David was curious what I spent a lot of my time this weekend doing, and since I wrote my last entry while I was in the middle of if, I didn’t really wrap up what I’d been up to. In short, this was one of those weekends where the creativity tap was turned on at some point or another and once it was on it flowed like a fire hose – it was all but impossible to turn off, even when I desperately needed to sleep for work this morning.

I puttered about the house to a large extent, recabling my turntables so I can turn them and the mixer and their dedicated speakers on and off with a single power strip (boo vampire power!) and also so the wine fridge had a more direct route straight to the wall socket as to not let it hop between power supplies. I finally got around to taming the mess of cables hanging from my desk (photos of my desk to come so you understand how important this actually was) with some velcro ties – the back of my desk, and thus where all the cables are, faces out to the living room, so I wanted to make it a little more presentable.

But the real magic happened when I sat down at my computer. I went on a Kaskade binge, spending most of the weekend playing with Grooveshark’s beta, which is scheduled to go live Tuesday at midnight – along with a hands-on rundown I wrote for AppScout.

I wound up with my arms up to my elbows in all of my sites, including ones that I haven’t announced yet, and another that I have no plans to announce. I’m a firm believer that everyone – even prolific and vocal bloggers like me who have a desperate need to be heard and acknowledged – need a place where they can be as venomous as they need to be and as vulnerable as they have to be with little fear anyone will find what they have to say. For me, I started a blog that’s just for me. The other one is waiting until I have more time to write the first batch of articles to populate the content with, and then I’ll go live with it.

Aside from the design and writing, it was all about analytics, tracking, WordPress plug-ins….all things happening behind the scenes. Installing search plug-ins, changing permalink structure, making use of my old ass Google Analytics account that hadn’t been properly set up, other litle tweaks to layout and features that I think will make a huge improvement in readibility overall and at least help people find me easier -and help me know when people find me. Nothing shiny, sorry David, but I’m still working on some shiny things too. I have theme hunting to do, I think – and I have no desire to use the regurgitated ones that everyone and their mother is using, like Pixel and variations thus.

So there you have it. It was pretty busy, and I’m hoping to carry some of that momentum through the week. Saturday I hit the market because I had the urge to cook for myself, and wound up making some shrimp and chicken baja soft tacos – a recipe that currently only exists in my head. I should write it down, but the results are here and here. Sunday I decided to try the lovely Stephanie Simpson‘s recipe for Easy Chicken Satay. It turned out beautifully and tasty – even for my first experiment with black rice. The results? here and here.

Anyway, I think this off-schedule entry helps, and my new secret project definitely does, since it gives me a place to mentally and emotionally vomit whenever I need to.

One thing’s for sure though, that Kaskade binge hasn’t stopped. One track that’s specifically stuck with me this weekend was Angel on My Shoulder:

Would it be weird to say I’m listening to it right now?