Life’s Plugs

DOPE. There is no other way to describe the sonic emulation creation nation that one can mix (verb) into and out of every track of audio you come across in working as a mix engineer (noun). Whether it be for a music artist’s song endeavor or a television producer’s imagination as to how a certain sound will elevate the viewer through the next edit, the things you can do with plugins today have reached a dream state.

Plugin formats are important to understand. If you’re using a current version of Avid Pro Tools as your DAW, you need AAX64 plugins. VSTs are ubiquitous, but can’t be used in all DAWs. Check out this great Medium article: Audio Plugin Formats Explained.

There are a plethora of websites that showcase a particular content author’s favorite plugins. They are usually filled with moving images of ads of unrelated things as that is how the author monetizes the site. If you can check these out on a big screen (please, not your phone), you may find a few plugins that suit you to start out with. I’ll list a few of my faves that I share with my students at the end of this missive. But first, a few of those sites:

The 11 Best VST Plugins of 2023 (this one has a list of websites inside this list)
Production Expert

For some old stuff out there (that’s so 2017), there are some decent write-ups on plugs that have withstood some time travel (as in the past 5-years which is the current shelf-life of anything new-ish in the digital domain). I don’t always agree with these guys’ go-to plugs, but it’s certainly worth reposting here:

“Get That Pro Sound – 14 Must-Have Plugins.” For me, when you boast “get that pro sound” as your web moniker, it’s just not believable enough. Those of us who are pro and earn a living mixing don’t put out a page like that. STILL, worth taking a gander at…

I absolutely LOVE these manufacturers and company’s plugins:

Baby Audio
SoundToys
Eventide Audio
Plugin-Alliance represents several boutique plugin makers around the globe like Dear Reality immersive audio plugs and Brainworx plugs.
Universal Audio UAD is the king of them all. These plugs are deep and add a ton of character and tone that you might otherwise have at your disposal in a fancy studio with a lot of analog rack gear, amplifiers, and more. Until their most recent addition of UAD Spark, you had to own a UA audio interface to access the plugins which require some heavy lifting on your computer’s processing. This is assisted with their Apollo interfaces and DSP Accelerators removing the burden from your CPU.

The starter pack I suggest to my serious audio students investing in their future:

Waves Scheps Omni Channel (hands down, my go to on every mix)
Waves F6 (if you can’t afford the FabFilter suggestion next)
FabFilter Pro Q3
Native Instruments Raum (This company is well-known for some of the most creative music-making software, but many do not know about their fantastic REVERB. It’s one of my favorites and is very affordable.)
AudioEase Altiverb 7 (If you’re flush with cash, this is the best reverb plugin suite money can buy. It’s worth a visit to their page just to hear their Impulse Response convolution reverb samples and take a tour of the spaces. It’s like taking a vacation from your laptop/pad/phone.)
iZotope RX (If your plan is to edit dialog, this is a must have Swiss Army Knife of fixing audio. They are up to version 10 and they have several different plans to purchase.)

That’s all for now! More soon.

It Ain’t Easy

This is a draft I found among my blog writings. It’s from early 2019 well before the world had completely turned inside-out and upside-down. I find it pertinent now, so I’m tweaking it a bit and letting it go like blowing on a seed head of a Dandelion. Some things are meant to remain as drafts, others are meant to circle the universe. These writings are for me and sometimes they just might reach another human or two, but this is not why I write.

Here goes from 2019:

It’s been a long period of non-communication as I had my hands in some projects (plug here for Sensation Guitars ), starting another new semester at the college, and feeling overwhelmed, angered, and perplexed by the precarious place that my country projects to its citizens and the world. (Adding in August 2020: imagine writing this then, yet knowing what we know now in Covid-infested America.)

