Picture Euphoria

This is going to be a great post, maybe the greatest ever...do you know why? Pictures.

First of all, all of the work we did on our yard in the fall is starting to look pretty good. One aspect of the yard I am quite impressed with is the mailbox and specifically the pansies around the mailbox. As I was pulling weeds last week I decided I should probably take some pictures to document how great they look:

The birds have been going crazy with the bird feeder too. I've had Cardinals, Doves, House Finches, a Tufted Titmouse, Goldfinches, and several mystery birds. Here's a picture I took the other morning. It didn't turn out that great, but you can see the finches, doves, and a cardinal:

Another exciting happening of late is that the other night Kristi and I had a seafood extravaganza. I have been shopping specials at various grocery stores to save some money, and last week Whole Foods had some specials on seafood. I bought some Talapia fillets and some Littlenecker clams, which I was quite excited about cooking. Kristi made a delicious Spinach and Strawberry salad while I baked the fish and steamed the clams. Those items, along with a baked potato, made for a wonderful dinner:

Sorry the fish is all in pieces. I got it out of the pan with a fork, and it was falling apart as I tried to get it on the plate.

I know at this point you are probably overwhelmed with all the great pics, but I've got even more. As you know I bought some snare drums over the past year so that I would have some quality variety. Since I've got the Mapex and the Ludwig now, I decided that I wanted to refinish my old Yamaha snare. My idea was that I would like to use it as a side snare, tuned very high, but I would like it to look nicer. Here's a picture of the drum originally:

So, I removed the yellow wrap and sanded the drum down. I thought about staining it as is, but the basswood didn't look like it would stain well, so I decided to put a veneer on. I found a woodworker on Ebay who sells his leftover scraps from his projects, and I bought some rare Etimoe veneer. I decided staining it before applying would be easiest, so I used a very light stain and then sanded it back so that the grain would show better. It ended up being brittle and pretty tricky to work with, but with some research and the help of my dad, I was able to attach it fairly successfully to the drum with contact cement. There were a few flaws in the installation, but you would have to look carefully to notice. My dad and I spent an entire evening applying contact cement and then adhering the veneer to the drum:

Over the past two weeks I have spent time finishing the drum. I sealed it with 2 coats of shellac, and then finished it with many coats of Wipe-On PolyU (maybe 20ish). After that I wet sanded it with 000 steel wool, buffed it with polishing compound, and then put some car wax on it. It turned out looking even better than I thought, and I am really proud of the result:

Obviously I need to order a grommet for the vent. All this talk about the drums reminds me, I have some exciting additions to the drum set I know you have been waiting to see. For my birthday I asked for money and was able to purchase a really nice used ride; a Zildjian K Custom Medium 20" Ride:Purchasing the ride meant that I could sell all of my old Sabian B8's and hope to get enough money to purchase a nice used crash. They didn't sell for much, but I did get enough to buy this used Sabian HHX 16" Evolution Crash:I got a great deal on both cymbals, and I am really happy with how they sound. I would really like to have an 18" crash also, but I will have to be patient and wait for another holiday. Here's some pictures of my drums as they are set up now:

I have the Mapex snare up in the pics, but here's a picture of all 3 snares:Last, I did some quick recordings of the set. The first one is with the Mapex snare, the second is with my newly refinished snare. It's tuned very high, I know...refer to my earlier paragraph about the snare.

New Cymbal Test

Refinished Snare Test

Well, I think that's all the updates for now. I am working on making a collage of some music from last Sunday. I thought it was the best Sunday sound wise since I've been at Southside, so I thought it would be fun to post some of it on here. Stay tuned!

It's not that I don't like vegetables...it's that I'd rather eat pretty much anything else...

This has been a great week. I feel like I have been very productive in alot of areas of my life lately, and this week has seemed especially productive. I have also enjoyed seeing what birds come to the bird feeder everyday, and I think Oliver is really enjoying that also. Lucy doesn't seem to care.

I had something weird happen on Monday morning. I was taking a shower and when I bent over to wash my legs I hit my head really hard on the handle of the shower door. Much to my dismay I took a pretty good chunk out of my head right in a spot where I am already balding. Hopefully my hair comes back there, but I am doubtful as it never came back in the spots where I hit my head on the diving board as a kid.

