Okay, getting back in the groove

I’ve been back home for a little over a week now and things are starting to feel normal again. After a manic tour of the Bay Area, I had only one show last week in Pasadena and one show coming up this Friday in San Diego; one show per week feels about right.

Speaking of shows, I’ll be doing a Saturday/Sunday engagement the weekend of October 20th over at Descanso Gardens for their Halloween/Harvest Festival, which I highly recommend if you have very young kids. I’ve been asked to serve as Grand Marshal of their costume parade, which sounds really awesome if you don’t think of it as “wrangling maybe a hundred toddlers hopped up on candy.” I walked the parade route today with some of the Descanso staff and noted that the route includes a bridge over a creek and crosses the train tracks… twice. But it’s just one of those little trains you sit on top of, plus they assure me the train will probably stop for the parade. Barring disaster, my actual show should begin around 11:15 both days.

During my not-performing time I’m making more progress on the business stuff: the board of directors of GriffinEd had our first official meeting, yay! My artist friend Dan is nearly done on the cover art for Wrong and Wright. The website for GriffinEd is getting close and should be up soonish. I just finished polishing a new song about photosynthesis, which makes five new original songs ready to go for the next album after this one. I have no time to record them right now, but I can at least start posting the lyrics of the new stuff at the bottom of the “Uncollected” folder. Have a look; if you find I have made any errors of scientific or historical fact, please tell me BEFORE I record them! Also, I’m finally following up on some projects that got thrown my way at Worldcon; some of them I will tell you about when and if they firm up, and there are others I am not allowed to disclose just yet. But we really are moving forward, if slowly.

Non-music stuff: I had my first experience as a substitute teacher today (it went much better than in the movies), which will let me maintain my teaching credential. I got to meet some good people with whom I will be running an after-school math program for Terribly Clever children. And I’m helping to escort a busload of 6th graders to the Skirball center tomorrow so they can learn about cultural stuff.

So yeah, things are about as normal as they get around here.