I thought of David Bowie today as I passed by a cemetery returning a 4-channel wireless microphone system to a friend who rented it to me for a workshop. I started thinking about Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars as I watched the sky roll across my window as I drove to my destination watching headstones pass by with the blue sky beyond. (Again, this was early 2019–fits now in August 2020, no?) The lyrics for “It Ain’t Easy” came to mind as did “Life On Mars.” The Ziggy Stardust album was recorded during the time of November 8, 1971 through February 4, 1972 (says the Wiki linked in the title). It was released on June 16, 1972. It’s particularly important to me for many reasons but most currently important: we own a Trident 88 console in our studios in the Broadcast Electronic Media Arts department at City College of San Francisco. I spec’ed this particular board because of my love of all things Trident for many years in my 31-years audio career. I once partnered with a local recording studio to form a new company together. My business double brought a Trident 65 to the partnership in his studio. I fell in love with that piece of gear when I had an opportunity to work on it, knowing of favorite albums recorded at Trident Studios in England from where the console (and its design) hails from. Years later, I have a Trident 88 (since last summer when it was installed by our awesome technical crew in the BEMA department at the college) to teach on, record on, mix on. It’s a bit of heaven in a life-long career in audio.

Interesting aside about recording back then: “Life On Mars” is a recording on both Hunky Dory (the album preceding Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and also ON the album ZS&TSFM). Why? One might wonder as this is quite unusual. Well, it turns out that the band for touring was found to have not a lot of “touring rock n roll material) in the Hunky Dory songs which are far more singer-songwriter, so the Ziggy album put them in a more rockin’ vein for Bowie to hit the road with an amazing entourage of Mick Ronson on guitars, Mick “Woody” Woodmansey on drums, Trevor Bolder on bass, and a series of fellows on keyboards for the tour, but none other than Rick Wakeman on harpsichord for “It Ain’t Easy” on the record.

Why am I name-dropping various musicians on these recordings? Because it is WHAT we did (and still do) to pass the time as kids/teens listening to new music. This research is utterly LOST on the new generations of music listeners who only see/hear the name of the lead artist paid by a corporation to show you who they are. But they are far less than the OTHER HUMANS who help to make them whole and those humans need to be given proper credit. There seems to be no easy way to give credit to the people who contributed to a great recording in this age of streaming (August 2020–though I know of some colleagues who are working on this). SO sad. SO wrong.

David Bowie – “It Ain’t Easy” (lyrics by Ron Davies)

It Ain’t Easy – David Bowie

When you climb to the top of the mountain
Look out over the sea
Think about the places perhaps, where a young man could be
Then you jump back down to the rooftops
Look out over the town
Think about all of the strange things circulating round

It ain’t easy, it ain’t easy
It ain’t easy to get to heaven when you’re going down

Well all the people have got their problems
That ain’t nothing new
With the help of the good Lord
We can all pull on through
We can all pull on through
Get there in the end
Sometimes it’ll take you right up and sometimes down again

It ain’t easy, it ain’t easy
It ain’t easy to get to heaven when you’re going down

Satisfaction, satisfaction
Keep me satisfied
I’ve got the love of a hoochie koochie woman
She calling from inside
She’s a-calling from inside
Trying to get to you
All the woman really wants you can give her something too

It ain’t easy, it ain’t easy
It ain’t easy to get to heaven when you’re going down
It ain’t easy, it ain’t easy
It ain’t easy to get to heaven when you’re going down

Life On Mars – lyrics

“Life On Mars?”

It’s a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling, “No!”
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she’s hooked to the silver screen

But the film is a saddening bore
For she’s lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on

[Chorus:]
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man!
Look at those cavemen go
It’s the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know
He’s in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

It’s on America’s tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
‘Cause Lennon’s on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns

But the film is a saddening bore
‘Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It’s about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on

[Chorus]
Dring-dring-dring.
(Mind the phone)

David Bowie ” Five Years” – lyrics

Pushing thru the market square
So many mothers sighing
News had just come over,
We had five years left to cry in

News guy wept and told us
Earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet
Then I knew he was not lying

I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies
I saw boys, toys electric irons and T. V. ‘s
My brain hurt like a warehouse
It had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things
To store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought I’d need so many people

A girl my age went off her head
Hit some tiny children
If the black hadn’t a-pulled her off, I think she would have killed them

A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheel of a Cadillac
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest
And a queer threw up at the sight of that
I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour
Drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine
Don’t think you knew you were in this song

And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor
And I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there
Your face, your race, the way that you talk
I kiss you, you’re beautiful, I want you to walk

