In the Key of K

I started this little blog/website in September 2024. It isn’t my first website. I had one for years (roughly 2007-2015) dedicated to music as a homebase for getting gigs and selling music stuff.

So far with the blog, it’s been easier to keep the posts coming with recipes than with music content. The stock of good recipes will eventually dry up. The real struggle is making the time to work on music endeavors. I like to work on recording projects with tunnel vision–no interruptions for several hours and that is nearly impossible when there are other people in the house. Oh well, it slows things down but doesn’t change the work.

Anyway, I wanted to write this post about the whole of 2024. More of a diary entry of stuff I did in 2024. Here is my year.

January: nothing of importance happened in January–at least not that I remember. We made some day trips to St Louis, ate at Bombay Food Junkies and the Vegan Deli and Butcher (both staple vegan restaurants in StL).

February: one of the kiddos turned 13. Lots of turbulent teen stuff this year. It’s way harder than I ever imagined but we are muddling through it. Anyway, she chose a chocolate raspberry cake with a raspberry coulis. I used this cake recipe–it’s my go-to. I don’t remember what frosting recipe I used and the coulis is just raspberries, sugar, and water cooked on the stove–any recipe will do but remember to strain the seeds!

March: afore mentioned daughter gets two birthday celebrations. One on the the day and another in March. We have a family party in late March so that relatives traveling don’t have to worry about the weather too much. It also coincides with my birthday so I pick the cake for the party. I always pick a German chocolate-type cake. I will post the recipe at some point. Both girls were also in Lacrosse.

April: the girls had their first eighth grade band concert (one plays flute/saxophone and the other plays oboe). We also went to the Central Missouri Renaissance Festival. It is a small Ren Faire but it has a lot of heart. Both girls were super embarrassed to be there and had no fun unless they were shopping. 🤷‍♂️ Next time they can stay home! My partner and I enjoyed it. They had live music, old-tymey skits, and lots of cos-players. The main downside was how pitiful the vegan offerings were for food.

May: In May my partner volunteered at a Wolf Sanctuary in Dandridge, TN for a few weeks. Also had some foxes in our backyard.

June: early in June both girls got a second ear piercing, right next to the traditional one. There was also this fun incident with hawks in the backyard. The drama of working from home never ceases!

We also had long weekend in June so we decided to all go to Dandridge for a mini vacation. We stopped at the Vegan Deli and Butcher on our way.

We had a nice Air B&B house for a few days in Dandridge as our homebase while we went to Bucc-ees (I still don’t see the appeal but the kids were ECSTATIC about it), DollyWood, The Island, the Bush’s Beans visitor center, and, of course, the Smoky Mountains.

DollyWood is super fun but it is crazy busy, crowded, and expensive. Live music, rides, variety shows. It’s a lot like Silver Dollar City here in Missouri but with better vegan options. That said, the vegan options were not great but they did have some stuff.

The Island was like a smaller cheaper version of DollyWood if you just want to shop and ride carnival-style rides. Unlike DollyWood, you can do everything in The Island in a few hours. It’s great tourist-y thing to do for a day that isn’t too expensive.

Below is from a chain store called Cinnaholic–a chain store that is entirely plant-based. There is one in Pigeon Forge, TN near The Island. It’s a cinnamon bun with cookie dough, chocolate chips, and chocolate sauce.

The Bush’s Beans place is just a visitor shop and restaurant. We stopped for an hour or so to buy merch and look around on our way to the Smoky Mountains.

The Smoky Mountains are a wonderful beautiful attraction in Tennessee. We only saw them for a couple of short hikes other than driving. It’s the most crowded uncrowded place I’ve ever been to. In reality, there just isn’t very much parking. We got to see a few things but I was miserable because one of the kids gave me a cold, flu, or covid and I was just starting to really feel it. The drive home was miserable! I was sick for several days and then had a persistent chest cough with gunk in my throat for WEEKS afterward.

July: the kids wanted to go to the park where the fireworks are setoff. So we took them and a couple of their friends. One of our kids set her phone down in the grass which caused some drama stomping around in the dark trying to find it. We eventually retraced her steps and found it. Later that month, the girls had another band performance with their summer band camp. All three ladies finished off the month by going to see Olivia Rodrigo in Kansas City. Too many people for me.

August: There are a slew of early August birthdays and I made a peanut butter cup cake. I don’t remember if it was Justin’s dark chocolate mini cups or the new-ish plant-based Reese’s cups. It was chocolate cake and peanut butter frosting.

We also make a trip to St Louis in August to celebrate my brother’s kids birthdays (theirs are in June and September so they split the difference for family that has to travel).

The month was rounded out with a trip to the Endangered Wolf Center near St Louis (also, another trip to the Vegan Deli). The Endangered Wolf Center has several endangered species and also some random exotic critters that people tried to have as pets that can’t survive in the wild. The picture is of the African Painted Dogs. It was too hot for most of the critters to be very active.

September: One of the kids was on the cheer team (co-captain!) the other was in cross country. There were many games and meets. Their school band also arranged to performed with the local high school marching band before a big rivalry game. They didn’t have to march or parade but they got to stand on the field and belt out a few classic tunes and the national anthem. The town where we live also has many summer events–one called Heritage Festival is one we’ve attended for the last few years. There are lots of small booths, food trucks, music, magic show, old-tymey trades (like spinning wool or building a teepee, etc.). It was rainy so we weren’t there for very long.

