Happy Halloween!

The thing is, every year of college thus far has featured Halloween on a day that could reasonably be considered "the weekend." Friday my first year, Saturday the next, and even Sunday last year sort of kind of was reason enough to "go out." As I recall, Julia and I went to see Titus Andronicus at SMOG, and it was a pretty laid-back affair (in Halloween terms), but it was still something. This year it's on a Monday, and despite the fact that I've had a few fun-sized Milky Ways and Kline played "spooky" sound effects all through dinner, I'm not really feeling it this year, which I guess is a shame, because the end of college (in my opinion) marks the end of the Halloween revival, the absolute last time you can dress up for Halloween and have it not be weird. Then again, it's very possible that I hate fun and this won't be the case at all, but I kind of feel like it'll be time to Take Myself Seriously.

To that end, I sent in a resume today to try to grab a part-time job at the college museum's tiny little new cafe. It's insane that a coffee shop needs a resume, sort of in the same way that it's insane that I may not have the "people skills" required to serve coffee. It's coffee, for Christ's sake. Still, four more hours of work would be a little extra money, and one can never have enough of that, for if one has money, one can drive to Geneseo to visit Julia, which is what I'm doing on Wednesday. I'm really excited, even though it sounds like she has tons of work, which is the norm. It really has been too long, and I can't wait to show her my new wheels, take her fun places, and generally be close to her. I feel like my inexperience with relationships has sort of come out again as she's moved out to Geneseo, but I need to remember that something as wonderful as this isn't to be taken for granted, and to treat her as such. Since we all have So Many Things going on, it's sometimes easy to lose sight of how things have to be done, and a relationship should always be fresh and new, in a way. She's really a beautiful, amazing girl, and showing her that is really the least I can do. In short, I really have to remember how lucky I am.

In lighter news, my new favorite thing on TV is Community. I have a Boardwalk Empire episode to watch, right off the back of easily the best of the current season, but after a month-long Breaking Bad binge, it's really refreshing to have a relief from heavy hourlong dramas in the form of short, funny, and witty 20-minute episodes that you can watch three of without feeling drained.

I also started work on a new gadget today, an early step in a piece for guitar and electronics I'm working on, tentatively titled "Degrade." Essentially, the piece will start with a short, minimal, kind of pretty acoustic guitar loop (already written), and over time, the loop will be degraded through the use of electronic effects. The thing I started making will (I hope) take an incoming signal (say, a clean guitar) and, at regular intervals, interrupt the guitar with another sound. Both the interval and the duration of the interrupting sound will be adjustable, and there will be a "dry/wet" knob. In theory, one could split one's electric guitar signal and run one through one effect and one through another (octaves?), and rapidly switch between one and the other using this thing. If one wanted, one could make a self-contained single-input/single-output effect using this, and I bet it'd do some seriously weird things. One day, one day...