[	i guess i'm feeling	|	excited	]
[	i'm pretending to listen to	|	"Emergency Exit" by Beck	]

Is it just coinkydink that Consistution Day manages to fall on the exact same same day as Talk Like A Pirate Day? I really think not. For some strange reason, McNally Smith is heavily promoting Constitution Day today. Here in the library, we have a small table set up, with a copy of the constitution, books on government and presidents and whatnot, and even a Constitution Day Quiz! But nowhere does it mention Talk Like A Pirate Day. Arrrr, tis blasphemy.

I'm in a bit of a concertgoing frenzy right now. Which is odd, because I'm usually not the type to go to a bunch of concerts. (Which in itself is odd, since I'm studying to be a record producer, and probably should be the type to go to a bunch of concerts.) Last night, I saw Sufjan Stevens at First Ave, and tonight I'm going to Beck at Roy Wilkins. The Sufjan show was incredible, one of the better concert experiences I've been to honestly. For one thing, the music was top-notch (pretty successful recreation of his "50 States" sound, complete with trumpet and some amazingly good vocal work), but beyond that, the show was wonderful. They were dressed in full University of Illinois regalia (the Fighting Illini!), they did occasional cheers leading into particular songs (my favorite was the Metropolis one, which managed to namecheck Balki Bartokomous, of Perfect Strangers lore), and at one point did a human pyramid! It was really damn cool. Not to mention, the music was excellent. Liz Janes opened, she's on the same label as Sufjan and he produced her most recent album. She was pretty good, she's got an amazing voice. Justin came up for it; earlier in the day, we went to the studios, and he laid down a guitar part for a song on my new album. A lot of good buddies were at the show, honestly, it was cool. A conglomeration, of sorts, a bunch of people from various groups of friends over the years. (Kind of a reflection of how I work-- I have one or two friends in a lot of different cliques, so occasionally, I get the real thrill of everybody coming together for an evening of goodness.) All in all, an absolutely wonderful evening. Even if he didn't play "John Wayne Gacey, Jr."

And tonight, we have Beck. In an hour and a half actually. Kind of sucks that I have to work until 7, and then head over. I'll be running. It's not far from here, but all the same, I'll be running. And I'm sure I'll update tomorrow-- this one's gonna be a good fuckin show man. I can't wait. So many songs I hope he plays. . . of course, if he plays a fraction of them I'll be happy. As I'm sure I will be. Until then mateys, I be off! AVAST!

[	i guess i'm feeling	|	impressed	]
[	i'm pretending to listen to	|	"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" by Bob Dylan	]

One month removed, three months to go. How quickly, and bizarrely, the time do fly. Things are just active right now. Not exactly busy, I don't feel overwhelmed just yet (give me a couple weeks), but I do feel very active. And, to a lesser extent, pretty tired. But like I said, things are going well; my album's almost finished. Mia came in and added violin to a track this past Thursday, which was most excellent. It's so pretty, it will make your disgruntled biker uncle cry. Of course, that might lead him to kick a squirrel or something in defiance, so maybe this isn't a good thing? Ah well. Frickin squirrel probably deserved it.

And now, I humbly present Ben C-F's Pet Peeve Number 426. (Those of you who haven't submitted your review/critique on number 425, I'm still accepting them until Wednesday, after which there will be a half-grade reduction.) Today's pet peeve is: vocal majors who like to sing constantly.

[	i guess i'm feeling	|	hungry	]
[	i'm pretending to listen to	|	"Armando's Rumba" by Chick Corea	]

Good evening, lords and lassies. I'm starting to suspect my online entries will be written primarily at the library. What with the computer access and rather startling abundance of time on my hands, and all. And especially right now, when my homework demands are somewhat scarce. (And the homework I do have is mostly dependent on a textbook I haven't gotten yet. Sue me for scrounging the net for a better deal than what our bookstore has to offer! I can take it! I can take it!)

