Hot cold

I haven't been able to record any new music for quite a while, since my fuckin' @$%&* bitch of an ex-girlfriend stole my microphone when she moved out, along with a bunch of other stuff. Since she also stole all my money, I was in quite a bit of trouble there for a while just paying rent and getting food, replacing the microphone was pretty much out of the question. Now I'm doing somewhat ok again, and I ordered two new ones. After a crapload of research online, reading forums and reviews, I went for two MXL v67g large condenser microphones. They are fairly cheap low-end mikes, but the general consensus seems to be that they can be quite excellent for recording lower male voices and acoustic guitars. I have a fairly low voice, and I would mostly be recording songs with voice and acoustic guitar through the mikes, so I went for it. What little I've tried them out so far sounds excellent. Unfortunately I managed to catch the horrendous monster-cold of doom the day after they arrived, so I haven't been able to record much right now anyway. But as soon as I get better, I'm going to record a whole bunch of new songs and put them online.

Natural (s)election

I'm not American by any stretch of imagination, I'm not even from this continent. But I've been following the US presidential elections with some degree of curiosity, and I'm kind of flabbergasted by some aspects of it. Some of the things to come to mind is what seems to be 'inherited political loyalty', where people will vote for, and whole-heartedly support a political party for no other reason than that they and their family always did. There seems to be no brain activity involved in this. They don't seem to care what the party stands for, they probably don't even know what the party stands for. But my pappy always voted for 'em, so I'm gonna vote for 'em too.

*blink blink

WHY? Why in the name of Zeus's hamster would you do something that stupid? If you wanna vote for a certain political party, go right ahead, but for the love of God, at least find out what the party is all about and see if it makes any sense at all first! Don't throw your chance away to actually make a difference and make this planet a nicer place to live! You could be voting for a complete idiot who will make you regret every second of the next couple of decades! Think about what you are doing!

Another thing that stands out like an elephant in a Cessna is the Republican pick for vice president. There's been a lot of debating about whether Palin actually has any more or less experience with governing things than Obama. Among all the information and counterinformation and misinformation and stuff, I have no clue who to believe, and frankly, I don't really care that much. But after seeing the interviews done with Palin, I just can't help to think that no matter how flawed or inexperienced or [insert other negative assessment here] Obama is, please, please, please, please, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease don't let this person become the vice president of the United States of America. Have you seen the interview she did for CNN with Katie Couric? Seriously, this person honestly makes no sense at all. "Oh, but it's all angled to make her look bad because CNN is a liberal dog of the democratic party..." No, seriously. This isn't something CNN angled in any way at all, this is directly out of Palin's mouth, and she just doesn't make any sense. She's completely incoherent, to the point where I was just sitting there with my mouth open staring at the screen and wondering how come the world all of a sudden went completely insane and I didn't notice? What was McCain thinking? Go watch it yourself, it's all over the youtube. Just look up Palin and CNN or Couric or something. It's astounding.

Post-vacation

Aaah! Today was my first day of work after 10 lovely days of vacation. I had quite the un-eventful vacation, not really doing anything in particular, just chilling out and sleeping a lot at my girlfriend's place in Montreal. I played some guitar, wrote some more music, and just relaxed. Quite nice!

I got back to my apartment yesterday at around midnight, and I've sort of made it a habit by now to just inspect all the corners for spiders before I relax too much. My apartment, being a basement apartment in an old stone house, seems to be a paradise for spiders. I find a new kind of spider almost daily. This time was no exception. I found this grumpy-looking fellow sitting on the wall right next to the entrance. It looks like a tegenaria domestica, or "barn funnel weaver", although it seems abnormally large. Females of this species are normally up to 11 mm from nose to tail, and males are typically much smaller. This fellow is a male, you can tell by the palps, the things that look like long fangs with knobs on the end. But this guy is 13 mm from nose to tail, not counting legs. These nocturnal spiders are very fast runners and very often the culprit in cases where a creepy-looking running spider scares the crap out of someone, but they are actually quite harmless. Although they can give a nasty bite, they are not dangerous to humans and will usually run for cover when someone turns the lights on.

