Bass and beyond

I'm proud of my bass-playing calluses. I love it when my fingertips are tender after a bass practice. It's akin to having slightly sore muscles after exercise, just enough so you know you've done yourself some good. Of course, I'd far rather play my bass than exercise, so I'm starting to become more familiar with sore fingertips than sore muscles.

I also love the sound of the band downtuning before playing Muse's "Hypermusic". It's like an airplane getting ready for takeoff.

I'm getting better at singing while playing, too. It's still tricky when I first start learning a new song, and there's some songs that I doubt I'd ever be able to handle the bassline AND the vocals at the same time, but I'm getting more reliable. Marcus suggested practicing it by emphasizing just the words that are sung as you're playing a note (particularily when they're on the beat), and then the rest sort of fills in over time - that's helped a lot. I've even noticed that sometimes I can tell whether the lead singer plays an instrument or not while they sing, depending on how naturally the vocals match the beats.

Other miscellaneous notes for the day:

• While I was scanning my spam folder for valid emails accidentally misplaced, I noticed the name 'Pat Pfirmphh" in one of the From fields. I didn't take note of what he/she was selling (no doubt the usual prescriptions, p3n1s enlargement, prizewinning notifications or the mystifying Christian Debt Relief) but I have to give some kudos to the spammer for coming up with the creative name of Pfirmphh. Come to think of it, it was probably for a prescription... the name sounds like an expression of great discomfort.
• The bus I take to work passes a grade school. Usually I've got my nose buried in a book or my eyes closed, but I was looking out yesterday and noticed that instead of backpacks, many of the kids were lugging small suitcases, like flight attendants. I'm not good at judging ages, but these kids must've been around, what, 7-10 years old. Has the curriculum really gotten so intensive that the poor things have to carry around that many massive books at once? Are they learning that much more? Someone explain this to me. What's it like to be a grade-schooler these days? I've obviously missed out on the changes in the past 20+ years.
• Finally, I think I'm going to switch this blog over to b2evolution sometime in the next few weeks, if I ever get time. It seems to be getting a lot of good feedback. Part of me really likes using a maintained system like Blogger - it's like having a day at the spa; some of it is stuff you didn't need or could've done yourself but it's just so nice not to have to worry about it. But I feel like Blogger is stagnating, and it seems kind of silly to go to TypePad when I can in fact host something myself on my own server. So we'll see how it goes. I hope there's an easy way to import old posts so I don't have to copy and paste all my archives... ugghh. Any tips? [UPDATE: I just found out that my host, Ace of Space, does provide b2evolution support - I just need to upgrade from an Admin Suite account to a CPanel account, something I've been thinking about doing for a while. Plus, they have wikis and more! WOOHOO! I can't wait!!]