I feel the monkeymind spinning out of control lately; work, personal errands, don't forget this and remember to do that.  I know my mind is moving waaay too fast when I start running words together while I'm typing.  (and on the subject of typing, does anyone else dyslexically swap k for d or i for e when typing fast?)  Not to mention when I wander off the topic with parenthetical sentences!  Luckily (but with a small amount of trepidation) we're off to Big Bend National Park in the great state of Texas to meet my folks and my sister and brother in law for a few days of hiking and checking out somewhere I've never been.  Really looking forward to the road trip thru Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas and I'll be borrowing a nice Canon still setup from my friend Scott that, I'm hoping, will rekindle my love of taking pictures (a hobby I haven't messed with since digital took over).  I'll also be carrying a nice field recording rig (zeppelin, Sennheiser MKH8040, Sound Devices MixPre, Olympus LS10) and am planning on grabbing a bunch of sfx on the trip.  So here's hoping for a nice, relaxing trip and a return to a couple of new games to work on!

Teaching an old dog new tricks

I'm counting down to the start of my 45th year or, as the Spanish would say, my cumpleanos or completion of another year.  I've always preferred that, celebrating the culmination of another year on the planet as opposed to celebrating the start of another year, just seems better.  Anyhow, while cleaning out my computer in order to upgrade it I stumbled across an old "to do" list and marveled at the fact that, while I had started some of the learning projects on the list, I never followed through all the way.  So I decided that it was time to conquer this aspect of my wandering mind and learn something new from start to finish.  To that end I have been spending most evenings after I've read Declan his stories studying the finer points of how to work a spreadsheet, implement audio into a video game or create and manage a database.  No, nothing exciting like learning a foreign language (although a spreadsheet IS a foreign language) but I've been doing this for a month now and I'm starting to see positive, concrete results.  Wow.  Gee.  Just imagine where I'd be if I had done this back when I created that original "to do" list.