Alive, but trembling

Hello. Every now and then, I tend to post something here to the effect of "I'm still alive, and I haven't abandoned the blog." This may be an "I'm alive" post, but the connotation is a little different this time. Today should have been a fairly normal day. I had a few interviews scheduled, and returned to my apartment to grab lunch between them. I left the apartment at 12:15 for my second interview, and returned around 1:40. My intention was to stop by my apartment, change out of my suit into more comfortable clothes, and head out again to go grocery shopping. Instead, I found my apartment inaccessible.

Police barricades cut off that entire side of the block.

Unbeknownst to me, three incidents had occurred in my brief absence. The first was a minor collision, blocking some traffic. The second followed from the first, with an 18-wheeler backing over the car behind it (well, under it, but you get my point). Apparently, there weren't any critical injuries in either of those cases. That can't really be said of incident #3. In the third incident, which was apparently unrelated to the others, a man was shot in the stomach about a minute's walk from where I sleep every night. On learning that, from the comfort of a Starbucks a few minutes away, I started shaking for reasons other than the unneeded caffeine.

I've lived most of my life in a pretty quiet neighborhood with little in the way of danger. My sister's car window was smashed once, and some possessions stolen, but I certainly never felt that my life was in peril. On moving to a new city, I'm about a month into my new life before someone gets shot in the stomach half a block away mere minutes after I leave. So yes, I am still alive.

Alive, but trembling.

Guitarman, out.

Transitions

You've probably noticed that I've been less than active lately. I don't really have time to post a review today, but I figured that I at least owe my readers an explanation for my relative silence. I graduated with my BA in international economics and philosophy on the 13th, and moved into my new apartment on the 19th. Lately, I've been using most of my time on the hunt for employment, and haven't had time to write here. Hopefully this'll change once I get a job and a stable schedule. I have a few interviews lined up for actuarial and financial positions, so hopefully I'll get my foot in the door somehow. Once I do, I'll be sure to keep you updated.

Until then,

Guitarman

Finals, finals, finals

With my final undergrad semester coming to an end, I've been kept pretty busy. Between working on term papers and searching for employment, I haven't exactly had much time to post here. Thankfully, there's a bit of a lull at the moment, so I've come to share some avant-garde metal goodness with you.

Hailing from Poland, Ketha play metal with prog sensibilities and a strong underlying groove. #!%16.7, the EP I've linked above, wastes nary a moment of your time, and clocks in at around 16 minutes over 12 tracks. In reality, it plays more like one song in twelve parts than a collection of short songs. The musicianship is excellent, the grooves are airtight, and the brass section is just right. I recommend it highly.

Until next time, Guitarman out.

Soon

So, you may have noticed that I've been conspicuously absent since December. I would like to apologize for that. I try to post at least once a month, but things don't always work out in my favor. This is my last semester as an undergraduate student, and I've been extremely busy with paper writing, job hunting and life planning. That being said, I'm currently home for spring break. Since I have a brief reprieve from my deadlines, I'm going to make an effort to post a few times before I head back to school on the 18th. I've already chosen some of the bands I'd like to cover, and am looking forward to sharing them with you soon.

Until then, Guitarman out.

Checking in

It's been a while since I've posted anything here, so I felt the need to check in. I'm currently in my senior year of college, so finals season has me quite thoroughly pinned down right about now. Thankfully, finals season ends on the 15th. After that, I will be largely freed of the obligations that are keeping me from sharing more music with you. Until then, I'll be over here cranking out papers 'til my hands bleed.

Guitarman out.

The World Turned Upside Down

Well then. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably already know the results of the US presidential election. If you haven’t heard the news because you were living under a rock, then that sounds like a lovely place to live and I hope you invite me to stay until this all blows over. I'm not writing here to criticize Trump, or to attack his supporters. You certainly won't find me celebrating the prospect of a Trump presidency, but that's neither here nor there. I’ll make time this weekend to discuss the growing toxicity of American political “discourse” (if you can even call it that, at this point). For now, though, I have schoolwork to do and a Black Sabbath concert (this Saturday!) to look forward to. After all, it’s best not to write a political post when your emotions are in turmoil. These things, like most in life, are best done with a clear head and even hand.

Until next time,

Guitarman

A health update

Sadly, health problems kept me from being able to get a blog post up this weekend. As I mentioned last post, I was kind of a wreck this weekend thanks to an allergic reaction to some antibiotics. Things got much worse when I woke up Saturday. I wasn't really able to move my hands much at all, and had difficulty standing let alone walking. I ended up having to go to the emergency room Saturday and stayed there until Sunday morning. The swelling is mostly gone, as are the hives. However, this ordeal consumed a large chunk of my weekend, and I had to dedicate the remainder to schoolwork. I'm still alive, though, and frankly that's enough for me right now. Had I delayed going to the emergency room, I'm not sure I'd be alive to type this right now (judging by the swelling on my neck that started during my stint in the ER waiting room). It's a bit of a stretch to say that "all's well that ends well," but there you have it. Hopefully next time I'll have a chance to post about music instead of some new medical ordeal. Guitarman out.

