general fuzz

2011 takes the prize for the most intense year of my life. It completely caught me by surprise. Dizzying highs and lows with a smattering of creamy middles. I learned more about myself then I ever thought I would. One of the big monsters in my closet is anxiety, and this year we’ve made a formal introduction.

For a long while there was not much change or growth in my life. I knew I wasn’t reaching my full potential for happiness, but didn’t know the first steps to take. I’ve built a fair number of barriers from my emotions for a long while now. Now I’m starting to peek over the walls I’ve built. Its frightening and exciting. The whole process is very delicate. If I start observing myself opening up, then the moment wanes.

My long bouts with insomnia in 2011 have been crippling, and my relationship with sleep has fundamentally changed. I’ve learned to function on far less sleep then I imagined I could. A useful lifelong skill.

I now see myself full of contrasting identities. I’m both frail and strong. Selfish and generous. Spontaneous and rigid. An adult and a child. My role as a father has become more and more part of my identity as Jasper transforms into a toddler. He’s popping up in my dreams for the first time.

I need to fill my waking moments either actively engaged (working, playing with Jasper, coding, music, yoga) or being passively engaged (reading, tv, etc). I am very uncomfortable with time when I am not engaged. What I thought of previously as boredom smells a lot more like anxiety now. Therefore, I’m attempting to spend more time being present and peaceful. I’ve always admired people who can be peaceful. I am taking steps toward having more moments of peace in my life, and its been rewarding. A followup revelation was recognizing that being contemplative is an important aspect of being peaceful. So I’m consciously doing more reviewing of my recent past, and I now find that I’m looking at my past more overall. Its a like a muscle that I need to exercise.

I’ve been pouring myself into new general fuzz tracks lately. I’ve been slaving away at them, and only recently have I realized that I was doing this to distance myself from my latest release. I’ve been going through a period of shame and negativity towards “miles tones”, a sharp contrast to how I was feeling when I was finishing it and putting it out there. No one ever claimed being an artist was easy.

I’m working on 3 major personal projects right now, which is incredibly fulfilling to me. I’m a little obsessive about these projects though. The balance is tipping so that I’m more motivated by the destination then the journey. It might just be when there’s enough momentum, I want to run free with it. When I can see the checkpoint ahead of me, I really want to get there. I already know that reaching the checkpoint itself can be a letdown, but maybe a relief as well.

I lost my friend Graham at the beginning of 2011. I still haven’t recovered from that. My inability to process that event was the catalyst for everything that followed this year, but I only know that in retrospect. He lived far away, I only saw him once to twice a year, and yet I miss him a lot. There are a few things I would like to ask him, and those questions will stand unanswered. I really would have like to talked him about my current coding project.

All in all, I’m pretty optimistic about 2012. There’s a lot to look forward to. I’m got a lot fires cooking. I’m just hoping the intensity level will dial back a bit.

• The verbal switch was unexpectedly thrown on sometime a few weeks back. All the sudden he starting asking for stuff by name and tossing out the odd verb. His mastery of consonants is a long way off , and he can get frustrated when his request gets lost in translation. We all need to level up on patience, but we are accumulating experience points. I’d say he learns a new word every day. For example, I was blissfully lost in my thoughts during my morning shower, when I hear “shower”. I look down to see a smiling Jasper in his PJs. He then pointed at my shlong, and said “wang!”. Or at least thought that while he pointed.
  
  
• General cognition is on the rise, which is leading to all sorts of new activities. Back in the day (6 months ago), the highlight of our Fairyland visit was banging on a trash can with a stick. During our last visit, he was excited by just about everything, and the giant hugging bunny freaking blew his mind.
  
• Contrasting sharply with last year, Halloween was a complete success. We ran across a skilled drum group in the madness that is Russell street, and Jasper went to town. He danced with them for over 20 minutes. His joy was very infectious (much like the rotovirus that hit us a week ago).

  The absolute highlight of Halloween was when we were walking home. I pointed up in the sky and asked Jasper what the big white thing was. I watched the comprehension sweep across his face, and he excitedly pointed and yelled “Moon”. It was the first time he knew what it was, and the moment was priceless.
  
  

• We took our first family vacation – a long weekend in Santa Cruz. Baby steps.
  