You may be aware that I have been working hard at consistently running every since the beginning of the new year. I have really enjoyed the exercise, and it in turn has motivated me to try and eat a little healthier. I don't consider myself a particularly unhealthy eater, but there are things I should improve on like eating more vegetables. So, I have been buying fresh vegetables and experimenting with cooking them. I wouldn't say I enjoy eating anything I've made vegetable wise, but some of them aren't too bad. For instance I have been grilling Zucchini and Yellow Squash with garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper, and it doesn't taste all that bad. On Monday I made a dinner that I thought was one of the better looking ones I have made:

I didn't like the spinach too much. Kristi and I are going to try it in a salad next week, we're thinking that will be better.

Another exciting thing I did this week was getting started budgeting through Microsoft Money again. I used to do this to keep better track of our spending, but my hard drive crashed right before we moved to Greenville and I lost the software since I didn't have it on CD. Last week I decided that I really needed to get more organized in the finance area, so I decided to purchase Quicken this time and see if I liked it. It was OK, I didn't like the layout as much, but the big kicker was the categories. If I put something in a subcategory...like "Eating Out" as a subcategory of a bigger category like "Entertainment," then it would no longer show up as an expense of "Entertainment." So if we spent $100 eating out this month, I wouldn't know it by looking at the "Entertainment" category, I'd have to show every subcategory, and in our budget I would have to break down what we wanted to spend on each subcategory. How dumb is that? It's like having a subcategory that isn't really a subcategory. Since I don't want to have to break down what we spend each month in that much detail, I shipped Quicken back and bought Microsoft Money again, which has been great.

I think those are the highlights from the week so far. This weekend is going to be really busy, but should be a good one. I hope the weather stays this wonderful! A little warmer and I'll be sweating it out in my car (no AC). Better wear a nose plug when you're around me this summer...

I think I'll change the name of my blog to "Andrew's Amazing Animal Almanac"....alliteration anyone?

I guess I'll stop making excuses for not posting often...I just haven't felt like it too much lately. Maybe it's because "Resurfaced" is no more. I'm surprised the blogosphere hasn't come to a complete halt as a result. Anyways, I figured I'd stop in for a weekly entry.

Kristi and I got some bird feeders and supplies around my birthday, sort of as part of my birthday present. I have been waiting ever since then for a bird to show up, and I have been sorely disappointed. My parents bought us a birdbath this week though, and so I faithfully kept it filled with clean water waiting for a breakthrough. This weekend marked the beginning of what I hope will soon be a bird paradise in our backyard. Strangely enough I was playing the drums on Saturday morning when I saw the first Chickadee land on our feeder:

This liitle guy and his Chickadee friend have been faithful since then, flying up at regular intervals all morning, grabbing seed, and then flying back to the woods. I learned on Wikipedia that these may actually be "Carolina Chickadees." Either way, their interest in our feeders quickly attracted other birds, and today I saw Mourning Doves and what I thought were Wrens, but I think they may be "House Finches":
As well as Goldfinches (I think?), which I was most excited about:
We even had two Goldfinches on our thistle feeder at one point:
I'm not positive those are Goldfinches, as they look different than the pictures I can find...but they do look similar to "Lesser Goldfinches," so maybe they are. What a crappy name...I'm glad no one calls me "Lesser Andrew." Well, not to my face anyways. I am still waiting for the Woodpeckers and the Cardinals, which I see in the woods all the time.

Today the mixing at church went well despite some rough spots at rehearsal. Mixing with ensemble mics is always a challenge, and this week it just wasn't working on Wednesday. We thought about giving wireless mics to some of the singers, but with some re-positioning and restructuring of panning, everything worked out well. James arranged a countryish version of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" for the prelude today which was cool. Here's the video Joe posted on YouTube...

Sweet camera directing, eh?

That's it for tonight. I need to post an update on my drums, and also a fun project my dad and I worked on, but I will wait for another time...mainly because I have to get pictures off of my mom's camera. In closing, my brackets won't be doing too well this year as I'll have Clemson going all the way....but if they do, oh baby....

