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Sunday, October 18th, 2009
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4:21 pm - Vodka Tasting Party!
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The morning after my first full-scale vodka tasting party was not nearly as painful as I feared it might be. Here is the full report!
The Tasters:
Alex, Austin, Crystal, Dylan, Me, Pawel, Sotheavy
The Contenders:
The Method:
Double-blind(ish) tasting, each participant ranks all vodkas, from best (1) to worst (6).
Our vodka experts were invited over for a Saturday afternoon cookout. After the meal we gathered inside for the tasting. I prepared official ballots for the participants. You will note that the ballot lists Ketel One, but this was swapped out for Effen, which Pawel had brought.
(I am amused by the fact that the invite said "if you want anything besides meat and vodka, bring it!", and Pawel brought more vodka. It is for such reasons that we are friends.)
I set out 42 glasses, and Sotheavy helped me label each set "A" through "F" with little stickers before filling. Then, while people played Beatles Rock Band, I filled each with about a half-shot and wrote down which was which. This would normally make it a single-blind test, but I honestly forgot which vodkas corresponded to which letters by the time I was done. I think this officially qualifies as double-blind-ish.
Here is a picture of the spread.
We all did our tasting at the same time, but not in a structured fashion. Chips and lemon wedges were available for palette cleansing. The goal was simply to rank them according to personal taste, not by price or match to the "correct" vodka.
Nobody did them as shots. We all spent a good amount of time going through the process, tasting and re-tasting, adjusting our rankings. I would estimate the group spent about 15-20 minutes working on it.
After everyone had their ranking finalized, it was time to view the results!
And the results are... (drum roll please) ( Read more... )
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| Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
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1:52 pm - Pause and Rewind
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Whoops -- I kind of dropped the ball there on blogging about my album. But it was for a reason: I decided that I need to update my personal site which hasn't been updated since roughly 2000. I want to have a sort of central place for the stuff I make and then I'll return to blogging about my album again, possibly in a slightly revised format. I hope to have that worked out within a month.
However in the interest of keeping up my main hobby, which is procrastinating, I haven't been working on redesigning my site for the past few weeks anyway. Here's what I have been up to:
- Celebrity Guess Who
Teaming up with The Reverend Brendan Powell Smith who had created a series of fun celebrity-guessing party games over the past year or two, we put together a web version that tests your facial recognition skills and your pop culture knowledge at the same time. My first bit of serious programming in over a year, and my first AJAX project ever, I had a lot of fun making it. I managed to get drawn in enough to pull an all-nighter or two!
- All-Day Buffet
I just returned from about 34 hours at the Excalibur hotel in Las Vegas, where I rented a room for two nights (just $36/night!) and joined my friends Lisa, Dave, and Cheryl for an all-day buffet pass (just $25!). We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner right there. As gross as that may sound to some, it was actually wonderful. There's no gourmet food at the Excalibur buffet, but what is there is well-made and very tasty. Between meals we talked up a storm, played games at the midway, had free champagne, hit the pool, Dave played in a poker tournament, and they all did some general gambling as well. Sophie stopped by for a bit, but could not bring herself to do three buffet meals in one day. I can't say I'd do anything like that again any time soon, but I enjoyed it immensely and seem to have gained only 6 lbs.
- Tickets to South Africa
I committed and bought tickets to South Africa for next spring! Eight weeks from March to May. I got a real connection to that place on my last visit, and I've wanted to return ever since. A and D continue to go every year and work in the schools there, and it looks like this year I'll have both the time and money to go help again. I continue to be amazed at how little we understand about what makes a healthy society function, and yet how much we take it for granted. I don't have any insight into it myself, but I want to observe close-up the struggles of a society on the cusp to see what I can learn.
Oh, and the latest TV show that will receive the J Field Death Touch (tm): FlashForward. It just premiered, I like it and I am curious to see where it goes. That means, without question, that it will be cancelled before resolving. You heard it here first.