  

• He caught a plush ball for the first time. He didn’t inherit his Daddy’s lack of coordination. I saw him climb up a curvy slide today at 20 months old. This was shortly after he sat for almost 30 minutes during an orchestra concert for children. I totally rolled the dice with that one, but was super glad we went.
  

• For all my posturing about how good I felt about my album, the crash eventually occurred. I had doubts about some songs. There were some smallish spikes of depression and anger. I attempted to allowed these feeling to occur, even somewhat expanding upon them, instead of immediately throwing up defensive emotional walls. These feelings were not overwhelming, and then after a week I felt better. Receiving a handful of emails and donations helped. Last week I learned that “miles tones” ranked #9 on echoes preliminary top 10 albums for 2011. Booyeah.
  

• This seems like a very transitional time for a lot of people I know, myself inclusive. There’s a lot of changes going on at work, I have a number of large scale personal projects I’d like to tackle, my wife needs watering, there’s talking children at home, etc. My personal growth is on the rise, nicely balancing my lack of physical growth.
  
  
• There’s been a few excellent extra curricular activities as of late. I saw an awesome house concert with Garren Benfield. I’m hoping to work with him for future general fuzz releases.
  

• One of the added benifits of sending out a mass email about a new album is that I always reconnect with a few people whom I’ve lost touch with. An old acquaintance of mine realized my ultimate 10 year old fantasy and built a full arcade in his house. Occasionally he opens it up to his friends, so Zack (the actual original lego manaic) and I spent a blissful evening at the happiest place on earth.
  

I’ve never had such a positive experience finishing up an album as I did with this one. Not setting a hard deadline for finishing the album was an excellent decision. It eliminated the element of stress from the tedious and time consuming process of finishing up the tunes (final mixes and mastering). I made loose goals along the way so I had something to aim for, but didn’t feel bad if it took longer to achieve these goals. My free time has diminished greatly from my pre-fatherhood days, so I really wanted to make working on tunes a fun outlet as much as possible.

My drive to promote my music has greatly diminished. I used to spend a lot of time sending out cds and emails to outlets for consideration. I very rarely got any response. It can be fun to share my work with other people, but its also a labor intensive process with a lot of rejection along the way. At this point, a decade in, my music has found some of its audience. There are people who care about it, and that’s pretty sustaining to me. Of course I hope my audience continues to organically grow.

My favorite part of making music is when ideas are flowing well and starting to coming together. It’s not when I’ve finished a track / album. It took 6 or 7 years, but I did eventually learn that it’s really more about the journey then the destination.

I pour myself into these songs. It takes more time then I care to admit. The tracks on this album took many different directions before they were finished. There was a ton of content that was written and removed. Many times I had to remind myself  that trying things that don’t work out is not a waste of time.

All I used to create these songs was my computer, a mixer, two MIDI controllers, a mic, and speakers at slightly uneven heights (and a LOT of software). My recording room is completely untreated, with a tile floor, glass windows, several bikes, and a couple large plastic baby toys that need to be passed along. The recordings always sounded good enough to me. Thank goodness there are tools like RX and Melodyne to clean up my recordings though. I did outsource the some of tricky instrument recording though – thanks very much to the internet + skype.

In the past three years I’ve become aware of what an amateur I am at producing, mixing, and mastering music. I’ve attended workshops with Carmen Rizzo and Rena Jones. I have learned that there is a huge amount of knowledge that I’m lacking. They all have very strong opinions over what gear and software you should use, how to treat your audio, and to never self master your music. If you listen to one my tracks and then of their tracks, you can hear the difference. I don’t think of this as a failure on my part – I just know that there is a lot more to learn, and that later in life I hope to learn more about my craft.

I’ve been making music as general fuzz for over a decade now. I no longer feel the burning need to prove to myself that I can make an album. I also have no intentions to stop creating music. General fuzz has become such an important part of my identity. I hope to create music for the rest of my life, and in theory, I have a lot of time left. I do need to try vary the course some though. I’ve got to try working in different styles and collaborating with different people, so that I can grow as a musician. I need to also take breaks from music, and allow some time for inspiration and motivation to brew.

Releasing an album is very exciting for a number of reasons. One aspect that I have only become aware of recently is that it acts as snapshot of my life. I can now listen to my previous releases and remember what was going on at that time. It’s also something concrete which represents a step forward in my path as a musician.

Most importantly, I’m proud of what I made. So far I have no regrets about the album, which was my ultimate goal. I felt that way after “soulful filling”, and I learned that it was worth aiming for.

