ziahassan.com

This is esquel

After 3 years of my second hookah, it finally broke last night.  This is the new one.  I missed out on an incredibly beautiful black on by about 15 mins.  Oh well.

Just got these two from Amazon’s mp3 store:

Patty Larkin - Watch the Sky

Carrie Newcomer - Geography of Light

This is exactly what I need right now.

Reasons why this week/weekend was/is awesome:

• Mike and Sarah moving back to DC
• Andy home for Spring Break on Friday
• New humongous TV
• Billy breaks my boredom streak and breaks in my TV with me
• Lunch with the whole fam over the weekend
• Sleeping in
• Hookah with Zach during a
• Full Lunar Eclipse
• $1 Movie in Arlington
• Wall hangers for small stringed instruments
• Full security clearance

I got hit twice with illness - one was a terrible cold that I’m still coughing up, the other was a stomach bug that shrank my stomach so that I can’t even eat a Chipotle burrito all the way through.    Sad.

The weather has been getting better, and that’s a plus, but sad to know that it will all come crashing down again pretty soon.

Super Tuesday tommorrow.  Trying not to get too hopeful.

I find myself bored lately - might have to do with the fact that I’m a little stagnant at work due to waiting for my security clearance, and also not having written/recorded anything lately, even though I’ve got a lot of ideas.  Might come up with an Ruby on Rails app to manage the project hours - I wonder how well it would be received.

Our house is almost done, probably a few more days of work and then we’ll have a shiny new kitchen and two bathrooms.  Oh yeah, and the deck.  Speaking of which, summer is right around the corner.  Was thinking about what David Allen said - mark your calendar a month from now, and something life changing will happen in that month.  The two times I’ve tried it, something life changing did happen.  Nothing earth shattering, but enough to make me believe in this theory.

I really hate everything that Starbucks sells.  Why do I keep buying them?

Music doesn’t sound right.  Can’t put my finger exactly on what it is, but it’s there, like one weird ingredient in an otherwise outstanding soufle.

Getting those awesome recordings of live shows in the mail was really fun back in the day.  That one summer where I didn’t have a job and just sat around burning CDs and licking envelopes - I will long for a 3 month stretch like that forever.  With this looming recession though, I may be unemployed soon - giving me lots of time to trade CDs.  It’s too bad that no one actually uses CDs anymore and most shows are downloaded these days.  I enjoyed the personal side of it.

Three things arriving by mail this  week:

1)  A new turntable, 25% off the store price.  I bid well on eBay for once.  It’s small and can be used for summer deck sessions.  It’s a good thing that records still exist and that some bands still make them an available media type for their albums.  It’s also a good thing that tapes are non existent.

2)  Cajon.  This arrived yesterday and is by far one of the coolest instruments I’ve ever touched.  If you thump the center of it with the heel of your palm, it makes a very real kick sound.  Hitting the top corners  with your hands gives it a snare (real snare wires in the back), and if you hit the foot pedal you get a nice tom sound out of the faceplate.

3)  Tape Op (book).  About creative home recording.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get something out of this.

Nick and I hung out and he introduced me to an artist named Mario Spinetti (myspace.com/mariospinetti).  This guy has a gorgeous, shimmery voice that sounds beautiful when quiet or loud.  His songs are well written, well recorded, and he has an a cappella track called Delirious which drives me crazy.  You can listen to his whole EP on the myspace site and buy it for $6.  It’s important to support this artist so we can see more come from him. He might be the future of melody.

Spent some time writing and setting up a soundscape - the drum samples I’m using now are from a real drum kit, so it sounds eerily genuine.  Nick wants a song about how lucky we are, and my idea is to play with the idea of chance and chain effects.

Watched Six Feet Under series finale again with Liza.  May be the best final 10 minutes of any show ever.  The kind of finale that is so final and so provoking that you can’t help but let it resonate through you the rest of the week.

The new bathroom is done, and the shower is hot, finally.  My sinus pains (weird eye dull throbbing) moved down to a cough, and now is moving into a full blown cold.  Nothing I want to do more than get into bed and sleep it out.  I don’t think I’ve had a sick day since High School, and even then I went to school.  It felt so important, and I remember thinking I’d be way behind if I didn’t go.

Still no word on the clearance.  It’s been approximately 4.5 months since I submitted my package, and 2 months since my personal interview, and colleague interview.  This is more than within the normal time frame for these investigations, but it’s getting frustrating.  So much to learn and no access to the tools from which to learn.

We got a new bathroom.  I’ll update with more pictures later, but here is what I have for now.

The tub                                                                       From the door

Only complaint so far is that the water in the shower is not that hot.   Oh, and the sink isn’t in yet.

Beautiful start to the week - it’s funny, I woke up feeling happy for no reason, only to walk outside and find spring/summer like weather.  It started on Sunday, and Liza and I explored Rosslyn a bit to find a record store and shoe store right next to each other - appropriate for us, since that’s our two vices, respectively.  Anyway, I let loose in the record store for a while.  I bought:

• Genesis - Selling England by the Pound (It’s almost funny to imagine Peter gabriel saying he wanted even more freedom to be creative)
• Roger Eno - Voices (Even though Ashlee and Aaron could never live up to Jessica and Nick, I have a feeling that this brother is worth checking out.  Plus, Brian did some treatments)
• Carlos Jobim - I really wanted to buy something from Joao Gilberto because Liza’s dad played me some amazing live stuff - but I couldn’t find his records.  Had to settle for the other Ipoenema guy.
• Some XTC record I’d never heard of

Last night, the weather was incredible - so Billy brought his friend Joy and Colleen also joined us on the deck.  Reminded of summer:  short nights, even though we all want them to be longer.

Recently saw Ari Hest open for Vaco, all I could think about was how nothing about his songs/performance had changed in 4 years.  Fortunately, he mentioned that he was going to write/record/release a song per week in 2008.  If you pay $20, you get the whole 52 at arihest.com.  I was debating signing up - it’s a fantastic idea, and one that has been pondered by a few musicians (at least, the idea of releasing bits rather than a cohesive album), but eventually my curiosity gave in and I heard the first piece, One Two, and was quite impressed.  This is exactly what he needed.  $20 later, I’m sure I’ll get to hear tons of awesome material from him this year.

Mm, good weather.