Assorted things.

For the last week and a half, I've been adding a single new Japanese word to my vocabulary every day.  I call it The Word of The Day, or Kyo No Tango (今日の単語) in Japanese.  In order to increase the impact of The Word of The Day, I'm thinking about starting a new blog called...this is creative, now...The Word of The Day.  See what I did there?  Creative, huh?  Today's word is kitsuen (喫煙), which is a noun that means "smoking."  It's relevant because I caught some junior high kids smoking last week (先週、中学生を喫煙して見たから、その単語は大切です。）

Yeah, well, we'll see how it goes.  I have to set it up from home, and I have some other things keeping me occupied at the moment.  I'll update in this space later.

One of those things that will be keeping me busy is that I recently discovered that I have the ability to mix with my laptop and keyboard, using the keyboard as my external controller (instead of CDs or turntables).  The upshot of that is that I can compose and practice sets from home in advance of shows, and I can practice my little heart out and train up my ears.  I had been going out to various electronics stores and hijacking their systems for practice, which is amusing but not very practical. 

Finally, Jun and I got some bad news on Friday.  It wasn't unexpected, but it's pretty personal, so I'm not going to post it here.  Anybody who wants to check in should feel free...otherwise, my good friends will probably hear about it sooner or later.  We'll just chalk it up to one of life's little challenges, but I'm a strong believer that those things make us stronger and better people.  I've made a point of leading an interesting life, and it wouldn't be very interesting if it were always easy, now would it?