Also, this moment brought everything into alignment.

With great pride and pleasure I’m releasing my sixth general fuzz album, “miles tones”. As always, it’s available as a free download off my website: http://www.generalfuzz.net.

Its been over three years since my last release, and during that time I became a grown up. My 1.5 year old son now takes center stage in my life. There are many musical references in this album reflecting the anticipation, arrival, and development of my son during the past few years.

This album turned out to be sort of a companion album to “soulful filling”. It has that same mellow vibe and melodic sensibility. I’ve decided to attempt to release albums with a more consistent vibe, so all my latest mellow tracks ended up on this one. As a result, the next album will have significantly more bump to it.

I was lucky enough to work a whole mess of truly amazing musicians in past couple years. It was an absolute honor to have Audio Angel, Josh Clark (the guitarist Tea Leaf Green, a band I have seen 20+ times), Ryan Avery, Phoebe Jevtovic Alexander, Jesse Ivry, Emiel Stöpler, Shakiban, Peter Medland, and Ryan Hughes in my “studio”. I’m particularly grateful to Ryan Avery, a stellar violinist and electronic music composer, who generously came over to my studio many times to help flush out some tracks. If you dig my music, you should definitely check out his – its in a similar vein to mine.

I decided not to make any CDs for this release, since its wasteful, expensive, and, really, its sorta pointless in this day and age. I’m always very grateful for donations, and the money always goes directly back into my music. I’ve added 4 awesome new “locked” bonus tracks to my website. If you send me a donation, and I’ll send you all 7 locked tracks. It’s like a whole bonus general fuzz EP. I also built a “song unlocker” on my website to incentivize folks to spread my music on the internets. If you simply post my website anywhere on the internet (facebook, twitter, google+, blog, etc), let me know, and I’ll unlock a bunch of tracks for you.

Many thanks to Chris Brown, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Dave SG, and of course my incredible supportive wifey, Stiners “the pants” McGee.

The album art was a photo taken by Sophie Thouvenin.

I do very much hope you enjoy this release. Feedback of all kind is always welcome.

Thanks so much for listening.

• Summer manhandled me a little bit this year. You’d think my primary focus at this point would be my child, but this summer I had to focus a little more on me. My emotional baggage area was filled to overcapacity, and some of that baggage came tumbling out. It was both scary and enlightening. Working on yourself is a challenging endeavor, but it was overdue. I’m viewing my present behaviors through the lens of my past and its been a little illuminating.  Instead of just accepting my feelings and actions as they occur, I’m occasionally trying to step outside the moment and ask why I’m responding that way.
  

• Along with some heavy internal re calibration thats going on, this summer has been pretty bat shit crazy ever since we returned from Europe. We’ve had four sets of people come and visit with us, sadly said goodbye to the Kirkbutts, attended numerous small child related celebrations, went back east and to Colorado. We pretty much discarded the notion of downtime.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Dave, Erin, and Mica


Tom

Josh and Jo and Dan, Abby, and Abra Fae visited as well.

• I went to LA for 48 hrs to visit with Dave, Keri, and Juila. And since I was already there, Dave and I meandered over to the hollywood bowl to see Phish. The parking lot antics set a new bar for behavior awesomeness. We managed to cobble together the tagline our new company: “We stream shit to your business”. Our first product is “vacusuck”.
  
  

• I’ve also been rather preoccupied trying to finish up album numero 6. Finishing an album is never that fun, and takes a lot of time, which I seem to have less of then I used to. Its finally all starting to come together, which is quite a relief. I’m ready to move on to other musical pastures. I’ve also invested far too much time into my website, making it twice as spiffy, and forcing it dump oodles of useless data in my database. Now I know where all 14 of you live. Reading blogs has consequences.
  
• I love this kid too much. I like him most of the time. Spending long stretches of time alone with him, something that happens with some regularity,  has become much more enjoyable. Behavioral firsts are popping up with a little more frequency these days, and the occasional new word sneaks into his incomprehensible babbling. He fucking knows things, man. When I read books, Jballs now points out the things that he recognizes. We’re regularly attempting to introduce sharing into his repertoire. He’s really generous with the high fives and hugs though.
  