We’ve got five years, stuck on my eyes
We’ve got five years, what a surprise
We’ve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
We’ve got five years, that’s all we’ve got

Songwriters: DAVID BOWIE

Five Years lyrics © BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC, TINTORETTO MUSIC

Music and Ocean

There are two things keeping me sane in the land of hatred and turmoil and you just read it in the title. I’m composing music and swimming in the open water in the San Francisco Bay at Aquatic Park. Yesterday, I noticed a major change while swimming with my pals: NO GHIRARDELLI SIGN! It was completely gone. No letters, just scaffolding left atop the famous building. I had to look it up to find out what’s going on: Why the Ghirardelli Square sign in San Francisco is about to vanish from July 1, 2020. Read it. Wow!

This is one place where from inside the water, a wonderful optical illusion plays on the eyes with regard to the buildings of SF. The ugly Salesforce Tower looks dwarfed by the Transamerica Pyramid building and equal to the height of Coit Tower. SO COOL. For those in the know, it’s a rather recent eyesore of the Bay Area as it soars above all other buildings and can be seen first among the other metropolitan architectural accomplishments in the city skyline.

The songwriting is filled with dread and minor keys. I can no longer spell the word “mourning” any other way, so it really doesn’t help to put “good” in front of it. I now prefer “greetings” to people I write to. And about that music…Most of these works-in-progress spell it out, so put on some headphones and head on over to:

A Life As Lillian – written for American dramatist/playwright/screenwriter Lillian Hellman

DJ Covid-19 Trials

Sonic Entropic White Patriarchy – some of this stems from a post I just finished titled “Nerve Endings” at DanaJae33.

I’m keeping busy during this 2nd lockdown (aka “Shelter-In-Place” with the appropriate acronym SIP for all of the drinking I’m enjoying). I hope you all have creative outlets because it truly helps to assuage the mourning. Time to prepare the chicken for the slow cooker.

South End Rowing Club view of Aquatic Park

CLOSED

Don’t we all feel closed right now? It’s been such a long road since mid-March. Most people suffer physical, emotional, and psychic ailments. I can’t even spell the word mourning the other way anymore, nor do I put the word “good” in front of it. What’s good? Everything is in massive upheaval and my stomach is in knots every moment of every day. Signs everywhere around my neighborhood (and I’m sure in all urban areas for months) that read:

*Most small businesses look like this. “*…until further notice.”

Grief-stricken humans walking in circles in a daily madness of sameness. Whether they are working in healthcare, food services, delivery, repair…we all walk with despair. Despair about the future, despair about the past, despair about the present…how long will this last?

People are marching. People are angry. People are exhausted by the horrors of watching our fellow citizens die. People are exhausted by the malfunction of the government in a country that pretends to be what it is not. Money rules everything in America. People are exhausted from not having any. People are exhausted from trying to make some.

This is not to say that there isn’t some bit of good in every day. Surely, I hear it in the birdsong every mourning. Surely, I see it in the vast ocean from the shore. Surely, I feel it when I swim in the Bay. Surely, I walk with good intention in the labyrinth my neighbor built at our back door.

Ocean swimmer captured from below the surface.

Some days bring static, some days bring pain, some days bring sunshine, some days bring rain. The melancholy has nowhere to hide. It seeps from my soul. I’m glad that I’m alone and no longer have to be inspire others (for awhile). The teacher needs a rest, so here I am. I retreat to my writing and have a few projects going. Just like when I read a book, it is never just one. I preoccupy my time with 2-3 at one time, switching between days. As it goes with my writing: I have 2 songs in the works, a short novel (my first!), and a screenplay I’ve almost finished.

Remember traveling and collecting stickers from places visited?

I saw this car parked on my walk around the neighborhood and it struck me that this is a summer when no none is traveling to places to collect stickers and memories. I noticed these places on the bumper above and wondered when we will be able to return to the freedom of travel…

NAMM2020 – Music & Tech Nirvana

This was a special year at the National Association of Music Merchants 2020 Convention.

