Week #4 Update!

Season's greetings!

I hope everyone has been enjoying the Thanksgiving holiday. How many of you celebrated by dressing your turkey as Ceviche Man? I'm not on social media, but I have a strong feeling that this was a viral trend this year. Looking forward to catching up on all of the virality I've missed!

I'm not going to do the usual day-by-day breakdown this week, because it all sort of blurred together.

I've been continuing work on the latest song. I'm having a hard time landing on a working title. I try out a new one every time I export a draft. So far I have Deep Water, Ends, and Again & Again. Again & Again was my favorite until I remembered I just finished a song called Come Again. Maybe this album's schtick will be every song has "Again" in the title.

Title issues aside, I'm really happy with the progress I've made. I've spent more time on lyrics than anything else. It's gone a bit off script from last week's thesis, but I believe it's all coming together.

I'm hoping to wrap up a full draft of this one early next week and move on to whatever is next. I took inventory last night, and I currently have 9 songs in play. 4 are fully written, 3 are 60%+, and 2 are still incubating. 11 is usually my lucky number when it comes to releasing albums. I've stopped at 11 in the past (HoM, Etc, SWORDS), but I don't want to stop working until I feel confident that this collection of songs is a worthy successor of SWORDS. I've been thinking a lot about doing 22 songs. Then I can decide whether I want to pick 11 crown jewels, release a double album, or do something in between. Regardless, you all should have plenty to feast on in the not so distant future as I'll share whatever doesn't end up going into the world here.

Some depressing news here from Camp Lutsko. My wife noticed a raccoon moseying about in our backyard on Thanksgiving around 9 am. My immediate worry was the little guy must be sick being out during the day, but google assured me that raccoons often stay out during the AM and scavenge for food. A couple hours later,  I go to grab something out of my car and I almost step on the little guy. It's totally unaware, unintimidated, disoriented, and has little snot bubbles coming from its nose. I google what's going on, afraid that it might have rabies, and I find that its symptoms match an illness called distemper. It bummed us out, but we assumed it was passing through and went about our day (2 Thanksgiving feasts on both sides of the family). It was dark when we returned home and there was no sign of our friend.

We awoke to said raccoon hanging out on our front porch. The cats were fascinated. The poor guy was stumbling around in slow motion and totally unaware of their voyeurism. I tried to give it some food but it showed no interest. I called all of the animal resource places I could find online and they all either went to voicemail or gave me another place to call. The one place I could get a hold of said it would cost $589 for them to come grab it because it was a holiday. Luckily, after a full 12 hours of it hanging on our porch, we had someone from the local animal center come retrieve it. Sadly, they said there was nothing they could do and the raccoon would be euthanized. 

I've been wrestling with the idea that it was sheer coincidence it posted up near our porch for almost 24 hours. Did it want our help? Did it want us to put it out of its misery? Was it aware we were even there?

I'll miss our sick friend, but it reminded me to be thankful for our pets' and family's health.

I hope everyone had (and continues) to have a great holiday weekend. I know things are in a bit of a lull currently, so I can't say thanks enough for your continued support and patronage. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing without this amazing community and it means the world. I am eternally grateful.

Cheers!
Nick