that, we played 626 songs, which was 39 hours, 58 minutes, and 8 seconds of music without repeats. In addition to my iPod, I had my collection of mix tapes and other cassettes, but we only played four of those. The full list of albums played is long enough (even without a few annotations) that I'll save it for another post.

Some highlights of 2006

• Finished my orthodontic treatment, and had bone graft surgery to fill in the gap in my upper jaw where the dental implants would eventually go.
• Visited Portland, Oregon, for the first time while Doug was here for a visit, and also drove out to Seaside, Oregon, stood in the open Pacific Ocean, and signed my name on the beach.
• Played a fantastic role-playing game series run by John Harper, dubbed "Tales of the Aether, Vol. 1: The Thought Lords of Mars"—which itself was a follow-up to another fantastic series that Tony Dowler had run way back in 2002 that featured some of the same characters.
• Received my Mac Mini as a bonus from work.

Some highlights of 2007

• Was laid off from my job two days before I'd planned to give notice, which worked out to my advantage.
• As planned, began working as a freelance editor.
• Purchased my first Mac laptop.
• Worked with Tony Dowler, John Harper, and Brandon Amancio to plan and hold the first Go Play NW, which was a great success.
• Purchased my first iPhone, which also provided me with my first digital camera.
• Began volunteering with KEXP.
• Visited Las Vegas for a third time, for Brandon's wedding.

Boston to Seattle trip log
Friday, March 8, 2002

3:07 am EST: Stop for gas in Willoughby, OH (near Cleveland), added 5.6 gallons. Odometer: 637 miles. Doug was driving at this point.

4:30 am—5:30 am EST: Stop to nap in a rest area near Toledo, OH.

6:30 am—8:30 am EST: Second stop for a nap, at the Oak Openings Service Center on I-90, somewhere a bit after Toledo. Doug had tried driving further after the first nap break and quickly decided nope, he just couldn't carry on without more rest, which was of course a wise decision. We ate breakfast at this service center.

10:00 am EST: Stop for gas at a service center in Indiana, added 6.1 gallons. Odometer: 859 miles.

Approximately 11:00 am EST: Driving along the Chicago Skyway (I-90 / I-94) in Illinois, passed the 1,000 miles mark on the odometer.

1:20 pm EST: Stop for gas at a service center on the north side of Chicago (near O'Hare Airport), added 5.0 gallons. Odometer: 1,021 miles. Ate lunch at McDonald's here. Called Eldy and told him to expect us to arrive in about 7 hours. Reset the clock at 2 pm EST to 1 pm CST.

5:15 pm CST: Stop for gas at Black River, WI, added 8.0 gallons. Odometer: 1,274 miles.

8:00 pm CST: Arrived at Eldy's home in Bloomington, MN. Odometer: 1,432 miles. Elapsed time since leaving Medford, MA: approximately 28.5 hours.

Some highlights of 2004

• After consultations with my dentist, an oral surgeon, and an orthodontist, got braces for the second time in my life as a necessary precursor toward getting a couple implants to replace a pair of teeth that were extracted when I was a teenager.
• Started doing some informal aikido training with John.
• Decided that due to the expense of the orthodontic work, I would not go home for Christmas, making it the first time I was ever away from my family for Christmas.
• After a few years of talking about getting a cat, took in a stray found by friends of my friends.

Some highlights of 2005

• After deciding in 2004 that I wanted to be seeing live music more often, started making a point of attending at least one show a month. That led to also writing about the shows in my LiveJournal, developing my music blogging skills.
• Visited Canada for the first (and still only) time in my life, despite being of French-Canadian descent and growing up in New England, while my parents were here for a visit. We went to Vancouver, Whistler, and Victoria.
• Went to Bumbershoot for the first time.
• Bought a condo and moved out of my apartment.

Boston to Seattle trip log
Thursday, March 7, 2002

11:30 am EST: This was the time Doug planned for us to leave. He got up early, even. Was the car packed and ready to go? No, it was not. Additional boxing and mailing of various belongings—mostly books and CDs, but a few stray other not-book items may have been shipped book rate—was followed by packing the car well past the point at which Doug kept saying, "No. There is no more room." Left behind: my minimal furniture, and very little else.

4:00 pm EST: The car quite obviously was riding really low over the rear tires, and there was some concern about whether it'd actually be drivable. A very cautious drive around the block did not result in any obvious alarming noises or difficulty.

4:30 pm EST: Left 99 Lincoln Road, Medford, Massachusetts. Stopped for 4 gallons of gas; a full tank is about 13 gallons. Headed out on I-90, westward-bound. Not the best time to be attempting to drive out of Boston (hello, evening commute); see 11:30 am EST.

7:45 pm EST: Stop for gas at a service area on I-90 just past Albany, NY, added 5.7 gallons. Odometer: 147 miles.

11:20 pm EST: Stop for gas at another service area on I-90 somewhere a bit east of Buffalo, NY, added 8.125 gallons. Odometer: 445 miles. Ate supper at Burger King here. Due to optimistically telling Eldy that we'd arrive at his place on Friday evening, and due to leaving 5 hours late (see 11:30 am EST), we kept on driving.

