I'm back... sorta

Well I am back for a time anyway. Winter is here, and that means blogging season once again. I have been remiss in blogging about my life because it was not important on the scale of things going on, but I am now back to doing so for a while. So what is going on? I will tell you.

First, Dad is doing well. There was a time that we were very concerned about what was going to happen to him as he battles cancer. He contracted shingles and prior to that was stung by a wasp and got pneumonia that sent him into a spiral of bad health and terrible pain for months. Having a compromised immune system is no joke and he was really suffering for some time. We all managed to work through it as a family and made it out the other side a little worse for wear, but alive and moving forward. During this time we all were pretty worn out and it took its toll on everyone in the family, but at least we are all in once piece for the most part.

I have been working as hard as they will allow me to work at my job. There have been several weeks that I have sat home and not gone to work for one reason or another. That has been a terrible strain on my finances of course, but there is little you can do to protect yourself from that kind of work stoppage in my line of work, other than to save for rainy days, and do everything that they ask you to do without complaint. It still sucks though.

I had a terrible scare a few weeks back. I had been working so hard that I got run down and started to catch a cold. I felt it mostly in my chest and thought that a weekend off, sitting quietly at home was the just what I needed. I woke up that Sunday with terrible chest pain and shortness of breath. I went to urgent care and was told that they were afraid I had a blood clot and that they were going to run some tests to see if I was going to be alright. I know that blood clots can kill and for a few hours, while getting blood tests, EKG, and xrays, I thought I might die. I can't tell you how frightening that was for me.

It turned out that my risk of blood clot was low and that the reason I was hurting so badly was that I had pneumonia and broken ribs. I had coughed so hard that I had broken 2 ribs and damaged all the connective tissue in my rib cage and diaphragm. I was never to happy to have pneumonia in my life. I was told to see me regular doctor in two days. I went in to see him on a Tuesday evening and could barely drive myself to his office. I was in so much pain that I could barely stay upright. My primary doctor is a friend of mine, and he took me out of work for a week to recover, gave me pain meds, and told me to stop working so damn hard. I was grateful for the pain meds, because I was worried that I was going to end up in the hospital with the amount of pain I was going through.

I went back to work last week only to run into the worst blizzard that has hit the east coast in years. I ended up stranded on the highway for 15 or more hours and a drive that normally would take a day with a 10 hour break in the middle, took 2.5 days to complete. I ended up breaking something in the rear end of the truck on the way home due to the rough roads, and damaging my rib cage all over again in the process. I am home this week because of that whole mess, and the fact that its xmas week as well. I am sure that by the beginning of the new year, I will be feeling better and so will my truck.

Things are going well on all other fronts. I am struggling along building the studios and the web presence that goes with that. I am also looking at converting this blog somehow to my own personal web space so that all my eggs are in the basket that I own rather than scattered all over the internet. I hope to accomplish this over the coming months and will let you all know what is going on with that as it happens.

I hope anyone left reading this is doing well and has a wonderful new year and a peaceful holiday. Take care everyone!

Sooooo Busy~!

I usually don't spam my own work but...

I have been busy framing this out and getting it ready to officially launch hopefully by the beginning of 2010. Not everything on the site is finished, but the staff page, the about page, and the main index are mostly complete. I still have demo files to upload, and category pages to write. I also have the individual bio pages to finish as well.

In other news....

If has been pretty good. I feel on top of things overall in the household and in life in general. I have been managing not to let my side projects take over my priorities with family, work, or friends. That seems to be an improvement in how I manage large scale things like this project.

Got drunk with my friend Phil on Friday night. He did a great job of holding up my floor while we took the time away from the worries of our everyday lives and just celebrated a regular Friday evening with no agenda attached. I have not done that in years and it felt good. A safe and good time was had by all.

Sunday was clean up of my daughters room and some rearranging of furniture. Preparing for her first party - set for Halloween! We are all excited for her. Five other little girls are going to be here to spend the night. Everyone is most happy with that idea.

Monday was mostly alone time for me as everyone was out of the house and off doing what they needed to do. I spent the day working out the site and getting housework done. Decided to take a break this evening and spend the majority of it on the couch with my lovely bride watching the boob tube. I just took a break from that to post this real quick.

Hope everyone out there in blogger land is good!

Laters~!

Project starting ... now!

