Now that I have declared “State of Awesomeness,” something is bound to go wrong. At the moment however, things are pretty good.

After I posted about how I was doing badly, my phone started ringing as friends rallied to give me pep talks and I even got an offer to help with the kitchen face lift. When I logged into WoW, I got more pep talks. It’s good to be loved, and I appreciate my friends more than ever for the support I received. It really did help. The new school semester is really what sent me over the edge as there is so much less time and energy to do all of the things that I absolutely have to get done. And just the thought of the time it takes to get all these things done is overwhelming.

As much as it kills me to say it, I thrive in a loosely scheduled environment. I’ve lived with no schedule at all and my life sort of fell apart because I was so overwhelmed with the things that needed to be done that I ended up accomplishing absolutely nothing. I was too daunted by the supposed list of things that I didn’t know where to start and, if I did, I didn’t think it would ever get finished up. Getting myself back into a basic routine has always been my sort of salvation, something Tom will never really understand, but if I don’t try to stay on top of at least half of this stuff, I fly apart at the seams. So, I’m back in a schedule, at least until the end of the semester.

As the second semester of Interior Design 121 (Basic Architectural Drafting) is really kicking in, I’m starting to enjoy it. We’re drawing rooms in two-point perspective, being allowed to pick out our own furniture and accessories, and do the rooms the way we envision. I’m really excited with the way everything is turning out so far.

The house face-lift is coming along. Everything in the downstairs bathroom is pretty much finished, except for some touch up paint on my fierce blue accent wall, some of the paint needs to be scrubbed off around the edge, and I need to have a mirror put up. The kitchen is coming, and probably won’t be done in time for my mom to get here, but it’s looking good. And, last but certainly not least, I put a good coat of primer over the walls of the master bedroom, finally hiding that lovely shade of urine that coated the walls. Seriously, I don’t know what the previous owner was thinking. Even with just the primer it looks so much better, but I doubt I’ll be able to get to the actual painting until after Mom’s gone. The kitchen is more important.

Writing… Now that I have the guild website, my personal blog and the new food blog (totally loving AwK, by the way), my other projects have sort of taken a back seat. This has been bumming me out. I’ve been trying to write my “novel” type stuff at work but to no avail. This, too, has been put into a schedule. My blogs get written at work, and the story I was writing for my friends gets worked on at home. I’ve started making an effort to give myself 1 hour of writing time at night. This is the primary reason for the bedroom face lift: A serene feeling has been given to the bedroom, and I have moved all bookshelves in there for a laid back reading zone. It’s perfect. I make tea, grab the laptop, leave the door open a crack so the cats can join me, and I write. My only concern at this point is that the chapters I put out are few and far between. Because of this, I have reinstated my original goal of having two chapters done at a time. Chapters 10 and 11 have both been started, and I am excited about both. I’m trying not to rush myself to put them out, because I want to get into a routine. Maybe I’ll cut back and say that I’ll put out one chapter a month and when school is out I can focus on it more. Who knows. At least I’m still enjoying the whole process of writing.

The book that I had originally started - the one that inspired me to start this crazy process of becoming a better fictional writer - has taken a backseat. I haven’t touched it in about six months. I’m sad about that, and I think about the story every day. Every day it grows in my head. Every day in my head, the characters live. But I have to choose, and the other things that are dominating my life take priority.

There’s more good stuff happening, but this post is long enough.

IWatchStuff.com is featuring the new trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

While I thought most of the one-liners were forced and corny and much of the action was a little much, it’s freakin’ Indiana Jones!!!

Well, I finally did it. This past Saturday I did my first recording session at my friend Andy’s house. The night before, I learned the song he wanted me to sing, called “Leave,” a quaint pop song that an old bandmate wrote days before that band broke up.

First things first about Andy: Forget modern technology and computers - he’s not a computer guy. He’s got all kinds of crazy equipment that we would lovingly call “vintage” - including reel-to-reel. Here, in his upstairs second bedroom, he’s at home in the wall-to-wall cacophony of instruments and strange mechanisms that make an album. In his mind, if some of the best albums of all time could be recorded with this stuff, then he can use it, too. When I first walked into the room, I got the feeling that he was a little afraid I’d be taken aback by the old stuff in there, but when I explained that my dad’s a fanatic about keeping all his old stereo equipment (including a Teac reel-to-reel), he looked relieved. So I felt quite at home and, while Andy was tinkering around with the equipment, they handed me some interior design magazines to keep myself occupied.

In the back corner of the room, the small clothing closet was turned into a recording booth - nothing you can stand in, but there’s some sort of insulation covering all walls and a carpet on the floor. The door had been removed so I was able to stand in the doorway, in front of the microphone.