Oh and here's another picture for your enjoyment:

I would be surprised if anyone really reads through all of this post....

This weekend was a good one, although I'd characterize it with the word "tired." I did run Saturday morning and I felt awful. I don't know what the deal is, but I just am not getting to that point where it doesn't hurt to run. I do have a good day every now and then though. Dad says I'm probably just that out of shape, and Matt (my community group leader) says I'm just getting older. I suppose either could be true.

Kristi and I ran some errands later in the day, during which we stopped at Circuit City. I just wanted to see if they had any cheap DVD players on sale for cheaper. It was like a war zone in the store. Turns out it was the last day they were open, and there was pretty much nothing left except a few random items and a bunch of their cabling that they had in bins for sale. The only items other than cheap accessories and cabling were a laptop for $200 and a printer for $25 dollars. They both didn't have a box and were just sitting there with a bag of accessories beside them...didn't seem like good investments to me, not that I needed either item anyways.

Saturday night we invited my parents over to partake in a dinner from the new grill they bought me. It was one of the better meals I've made lately, although it wasn't very complicated. I can tell that this grill is going to open up a whole new world of cooking possibilities for me, which is exciting. I think I want to make some fish sometime soon, and also some grilled chicken. Tomorrow I'm going to grill some pork chops, which I have marinating in the fridge as I type. I think they are going to be delicious, although I am a little disappointed that I don't have any onion to cook with them. Oh well. We took the dogs downtown and ate dessert at Marble Slab afterwards. I love coffee ice cream with raspberries and oreos. It may sound weird, but it is right up my alley. Plus, I think if you told someone you drank a mocha coffee drink with raspberry, that would sound good, so I don't think my dessert choice is that weird.

Lucy is kind of weird. If you haven't gathered that from my blog you haven't read enough. One of the weird things about her is that she gets extremely whiny and grumpy when it's past her bedtime, like a little kid. This was true on Saturday night. She started whining in the car on the way home, and then when we got inside she just stood at the bed and cried for like, 20 minutes. Finally I picked her up and put her in bed and she flopped down and went to sleep immediately. I'm having serious deja vú, have I written this before?

Anyways, I slept awful Saturday night because I was worried my phone would malfunction with the time change. It is my alarm, and I wouldn't want to be late to church for work on Sunday because I think that would be fairly stressful for Matt and Joe. Not to mention Lucy woke up to barf at 3. She does this every now and then, and no change to her feeding schedule has helped....weird. Dr. Ringger, got any suggestions? The good thing is she has done it enough to where she has learned to go to the linoleum, which is way easier to clean up. This post is just getting weirder by the paragraph.

Church went well, although I was EQing vocals all through the first service. I am reworking the board EQ, because it was a little crazy. Basically I am just trying to flatten it out, because some mids had seriously cut due to previous feedback problems. The issue is you can't really get those mids back very well; even drastic EQ just ends up doing screwy things to the sound. So that process has created some new issues with mixing, and I wasn't able to get the vocals where I wanted them Wednesday. I had Matt sing some for me on Thursday, but without the band it isn't easy to figure out what you want. Thankfully by the end of the first service I had a good handle on things.

I also spent time taking SPL readings at various points during the music today. I am just interested to know what I run at as I haven't really been given a reference to aim for. From the sound booth I am running about 93 average on dBC slow, and about 85 average on dBA slow. This is at the booth so I would expect it to be 3 dB louder on the floor, and it hotspots maybe 5 dB louder. dBC is much more affected by bass, so I'm thinking people sitting right at the sub probably would read over 100 dBC, but if you switched to dBA would probably drop like 12-15 dB's. dBA is typically used for modern music, because it's not flat. It's almost like it reads with a band pass, and in so doing compensates for the fact that humans don't hear low and high frequencies as well. From the meter, the levels I'm running are fairly conservative. I've read that 95 dBA is as loud as you can get at most churches before people start complaining (well more than a few), although I don't know how true that is, and what constitutes this group of churches? I would guess at places like Newspring and North Point they are running closer to 100 dBA or something. On some forums I've read about churches running at painfully loud levels, which just isn't wise in my mind.