So much has been happening lately that I haven't had the time to process all of it. It seems that I have been focused on a bunch of things, but at the same time, not getting a lot done. Spinning your wheels is never a good feeling, but at least there is some small bit of forward movement.

First - the family is fine. Everyone seems to be in good working order for the most part. Mom and Dad have a cold, the Mrs. and I are tired from all the hard work we have been doing, but that is just par for the course.

I have been focused on making the recording work that I have been doing into a business. I am not ready to jump in whole hog, and quit my job and go full time with it, but I would like it to be something that eventually looks like a functioning business.

I went ahead and purchased a .com address, paid for hosting for 2 years, and am in the throes of developing the site. I would like to have it done as soon as possible, knowing full well its going to take a while to get the site up to speed. I have to make sure that whatever I put up there, is of good enough quality that I can edit simply so that I can concentrate on the actual work. I want to make sure that I create a library of representative work that shows what I can do without giving away the store. That part of the project is going to take some time, but I needed a hobby over the winter.

Here is the link to the site - www.tughillstudios.com

I have not finalized the layout at all. Quite frankly, I am not even sure that the layout I have on there now is something that I am going to keep at all. I wanted to use a blogspot-type system for the site just to have ease of updating and such. I loaded WordPress on the site and am using that system at the moment. It seems to be pretty well suited for my needs, however, I am hoping that I can make it more like blogspot, in the sense that I can manipulate it a bit more easily.

In other news, with the help of some good friends I have my entire front porch loaded with wood nearly floor to ceiling. That is about half of what I expect to use this winter. The good news is that we have easily twice what we need for the season. We try hard to have at least 2 years of wood on site just in case. So we are well ahead of the autumn workload. Of course, as the leaves fall, there is going to be ton of yard work to do, but the good news is that I am going to be able to get that done much more easily now that I have the power equipment all in working order.

I am going back out on the road today, but not until late this evening, and I will be going all night. I usually leave in the morning hours and end my day in the mid to late evening, but the load I have today is going to pickup up at 630pm. So I "start" my day then. It is a new customer, so it should be interesting getting down there and dealing with that. The good news is that I am delivering into southern Georgia almost at the border of Alabama for Wednesday mid day. So as soon as I am done with all the puttering I want to do on the computer I am going to take a quiet nap.

Hope everyone reading is well~!

Audio engineering is so much fun~!

As you all may know, I am a Huge Fan of zombie movies. I always have been. There is something exciting about the prospect of the world deteriorating into a "tribal" government, where each small group of people have to band together and survive against everyone else that makes me happy. Maybe it is because I am so upset with the way politics and government work? I am not sure.

I also am a huge fan of NPR and PRI. Intelligent talk radio in the united states is increasingly rare. Most of the talk radio shows have been shoved over to the AM band and are 90% very far right leaning political shows, or sensationalized medical and advice call in programs. I don't like those at all.

So how do these two things go together? Enter Lost Zombies:

I am a featured member of this "social network" and have been for a while. If you ever wonder what I spend my time doing when I'm not blogging or working and what-not, this is it. Lost Zombies is a social network site, but it is far more. The ownership of the site is hell bent on creating a "Community Generated Zombie Documentary". What is that you ask? We are gathering interest, material, and contributors for a feature lenght movie. We have won several awards and gained some serious interest from the film industry. Anyone who ends up contributing work that goes to the film project, will get full credit and be compensated.

So I love radio drama, and radio programs. I have a home studio and freinds who do voice acting as a hobby. I have free time on my hands.... and well... this is what comes out of that combo.


So I present to you "The Gerald Borland Show":


Find more videos like this on Lost Zombies


And of course there would not be studio work without out takes. Beware the F-word show up in this out take so parental discretion is advised!


Find more videos like this on Lost Zombies

Off To The Fair

Good Morning Everyone~!

It is that time of year again. We are off the the Great New York State Fair~! I have my new straw fedora, comfy sneakers, a pocket full of cash, and the whole family. I love the fair I took photos of it last year and they can be found in my Photos Section. The fair is great for so many reasons. People watching is always a treat. There are so many freaky people at the fair. The food is to die for. They have everything from Gyros to Deep Fried Pickles (bleah) and Spaghetti on a stick (how DO they do that?). The exhibits are really interesting every year as well.

I'll post more tomorrow after I recover! Have a great weekend!