Most of you who read my online diary haven't ever seen my apartment, have you. (Jerks.) Basically, I live in a large apartment complex on the corner of 4th and Wabasha, downtown St. Paul. It's a very old building, but also a very historic building-- it used to be called the Hotel Lowry, and as of a 1937 postcard, was apparently "the largest hotel in St. Paul," "absolutely fireproof," with a "private bath and circulating ice water" in every room. Time hasn't exactly been good to the place (much like Seventh Place Apartments, another hotel-cum-apartment complex); it isn't horrible, but hardly a five-star hotel anymore. The carpet's kind of musty, the stairwell area in particular looks a bit war-ravaged, and there's a rather everpresent roach problem, so much so that you'd think they should be splitting the rent. Damn freeloaders. But, things are changing. Slowly. A man named John Rupp, who specializes in rennovating/restoring buildings for place in the national registry, has been working on Lowry Square for some time now. I guess his plan is to convert the lower area into a hot restaurant/nightclub scene, and simultaneously restore the upper-level apartments. This sounds exciting, except for the fact that work is progressing verrrrrry sllllowly. The entire third floor was being rennovated, and ostensibly set aside as a McNally Smith-centric floor, for upcoming students. The idea was to have it ready by August, for the Fall semester. Yeah, didn't happen. Oh, work is certainly progressing, because the fire alarm that forced us all out of bed at 7:30 a couple weeks ago came from the apparently-vacant third floor. But still. It's coming along quite slowly.

The whole time I've been living here, it's looked quite ghetto from the outside. Part of this is because of the very scary-looking people that hang out there at all hours of the day, but the main reason is the plywood covering the large windows on the front level. These windows are large, basically encompass the whole first floor, and they're also numerous, so most of the first floor used to be a glass encasing. Right now, it's a bunch of pieces of plywood. This gives one the impression that the building is rundown, when in actuality, it is. The smart thing is to make it look great on the outside and be crappy inside, or perhaps vice versa. Matching crappy appearance with crappy accomodations, on the other hand, just makes the whole sherade quite crappy. Apparently, the mayor himself is peeved at Rupp for taking his sweet time, and has asked him to do something about the windows in particular.

So, today, they did. Their solution, in the absense of funding or any brighter idea apparently, was to paint the plywood black. I saw the crew this morning, merrily spending time that might have gone towards the actual restoration by painting a bunch of disposable plywood black. So now, at least from a distance, the building will look much better. At closer scrunity, of course, the building will look like it has a lot of black plywood boarding up the old windows and doorways.

I'm not sure what to think about that. I mean, on the one hand, this does give off a better appearance. And apparently, that plywood has been in front of those windows far longer than I've lived there. When we moved in there in April, the general word was that construction would continue through to the end of Summer, and the whole building would be ready by the Fall. I'm not there all that often of course (little pockets of time here and there), but when I am, I never really hear any construction, or more importantly, notice a lot of construction workers. Seems a little sluggish. Not to mention, the fact that they spent a day or two painting all this plywood black seems like a decent indication that this plywood isn't going anywhere any time soon. And that's just not a good sign.

Either way, the rent is cheap, and my apartment itself rocks. Y'all should come see it. Justin's going to. Sunday night boyee, Sufjan Steves at First Ave! Awwww fuck yeah. Okay, I'm gonna go.

Current weather in Guatemala: 73 Degrees. . . and mostly sunny! Holy shit! There's a change of pace for ya. (Of course, it's been very rainy and humid here today. So it's a tradeoff I guess. Minnesota and Guatemala, working in conjunction to cover all possible late Summer weather conditions. Way to go, Minnesota and Guatemala!)

