Weeknotes: October 12–16, 2026
Monday, October 12 – Friday, October 16
I set up two mics and cut a quick acoustic demo of a song I've been playing live for over a year. My tiny studio/office remains a difficult space to record in, but I keep trying — it's all I have.
During a break from my online history class, I go into the kitchen to do the dishes. From my laptop in the other room I hear elaborate, cartoon-like snoring. A classmate has left their mic on and fallen asleep.
In the evening, I play guitar quietly through my old Peavey Backstage Plus, the little solid-state amp my parents gave me on my 10th birthday. Last month, I had a gig in a basement bar in Ann Arbor, the same address where, 27 years earlier, my old band used to rehearse.
Our drummer at the time was in the process of opening a Beatles-themed restaurant, and for a short time it doubled as our practice space. We parted ways with him not long afterward and, unbeknownst to me, my old Peavey amp got left behind in the restaurant's basement. Somehow, I didn't miss it until years later, by which point I had no idea where it had gone.
Sometime in the late 2000s, a fan showed up to one of our Detroit gigs carrying my amp, unearthed from this Ann Arbor basement and miraculously traced back to me.
After the Tigers' disappointing season, I've shifted my allegiance to our Midwestern neighbors. The Dodgers and their ridiculous payroll are no match for the small-market Milwaukee Brewers, who complete their sweep of the defending champs on the road. Meanwhile, our central division foes, Cleveland, are looking pretty good against Tampa Bay. Will it be a Great Lakes World Series?
All along my street, walnut and locust leaves blanket the sidewalks. Halloween decorations have been up since early September. A few houses down from mine, a contractor is doing some carpentry in a neighbor's front yard. Painted in blue lettering on the side of his van is Heaven's Handyman. There's also a personalized license plate, DEO DUCE, which I look up on my phone. It's Latin for "with God as leader." In the next yard is a crumpled Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, awaiting its evening inflation.
The morning coffee ritual sets the tone for the day. Last weekend, I rode my bike into Ann Arbor and bought a new mug from the UMMA gift shop. It's a subtle shade of robin's egg blue with a tapered, unglazed base, and a geometrically pleasing handle. It was an impulse buy, but I'm always auditioning back-ups for my favorite speckled mug, which I ordered from a small ceramics studio back in 2020. It's still in good shape, but I've used it almost every day for six years, and the risk of breakage haunts me. Sometimes we have to protect ourselves by introducing a successor before it is needed.