All of the below.

So it's about 7:00 am, Friday May 22nd. I got to bed around 2-2:30 am... and I know I have to get up around 8:30... my body knows it. I set the alarm, and if I bother to set the alarm I hardly ever sleep up to the point where the alarm will go off. My body usually provides what I've come to think of as a pre-snooze alarm where I wake up at least half an hour before the beeping and then doze in 5-7 minute increments until just before it starts, and turn it off.

But it's not 8:30 am... and it's not even 8:00 0r 7:30... it's 7:00 am.... and I'm awake. I'm awake because something is biting my ankle. In my sudden fuzzy alertness I grope down to my ankle half-expecting it to be a morning cramp only to finger what I assume is an ant making a snack of my foot joint. I do quick "sweep, sweep, sweep" motion at my ankle and sit up in bed but the little fucker is nowhere to be seen.

And I'm up.

It's been that kind of surreal month since I finished work at the lab for the term (which is why you haven't been enjoying nothing video Mondays... I'll try to post these with some regularity once things normalize a little).

Jumping around through the month this stuff happened:

I got to interview Dave Longstreth from The Dirty Projectors about their new album, Bitte Orca that comes out in June.

I've been working on writing with some success and some frustration that will hopefully lead to even more success.

I was readying myself for a kinda easy-going May with a stripped back work schedule at the store, but as it turned out my plans conflicted with Chris' securing a new job that takes him to NS four days a week... and eventually out of Backstreet completely. On the plus side when mentally narrowing down the candidates to take over for Chris one of the first people I considered approaching actually approached me... taking the guesswork and pressure off.

On the other downside of that same situation is the fact Steph was scheduled to start his Backstreet journey this coming Monday... but this past Friday, not four hours after my little insect interaction, my mom called me at work to tell me that my aunt (actually grand-aunt) Marg had passed away. She had been in the hospital for two months following a fall that had required hip replacement... a surgery no one expected her (she was 89 and had undergone heart surgery and the installation of a pacemaker in the last year) to pull through. She had pulled through and immediately began campaigning to get out of the hospital in time for Easter, but that date passed and her appetite began to fail, and her breathing was becoming troubled... and her body eventually gave up. So Steph's first day at work will unfold while I'm on a bus headed for the North Shore.

In other medical news... a couple of week's back I was working on a little recording experiment involving a glockenspiel, a microphone, a guitar pedal and a Kaoss pad. While the result was impressive... it also unleashed a burst of feedback that daggered my left ear drum. Over the next few days there was ringing, weird crunching, sensitivity etc. Making the mistake of telling a few people their amateur diagnoses (based on experiences and hearsay) had possibilities ranging from ear drum devouring infections and the need for MRIs. Panicked enough to make a doctor's appointment, by the time the intermediary ten days had passed all my symptoms were gone... but I went to my doctor's anyway. At the very least to make sure she was still around, given I hadn't been to her in four years. She looked in my ears and said everything looked fine... except for the massive amount of wax buildup she found. Now in another week I have to pay a return visit for an "ear syringing." I wonder what the world will sound like after?

What else?

I've watched a lot of movies... I bought the first two seasons of Miami Vice with built up points at Rogers... I wrote a lot of reviews for Exclaim!... I watched the season finales of Dollhouse, Life and SouthLAnd... I discovered that my average possible viewing time for any music-related channel before I'm irritated enough to throw a shoe is about 7.3 seconds... I fell in love with Emily Vukovic on the Weather Network (weekend evenings,yo)... I listened a lot to the new Akron/Family, the Iron and Wine b-sides compilation, The Wooden Birds (side project from a member of American Analog Set), Mark Templeton, etc.... I suffered my kitchen sink's leaky ways... had a customer rush in with two six packs as a thank you for running a records store in Fredericton... had another customer give me a can of Stella for staying open an extra ten minutes for him to come in and get his Tapes n Tapes vinyl (I'm liking the trend)... renewed my affection of Dimitri's gyros, microwave popcorn and egg salad sandwiches... renewed my dislike for Joan Rivers and Donald Trump by stupidly watching Celebrity Apprentice... cared about the Boston Bruins for a few minutes there... forgot one of my best friend's birthdays for the second year running (April, not May... April)... got a haircut and new shoes... paid nearly $900 in income tax... took some pictures of unpaired socks.

I'll go into greater detail about some of this stuff in days to come... but for now, I'm going to finish by veggie biryani and call it a night.

'night.