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| Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009
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8:03 am - Nocturne
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Over the next few weeks I am going to post about each song on my album in turn. The posts will include the story behind each song, some notes about the recording process, a streaming copy so you can listen while you read, and for the truly curious I'll be putting up the GarageBand files as well.
I think the Garageband files might be interesting for anyone who is recording with GarageBand themselves; to see how the sounds were created and the songs constructed. If you know anyone who might find it interesting, spread the word.
Without further ado, here's the first song on the album, and the first song I recorded for the album...
This past March I went on a two week road trip up the west coast and back with my friend Lisa. We had a great time cruising in her RV, yet I was depressed for most of the trip. I had been going through some dramatic changes over the previous several months, including a divorce, and I had yet to see the light. I'm not sure how apparent this was to her or to the people we visited along the way; I kept it to myself as much as possible. There's sometimes a strange contrast between the interior and exterior.
We got back to Las Vegas in late March, and I remember the first night home I was very glad to be back. Though the trip was absolutely great, there was a part of me that was uncomfortable ignoring my depression for all that time. I didn't know what to do about it, but being back in the house alone I felt awful, yet relieved to be able to let myself feel awful.
One thing was sure that first night home: I couldn't sleep. It was in this insomnious state that I went into my studio for the first time in several months and picked up my guiltar. In the unlit room I plucked out a few unplanned notes: the spare opening guitar line of Nocturne. The resigned simplicity of it and the pacing resonated with me, and so I decided to record.
I knew I wanted the guitar to sound very distant, and slowly approach the listener. Even though the style of the song was very different from what I normally do, it came pretty naturally. I had the intro, first verse, and bridge section recorded in a couple hours.
I felt right away that I wanted the song to be the opening to an album -- not that I actually believed I'd record a whole album at the time; I'd had more than a few false starts on such things over the years. But I liked the idea of setting a tone of sleepy melancholy and then exploring that through several songs. Maybe an album about one lonely night from sundown to sunrise.
I had so much unfinished music I'd accumulated over the years, but I thought to myself that I'd let go of the past, and write all new songs. They'd be more atmospheric, darker, with a deliberate pacing. An album that you could listen to while falling asleep. And then as the morning light came, I went to sleep myself, having completed the first half of the tune.
I let the half song sit on my iPod for a week or two before recording the second half. I listened to it often while driving around in my car. I seem to use the car as a secondary listening room; a way to see how the songs sound when played out in the real world. My car just has a stock stereo, and it's good to hear what happens to the mix on a non-ideal system. But just as importantly, driving around puts me in a different frame of mind from being in the studio, so I get different insights into the music. Eventually I went back to the song and added the second verse and the ending.
The only part that gave me any trouble was getting the last vocal section right; the part that begins at around 2:18. But even that came together relatively easily.
I've been pleasantly surprised with the reaction to this song, which has been very positive. It is a little shorter and simpler than most of the other songs, and in some ways I thought of it as an intro rather than stand-alone. But several people have named it as their favorite tune on the album, so I guess it works well in any case.
Technical Notes:
Like everything on the album, Nocturne was recorded with a relatively simple setup: a MacBook Pro running GarageBand 09 via a Tascam US-122 audio/midi box. Vocals were recorded through a Sure Beta 87.
For instruments: I used a relatively new Schecter electric guitar, the only electric I currently own. My bass is an old Peavey Dyna Bass (in passive mode) bought used around 1993. The keyboard sounds were from GarageBand using my old Ensoniq as a MIDI controller.
The drums on this song are a loop from one of the excellent "Jam Packs" that I got for GarageBand. For years I avoided loops, considering it cheating. But in the past couple years I've got over myself and decided to serve the song over my ego. I found this rhythm loop fit perfectly, and I added only a few fills of my own and the percussion during the second bridge/finale section.
Here is the Nocturne GarageBand file. You'll need GarageBand 09 to open it or, I am told, recent versions of Logic Audio can open GarageBand files too.
I'll be posting about the title track, "Drift" in a few days!
