Been busy as all hell the past two months. We're really understaffed at my preschool, and I'm running myself pretty ragged. They just cut our hours down to 30 hours a week, which I am actually pretty grateful for at the moment. I don't have to go in until 11:30 every day now, which finally gives me some time to work on things before I am completely exhausted at the end of the day. I've made it my goal to make some new music every day, and so far I've managed to keep up with that goal for the last two weeks or so. If you want to listen, you can check it out here. Pretty much all just ambient stuff, I've been going back to recording live on tape and slowing things down. I'm considering taking about an hour's worth of the best tracks here at the end of the month and printing a limited run of like 25 tapes.

I also did some music for a friend's short movie recently, which just came out this weekend:

And last, here's something I'm really proud of that I made for the preschoolers when we were talking about robots:

It's a light/touch sensitive synthesizer thingamajig! LDRs for the eyes, and custom-made PCB touchplates on the sides. The kids had a blast exploring this.

Hope all the Hubskiers are having a good start to 2020 2.0!

https://clyp.it/usexn1kh?token=6b246bf67f75305854b843d44de20023

I'm gearing up for a move myself, felt inspired to write about it and lay down some really quick vocal tracks. Might re-record later [EDIT: I have, indeed, re-recorded the vocals. Much happier]. I sped the tempo up to 145 and pitched it up so it's in the key of F major.

I'm missing you Hubski folks - my life has been really crazy the past few months, but I'm hoping things will settle down again soon. Expect to see me in a pubski soon...

LYRICS:

A new start, carried in cardboard

piled up on the stairs

we packed up all the sins we could bear

Oh, we're starting to ache

bags are starting to tear

OK, I guess we'll leave 'em right there

You thought you heard a ghost

You swore you saw her

T-shirts from all the old concerts

stuffed into a drawer

we never have the time anymore

Too tired to set up the bedframe

we'll sleep on the floor

and talk all night like we did before

We felt like we were kids

We felt like having...

How long 'til I can say this is where I'm from?

How will I know when my real life has begun?

Where will my ghost haunt?

Where will my ghost haunt?

Married.

More to follow after honeymoon.

Y'all. The wedding suit is DONE (almost).

Still needs doing: strap for the vest, slip-stitching on vest/jacket/pants, sleeve buttons for jacket, hem for pants, lots of cleaning up (unfortunately, there are some small iron burns on the lapels of the jacket which I'm trying to figure out how to deal with).

This was the biggest sewing project I've undertaken, and I am generally really pleased with how it turned out. The suit fit me really poorly as-is because I am pretty lanky and fall in-between two sizes, so I had to do a lot of alterations, and still might do some more here and there. Unfortunately, this was after I had already bound the seams of the jacket with bias tape, so the insides of the jacket are not as clean as I would like.

The suit is made of a linen, which was fucking HORRIBLE to work with because of how much it stretched and shrunk throughout the process.

All told, it took three days to sew - one for the vest, one for the pants, one for the jacket. This was my first time making any of these patterns, so there was lots of learning to do.

T-Minus 17 days til the wedding. Still need to make rings, but that can wait another day.

Hey.

Something sad happened this weekend..

In the grand scheme of things, this building doesn't mean that much - it hasn't been a functioning theater for a few decades, and was close to falling down on its own anyway. I grew up right next door to it, and played in the park outside it every day. I threw rocks at it in middle school, broke into it in high school, and helped try to fix it in college. I spent weekends painting walls that were falling in on themselves, cataloging moldy costumes, laminating old playbills.

My family has run a theater program the last 5 years on the grounds of the theater, and have been trying to get the place opened up again, at least so people can see inside of it. They've had some success - we did a play last summer on the balcony of the theater, and opened it up for tours for the local schools. They both work full time jobs and put all their spare time and money into this program. They've gone to every town meeting for 5 years to try and get any support they can, with very little luck.

They stayed up all night to watch the fire, because what else can you do?

-----

I used to sneak out of my bed and sit on the roof with my brother when I was a kid so we could hear the shows they did on summer nights. We couldn't see anything through the trees, but we could hear the words, and my brothers tried to explain what was going on.

I was planning in getting married in the park. Just ordered invitations, too. Going to visit the wreckage this weekend and make some decisions.

Anyways, here's a song I wrote.

PS: the kicker is that at the last town meeting, people were talking about how now they could finally build condos there.

Engaged.

I wasn't really prepared for the emotional toll that leaving all these preschoolers was going to have on me. I still have a few more days teaching, but I've told the kids I'm leaving and they are... not pleased, to say the least.

The hardest one has been a 3 year old kid named Ian, who's been at the school since it opened. I babysit him sometimes, because his family's a mess. His parents just finalized a divorce, his brother bullies him all the time, etc. When I was babysitting him yesterday, I told him that I'm leaving soon, but we still have time to play at the school a few more times.

