What a crazy long day! It was one of those days that actually feels like two very different days combined into one. Jenny and I got up real early to get out of Berkeley in order to make it down to Fullerton in time for me to attend the Handmade Music – Los Angeles event at Crashspace. I was lucky to be a presenter of sorts.
June had a bit of a fever before we left and around the time we were stopping for lunch we decided to take her temperature again and it was 104! We freaked out and called my sister whose a much more seasoned parent than Jenny or I. We thought too little of the small fever in the morning and June seemed sleepy but otherwise content for the car ride so you can imagine how horrible we felt when we realized we’d neglected to follow up on her temperature. My sister told us to give her some tylenol and that her fever should go down very quickly and she was exactly right. Within 20 minutes June was back around 99 degrees. Then, we hit traffic. There was a brush fire in the Newhall pass and all traffic was being merged into a single lane so it took two hours to pass an area that would otherwise take 10 minutes. Then, Friday night traffic. Every time I tried to escape it by taking an alternate route I’d just drive my way into a new traffic jam.
I called Kevin, the fellow who organized the Handmade Music party and told him I didn’t think I was going to make it. He was very understanding and offered me the ability to arrive whenever I could and set up at my own pace so I left it pretty open-ended. Once we finally got home I made sure Jenny was okay with me heading back out and she said it was all good. I stayed for awhile preparing the baby for the night and then collected my stuff and headed back out on the road. I found my cell phone after a week of not having it and found a text message from Gareth, an old friend from New Zealand who was down for a visit. Well, I texted him back and ended up picking him up to come along with me to the music night.
It was all very surreal to go from a 12 hour drive through the fever and the brush fire to be picking up my old friend from New Zealand heading out to a Handmade Music night. Anyways, I arrived around nine and began setting my stuff up. I brought my Soundlab (which sadly, never got plugged in) my kit-built monome, and I presented my application 64(video) fingers. Gareth was very understanding. I felt a little bad taking him to someplace so random and sort of leaving him behind a bit but he found everything intriguing and actually enjoyed himself.
I have a bit of a presence on the monome forums as egon77 so it was great fun for me to actually meet some of the other members face to face. I got to see Kevin, tho guy who organized the event also known as Soundcyst on the forums perform some cool ambient noise loops live. I also was lucky enough to see a fellow named Rawray on the forums or Altitude Sickness (his artist name) perform some amazing finger work on the monome. It was pretty awesome. Finally it was great to see people actually playing with and being interested in my application.