Ten (10)

First... screw you mother nature. There, I said it. I friggin hate winter. I have had it. I am done. I am packing up my family and moving some place hot. I'm thinking really hot. No more of this Florida talk, or the Caribbean, or any crap like that. I'm talking Northern Africa hot. I'm thinking Ethiopia. Somewhere we can go to never ever ever never ever ever never ever see snow and ice again.

All of the mountains of snow we got in December and January were pretty much gone. Only the snowbanks remained. We had a full week of temps in the 40's and higher. It felt like the end of the horror was upon us.

Then we got a little on Wednesday. That sucked but it was all right. It was only a little and it was gone quick (lots of Thursday rain helped). Yesterday I checked weather.com to see what the next 10 days worth of temps were. I saw one day with a high of 32, everything else was well above freezing.

What I didn't look at was the actual forecasts themselves. Jen mentioned a chance of snow on Sunday. Noooo says I. Then just before bed I looked out the window and everything was covered in snow. Noooo says I again.

I opened the door to go outside this morning and there was only about an inch of snow. It looked much the same as the last accumulation, that is to say, nuttin. Then I got to the car and grabbed the snow brush and tried to clean the car.

The inch of snow came off easy... but it revealed about a quarter inch of ice. It took me almost 20 minutes to scrape the ice off of the two cars, and even then it was a piss poor job. Noooo says I yet again. It sucked. Cars were sliding all over the place. Traffic on route 93 South was nightmarish. The only upside of this friggin' commute was that the storm stayed up North. Once I got into Lincoln it was fine.

Screw you mother nature. I hate you and your winter.

Now, what the hell was I going to talk about again? Oh yeah, RPM...

The RPM Challenge is to record 10 songs or 35 minutes worth of music during the month of February. There used to be a push to write your 10 songs during February too. I have always put my focus there over a high quality recording.

This morning I put together the bare bones of song number 10. I went into this thinking I would try to write quick and easy songs, including some that would just be a guitar/vocal kinda thing. I found myself this morning with nine songs, all of which will end up with at least two tracks of percussion (drum machine cop out style), a bass, at least two tracks of guitar, and anywhere from one to three vocal parts. So today for the 10th and final song I went with a simple quiet 12-bar (a cop out, yes, but I had planned to throw a couple of those in this time for speed's sake and this one makes two) that probably will end up with a bass, one guitar, and one vocal. Simple. There. I might use the little tiny bongo drums type thing I bought at the Moroccan Pavilion at Epcot center too. As for now the percussion consists of a click track. Watch, it'll end up being the best song of the bunch.

Now I have to figure out 10 bass guitar parts (again, quick and easy is the key), rerecord 10 rhythm guitar parts, ad-lib 10 lead guitar parts, write 10 lyrics, and write and record 10 melodies... and I only have eight more days. Yeah, I'm gonna finish this thing.

Wish me luck.