Mesmerized by life's flow of experiences, overwhelmed sometimes at how much is getting done: We have basic tracks with guitars on six songs for the new record, and vocals on four of those. I'm relieved to have my guitar tracked on "Straight to the Body," a delicate part, and I think we got all components into their right separate grooves. The studio high point of the last two weeks was recording Ian's guitar solo on "Where Is My Robot Maid" in a rubber-burning one-take explosion, although speaking of right separate grooves, The Larch have also resumed recording which means there's not a lot of: - Show going (although I did buy Robyn Hitchcock [& the Venus 3] tickets) - Record buying (thank goodness for Steph's gift of The Housemartins Live at the BBC to augment my vow to dispatch my tape collection) - Writing. Ideas come along and get listed, truncated until time can be spent to give them flesh. We played last Saturday at the Laila Lounge to a chill-resistant crowd. Rumor has it the vocals sounded good from the audience - we couldn't tell over a lot of crackling in the monitor - some kind of wiring problem, but seriously, Houston next time work that out before you clear us for lift-off. So we were content with playing a show to satisfy, resting the three songs we're prepping for drum and bass tracking, not yet addressing the new post-this-album material that's already up and out of the crib getting into trouble and running around. The March 3 show in Rhinebeck has been cancelled by the venue, but just as that unexpected news was received, our friends in Skelter invited us to continue the tradition of playing each other's CD release parties, so we added a Manhattan show at Otto's for March 15. Ides say it's gonna rock! Oh, and I got a haircut.