I seem to have abandoned the Lovespirals site since creating my own Anji Bee site. Bad, bad, bandmember, me! It was a ton of hard work to get my new blog up and running, and I have to thank Ryan for helping me out with some style coding, and Julien Smith for a little pointed advice.

The bulk of the work, really, is just simple data input. I wasn’t able to get the data from my previous WordPress blog before it bit the dust, so I’ve been forced to recreate all my shownote entries using the sometimes wonky code from the PodShow site. Plus I’ve been adding in podcast artwork, missing band links, purchase links, etc etc, so needless to say, it has taken up quite a bit of time. But just because I haven’t been blogging over here, it doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten you all! Just waiting for the inspiration to strike, or something worth reporting, I guess.

Which reminds me, last night Ryan and I started writing song number 7! Here we are, in the midst of recording song number 6 (aka “Sundrenched Tears”), when the old muse tapped us both on the shoulders with another lovely idea. Thus far, we have a Rhodes piano melody and vocals, in the roughest demo form, but as soon as we’re done with our current tune, we’ll surely launch into the next one right away!

Ugh, I can’t believe I’ve been putting off creating a site for myself for so long… I used to have an anjibee.com site a few years ago, but the coding was all mid-90’s and the info was out of date. Come to think of it, I based the current LSD site on my old code… Another site that needs overhauling! Anyway, rather than polish a turd, as they say, I just took my site down and have been waiting to work on it “when I have time.” Seems to me that day will never come, so I need to just *make* some time for it. I decided to do a blog, rather than a standard site like lovespirals.com, since most of my content will likely be podcast and vidcast related. I figure folks can subscribe to the whole site feed, if they like.

I honestly am not in the mood to design a site right now and have no idea what I want it to look like. I know what I want it to do, but the rest is a giant question mark. It is impossible to create something that you can’t imagine! And I feel like I should be working on so many other projects that I’m having trouble concentrating on site design. It’s times like this I wish that I didn’t do everything personally… Its hard trying to be good at a million different things and its exhausting! I need a staff of experts that want to work for me out of the kindness of their hearts. 🙂 Well, a girl can dream…

Life honestly seems to be a constant process of gathering and sorting. So much of my time is devoted to activity. Sometimes I think I should be more classically Buddhist by trying to not own things. I’m not even always aware that I’m collecting things until I notice that I need to organize them or discard them. My house is so tiny that it can’t fit many things in the first place, so just a few things can really make it seem crowded or messy. I’m at a point now where I look around and see small stacks piling up here and there which drives me crazy. I’ve been listing many CDs on lala.com just recently, but of course, more CDs come back to me… So my large stack of unwanted CDs will be replaced with a large stack of wanted ones. Which is better, I suppose. I’m stil in the process of digitizing my whole CD collection, which is pretty time consuming. I made smaller bit rate files of many songs back in the early mp3 days, so I’m trying to replace those with 320 aacs now. Plus I’m adding in the artwork, too. Gathering and sorting. Oh, and deleting.

Ryan and I went down to Ontario for the Podcast & Portable Media Expo, but ended up spending most of our time at the PodShow UnExpo2! Originally we thought we’d just go up Friday to check it out, but we decided to go back on Sunday, too, to hang out poolside with my PodShow homies and take part in the live PodShow Music Rewind recording session. You can actually check that out over at rewind.podshow.com — episode #45. Ryan and I come in next to last on the show, though you do hear me laughing or yelling in the background from time to time. Ha ha!

I also did video interviews with Cali Lewis, of GeekBriefTV, and the Rumor Girls, so when I see those go up, I’ll link to them here — probably in the news section. Posed for photos here and there, including a great one with 6 other women PodShow podcasters taken by Frank of Media Artist Secrets.

We’re nearly done with our fifth new song, called “Nocturnal Daze”. We originally came up with the idea back in November but just returned to it last week. Unlike the last song, we didn’t have really strong ideas about the arrangement before going in to record it, so we started simply with the acoustic guitar and vocals of the demo and then let the ideas flow in around it. Ryan decided to play Rhodes throughout the tune, which ended up giving it a bit of a Zero 7/Air feel. I likened the sound to “Trip Hop without the beats.” Anyway, at first Ryan was just going to play his electric guitar at the end, but I had imagined it going in and out of the whole song, so he gave it a shot last night and we both liked the results. The song fits really well with the other 4 completed tunes and once again I am struck by how nicely the album is coming together.

dear cbs,

your labor day tennis coverage was incredibly frustrating! while the #2 seed game was going on, you insisted on sticking with the tedious #14 vs #18 seed game that drug on and on uninterestingly. i suspect cbs of being nationalist, trying to force amercian tennis players on us. get a clue; americans love nadal, not ginepri!

not only that, but you kept showing tennis news while you could have been showing live games. i would have loved to see some of the safin game, but instead you wasted time repeating scores and making commentary in the studio. we can already read the scores on the bottom of the tv screen – so why not focus on the live tennis games going on? frustrating!

i am completely dissapointed in today’s coverage.

— anji

The newest episode of Chillin’ with Lovespirals lists our Top 5 Downloads, which were quite a surprise to me, I must say! I also announce our digital sales vs CD sales ratio… maybe not as much of a surpise to us, but may be to some fans. We also chat about recent band happenings and share the intro to our latest song in progress. And if you’ve already heard the podcast, yes, introoutro.com is taken!

Some friends of ours offered us tickets to the sold out Zero 7 show at the Hollywood Bowl last night just a few hours beforehand. We both love that venue, so even though we don’t own any of their CDs, we decided to go check it out. I don’t know why I haven’t bought their albums yet, really. I’ve liked everything that I’ve heard. I really, really like the new stuff with Jose Gonzalez. He was so cute in person, too. And Sia was really amazing! Her voice really held up live, and her performance was quite charming. I’m definitely picking up the new CD for sure, and probably the other two, as well. I also want to get Jose’s solo album. Gotan Project, who actually headlined, were enjoyable but somewhat of a letdown after Zero 7. The songs were all compentent and pleasant, but a bit samey. There weren’t as many highs and lows in mood. I did dig them, however. Anyway, another great show at the Bowl with a wonderful picnic beforehand. Man, I had Rose two nights in a row this weekend. I feel a bit dehydrated today!