Health issues

This story starts some time in last July. I noticed that my large toes on both feet were quite a bit more sensitive than usual. Upon examining them, I found them to both have fairly nasty ingrown toenails. They both became infected, and I went on antibiotics. The antibiotics were mostly effective at eliminating the infection in my left big toe, while my right big toe remained infected. Since I couldn't get an appointment with a podiatrist before my planned trip to Ireland in early August, I went to urgent care and had part of the nail removed on my right large toe. My hope was that this would remove the ingrown portion, allow the infection to drain, and get all this resolved before my flight to Ireland. My left big toe was, at this point, merely ingrown.

Unfortunately, my trip to urgent care left me noticeably worse off than I started. They managed to take part of the nail off on my large right toe, but there were complications. The person actually removing the nail (let's call them Tim) turned out to be extremely inexperienced, and the nail itself turned out to be quite brittle. Instead of cutting cleanly, my nail came apart in narrow splinters. Tim saw this and decided to stop the procedure early, repeatedly telling me that he did not know what he was supposed to be doing in this situation. His superior responded to his questions by telling him to use his own discretion, a comment which appeared to fluster and confuse Tim. Keep in mind that all this is happening in front of me, so I'm not exactly feeling confident about Tim's competence. He had also not succeeded in actually numbing me (largely due to the level of infected tissue), so I felt every tear he made with his knife and tweezers, as well as every time his hand shook while injecting me with nerve blockers (which was quite a bit). At the end of the day, the nail was in worse shape than before the procedure. Instead of being ingrown, the edge of the nail was now in a serrated pattern that was sharp to the touch. Furthermore, the toe is still infected a month later.

After getting back to school (and having the infection return to my left large toe), I went to the school medical staff for antibiotics. They prescribed me a generic version of Augmentin, an antibiotic which helped somewhat with the infection. Coincidentally, they also found that the one of the numbing agent injection sites from my surgery had itself become infected. Thanks again, Tim.

Everything started looking up after I started the Augmentin. I felt itchy sometimes, but thought nothing of it. My feet were recovering. Today, however, I woke up to find myself covered in hives from head to toe. I have hives on my neck, behind my knee, all over both arms, all around my waist, on both of my inner thighs, and basically everywhere else I've checked so far. My hands are so swollen that I have difficulty moving about half of my fingers (making this somewhat difficult to type), and my skin feels like it's on fire. Apparently (according to my school physician) I'm allergic to Augmentin.

So there you have it. My health is a bit of a comedy of errors at the moment, and I'm kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'll try and get a music post out this weekend, but I'll probably wait for the hives to clear up.

Hope your day went better than mine did, and I'll see you next time. Until then, Guitarman out.

I'm back

Hello! I'm back from Dublin, and have returned to San Antonio for my senior year of undergrad. School will keep me somewhat busy, but I should have more time for updates now than I did over the summer. My schedule is also a lot more flexible now. I'm planning on updating the blog this weekend once I'm better situated in my dorm. I have artists already picked out, so it's just a matter of putting metaphorical ink to metaphorical pages. See you then!

EDIT: Whoops, seems I didn't end up having enough time to post this past weekend. My bad. I'll upload the post once I'm done with classes today.

A Belated Sit-rep

Is it really July already? Considering I've been AWOL from ROTGM for so long now, I feel I should explain my absence. Some time in February, I was let go from my internship at an advertising firm. Long story short, they finally ran out of work to give me and we parted on good terms. That internship was only supposed to last through the middle of August, so I was really just happy I managed to hold onto it for more than twice as long as planned. Granted, this meant going back to job searching, which (combined with finals in May) really clamped down on the time I could use to track down music for ROTGM.

Once I got back from college for the year, I started working at a temp agency in my home town. The temp agency connected me with a factory gig working on prosthetic limbs. Not exactly my cup of tea, I thought, but hey it would pay the bills. Unfortunately, this job goes from seven am three-thirty pm, and is carried out basically in silence. We all wear earplugs on site, so idle conversation isn't particularly easy to pull off. There's a radio playing somewhere, but it's so distant that it's mostly drowned out by ambient noise. As a result, I basically sit at a table all day hoping that A.) I don't set myself on fire (a fairly common occurrence there) and B.) that I don't go insane from lack of music. It's not so much a difficult job as it is an utterly soul-crushing one. Silence for eight hours, interrupted occasionally by the sounds of me freaking out because I set my hand on fire again with the blowtorch (we don't change gloves between rubbing shoulder supports down with alcohol and using a blowtorch to melt scratches on those supports, so our hands are extra flammable). Basically, I've been too bloody drained these days to think of much interesting to say on ROTGM.

Regardless, I wish to make it known that I do have some updates planned for the next few weekends. I have some bands I'd like to feature here, and it's just a matter of having enough time to do those spotlights properly. I'll be back in a few days with more than just a status update.

Guitarman out.