Moving on

I'm veeeeery tired. Work has been a major pain in the ass lately. I'm training people during the days, and doing linguistic testing on projects in the evenings. What's more, I've been the only tester available to test my language for a month or two now, since the other dude just up and quit. This all results in some pretty long days. I'm really starting to get fed up with it. I'm shuffled from one project to the next, always leaving work with the feeling that I did a shitty job with all of it. It's been quite a while since last time I punched out and felt that I was satisfied with the quality of my work. I'm starting to get the impression that I'm expected to be everywhere doing everything all at once, and I'm not even a tester anymore. Nothing takes the fun out of something as fast as two dozen people yanking your sleeves, constantly telling you that you "have to" do something. Work has stopped being something I enjoy, and turned into something I can't wait to leave every day. It's like I'm always waiting for another day to be over, rather than looking forward to the next one.

This is an all-round stupid situation. I feel like weeks and months are passing by while I'm just waiting for them to pass, and I'm not accomplishing anything at all. So, it's time to move on. My contract runs until christmas, and after that I'm leaving Ste-Adele. Where I'll go, I have no idea. Anywhere far away from this company. Perhaps somewhere else in Canada? Toronto? Vancouver? Maybe back to Europe? England? Spain? Finland? Maybe Australia or New Zealand? We shall see... Between myself and my lovely Gin, we speak Swedish, Finnish, English, German, French, Spanish and Italian, so the language won't be much of a problem. :)

In other news, I finally had my guitar fixed. The neck needed adjusting, and the jack where you plug in the cable was all loose and coming out of the guitar. Annoying that something so simple requires all kinds of special tools, so you can't just tighten it yourself...

Compact living

I have an apartment of my own now, a very, very small two-and-a-half on the semi-basement floor of a house. It's quite nice, the rest of the house is inhabited by the landlord, a super-cool middle-aged lady who spends most of her free time riding around on her motorbike. She lives on her own, with two gigantic German shepherds and a tiny, white fluffy dog that looks kind of like a Maltese. It's a pretty quiet place, I don't see much of the landlord. The location is awesome, the house is right next to a small river, surrounded by lots of trees of various kinds. I even have my own terrace down by the river.
Only thing I don't quite like is the fact that the apartment is really, really small. There's a separate kitchen, a livingroom/bedroom, and a bathroom with a shower cabin. The kitchen has about 4 square meters of usable space, and the other room maybe about 15, but because of a long and narrow shape, and with all the furniture in the room, I'd be hard pressed to find a spot on the floor where I can actually lie down straight. I also have a nasty habit of accumulating stuff that take up space, like guitars and a keyboard, so the place is quite crowded. But hey - no place is totally perfect, and for the price I'm paying, this place is awesome.

I took my girlfriend to a spa last weekend in Morin-Heights. Aaaah... It was great! The place has all kinds of cool and relaxing stuff; a dry sauna, a steam sauna, jacuzzis of different temperatures, massages, etc. You can go to the spa just for a day for 30$ on weekdays and 35 on weekends. I recommend it, it's quite nice! They also have all kinds of packages of different prices. The food was good, but the restaurant was a bit sneaky. If you get a package deal, some meals are included, like the dinner. But when you get to the dinner and have a look at the menu, you notice that this, this, and that is either not included, or you have to pay extra for them. Also, the first impression of the spa is a bit weird when you get there and realize that it's located right next to the highway. Fortunately, you couldn't hear anything of the traffic, and once you're inside, you don't even see the highway at all, so it really didn't bother me at all. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought that I was in the middle of a forest. Morin-Heights is also a pretty cute little place, with restaurants, bars and shops within a 5-10 minute walk from the spa. So if you have a few bucks to spare and you need to relax, this is not a bad place to go.

When we got to the spa, there was a lady who showed us around and explained what all the different things were. She told us that for relaxation, you should spend about 10 minutes in a hot sauna, then cool off in cold water for a few seconds, and then just sit around and relax for 10 minutes or so. Well, being of Finnish origin, and having more or less grown up in saunas since I was old enough to not drown in a bucket, I think that 10 minutes in a sauna is for wusses. So I stayed in there for about half an hour, then took a cold bath and went back in for another good 15-20 minutes or so. It was wonderful! I could easily have stayed in there for another hour. However... For my Spanish girlfriend, who is not quite as accustomed to spending hours on end in 80+ degrees Celsius saunas, I think it was maybe a little bit much. She started looking kind of dizzy and had to step outside. But after cooling down for a bit and drinking a bunch of water, she was fine again and jumped into the colder one of the two jacuzzis.