  

• Stina and I have different strategies for dealing with behavior that violates the principals of our cookbook for awesome living. Unfortunately, she is unable to accept that I am right all the time, so I’m resorting to smiling patronizingly at her every time Jasper hits me with a stick. This kid has quite an arm, and might be getting mixed messages. I blame mommy.
  
• Jasper has found his 3rd gear. His favorite things right now are bubbles and balloons. He loves to be chased, so were are considering adopting a tiger cub.
  
• His ability to comprehend what we are saying is increasing rapidly. Unfortunately, that skill set seems come with some fairly sharp “No!”s and the occasional tantrum. We are in the pre-2 zone, and trouble is on the horizon. We are aware this is a sweet spot, and are treasuring it when we remember to.
  
• Stina and I used to argue nature (me) vs. nurture (stina) when we were teenagers. It’s amusing to catch 1.5 year old Jasper compulsively put things back in their “place”. One point for Stina.
  
• We caught the first day of Outside Lands, since Phish was headlining. Grandma flew in for the weekend, and good times were granted. I saw an AMAZING show of Zappa plays Zappa opening up for Return to Forever. Blew my mind. Definitely the top show for 2011.
  
  
  

We were invited to the Tuteur family reunion (my mom’s side) in Germany. There was no way we were going to go. The Ruddens, on their own volition, offered to fly out to CA and take care of Jasper if we went. All of the sudden, the family reunion sounded like a good idea, especially if we used it as a jumping off point for a European adventure. So Stiners and I headed east for 2.5 weeks sans Jasper. I went through the emotional wringer prior to leaving, but settled into our vacation as the days slipped by.

We kicked it off in Germany (Bad Kreuznach), with an amazing tour through the places where my ancestors roamed 100 years ago, drinking tasty beer at every meal. We then departed from our extended family members, and headed our way down to the Swiss Alps. We toured through Switzerland for almost 2 weeks. Getting around in Switzerland was thick savory pie. Trains ran often, and where the epitome of comfort. I love trains. Jasper will soon.

There’s nothing quite as awe inspiring as the Swiss alps. And who doesn’t love a gondola ride? Nobody.

Why go to France, when you can go to the french part of switzerland and be equally as confused? Same with Italy. People were stylish and beautiful, but I wouldn’t call them friendly.

Mostly I’ll the let the pictures do the talking. It was quite a experience. Good times were had.

We connect with my old co-worker Joerg while we were in Zurich. That was fun.


We are deeply indepted to Lolo and Lola for taking such awesome care of our son.


Thanks for cleaning the shit out of our house as well.

We were apprehensive about how Jasper would react to our return. To our delight he was crazy happy to see us, and laughed for an hour. We missed him terribly. Arriving home to him was a terrific reward for staying up for 20 hours straight.

• I’ve been doing a lot of solo Jasper care since Stina’s been working evenings and weekends, along with the household plague thats been haunting us for the past few weeks. I’m rather intimidated by the idea of entertaining the little nutball for 3-4 hours in a row. You have to constantly distracting him from whatever terrible idea he concocts.  He’s unaware of the dangers of pretty much everything, likes to get most things in his mouth, and has no concept at all what a bathroom is. In my old life, that time would be filling with dicking around, watching movies, computery goodness, and more sweet dickery. The time NEVER flies by. When I reflect upon these days, there’s often a moment or two that was really amusing or special. It probably makes it all worth it. I’m aware that I won’t regret it in the long run. We’re particularly bonded right now. Now might not be the perfect time to leave him for two weeks, but really, when is?
  
  
• I often find feeding JBalls to be very stressful. I’ve been observing Stina during meals, and have picked up that what I’m really lacking is patience. Just cause he initially rejects everything doesn’t mean all is lost. Sometimes he’ll get around to eating those dreaded vegetables. Or not.  Theres always the potential for cheese in the future. Possibly words to live by.
  
  
• Rocking your half awake baby back to sleep at 5am is totally awesome when you only have to do it once a month. Whoohoo for not having an infant anymore.
  
• Its fun to see the little guy keep hitting plateaus. There’ll be a stretch of days or weeks with little change, and then BAM, new behavior. New words appear out of nowhere.  Where it took us 6+ months to teach JBalls to sign “more”, he learned “please” in a week. The learning train seems to be accelerating.
  
  
• Tantrums also seem to be on the rise. This kid is so strong, I’m worried that he’s going hurt himself with his arching and flailing. You never know which Jasper you’ll get when he wakes up. We roll the dice three times a day. Sometimes life gives you whammies.
  
