Game 19 - Dropping the Finale

Twins drop the series finale in Cleveland by a final of 4-2. Win to Laffey. Loss to Perkins, which ends a three-game streak of 8 innings, two or fewer earned runs, and four strikeouts in each. He pitched alright today, but that just wasn't enough. Save to Kerry Wood? Hmph. So that's what happened to Kerry Wood. And yeah, he looked fine. A three game series against Tampa Bay begin tomorrow night at 7:10pm at the Metrodome in beautiful Minneapolis.
Today I got my stereo back. For the last three weeks or so, I've had some of our studio gear on my desk, which is where I usually keep my stereo setup. Yesterday, however, I brought the gear back to our rehearsal space/recording studio. Upon returning home around 2:30am, I was in no condition to put it all back together, but when I woke up, I turned on the ballgame and began the art of setting it all up again. That entailed cleaning the desk with a fine polish, wiring and plugging in all the components and speakers, and tweaking everything until it looks and feels right. After all, this is where I'll be doing preliminary mixes for the album.

Today's Music: Origin of Symmetry by Muse.

PXL

Game 18 - Kubel Continues

Our Twins won the second game of a three-game set in Cleveland Tonight by a final score of 7-1. Win to Slowey (8+inn, 1ER, 7K). Loss to Pavano. 2 Homers to Kubel who continues on his tear. Amazingly, though, Gardy continues to pencil Young into the starting lineup even though his poor at-bats, confusing feilding routes, and tonight, bad baserunning mistakes continue to cost our Twins runs in nearly every game. He is a liability and needs to change or leave.Today I watched the game while working from our rehearsal space/recording studio. We had a number of odds and ends to clean up before prepping for vocal tracks, so I took care of those and caught little bits of the game in between. After the last out was recorded I took a little post-sunset walk down to the lake and took this picture. All you can see is the lights on the other side of the lake, but not to worry, many more lake pictures to come throughout the summer.

Today's Music: Red Pens EP by Red Pens

PXL

Game 17 - Blackburn's Gem

Twins win the first of three in Cleveland tonight by a score of 5-1. Win to Blackburn, who was brilliant. Loss to Carmona. The Big Canadian clobbered another one tonight which makes four on the year (through 17 games, he's on pace to hit 38 this year). Morales continues to do a serviceable job filling in on Redmond's off days while Baby Jesus is on the DL, but Young still looks hopelessly lost at the plate... oh, and on the field. If he doesn't stop swinging at every first piece of junk pitch that every schmo pitcher offers, I'm gonna lose it.While I've missed baseball this week (off days and rainouts) and it is nice to have it back, I've been getting tons of work done on music. I've been doing tempo correction in Ableton 8 as well as getting my legs back under me doing preliminary mixes in Acid 7. I continue to listen to a new album everyday in addition to about 45 minutes of guitar playing and an hour of drums each day. On guitar I play whatever I feel like, but drum exercises are split three ways; random warmup and sticking routines, playing along to whatever I'm listening to at the moment, and out of perhaps the finest drum practice book ever written, George L. Stone's Stick Control for the Snare Drummer. I did a bit of everything tonight from the kitchen while tonight's game was being televised and a Westerly wind was bringing in a cold front. Today was a beautiful day in Minneapolis.

Today's Music: Asleep in the Aisle by Asher Roth.

PXL