my road trip is now a nope trip ⛰😾
Honest Updates From A Luxurious Days Inn in Laramie, WY.
(because we don’t do TLDR in this house).
👉 SHAMELESS (new!)
👉My Planetarium Performance: Full Show Now on YouTube!
👉 When The Plans In Your Head Aren’t What Actually Happens: Updates from the road…or not.
👉 Recording & Roaming Around Iceland Next Month
SHAMELESS is where I plug my offerings, shop updates, music releases and more. Other than this section, this Substack is for musings and honest updates from my life.
The Jurassic Park Bandanas I illustrated and designed have been printed and I will be picking them up later this month! » ORDER HERE « I’m also working on a new design…”we’ve got cows,” is the only hint I’ll give you. ;)
Pet Portrait Commissions are OPEN. Get an illustrated digital portrait of your best friend or give one as a gift to someone else. » ORDER HERE «
Tapes & Loops & Reverb & Delay merch is on sale! I need to move these shirts, so they’re currently priced to sell (25% off and free shipping in the U.S.) You can order them via my Bandcamp HERE.
My marketing/design books are OPEN. I offer freelance marketing/design services as well as consulting/guiding sessions and am accepting new clients right now.
And now, onward to what you really want to read…
Housekeys Planetarium Show: Recap & Video
You can now watch the full show from my set at UTA Planetarium!
I am excited to share my full planetarium performance on YouTube! You are welcome to watch it or simply put it on and listen to it.
Keyframe photo by John Paul Thompson.
When The Plans In Your Head Aren’t What Actually Happens
Updates From The Road…Or Not.
If you’re just joining me, I am currently on a road trip (now cut short) around the Rocky Mountains (Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana) before fully moving back to Colorado. You can read a bit about it in my previous Substack post.
My cats, Howl (15.5 years) and Luna (1.5 years), are both with me and are quite the road trip buddies…and not in the fun way. Since they aren’t having any fun, nobody is.
Traveling with cats looks so cute and fun on Instagram and YouTube. Before going on this trip, I watched several YouTube videos about “How To Travel With Cats Full Time,” to do some preliminary research and preparation months ahead of leaving for this trip.
Quin Gable was one of my favorites and I have really enjoyed following her adventures on Instagram! Here is a fantastic video-tour of her van and how she travels with cats:
I intended to go all the way to Glacier National Park in Montana and then head south towards Texas to prepare for my Iceland trip, but the car travel has been too much on the cats, which in turn has become too much for me. I’ve learned that I am more sensitive that I used to be about animals (I’ve even gone mostly vegetarian again), and knowing that they don’t like being in the car is upsetting to me.
To calm them down in the car, I’ve given them CBD and gabapentin (not at the same time), and while those things help, I really hate drugging my cats!
When I have had a place to stay they adapt very quickly and plop on the bed almost immediately. However, if I decide to go for a hike or explore the location we’re in, I’ve been getting anxiety about leaving them, and I’ve started to wonder if it’s worse for me than them…
When I ask myself, “why am I so anxious leaving my cats?” I consider the fact that I have worked from home for most of the last several years, I study at home, and of course, COVID lockdowns are still impacting many of us.
I’ve also discovered on this road trip that I have some ptsd from recent pets’ deaths, as well as a friends pet passing away in my car totally unexpected during a drive from Austin to Dallas.
And when I took Wizard to the vet to have his breathing checked out, that car ride turned out to be his last and I definitely wasn’t planning on that.
Those experiences have me on constant high-alert and weigh heavily on me, causing me to constantly turn around or pull over a couple times per hours to check on the cats during the drive. It’s not typically how I am, and it’s no surprise that I have a light anxiety attack when I drive away to leave my cats, even for a few hours.
I don’t even want to think about leaving them behind while I go to Iceland for two weeks…but I have an amazing cat sitter lined up that will lessen (most) of my anxiety.
I have tried to find that place of peace, usually weight the best and worst case scenarios and then accepting them, but I haven’t been able to manage my anxiety well when it comes to the cats. I don’t want to accept the worst case scenario. If you experience this - I’d love to know how you manage! Please reply and share.
So for now, I plan to return to Boulder and begin to actively look for an apartment as well as my next anchor client and primary source of income. I will still go back to school in the Fall, but unless I can lock in some scholarships or get my residency status changed to in-state, I will have to wait to start at CU Boulder until next semester. Not to worry, I still have plenty of math classes to take and am taking a Modern Physics class online at UTA.
Let’s hear it for planning and then watching those plans fall apart!
Recording & Roaming Around In Iceland Next Month
I will embark on two-week trip to finish my record and enjoy 15+ hours of daylight in the land of fire and ice with a friend.
Next month (August), I will head back to Iceland to finish recording my first full-length album with Albert Finnbogason at Sundlaugin Studio, which used to be a below-ground pool, converted into the practice space and recording studio for Sigur Rós. Several of my favorite albums have been recorded at Sundlaugin, which is major reason I chose it for my own record.
In October of 2022, I recorded the first half, which also marked my first time recording my own music in a legit studio. I was surrounded by piano, organ, and synth heaven and even happened upon some Sigur Rós artifacts still haunting the studio.
I haven’t really shared a deep dive on that experience, but stay tuned for a future update, because I definitely will after I am back from this next trip. It deserves so many of the words and feelings I am still churning through.
** If you’d like to help support the funding of recording this album, you can donate to my Venmo (@tiffinycostello) or Paypal (@tiffinycostello). I’ll include your name in my linear notes as a grateful thank you for your support! **
For now, here are some photos of the studio and process for round one of recording (thanks to my dad for snapping some shots):
As always, thank you for reading along.
I would love to hear from you if anything in this blog/newsletter resonated with you. I’d love to know what you want to hear from me too!
xoxo,
