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I know that I already went over this in a fair amount of detail in my [Ten Years of Twenties] post, but I wanted to hit upon the other aspects of my life since I have the tendency to document my life by what I’m doing at the time with my music instead of looking at the big picture. Music This was definitely the year for my [Amaranthine Skies] project, as I did a Chrono Trigger cover entitled “The Future of Destruction (Demo)” in March, then a Drakkhen cover entitled “Machinations of the Drakkhen” for the [Dwelling of Duels] competition in April. After that, I finished up two releases for the project by mid-year ([Enveloped] in June and [It Came from Beyond the Oort Cloud] in July) and did the track “Elemental” for [Nevar Say Die! Compilation, Volume Three]. Granted, I did a track under all seven of my projects for NSD3, but that’s beside the point. This year was also the year for [Concrete Mutant] to rise from the pavement, as the project was on indefinite hiatus since March of 2007. It was brought back to life with the “Resurrection” track that came out on [Avalanche on Play, Volume One] album, shortly followed by the “Seasick” track for NSD3. In fact, I’ve been doing at least a track or two for this project over the last three months, with the Ninja Gaiden 3 cover entitled “Ominous Death” for the Dwelling of Duels competition in November, a cover of “Jingle Bells” for [Avalanchers on Sleigh], and maybe I did something for the upcoming Dwelling of Duels competition with a listening party to be held at [MAGFest] this year. [Cyanidic Rapture] is another project of mine that I thought may have been headed for the scrap heap in early 2009 after [Dragons of Putrescence] came out and I had no idea where to take the project, but that changed this fall when I figured out where to take the project. Once I figured everything out, I did the “Narcotic Interlude” track for NSD3 and finished almost all of the electronic parts for the upcoming “Sphere of Conspiracy” EP, so 2010 will start with recording the vocals and instruments for it. It was fun working on the Zud song entitled “Decay” together with a couple of other folks from different areas; one from the east coast of the USA and the other from Russia. That’s one of the things I love about the internet; the ability to create with other folks over long distances with relative ease. All of my other projects had fairly minimal output this year, as the new material under said projects showed up on NSD3. The two songs on [A Chip off the Shizz Block, Volume One] from my Mystic Nova project were from 2007, so those don’t count. In any event, these projects aren’t quite as major as the first three that I mentioned, so there wasn’t as much focus on them. I also started a song for my new project last weekend, but I’m going to wait to talk about that until I get a song up. Fitness This was really the year of revolving trainers, as I’ve worked with five different ones this year. My last sessions with Dave were at the beginning of the year, and I also quit MKG around that time. For a good five to six months, I was training regularly at home doing lots of striking routines and dumbbell drills. I only went back to the gym because my contract was about to expire. I was going to cancel my membership, but Richard set me up with a sweet discount on the membership fees and personal training, so I kept going. I’ve already covered most of what happened from that point in my [For the Love of Fitness] and [Revolving Trainers] posts, so there’s no point in repeating myself (more than I already have). I have worked out with Ting a couple times since those posts, and we definitely had good workouts. We did a striking workout last week and it was great to get back to training my striking with an actual person again. The session on Monday was a bit more normal, but there was a part of the training where I was hammering a medicine ball into a tractor tire and tore the skin off of the insides of my thumbs. All’s fair in the pursuit of a good workout! Gaming Gaming wasn’t an extreme priority this year (it hasn’t been for quite a while now), but that didn’t deter me from picking up an Xbox 360, mainly because I’d been sold on [Fallout 3  ] and some of the other titles. I did play a ton of Fallout 3 when I first got the system and managed to knock out all of the achievements on Civilization: Revolution.The game I’ve been spending the most time with lately is [Borderlands  ], which combines the best parts of Fallout and Diablo and I love the sense of humor that the game has.Other games that I’ve spent quite a bit of time working on are SoulCalibur 4, EarthDefenseForce 2017, Phantasy Star Universe, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, A Kingdom for Keflings, Crystal Defenders, and Catan. The achievement point system is a blessing and a curse – I love achieving things in the games, but it’s kind of wrecked gaming on other systems for me because they lack those achievements. If I’m going to start up the [Nintendo-A-GoGo] site again next year, I’m going to have to get over that quickly. Beer This was a pretty monumental year for beer, as I went to Astoria three times (March, July, and September) to enjoy the goodness that the [Fort George Brewery] and the [Astoria Brewing Company] have to offer, which is a lot. I came back each time with two growlers a piece from each brewery, not to mention a growler from the [Pelican Pub & Brewery] on the September trip. I certainly got well-acquainted with how to pack a cooler this year, since beer needs to be nice and cold to properly travel from place to place. I’m not hauling beer across the Pacific Northwest to risk it getting skunky from getting warm. Anyway, this knowledge also came in handy when the refrigerator died in October and the replacement didn’t come for a couple weeks. Locally, it was a little disappointing that the [Maritime Pacific Brewing Company] moved locations because the folks down in Olympia have been dragging their butts on getting the beer license for the new location back to them, which meant they haven’t been able to open up the new restaurant yet, which will hopefully still be called the Jolly Roger Taproom. I had some good times there earlier in the year, but at least they’ve got production up and running, so their amazing Jolly Roger Christmas Ale is in the local stores. It’s hearty, tasty, and with a 9.5% ABV to turn you into a fumbling mess with a quickness. I also got a book on micro brewing that I mentioned in the [Turning Thirty] post, but I haven’t had a chance to crack it open yet. Writing There’s not a whole lot to tell on this account, as I started “For the Love of Creativity” at the beginning of this month and I’ve been keeping up with it tri-weekly. So far, so good! Webpages This one’s pretty easy to sum up as well – I revamped the Concatenation Records site at least a couple times this year, and it helped me to figure out a basic template that I want to use across all of my sites, so now it’s a matter of fine tuning everything. 2010 I have a feeling that each of these paragraphs will be the size of the music one next year, as I have quite a few plans in each of these venues that I’m going to execute. I have a strong suspicion that the upcoming year is going to be my busiest yet, which seems to be the case as every year has gotten busier and busier since 2006 or so. I hope I can ease off a little in 2011, but we’ll see. This is my last post for the year and I’ll be back in a week with some epic tales of revelry! Happy New Year everyone! Discuss this post at [The Forum of Jason Vincion]! Posted on December 30th, 2009. |
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 Compilation Volume Three |
 Shizz Block Volume One |
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[For the Love of Fitness] [Revolving Trainers] [Ten Years of Twenties] [Turning Thirty] |
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