October: The spooky month! Nothing special this month. Halloween stuff, mostly and finishing up school sports and more lacrosse. One kid dressed up as a ballerina unicorn (pink headband and tutu with black leggings and shirt). The other did a group costume with friends as the Tinman from the Wizard of Oz. The Tinman costume was all homemade–it turned out really cool. The ballerina was cool too but it was assembled more than made.

November: Gingerbread houses (store bought this year), cookies, pies, and more! For Thanksgiving we had a vegan feast that included homemade seitan ‘ham’, kale salad, veggie bake (brussel sprouts, potatoes mushrooms, shallots, yellow squash, and zucchini), sweet potatoes, crescent rolls, mashed potatoes, corn, gravy, stuffing, and homemade cranberry sauce. Peanut butter pie for dessert.

We also adopted a dog to go with our two cats. She was going to be euthanized because of her bite history. My partner had been taking her on doggie-day-outs with the Humane Society all summer. To my knowledge, she has only ever bitten strange men. She is introverted until she accepts you as pack. Then she is the sweetest little smoosh in the world. We started fencing the yard for her but it’s too cold to continue so I probably won’t finish it until the weather warms up a little.

December: more band and jazz band concerts for the girls. One was in a musical for a theater class–it was a cute, lots of heart, low budget retelling of the Cinderella story.

One of the kids is a swing fanatic–it is her way of relaxing, unwinding, and listening to music. Her first swing set lasted 12 or 13 years. It was one of those huge monstrosities with a two layer fort, monkey bars, slide, and two to three swings. Anyway, it was starting to fall apart from years of heavy swinging and the wood deteriorating. She was devastated over the summer when I demolished it and traded it in for cheap tube pipe single swing from Amazon. The Amazon one didn’t even last a year before she broke it–the inch and a half or two inch tubing broke at the top where the a-frames meet. So, mid December, we built a new one. In 2019 I built her a loft bed with a desk area underneath, a swing attached, and then a slide that could put up or extended down. A few years ago she decided she wanted a normal bed but I saved all the lumber from it, which included a bunch of cedar 4x4s. For the new swing, I bought four pressure treated eight foot 4x4s and hardware but the rest was all scraps from her old loft bed.

The other kiddo has a December birthday. We went out for oatmilk lattes and she had some crepes. Later she went out to get a third stud in her ear (three in a row). She didn’t want a cake or party stuff but then was sad that she didn’t get much of a birthday. Next year we will do it right for her even if she says she doesn’t want to do much. Her birthday is so close to christmas that it is hard to do something special relatively.

Lots of family come to visit on christmas day. Our tradition is to open presents and order Chinese food. We also celebrate Chanukah which started on christmas this year. My partner was raised in an ultra orthodox Jewish household but we are atheists at home. We had lots of cookies and candy–including, chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, no-bake cookies, holiday/easter eggs, pecan pie, peanut butter pie, and peach pie. After all the family left I spent a ton of time on my work break playing Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. I don’t play a lot of video games but when I do this is the type I like. Fun adventure but not too challenging.

For Chanukah, we made a variety of dishes nearly every night highlighting olive oil. The big celebration happened on night two or three, I think. The girls had some friends over and we made homemade deep fried jelly doughnuts, battered and fried oyster mushrooms, battered and fried tofu knots, and latkes. Throughout we also had tabouleh, hummus, falafels, lemon/oil pasta, broccoli with pasta, and focaccia pizza. There are probably some things I’m forgetting. Several of the above recipes will find their way onto the blog eventually.

Also, throughout the year, I finished writing seven new songs and worked on recording those along with at least six other older songs/compositions. I finished and mastered one movement of my piano sweet Pentahedrons (it is an untraditional atonal piece where you smack the wood of the piano with one hand and play ugly chords with the other–midi versions couldn’t replicate it–I played the chords and then had to overdub a noise to mimic the slapping since I only have an electronic keyboard–it’s an altered snare drum sound but at least you can get an idea of how it is supposed to sound if a professional piano player played it–I am definitely not that guy).

Since September, I’ve created this website/blog, published 19 or 20 blog posts, have at least 15 more drafts started, created an etsy store and other socials for this site. I have a ton of work I need to do designing more artwork for the music and getting the etsy store to do something besides generate spam from scammers. I don’t like doing social media stuff so that has suffered a lot this year. I have a day job too! I also hope to upgrade my music computer soon so I can use it create 3D animations.

I read a lot this year! I started out preparing for the new Deadpool movie (plus for youthful nostalgia) by reading a whole bunch of Deadpool comics–around 16 omnibus collections–over a hundred comics, by my estimation. I also read at least 47 novels and a smattering of short stories, and novelettes. My highest Goodreads ratings were for Deadpool Vol 1, Dead Presidents and Deadpool Vol 2, Soul Hunter. Other than those two 5 star ratings I have several four star ratings for a couple of Brandon Sanderson and Ilana Andrews novels, as well as Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Stephen King’s Holly, and Natalie Zina Walschots’s Hench. The worst book of the year for me was Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay. I don’t want to trash talk it, suffice to say, it just wasn’t for me. But I will say this, a good editor could have saved it!

Next year’s recap should be a little better, I want to make a habit of documenting month by month so it’s relatively fresh in my head and I don’t have to hunt so much for pictures.

For 2025, I hope to release some new and old music. I’m going to use AI to separate the parts of the music I recorded in the 90s to re-do some of the terrible singing with less terrible, terrible singing. Plus the mix on some of the tracks is a little wonky and I would like to tweak it. Other than that, more of the same–spend time with family, read, and make more art.

2025, here we come!