• I’ve never known such joy from bubbles or a blanket. As of now, I rather enjoy being a human jungle gym. That, I’m sure, will be fleeting.
  
• I went though another spurt where I was obsessed with coding for my website and working on music. There were also several bouts of insomnia. One night, I ended up getting out of bed at 3am and coded for a couple hours. Stina asked whether I wanted to work on my website or I needed to. I was unable to answer that question, and after pondering it for a couple days, I’m still not sure.
  
• We got a bike attachment for Jasper, and now we have access to the enormous playground of the Berkeley campus.
  
• My mom came out for a visit, which was excellent. Up next is the Rudden invasion for a 3 weeks. Of course, Stiners and I will be absent for 16 days of that as we valiantly attempt to make nice with the Swiss.
  
• The continued existence of the ball pit establishes Stina’s boundless love for Jasper. Picking up 50 balls from all over the living room multiple times a day is apparently a small price for Jaspers happiness. I’m pretty stoked that it just went into hibernation.
  
• I had my final recording sessions for my next album. It’s really coming together, and the drive to finish it is making an unwelcome appearance. I’m doing my best to quell the beast, but it’s sitting shotgun in my frontal lobe, and its got a riding crop.
• Once again, I’m really trying not to take my health, family, and friends for granted. I’m so freaking lucky. Not everybody gets to drink from the fire hose.
  

His first birthday party was held at a local park. In typical Krudden fashion, it lasted for 6.5 hours. On his actual birthday, we spent the day trying to make him as happy as possible, and I believe we succeeded. It was a wonderful weekend.


In the last 30 days, we’ve had visitors for 21 of them. Stina’s parents came for almost two weeks, and celebrated Jasper’s birthday with us. It was a great visit, Stina and I caught up on some sleep, and the house now has a built in spice rack. We got out to see Trey Anastasio at the fox with Rachel. We even had a funtastic night out sans JBalls in Sausilto. I took the ferry out from San Fran after work for gorgeous view of the fog rolling over the GG bridge, met up with Stiners, and begin raging when my feet were on solid ground. We were asleep in our hotel by 9pm.

And Haber learned to point too!

• Shortly into the new year we learned that a friend from college, Graham, died. It came out of nowhere, and I was completely unable to process it. This a friend we’ve known for 14 years. He lives on the east coast. We see him once or twice a year. He was literally one of the two smartest people I’ve ever known – like genius level. He was also warm, laid back, and quick to smile.  He really made an effort in our friendship. I can’t believe he’s gone. Since we don’t see him on a day to day basis, it has been especially hard to process. We had just seen him four months ago, and were talking about the next stages of his life.  I’m all too aware that I have a difficult time processing and expressing emotions, but this was so far off the charts that I couldn’t even compute what was going on. The universe is far worse off without Graham in it. Eventually, I shifted from obsessing about Grahams life, to the abruptness of death, which brought on a host of new issues to struggle with. I was unable to sleep for more then 5 hours a night for more then two weeks.
  
• A few weeks into January we made a whirlwind trip down to LA to visit Dave and Keri before they pop out a little dudette. Jasper + their cats = endless entertainment. I dictated that we make an Oinkster and Dave’s Chillin and Grillin stop. When went to Dave’s C+G, in a moment of adventureness/instanity, I ordered the daily special instead of getting my beloved turkey sandwich. Stina, in an act of love that transends all boundaries, offered to trade sandwiches after she saw the overwhelming sadness / envy on my face. I’m still reeling from this. So much so that it’s dominated my bullet point about the LA trip.
  
  
• My parents came out for an extended visit. By extended, I mean, they couldn’t go home since the eastern part of the country was buried underneath seven hundred feet of snow. It started out well, but slowly devolved into a full on stressy nutbag, bit by bit. Our plans and life did not align properly, and I think everyone was relieved when they got back home.
  
• A last minute bonus idea was  to take my mom to a show at Yoshis Oakland – Mediski on keyboard, the guitar player from Living Color, the bass player from Cream, and Sanata’s wife on drums. The first tune was 10 minute free jazz improv, and 5 minutes in I was regretting taking my Mom to such an atontal avante garde show. Fortunately the rest of the show was more structured.  Santana joined in for the encore. Top notch show. I think my Mom enjoyed it. Real good times were also had at Yoshi’s SF with George Clinton + P Funk. There were at least 25 people on stage at once – 5 guitar players. I was so close I got to fist bump Mr. Clinton. Haven’t washed my hand since. Got to have that funk! Unh!
  
