A hard day’s afternoon.

Sometimes nothing goes right and yesterday’s recording session was mostly one of those times. Instead of going to Hyde Street, I went to a yoga studio I can rent for $25 an hour. I figured I’d save a few bucks, right? I mean, Hyde Street is over $500 a day, not counting musicians, so I only like to use it if I really have to.

The session was supposed to start at 3:15 in the afternoon and go to about 5:30, but five minutes after arriving (on time even!), I realized I’d forgotten the power adaptor to my computer. Mind you, I had remembered my mic, mic stand, mic cable, pop screen, MBox, two pairs of headphones, a headphone extender cable, headphone mini-to-¼ inch stereo adaptors, a headphone pre-amp, a music stand, 2 sheets of lyrics, a pencil, a camera, a tripod and a computer -- and ALL OF IT became POINTLESS in that instant I reached for the AC adaptor and found it wasn’t there.

Gloom.

Minutes later, vocalist Dave Brogan showed up and I had to tell him about the disaster and that I needed roughly 30 minutes to scoot home and get a G-----N F-----G ADAPTOR.

Side note: when things go wrong, I think I handle it fairly well outside (save for a slight perspiration issue), but inside I am roiling with emotion. There’s self-loathing, anxiety, a sense of failure, a voice saying, “You loser”. I always imagine myself as Charlie Brown with a scribble above his head but it’s not funny. That scribble expresses perfectly what I feel: a mass of confusion, tangled thoughts (all of which are bad), blackness. And now with my brain injury, the scribble sensation is even worse, as my head always feels a little jumbled and light, no matter what’s going on.

I returned to the yoga studio at just about 4:00 and we got going, only to have Pro Tools fail. ARGH. Digi or Apple or somebody must have created a bug during the Snow Leopard update, because after I loaded that mangy, maggot-ridden cat into my computer, Pro Tools has not been the same (yes, I have the latest version). The situation got worse over time, with Pro Tools ultimately failing to even go into record mode, despite several system reboots. Finally, we got a track down, but it will only serve as a guide for next time, which, of course, won’t be for awhile because Dave and his band are headed to Australia to play a big festival. Shazbat.

And you know what the worst part of this whole story is? When I was digging though my computer bag this morning-- the same computer bag I brought to the recording session -- guess what I found: yup, an adaptor.