His exact response was:

big tears

"BUT YOU'RE MY BEST GROWN UP"

Starts running away from me in the Fred Meyers food court

Once I caught him, which thankfully didn't take long, he told me that it's okay I'm moving, because soon he's just going to get a jet, and use that jet to bring me and my family to live at his house.

So, there's that.

I MADE SOME SHIT, Y'ALL

First of all, my first sweater is done!

Really happy with how it turned out, just a smidge short, but that's okay. Already started another sweater, because I'm crazy.

Also, I started painting stuff this weekend. I've never really been good at or liked drawing/painting, but I've been toying with some isometric stuff for the past few weeks, which has been fun. I'm making about 1 room a day, might connect them, might not.

First one:

(The dog is named Sammy)

Not quite as cleanly executed as I'd like, but I like the design of this room. Might make it again sometime.

WIP of the current one.

SHIT'S POPPIN'

I have a temp job that fulfills almost all the requirements I was looking for last week - consistent schedule, paid breaks, near where I live, reasonable pay, and a place to sit, if I want to. It's warehouse work, and I'm pretty good at it.

But more importantly, I got an interview for that job I really fucking wanted. The one over here, the one I thought I was unqualified for. I requested to be the first interview of the day, and they have about 10 other people they're considering for the job.

I don't own a jacket. I don't own a white shirt - though I think I may make one tonight after work. I'm really nervous, but I feel good about the possibility of working a job that I both like and think is important.

----------

Also, the album is unfortunately not coming out on the 15th. Job hunting has been an all-consuming affair. Sometime this month, though.

EDIT: Interview went well! They're doing a second set of interviews next week, should be hearing back this weekend about whether they want me to come in again.

Congratulations! You've shown that you care enough about human life that you started a homicide statistic with "lol"! You definitely seem like you do give your time supplying food to the homeless, or volunteering on a suicide hotline, and don't just use the excuse of "this isn't an issue that directly affects me" to avoid actually helping anybody not related to you by blood.

I'm sorry that not enough trans people are dying to warrant your empathy - let's hope it stays that way.

Tell me, how are you fighting the Opioid epidemic in America? What are some concrete steps I, as a citizen, can take to stop the deaths of 33,000 of my peers? I certainly don't know anyone who is addicted to prescription pills, so by your reasoning I have no reason to care about it - that's just not something which affects me. I do know a young trans woman who was beaten to within an inch of her life in an alley, but hey, my number's smaller than yours, I should care about your thing instead - fuck her statistically insignificant life!

See, here's the thing about proportions: they tend to point to something larger than themselves. If you actually did give your time to helping the homeless, you would find that between 10-20 of those 50 people might be gay or trans (and before you have a chance - I know I linked to a liberal rag and you are going to debate the numbers, I don't particularly have the energy to find better sources) - a number which is disproportionately high. Or if you actually spent your time with opium addicts, you would find that, again, a disproportionately high amount of them are gay or trans. And do I even have to tell you how many gay and trans people would be calling you on that suicide hotline?

I get it, you don't know any trans people, but some of us do. Some of us may even want to start a family with the trans man they've been dating for 5 years - a thing that becomes significantly harder if he's dead. I completely agree that there is a finite amount of energy that we can all channel to causes that we deem to be important - I just hope that you're channeling yours towards something bigger than complaining about people mourning the dead.

EDIT: I'm sorry that this is pretty aggressive, I don't mean it as a personal attack - in all seriousness, I have no doubts that you are a good person, and I get where you are coming from. This is just an issue that hits really close to home.

So, thenewgreen commissioned a shirt from me, and I decided to make a Hubski-themed one. Still mid-process, needs buttons and hems.

Here is is head-on. Mostly black, subdued, but then...

BLAM color everywhere.

Collar down.

Cuffs closed.

placket.

Proud of how this one is shaping up, lots of nice details in it - goobster, there are honest-to-god pleats and plackets on this puppy, I'll upload detail pics later.

----

Also

Made my sister a dress for her birthday.

(There is a picture of me modeling it, but it's a bit early in the day for that...)

-----------

Relatedly, my mother, who is a saintly woman, saw me working on this shirt last night, and she literally pulled my father by his shirt to the machine and said "OUR SON CAN MAKE A PLEAT" like it was the most mindblowing thing she had ever seen. My dad has been, uh, not super pleased with my sewing in the past, so it was nice to at least get a "huh, pretty good" from him (even if it was kind of forced).

Bottom line: my mom is awesome.

Whale, whale, whale - another dang ol' shirt. Cozy cheap flannel, no major construction errors.

I've been buying a lot of women's sweaters from thrift stores and re-tailoring them. Definitely need some new buttons for this one.

Made a friend from the scraps, his name is Whaleiam. Free pattern (in German) is here if anybody is interested.

Life is pretty good, my boyfriend is coming to Chicago this weekend. Gonna go to some museums, the aquarium, a drag show, the usual.