Hugh fixed NAMM 2020

First of all, they did not distribute extra free passes to the manufacturers to hand out to people the weeks in advance nor did they allow any single-day passes. This was a major departure from past practice for the past 30-years that I’ve been attending (on occasion). It created a much less jammed show floor even on the busiest days which are usually Friday and Saturday. I found the first day (Thursday) to be much more full than Sunday which felt the least crowded of all of the days.

I have several things to share from my personal fun favorites:

Waves OVOX vocal resynthesis plugin that I can’t stop playing with even now as I type this. This video says it all.
Zylia, a Polish company has a 3D microphone with (19 capsules!) and software to record an amazing surround sound using just one microphone.

Zylia 19-capsule microphone

Universal Audio (UA) Luna – fab new Mac-based recording system to work with their Apollo interfaces. (link is to a Sound on Sound magazine review)
Just when you thought there was no more room for a 2-channel audio interface, in walks the SSL 2+for $289!

SSL 2plus

Sonicware Liven and a revision on their ELZ-1
Kii Audio Three loudspeaker system – Oh my Lord, these sound AMAZING and in a horrible room with no acoustic treatment on the walls because they are designed to “remove the room.: Very interesting speaker design from Holland. The speakers in the video link are red, but they also come in black, white, and several choices of colors.

Kii Three demo room

Bittree Audio Dante Patchbay

This next one is something that is a big game-changer for studios that have a lot of legacy analog devices they want to put on a Dante network in order to easily share between rooms:

Bittree (high-performance patching systems) that earned several Best of Show awards from publications (such as Pro Sound News, TV Technology, Sound & Video Contractor, and Government Video) at the 2019 NAB conference for their Patch32A Dante patchbay. I did not know about this important piece of gear before seeing it at #NAMM2020 when I approached the small booth to ask questions of the unassuming founder. For those in the know, check the specs in the link above and read about it in this MixOnline article. WHOA. From the article:

Bittree’s Patch32A Dante patchbay eliminates the complexity of analog and Dante audio patching in broadcast and professional AV infrastructures. Providing a ramp to instantly move 16 channels of analog audio onto and off of Dante networks, the new solution serves as a natural bridge between legacy audio equipment and IP-based systems using Audinate’s popular Dante media networking technology – including the Dante platform’s recently-added AES67 and SMPTE ST-2110 interoperability. The Patch32A minimizes cabling, conversion equipment and associated costs for broadcasters, recording studios, post-production facilities and commercial AV environments including houses of worship, performance venues, large corporate offices and higher education campuses.

And let me add this includes patching both professional and consumer-level sources ( 0 DBFS Reference Levels 18dBu, 24dBu, -10dbV). WOOF!

Dolby had a nice lounge to sit in and refresh oneself with coffee, juices, and water along with a demo of their ATMOS object-based mixing software and with a focus on their free DolbyOn recording app for IOS and Android. Let me tell you that it WORKS and is incredibly easy to use. Download it and start recording on your mobile device.

Would you like to hear some short snippets of sounds of #NAMM2020 I recorded with my Dolby On app?

Hornland at NAMM2020

Drums!

https://www.uaudiou.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Drums.mov

Horn trio jam

Tower of Power soundcheck!

BEMA students Kevin Cica and Nina Cestaro in the Dolby Lounge at #NAMM2020

I heard amazing loudspeaker demos from Meyer Sound, L-Acoustics, and a Focal 7.2.4 system! Fab!

Meyer Sound Lina demonstration

If you’d like to read the POV of several different people, check out Reverb’s Best of NAMM 2020: Highlights, Trends, and Releases You Should Know. If you’re a synth-head and want to see what’s new and cool and/or you’re looking to get your kid into sound and synthesis, here’s a quick video on the new synths announced at NAMM2020. WHOA!

Technical Excellence & Creativity Winners 35th Annual NAMM TEC Awards

The best part is the reconnection with colleagues, friends, and many of my amazing former BEMA students!