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| Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
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9:56 am - iTunes
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As of yesterday, my album is now available in iTunes! Yay!
I think it's amusing that I ended up with a "Parental Advisory" label, but I've only got myself to blame. Without too much thought I flagged "So Hard" as having explicit content when I was adding it to CD Baby. So there you go.
Over the next couple weeks I'm going to blog about each song on the album, and I'm going to release the raw GarageBand files. Crazy? Perhaps -- but I hope it'll be interesting for some people to poke around and see how the songs were put together. I'll try to give a little insight into how and why they came to be, as well.
The songs are available for free download in my July 4th blog entry, and you are welcome to grab them. If you find yourself replaying and enjoying the songs as much as other songs you've paid for, please buy a copy from iTunes, or if you want a hard copy CD, buy one from CD Baby. Otherwise, please feel no obligation!
Honest reviews on either site are also appreciated!
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| Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
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2:00 pm - Drift Cover Art
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Oh, yes: the album has cover art now. I actually put together most of the cover art the same night I finished the album, back on July 4th. I was originally going to release the art at the same time as the songs, but I thought it needed some additional tweaking so I held it back. Anyway, here is the final cover art, in large-ish form:
All that plus on-disc printing is included with the physical CD. I'm pretty happy with the quality I got from "Disk Makers. The first batch of 50 is mostly gone already, but then again I gave most of them away. Now that the rest are for sale, we'll see if I need to print up any more :)
You can buy one at CD Baby.
Thanks to Sophie for the photographs and creative feedback!
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12:35 am - Available For Sale
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Finally the album, both as a CD and a download, is available for sale:
Drift at CD Baby
You are of course welcome to simply listen to the copy that I've posted here, but if you'd like to show your appreciation, or if you want a hard copy CD complete with album art and printed lyrics, you buy a copy there.
Sincere reviews are appreciated! Feel free to post your thoughts on that page.
Through CD Baby I should be on iTunes and Amazon eventually, though they've been less than clear about how and when that happens.
Once it's up in iTunes and such, I'll be posting a song-by-song log of my experiences and thoughts recording each track.
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| Saturday, July 4th, 2009
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11:33 am - My Album
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Well here it is. My first complete album of music since I collaborated on the 3 Honkees back in 1994.
Yes, It's been 15 years.
I've done music in that time. Lots of it, but on and off. I never had the time or discipline to record a complete album until now.
Without further ado:
Jonathan Field - Drift
1. Nocturne
2. Everything Is Wrong
3. Drift
4. Paper Time Machine
5. So Hard
6. Don't Make Me Any Promises
7. Pretty, Sad
8. I Still Care
9. You've Got To Start Somewhere
10. So Long
Download a zip of MP3 files here (39MB)
It's all me and only me. Everything was written and recorded in the past couple months as I aimed for the arbitrary deadline of July 4th. I have lots of thoughts about the process and the finished product, but I just pulled an all-night session and it's time to catch some sleep before some friends arrive for a bbq in a few hours.
It's a pretty varied collection of songs. Hopefully you can find a few songs to enjoy, and not many to hate :)
Happy 4th!
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| Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
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11:25 am - Party Pics
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| Monday, May 18th, 2009
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1:06 pm - Birthday!
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I just had a great birthday week. Sophie came out and we spent a night at the M resort since I had a good coupon. Then we went to the Mirage to see LOVE and spent a night there too. In a rare moment of true Vegasdom, we hit the casino floor and threw about $100 into the machines. We walked away with just a little over $100, so not too bad.
Then we spent most of Friday buying stuff for a pool party & birthday bbq for Saturday. It was a combined birthday for myself and my good friend Christa, who was also born on this lovely week in May. The party was a big success with some 40 people rocking out by the pool, snacking on cookout food, and generally having what appeared to be a good time. I'd never thrown a party that size before, so it was fun to see it all come together.
Currently, this is the only picture I have from the party. But that works.