[	i guess i'm feeling	|	giggly	]
[	i'm pretending to listen to	|	"Do I Do" by Stevie Wonder	]

Greetings fellow campers. My quest to write from as many online locations as possible has taken both a studious and an occupational route. I'm writing to you, my ever-lovely audience, from the McNally Smith College of Music Library, here at (you guessed it) McNally Smith College of Music. I work here now. I got a new job! I work at the McNally Smith College of Music Library! Fun times, this is. I mean, sort of. I'm basically sitting behind the desk and checking out headphones. I've been here for just over two hours, and have checked out, like, three headphones. Otherwise, it seems to me, this job consists of sitting here, doing homework, and writing online journal entries. Okay!

The good part about this is, it means I got to quit the fuckin gas station. Which I've been wanting to do for quite some time, you may recall. I have one shift left there, on Sunday morning. And I guess they want me to work it, what since I was scheduled and all. But after that? Holiday Employee No More!! Now that's accomplishment in a can.

Anyway, we're a week and a half into classes now. It's going okay. I've had to do a lot of tedious rescheduling and bantering with my profs and department heads, not only to get into the classes I want, but to just plain get into the right classes. For some reason unknown to man (but apparently known to cheetah, those clever cats), I was placed in a bunch of classes for Recording/Engineering majors. It's not something that's drastically different (I wasn't suddenly stuck taking advanced ballet or anything. . . hmm, no), but the differences are noticeable enough for me to, well, take notice. As baffling as it was that I was thrown into a different department, what was even more baffling was my teachers' immediate reaction, a mixture of concerned apathy and "oh well"-edness. I was basically told that it didn't matter that much, I could just stick in the classes I was scheduled. Oh, but I should add one class, since production majors are required to take it. Yeah that was nice. (There was a class I wasn't even scheduled for, and had no idea I was supposed to take. I only figured it out when I randomly dropped in on a couple friends, asked them if they were taking this class as an elective, and was informed that, well no, it was required.)

Naturally, I started thinking a bit more about the classes I was currently in, realized that no, I shouldn't be in these classes, because I'm not paying to get a degree in the Recording/Engineering department. So I went back to my department head, and calmly said that I'd like to be placed in the Production classes. He said, "Okay," and proceeded to change my schedule and get me into the Production classes. That was it. Which was fine! Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm confused about getting into these classes, goodness knows, it isn't that! It's more, if this was such a simple procedure in the first place, why was I initially told to just stay in the Recording classes? But either way, it ended quite nicely, and I'm in the classes I should be, and life goes on, albeit hectic and potentially stressful.

In the midst of all this rigamarole, I got hired at the library. I gave an extremely impromptu interview Tuesday afternoon, and was hired the next day. That was a moment of pure jubilee, walking down Wabasha St, listening to the voicemail telling me I got hired, the immediate realization that my days at the fucking gas station were over. Good times man, fucking good times. And this job doesn't seem too complex. Certainly not on evenings and weekends. I kind of see it as a great forced way of doing homework-- not much else to do, might as well do my homework! Plus, if it ever involves chart-writing, I can listen to CDs and stuff. And I can use the net, watch DVDs if I really want to, bring in food and stuff. Essentially, it's like sitting in my room, only I'm getting paid for it, and occasionally I check stuff out or in. I'm even sitting down. I can handle this. 21 hours a week, flexible to a point around my schedule, and it's at school. Best of all, no driving. Not even a block, let alone 45 fucking minutes roundtrip (longer in rush hour). And. . . IT'S NOT A FUCKING GAS STATION!! Moving back up, my friends.

Anyway, I should go. . . don't really have anything to do of course(!), but I mean, there's bound to be something I can accomplish. I brought a Harry Potter novel, I've never really delved into those before. Rainey leant me two before she left. So perhaps I'll read them. The truth is out there, homeys.

Current weather in Guatemala: Partly Cloudy, 73 Degrees. Thunderstorms continuing into the weekend. . . truly is the rainy season, isn't it. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. But I'm not gonna write it. You see, I consider myself above the obvious pun. No siree, you'll never catch me spouting bad puns off at the ol' online diary miller!