BEMA sound alum and amazing audio engineer David Saenz with Dana and another great BEMA sound alum and audio event engineer Chris Dumke

The inimitableGeorge Peterson with Dana

Music Expo founder & producer Loic Maestracci with Chris and Dana

Genelec Dave MacLaughlin with Dana and BEMA alum Roger Strassner

BEMA student Misha Hinton with the amazing Andrew Scheps

The outstanding Andrew Scheps with BEMA student Misha who has been a fan of Andrew’s well before he took my classes. That’s when I knew I already had a great mixer among my students. Anyone who follows Andrew Scheps is a mix genius in the making…

Lastly, I found my retirement home for a few years: an Air Stream with a recording studio in it and a sound system to invite friends to jam while strumming guitars and playing some electronic instruments anywhere I tow the trailer:

Traveller Guitar Air Stream

Until next year…

The Long Way Home

The end of the year began the day after December 25th as I embarked on my journey back to San Francisco from Los Angeles. Usually, it’s an easy drive up the 101 which I much prefer over Interstate-5. While Highway 101 provides a luscious view of California’s agricultural abundance as it meanders around the north end of the southern Cali coast into the central coast, the I-5 shoots straight north/south through one of the more depressing and desolate landscapes in America. I know because I spent a couple of years touring America with a rock band in the early 90’s driving across hundreds of highways through 38 states. My plan was to leave North Hollywood via I-5 for 1/3rd of the way and then cross over to 101 around Bakersfield to shorten my trip by one-hour. Thankfully, a dear friend in Ventura alerted me to the I-5 closure that had occurred the night before (on Christmas) stranding unsuspecting drivers in a snowstorm. PHEW! I hadn’t thought to check the conditions at the top of the pass through the Grapevine. There was no way I was heading north, so I left heading west toward Santa Barbara on the 101 and I got nowhere. On a trip that usually takes 1.5-hours, 3-hours later I was still in bumper-to-bumper traffic and I had yet to reach Ventura! The Waze app alerted me to a quicker way through the city of Ventura where I found even more traffic. It told all of us Waze users to exit the freeway to take the small roads around Ventura. Gridlock everywhere.

I finally stopped on Main Street at a restaurant/bar to use the restroom and chat with some locals playing pool. They were complaining about the sudden traffic in town when they overheard me telling the bartender about my Waze app experience.

“That’s it!” exclaimed one of them. “No wonder we are buried in cars today!” I watched a young person crouched over the bar on a stool drawing carefully on a small bar napkin, totally consumed in their art. The boisterous fellows continued to question me about my drive. We engaged amicably for a bit as the artist finished their beer and walked out. I couldn’t tell you the gender of this gentle soul with smallish features and so I use the gender-neutral pronoun. As I paid for my peanuts and beer and bid adieu to my momentary acquaintances, one of them stopped me to hand me the napkin the artist left behind, “Hey, I think this was meant for you.” I looked at the napkin with its amazing ink detail with the words “Safe Travels” at the top. The treble clef “S” in “Safe” struck me as this holiday break has been a bit of a musical journey for me. I felt a deep resonance and held it close. “Wow! Thanks for handing this over, guys!”

As I walked to my car, I felt a buzz from my phone and looked down to see a message from my pal, Sheri, who had warned me about the I-5 closure. She was checking in to see how my drive was going and there I was about a mile from her home barricaded in by the gridlock of travelers stuck in Ventura. It was a sign. I let her know where I was and she insisted I come over right away. “Get out of that mess and join me and my daughter for a margarita and spend the night! Start fresh in the morning.” Since it was around 6p and night had fallen, this sounded perfect. I love hanging out with Sheri! It was a delight!

The next day, I left around 9a for the drive back home. It was a gorgeous day and I thought about what a perfect ending to the year this was turning out to be. I felt blessed.

For the first hour of the drive, the traffic moved between 20 and 60 mph in places. When it slowed down, I took a few pics out the driver-side window:

But then, the excitement of the drive faded into more slowing down with several areas that came to a full-stop parking lot on Highway 101. Big rigs had been re-routed to 101 from I-5 as well as everyone else who happened to holiday in southern California and were heading home.