Sophie was an amazing help with the party -- making some super Korean Beef and managing the kitchen area for much of the festivities. And the guests were wonderful people that not only brought a great assortment of sides, drinks, and desserts, but they also cleaned up afterwards, too. The next morning upon waking I only needed to sweep the floor and carry out a bag of trash.
Then on Sunday there was _another_ birthday for pal Sotheavy. A big group went to Hostile Grape for delish wine and cheese time.
And now it's Monday. I'm 36. What to do?
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| Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
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2:55 pm - Bacteria
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I found this presentation pretty mind blowing:
Bonnie Bassler on Bacterial Communication
I kind of love the TED conference; at least the web available video portions. It stimulates an exhilaration in me similar to the way Wikipedia often does. I should hop over there more often, whenever I worry that the world is getting stagnant.
I'm in Rhode Island, for my first niece's first birthday. Visiting with the family and chilling out. And obviously watching videos online :)
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| Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
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11:42 pm - New Band!
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So things have been enjoyable for the past month -- except for the looming sense that this might all come to an end. By "this" I mean my financial independence. The fear that this might come to an end seems to keep me from really digging in to any cool projects. Lame, I know, but there you go.
Despite that, I was pleased to come across this little internet meme today:
1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit "random"
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random.
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to flickr and click on "explore the last seven days"
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.
5 - Post it to FB with this text in the "body" and TAG the friends you want to join in. (you can untag yourself if you don't want this photo up)
In step 5, replace Facebook (FB) with your favorite social site. I did mine on Facebook, but the fact that non-Facebook people can't see them has pissed me off and so I am posting it here as well. My results:
( Read more... )
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| Thursday, January 8th, 2009
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4:29 pm - A Story I Wrote
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It's sure been a while since I posted. Life has been full and I've traveled to the Carolinas and to New England for Thanksgiving and Christmas respectively. I've been hanging with some kewl new people and enjoying life here in Las Vegas as best I can.
On to the reason for this post: a story I wrote was posted to the front page of kuro5hin.org. Pronounced "corrosion", it's a site where users write stories and articles and then the members vote stuff up or down.
What may not be apparent unless you're familiar with kuro5hin is that it's largely a haven of vile misanthropes who despise almost everything. I've been occasionally reading and commenting there for years as the community has shrunk down to only the most stalwart and bitter members. I take it as a great honor that my story was accepted and voted up by such people.
I suppose it's not too surprising -- it's a dark story. But I'm proud of it. Hope I can get myself to do more writing in the future.
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| Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
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1:29 am - More Blah.
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Well, not entirely: since I last posted I had a great trip to SF for a wedding in Mendocino. While there I got to see lots of good old friends. Then I was the witness at a little civil ceremony back here in a LV for a couple other good friends. Everyone's getting married! Despite my warnings!
Michelle and I did only one Halloween party as Mickey and Mallory Knox of "Natural Born Killers". We did these outfits, but I did this hair.. I think we looked pretty great, but somehow we failed to get any pictures. Lame.
Other than that, things are just dragging. I tend to waste my way through the day. The election has me nerved up. I can't wait for it to be over tomorrow night, whichever way it goes.
I'm pretty convinced that thanks to the economy and its effects on Zappos, I won't be able to continue the "live frugally off stock and do something great" lifestyle I've set up. I'm going to need to get a job. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't seem to go from life-crushing to creatively-inspired fast enough, and soon my time will be up. So it goes.
Want more?
Today I got a call from a close friend who's had recurring problems with domestic violence. I mentioned it somewhere along the way in the South Africa journal. Anyway, after what seemed like her hitting rock bottom a few months ago, and a subsequent new beginning, I was hopeful and supportive on the condition she never let it happen again. But somehow in the past week or two she managed to let the guy back in the picture for the umpteenth time. Within a few days he had broken her collarbone and has been arrested again.
It kills me to walk away from someone I love who is so obviously in need of help, but it doesn't seem I can help, and I just can't be connected to it any longer. She told me she's going to move into a shelter. I wished her luck and goodbye. So it goes.
