Last night was spent working very late, on kind of a sad project.

My friend Jerry, a songwriter and producer of note, has a studio in his basement that is large enough and complex enough to rival most of the commercial recording studios in this city. Around five years ago, he bought a new 48-fader console, necessitating the complete gutting and rewiring of the studio. I designed the wiring and patchbays for the studio and supervised the installation.

Now that Jerry has decided that Pro Tools (a computer-based recording, editing, and mixing system) is the ultimate answer to his many concerns, the console and most of the wiring is now superfluous. Last night, we stripped it all out. It took hours … but due to some forward thinking on my part, the wiring was all connectorized and came apart easily.

Another local studio has bought the console and patchbays, and the modular wiring will make it simple to quickly install and integrate into its new home. Apparently Jerry’s talked the new owner into using me for design and installation supervision as well.

This is the sort of work I need right now anyway … it keeps me busy, too busy to think or feel sorry for myself which is what I still find myself doing if I’m alone for too long. Mornings seem to be the worst times for me lately, waking up in a place where I don’t want to be, missing her, the cats, the birds, everything about my lost life.

I can’t bring myself to write much more right now, so I am going to leave you with a bit of music. I hope this works, I’ve never posted an MP3 before. It’s about 2.6M. The song is an old one by Paul Williams (YES, the little short guy from “Smokey and the Bandit”) and Jon Vezner, and to my knowledge it’s never been released. I don’t think they’ll mind.

Here it is. (This will probably stay up for no longer than a week or two due to bandwidth concerns.)