Well, look. How bad can it be, really? I had nowhere that I had to be at a certain time and the travel view was stunning. Who’s complaining? The drive remained in this stop-and-go state for NINE hours as I slowly meandered my way north to stop briefly in Atascadero for a couple of tacos at a family-owned Mexican restaurant where the 20-something daughter politely and efficiently handled tables of locals and folks like me on their way through town. Everyone was talking about the traffic on 101 they had witnessed for the past two days and nights. 9-hours for a drive that is usually accomplished in 5.5 from Ventura to SF–but again, it was gorgeous and certainly could have been worse.

Along the way, I started coughing at times. The blessing was starting to fade. The cough seemed to deepen by the time I reached home. It was 6p and I unloaded only my clothes to launder as I would have one day back before leaving for a couple more trips out east to visit my aunt, my sister, and my cousin in El Dorado county and then Placer County respectively. Interesting aside: Placerville is NOT in Placer County. Strange…

(night before) NYE cheers from the cousin’s home!

Fast forward to Jan. 4th to wrap this up: the flu bug grew deeper into me. Blessings turned to “Bless you!”s. I had to head home early from the family travels and arrived in my own bed on the 1st day of the new year. It’s been one fluey day after another, but that’s not half as bad as the rest of the world with the humans spinning it out of control. I watch the digital news while coughing and sneezing. From the fires around the entire Australian continent (heartbroken watching the animals run from the flames) to the crazed U.S. President (madman!) and the erratic foreign policy of his cabinet throwing the Middle East into massive turmoil. The entire planet is OFF! Get in your bunkers! It’s going to be a wild 2020!

Make Me Wanna Shout

“Shout! Let it all out. These are the things I can do without…”

I can do without pain and suffering as I want only what’s best for all living things.

I can do without greed and gluttony. The sin of the kin stuck in skin.

I can do without fear and loathing. Humans don’t know where else to begin. But sometimes the writers get it right. “There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. “

I found a music festival in Singapore where most of the lineup of performers are female. What a wonderful change of pace…check out the Alex Blake Charlie Sessions here.

Who is Cate Le Bon? My friend and sonic brother John Karr turned me on to her just this night as I type this. She is this: “Surrealist, tactile, against the grain… Welsh polymath Cate Le Bon keeps a steady, curious hand. A ringleader who’s prepared to stake out uncertain territory, she walks the tightrope between krautrock aloofness and heartbreaking tenderness; deadpan served with a twinkle in the eye” – AUNTY MEREDITH

Imagine this about your music on an event page for a gig in Perth, Australia: https://rosemounthotel.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/fce5644f-dd73-48e0-8b08-cc0ac83672c3 I mean: WOW! GO EVENT PROMOTER across the globe! What a fantastic write-up on the artist coming to your city! Oh my GOD, the writing here on this event page is BEYOND! I LOVE IT! I had to read it twice!

Nonsequitur:

I composed some melodic oddities and provide here without edit. I need to sculpt them further and add vocals, but here are the bits:

https://soundcloud.com/user-75473007/the-clamoring-of-voices-vying-for-attention

The Doer in Me is UnDoing

The doer in me is undoing

The giver in me is ungluing

Every night I return to the peaceful white light

Reminding me to make a better choice, “Go Girl, ya brave knight!”

Time to plan the escape at the end of the year

Wrap up my bags and shout, “Enough of this!”

Run off and steer clear

Put the headphones on, play Sting’s “A Brand New Day”

Join my comrades in the sky, “Well, hello to Dana Jae!”

Break free of the morass, sitting at the front of the class

Now I’m upward bound, giving myself a hall pass

(image thankfully borrowed from fractalenlightenment.com)

All My Bags Are Packed

OH HOW I WISH I was driving this adorable mini VW wagon down south to (one of many) surfer’s paradise where I plan to spend the next few days. I’ve got my keyboard, laptop, and music-making plugins, headphones, 3 books, iPad, flip-flops, frisbee, nutri-bullet, healthy edibles to make smoothies, swimsuit, binoculars, Penelope – my stuffed Octopus with her pal Piglet in her tenacles, a video stick and oh, yeah: clothes!

This will be a much-needed respite from my working fool life and a way to explore my inner Dana with words and music, sunshine and waves, hot tub and garden.

See ya latah…

Spring in Joshua Tree

https://danajae33.wordpress.com/2019/03/26/spring-in-joshua-tree/