Some highlights of 2002

• Moved to Seattle, of course.
• Reunited with college friends, made new friends, including finally meeting John Harper after years of knowing him through the Talislanta email list. 
• Started career in the software industry as a technical writer, editor, and software solution tester.
• Visited Los Angeles for the first and still only time, for the Microsoft MGB Conference for work. Technically, first visit to the open Pacific Ocean, as there was a post-conference party at the Santa Monica pier, but I did not actually stand in the ocean.
• Started my LiveJournal, although I only posted 4 times that year so nothing of substance there.

Some highlights of 2003

• After being laid off from my first tech job due to circumstances unrelated to my work, picked up the next day by the start-up company of another college friend and a new Seattle friend. Began working more as a technical editor than a writer, continued doing software testing as well.
• Had my apartment burgled. Fortunately did not lose anything very valuable (besides my sense of security), but still annoyed about losing some of the CDs to theft.
• Visited Las Vegas for the second time (first was in 2000), for a fun weekend with friends who were attending another friend's wedding.
• Took a trip to Maine in October for Jason's wedding.

Andrea reblogged—retumbld? reposted?—Amber Rae's "Unconventional Dictionary" proposal, which includes this entry:

procrastination. noun.
1 - your body’s way of rebelling against what your mind says you “should be doing.”
2 - an indication that you are working on the wrong thing. 

And I like the idea behind that. As my journal's long-term subtitle ("We Put the 'Pro' in 'Procrastination'", for those of you who might be reading this somewhere other than directly on my LiveJournal page) indicates, I'm no stranger to procrastination. I've long since accepted that it's a necessary part of my working process, it's apparently a means for my brain to come around to coping with work or organizing my thoughts subconsciously while I'm apparently distracting myself with irrelevant stuff. I think I've even written about that before, although I'm not finding any such posts by doing a quick check of the recent posts tagged "me" (to be fair, that's a lot of them) and I don't have a "procrastination" tag or anything else obvious to check (maybe "work" or "writing", perhaps). Oh wait, this is probably the post I was thinking of: "thought time, or indirect work". It's related, at least. Ha, and I wrote it a year ago, interesting. I know I'm also thinking about some other article or blog post on procrastination that Andrea must've linked at some time in the past and that I think I reposted on Facebook.

Anyhow, the point of all that is this. While I like the idea behind that definition, while it seems to sit well both with my own typical behavior and with other articles I've read in the past, it leaves me with a fundamental problem. What am I to do when I don't have time for procrastination? When I've agreed to do a project, and it's already running late, and I'm up against the need to get it done as soon as possible, but I'm still finding it difficult to move forward on it without spending a lot of time not looking at it? When it's already two in the morning and I don't particularly want to stay up another three hours finishing the work, but I really need it sent off before the start of the normal workday in the morning because I have other things to do tomorrow and again because the client would really like it done, now? 

Well, in this case apparently what I do is come to LiveJournal and write a post about it. And now I'll go back to struggling with finishing up this project.

Atom™, playing the Decibel Opening Party showcase at Re-Bar

My Flickr Pro account expired early in October, right when I was flat broke and couldn't afford to renew it. A free Flickr membership has restrictions on uploading photos, and will only display the 200 most recently uploaded photos, so I didn't bother trying to upload my Decibel Festival photos until I renewed my Pro membership. Well, with all the financial juggling I've been doing to try to catch up on my various late accounts and also cover my regular expenses, I didn't bother renewing my Pro membership until yesterday. So yesterday evening I finally went through my Decibel Festival photos and uploaded the ones I felt were worthwhile.


Ladytron, playing the Sinthetic showcase at the Showbox at the Market

I started out with 150 photos, which is a small amount relatively speaking. But I hadn't bothered to try taking lots of photos this year, for a couple reasons. For one, this year KEXP had a small and moderately well-coordinated group of bloggers and photographers attending the shows, so I expected that between KEXP's own photographers and the official Decibel Festival photo pool, I would have enough good photos to use for the blog posts. For another, although I once again borrowed Gina's fairly decent digital camera, I wasn't actually getting very good results in a lot of venues. Generally the venues were so dark that even putting the camera on the nighttime setting wasn't enough to make up the difference, and I was reluctant to use the flash as I wasn't expecting good results with it and also felt that it was inappropriate for me to do so as an unofficial photographer (and I had a vague idea that at least some venues were restricting the pro photographers from using flash). As a result, after I'd sorted through my photos and discarded the ones that I felt weren't worthwhile, I ended up with a set of just 36 photos, which you can see in my Decibel Festival 2011 set on Flickr. 


Amon Tobin (hidden inside the largest cube in that structure), playing the Red Bull Music Academy Presents showcase at the Paramount Theatre

Fortunately I was able to get some decent photos of Amon Tobin's amazing stage set for his ISAM Live production, as you can see in the previous photo. Unfortunately, static photos can't begin to do justice to just how cool and amazing it was to see the video projected onto the building-block structure that produced a realistic three-dimensional effect without glasses. As far as I'm concerned, this is as close as we can come with traditional two-dimensional video to the ideal of true three-dimensional holographic projection. 





You can still read my KEXP Blog post about the Amon Tobin showcase, as well as my post on the Opening Party. Unfortunately, with all the things I had going on in October, I was never able to make time to get any more posts written about Decibel Festival for the KEXP Blog. However, I will still try to make time soon to do a brief write-up of the rest of Decibel Festival here on my blog. 


Kid Hops, playing the Onset showcase at the Baltic Room