Then we recorded. I didn’t really know what to expect. Professional singers have been known to say how much they love hearing their voice played back to them, so I wondered if I would have a similar experience.

I didn’t! LOL

It’s been a long time since anyone’s recorded my voice in this way - around 15 years. In that time, my voice has changed quite a bit and the only recent (in the past 6 years) recordings that I’ve had were live with three-hundred or more people singing along with you, so it’s not the same. He played my voice back to me — and I immediately begged him to turn it off. I couldn’t even get through the first verse, I was so embarrassed by the sound of my voice. I looked at him, horrified and said, “Is that what I really sound like?” I realize this is repetitive to keep saying it, but the sound really was horrific to me. Of course he thought I was crazy, but no matter how many times I listen to my voice being played back, I cringe. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.

The first recording was also a bad recording, because I just sang it straight instead of owning it. So we scrapped it and I gave him a few more recordings of the song. All through the process he seemed really thrilled with what I was giving him, and that makes me happy because my fear was that I would go in and do this song injustice - the point was to give him something he’d be happy with, regardless of what I thought of it. So, at the end of the day, even though I didn’t like the sound of my voice (still don’t) he was very happy. I got there around 10:00 and we wrapped up around 2:00. Overall, I have to say it was a lot of fun and, if asked, I’d do it again.

And before you ask, no I’m not sharing the recording with you because my voice is horrifying! LOL

AmateurswithKnives.com is up and running. Hope you love it as much as we do.

The food blog I mentioned a few days ago is coming together. We’ve got Ken and Rich lined up to help write for it, Ed’s even volunteered to do a monthly segment on wine, and we’re still searching for more. As I said previously, my only criteria is that if you volunteer to become a contributor, you have to agree to write consistently. If that means writing weekly, every other week, or monthly, so be it - I just don’t want someone coming in with the best intentions, writing one post, and then disappearing completely from the site.

In order to get a site going, you need a site name. After much discussion, some disagreement, and many virtual shrugs, Ken came up with the following:

AmateursWithKnives.com

I was smitten. The name was available for purchase so Tom bought it for us last night. We should have a blank site up and running by this weekend, and I’ll keep you posted on the kickoff. We want to have a new recipe site attached to it, and I’m thinking about getting a subscription RecipeZaar.com, as they also have a nutritional calculator for recipes. We’ll let you know. I’m very excited. If you’re interested in being a contributor, or know of someone who is, shoot me an email or post below!

I’m burning the candle at both ends and some in the middle. School has only been back in session for two weeks and I’m already struggling. Working until 6:00 at night is starting to get the best of me, as well as a gaming schedule that I haven’t tapered back on — which leaves all of my other extra-curricular activities vying for any spare minutes I can possibly give them. The kitchen face-lift has to be done before my parents fly out in April, and I only have a few hours on Saturdays to do it — and that’s going to change since a friend wants me to start recording my vocals to his songs, and that will take place on Saturdays, as it’s my only free day. Needless to say, there’s no way I can get the kitchen done without paying someone to come in and help me, but I think that’s out of the question. Writing has completely fallen off my radar. I don’t even pretend that I’m going to get time to write anymore. To make myself feel better about not writing, I tell myself that I don’t like it and that I suck at it. It’s working (sort of). My pumpkin-time, which is the hard stop that I reach every night and head up to bed, was formerly 10:00 pm. Now it is “whenever.”

I can always tell when I am reaching the point of exhaustion, because I say the opposite of everything I am thinking, and this is been becoming more and more frequent. “Widen” becomes “narrow” and “hard” becomes “soft” and “north” becomes “south” — you get the picture. Tom has been correcting me a lot these past few days. “Did you mean to say (insert word here), honey?” He will ask. Now I am to the point where I can no longer speak my thoughts coherently, and it’s getting worse. Late last week, while I was emailing someone, I realized I had started doing it in my typing. I’m no longer coherent.

I’m crashing and burning. I can feel it. It’s in the headache I’ve had every morning for the past week. Not sure what I am going to do. The obvious answer is to start cutting back or completely cut things off of my schedule, but I’m pretty passionate about everything that is on my plate, even the gaming. I want to keep the gaming on my schedule because I have worked so hard for this guild and making sure there are events and people are happy. But then, a close friend of mine said to me a few weeks ago that Ed would be the perfect guild leader. I asked, “Is there something wrong with the way I have been doing things?” He said no, because we absolutely need someone to schedule things, but Ed would just be perfect…”

So I’m the guild secretary. How quaint. Now that I have this hurtful comment to deal with, I think I should just cancel my WoW subscription until school is over in June. I don’t know, maybe I’m just feeling unappreciated again.

I’ll get back to you. For now, I’m drowning and there’s no rescue in sight.