• After the aforementioned not sleeping and stressful parental visit, I got really sick. I rarely get sick like this, and my body demanded that I sleep like 10 hours a day for a while. I’m still in the recovering stages.
  
  
  
• I had two excellent recording sessions. Its always a privilege to have Audio Angel in the studio. There were several spine tingling moments during that session. I later discovered that my primary goal of that session did did not turn out the way I had hoped – and have been shocked by my total acceptance of it. I figured out my mistakes and began plotting a new course of action to remedy the situation. Overall, music has been flowing particularly well in the past few weeks which is helping prop up the rest of my life.
  
  
• I attended an awesome workshop with Rena Jones and Asher Fulero (two musicians I’m a huge fan of), where I was reminded that I’m a total amateur at music production. This isn’t terribly upsetting. I’m simply aware theres a lot to learn, and know why my productions don’t sparkle likes theirs do. Good thing I have confidence in my music and, more importantly, a day job.
  
  
• Jasper is a walking machine. He now climbs down our front stairs, walks four houses down, then climbs up our neighbors stairs in search of their cat. Needless to say, we’re meeting more of our neighbors, and freaking out the animals in our path. He says “da” every time we see a dog. He’s constantly bringing us books to read to him. And, if you weren’t in the know, sticks are where its at. Along with yelling.  Nothing beats a stick and yelling sandwich. J-balls has fully transformed from baby to very little boy with insane amounts of energy. It doesn’t look like thats gonna taper any time soon, so, whoohoo.
  
  
• It’s been an intense beginning to 2011, to say the least. Our lives are radically transforming, and we’re trying to grasp how to roll with the changes. We are overwhelmed by whats going on with our families, jobs, friends, social lives, and son. Every once in a while, we stop trying to wrap our heads around it all, and remind each other how lucky we are. That’s usually when I start pining for sex.
  

• Since our Chrisnukah plans were thrown in a tizzy by the non-arrival of Stiner’s parents, we made up for it with a hunt for all the east bay baby friendly holiday events. We hit the Tilden merry go round, Fairyland with x-mas lights, and the 4th street lights. While we were really impressed by our inaugural trip to fairyland, J-Balls was enamored with a bell, which he rang for a solid 10 minutes, mouth agape, drooling in ecstasy. We hosted orphan x-mas, which to Kerry Jo’s chagrin did not involve actual orphans. Instead, the local Jewish folk with nothing better to do on Christmas joined us for fancy late lunch.
  
• Though Jasper seemed to making efforts to walk by early December, in true Krudden tradition, he messed with us by ceasing most walking activity for over a week.  He then made a very last minute decision to become a walker in 2010. At this point, crawling is almost absent in his motion repertoire. He also deposited some mimicking, lots of clapping, and awesome self pillow smothering in the activity bank. He fucking LOVES doors. OMG. Doors are where it’s at. They open. . . .AND CLOSE!
  
• Its been cold (for Cali) and raining, so we’ve also been scoping out the indoor baby places. Its turns out by throwing money at the problem, we can take him to these amazing sheltered play spaces that he totally won’t remember going to.
  
• I got out to see the final Black Crowes run at the Fillmore. I also caught the pre New Year Furthur hippie festival at the Bill Graham with the old shakedown crew (which they appropriately opened with while our old landlord was chillin with us).  The Krudden clan celebrated NYE by streaming the MSG Phish show, which fit our lifestyle very nicely. Stina charged me 8 bucks for a beer, and I stood outside my bathroom for 10 minutes to make the experience more real. We raged until 1:30 in morning (east coast time). I heart east coast time. And streaming Phish. Enough that we did again the next night.
  
• We’re gradually dusting the cob webs off our social life. We had some neighbors over for dinner, and are beginning to transform casual acquaintances into full fledged monkeys. I like monkeys.
  
• Jasper really enjoys sucking on long thin things. We practically live in Berkeley, so it’ll work out.
  
• Both Stiners and I found that over a recent two week period, we’ve transitioned from being in love with DroolyMcgee to being crazy in love with him. We were surprised to discover that it happened to us both during the same time frame. But there it is. We are no longer entertaining ideas of selling him. Renting may still be an option though.