On a more positive note, I went dancing at FreeZone this past Saturday with some great people, which was a lot of fun. I hope California's prop 8 doesn't pass.
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| Friday, October 17th, 2008
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10:58 pm - Zep?
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Went to see Lez Zeppelin tonight with Aki and Lisa. It's an all-girl Led Zeppelin cover band. They put on a great show -- there were a couple rough spots but they nailed most of the tunes right out of the park. Their rendition of "In My Time of Dying" was amazing, as was "Kashmir", "Rock & Roll", "Black Dog" and "Whole Lotta Love".
The drummer was the highlight -- totally slammed every song. Got all the nuances right. Looked like she was having a blast. And she has the best rock name of the bunch, too: "Helen Destroy". But they all put on a good, fun show.
I hear that sometimes they do the first album from beginning to end. I would love to see that. I will check them out again next time they're in town.
Got my halloween costume all set. Doing another couple costume with Michelle. It also involves her wearing tight fitting clothes and me shaving my head. Like last year, we don't expect most people to get it. I'll post pictures and an explanation when I get them.
I've already got an idea for next year's costume, should it come to pass, that again involves her in tight fitting clothes and me shaving my head. I wonder how long we can play that motif out.
All that sounds wonderful. And I've been working on a video. But honestly, I feel blah. Hopefully it'll pass. If not, I'll have to start sniffing glue.
current mood:  blah
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| Tuesday, October 7th, 2008
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4:53 am - Who?
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And now I present the result of an otherwise ordinary Monday evening:
Baba O'Riley
My apologies. It occurred to me today as I was driving around listening to the stereo, and then it had to be done.
Just voice and Garageband effects.
Update:
No, I had no idea that a cappella Who covers were already the latest thing. Late to the game again!
Update 2:
The first version I uploaded had the end cut off, dammit! The full version, including my annoying impression of a fiddle is now available above.
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| Sunday, October 5th, 2008
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9:54 pm - Urban Hiking
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Yesterday, Saturday, I went urban hiking. I badly needed to decompress after this week. I'd felt pretty lousy about things and I'd kept myself cooped up for several days straight. Not good.
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| Saturday, August 30th, 2008
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5:34 pm - Wikipedia
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I just realized one of my favorite things about Wikipedia is the occasional misinformation. I read from Wikipedia more than is normal or healthy I think. Probably several times per day.
Occasionally when reading I come across information that for one reason or another seems questionable to me. So I research it elsewhere, then correct the article if necessary. I feel that it helps develop my bullshit detector.
I'm not talking about vandalism and overtly ridiculous additions, which are easy to spot. I'm talking about the seemingly innocuous bits that are nonetheless untrue. I'm actually surprised how often it is possible to pick up on subtle cues. I guess I have no idea how many I miss, but I have sometimes suspected and researched things that turned out to be true. I take those false positives to indicate my suspicion threshold is at least in a reasonable range.
Misinformation seems rare enough in Wikipedia that it's still a great source, on par with other single sources. I still start all my learning there. But as with most information sources, you really can't just blindly trust.
So I posit that Wikipedia is good mental exercise as it openly requires you to stay on your toes.
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| Monday, August 25th, 2008
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9:53 pm - Music!
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It's been an amazing time since I last posted. I've driven from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and up to Portland. Along the way I visited many good friends and had some wonderful adventures. Sometimes I worry that if I don't write things down I won't remember them, but I'll have to risk it as I've been too busy with actual living to document everything.
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| Friday, July 4th, 2008
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2:51 pm - Arizona Sites, and Home
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| Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
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12:39 am - Austin, Albuquerque, Flagstaff
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The drive from Austin to Albuquerque was long. I let myself sleep in the morning so I didn't leave town until 10:30 AM. I didn't get into my room in Albuquerque until just before midnight. And that included an hour of driving in the dark in the pouring rain near the end of a full day on the road.
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