Paksworld

My friend John Hemry, who also writes as Jack Campbell (the Lost Fleet books)  was asked by his audio-books publisher to record an interview or conversation with another writer–and he chose me.    We’re both military vets,  we’ve been on panels together, and we get along very well.    The tricky bit was finding a way for someone in Annapolis, Maryland and someone in (more or less) Austin, Texas to hold a conversation in a way that would result in a good recording. His publisher located a recording studio in Annapolis for John, and one in Austin for me, both available on a date and time that we could both manage.  Noon today, in fact.   Given the weather, distance, and traffic between here and there, I left home an hour and a half before I was due there, slid through traffic without much difficulty and got there early. 501 Audio is one of a group of studios in downtown Austin, and everyone I met treated me as if I really were “the talent.”   From the receptionist on up (and deeper in the building, everyone was cordial, reassuring, helpful, etc.  The building itself is an old rock one, but inside it’s been turned into a warm and stylish version of Southwestern decor.    (Data point for me: I didn’t know that term was used anywhere but in TV shows about TV shows, but one of the people at my end asked one of the studio people at the other end if “the talent” was there on site. ) After a lot of back and forth between sound engineers (I think that’s the right term) on both ends to get the equipment synched up,  I was set up in a booth by myself, with headphones on and the weirdest looking mike attachment I’d ever seen (like a wire mesh flower)  in front of me, with warnings not to make any extraneous noise.    Then the people at the other end said “Go”  (or something similar) and John introduced himself, then I did, and then we started talking shop,  as planned.  I think it went pretty well. Following that, I spent some hours rewriting the stupid blog post in my head, and finally, at church before choir practice, the stupid beginning fell off it, and revealed a partial (but lively) blog post underneath all that.  Now it needs a polish and tomorrow I should be able to send it off.

Choir practice included lots of music–the rest of Lent, Holy Week, Easter and a week after.  Bach, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Bruckner and others.

When I got home,  R- told me that four of the neighbor’s cattle, including a bull, had gotten into the garden and back yard of the house our son lives in (where my mother lived, kind of catty-corner to ours) and our son was trying to shoo them away.   R- helped, and finally the last one leaped the fence (which has been deteriorating over the years) so R- piled a lot of  thorny pyracantha limbs he’d trimmed a few days ago in that corner.