Ryan

Around 12:30 AM, as I was mostly sleeping, I was woken up by my girlfriend, who was making a painting and wanted my opinion on something she was doing. I always feel excited and privileged to be able to witness her creative process, so I gladly got up to see what she had been working on. We talked for a while and then she went back to work and I went back to sleep. She woke me up again at around 2 AM to let me know that she had finished it and so I went to see it in her room/studio. It’s an absolutely stunning piece that I stared at for a long time. I will never skip an opportunity to promote her instagram (@ztheratt), and you can see it on there along with her other beautiful art. 

I stayed in her room and slept there, and in the morning she decided she wanted to add some things to the painting. She likes to work alone, so I went and had a bowl of cereal and read in the living room. This was my first day off from my first week of work at my new part-time job, so I don’t have plans to do much. I am working as an assistant archivist at Curtis Institute, after having finished a library science degree this time last year. This is exactly what I want to do, to work as an archivist in music and sound related materials, so I’m very excited.

I’m really tired. Like I said, no plans to do anything. I have to go get my fingerprints done for my job later, but other than that I plan to just sit here and listen to new music. I would’ve thought to make this a more introspective post since I’m just kind of sitting around, but I don’t really feel like I have much to think about at the moment, so here’s some music I found that I liked.

My fingerprint appointment is at 2:10, and it’s 8 blocks away, so I leave 17 minutes before the appointment starts. It’s sprinkling outside; I would’ve liked to go for a longer walk today, but the weather and my energy levels were two good points against that objective. It takes me only 14 minutes to get to the general area of the fingerprint center, but it’s a good thing that I got there a few minutes earlier than needed because this place is fucking impossible to find. After circling the perimeter of this huge unmarked building that Apple Maps says is the place I’m looking for, I pull up Google Maps and find that it gives me a more precise location that is actually confusingly intertwined with the huge building in a way that I can’t quite describe. Anyway, I get there at 2:12. I don’t like to be late but this is fine. When I walk in, a lady directs me to sign in on a touchpad kiosk. She then takes me to a room where she kind of mumbles at me to place my fingers on a scanning device. The machine really isn’t good at performing its single intended function of capturing my fingerprints, and eventually the lady gets frustrated and takes my fingers and tries to press them against the scanner more accurately. This doesn’t help. She keeps telling me to relax my fingers; I thought I was relaxing my fingers, but am I? The more she tells me to relax my fingers, the more tense I feel. I’m getting my fingerprints scanned for some FBI database and now that I think about it that is kind of weird. Does she think that I’m nervous? I’ve never had any reason to get my fingerprints recorded, but now I guess I’ll never fulfill my lifelong dream of leaving my fingerprints at the scene of a crime because they will immediately be located in this database. Why do I even have to do this? What’s next, a fucking mugshot? Christ. Anyway, it’s done now and I walk back home trying to cool off from the tension. I get home and say hi to my girlfriend. We hang out for a little bit and watch a new episode of a Hulu show that we’ve been keeping up with. It’s called Under the Bridge, and it’s based on the true story of a group of teenagers who kill another teenage girl and the resulting investigation and effects on the community. It’s pretty good, but every character in it is completely insufferable. All of the teenagers like to think of themselves as gangsters despite living in like Alberta, Canada, and the adult characters are cartoonishly gullible. Still, it’s a pretty compelling story, and the actors all pull off their characters really well. After the show is done and we hang out some more, I go back out to the kitchen and heat up a quesadilla from Whole Foods. I listen to music some more, read, take a shower, read some more, and then go to bed. That was my day. 

Ryan is here. He is @numberonestepdad on Instagram. He would be happy to share music with you, and hopes you’re having a good one.