The OSHA has established levels that people can't be exposed to over a period of time in the workplace so that their hearing isn't damaged. The lowest of this is 85 dBA, and they state that you would have to be exposed to it for over 8 hours for permanent damage. This means if you work somewhere that has an average ambient SPL of at least 85 dBA and you work an 8 hour shift, you will experience hearing loss, and your employer has to legally provide you with protection. So if you think about our service today, the average person is in there for maybe 1.25 hours, and the average SPL between the music and teaching/talking is going to be way below 85 dBA, so you can be assured that you are not losing any hearing by coming to Southside. If we ever have a service where the band plays their louder songs for 9 hours straight, you should probably wear a little bit of hearing protection. Also, interestingly enough I read an article by a sound engineer today that said most people like listening to their stereos at 85 dBA, and he thinks that's a good reference for churches. When I think about concerts that I have thought sounded amazing, I would guess that they were running a very balanced mix at something like 95 dBA. I would guess the dBC would be way higher because concerts that sound great have some loud, tight, pumping bass that really hits you right in the chest. On another note, I don't know that I will go back to the Handlebar very often because every concert I have been to there has had screeching highs that have left my ears feeling deaf for a few hours, which means my ears were seriously trying to protect themselves. I guess I could just wear earplugs next time, but we all know how lame that is.

Disclaimer: alot of the things I said were just guesstimates, so take them with a grain of salt...I don't even know how accurate our SPL meter is.

Wow, I did not originally mean to get off on that long of a tangent. We ate lunch at the Boyds' and then went to community group...the end.

No but seriously, I think that's all I have to say after that. Lunch with the Boyds was good and I made the usual cheesecake I make for community group, which got good reviews as always. I think I will be making that thing for every function for the rest of my life...it's just so impressive.

Tomorrow will be rough if I decided to run, because my legs were so sore today. I'll see what I feel like tomorrow, but I think I'm going to cut back to 4.5 miles for a while. I'm kind of disappointed because I wanted to get up to 6 quickly, but I just can't stand how crappy I feel every time. I'll keep blaming it on the hills...

I bet if I ever did homework, Lucy would eat it...

Lucy chewed up my computer power cord a long time ago, right after we moved to Greenville. I, being the amazing person that I am, was able to solder it back together and had been using it with fine results since then. Unfortunately it came apart for good a couple days ago, which meant that I was without my laptop until my new power cord got here, which meant I couldn't blog from bed. This coupled with the fact that I can't load my pictures onto my desktop due to no card reader and no USB cable meant that I had to break from blogging for a few days.

But I'm back. The only thing I really wanted to mention about the past few days is that I had a chance to use my new very cool grill:

Things went really well, and the steak I made was great. It cooked really fast though, and was medium well I would say. This is due to the fact that they were so skinny, I mean they were only on each side for like 3 minutes. I used to use a George Foreman in Columbia, so I always used skinny cuts. I think I would like to try some thicker steaks next time on the grill. Here's some pictures of me in action:


Today was a pretty productive day. I got to work around 9 and was surprised to see Joe right after I arrived. He usually gets there a little later, so it was nice to have some company early on. I spent the morning working on the sound board some. I have been using the channels a little differently, so I decided to re-name them for now. I figure once we get a good rotation of sound guys we can talk about how to best set it up, but for now I'm tired of having things labeled wrong. I also called Yamaha to see if I could get some kind of plug-in card with a de-esser in it. The vocalists could really use one, especially Matt. The Yamaha rep told me to buy the Waves Y96K card. All of those effects look amazing, and I have used some of them like the L1 and the L2 in the studio before. Problem is, it costs $1000.00, and I don't know that that would be the best use of money. On one hand it would be incredible to have those capabilities on every channel, but on the other hand we have an alright compressor/limiter on every channel, and I could get some hardware de-essers for a few hundred. But, I mean paying a few hundred more for that much more capability might be a good investment too. I talk like I even make these decisions too, when really it's not up to me. I spent some of my morning making a list for Joe of what items I thought would really benefit the sound area of the tech ministry though, which is why I'm thinking about these things.

I also loaded some Igniter Media video backgrounds onto Easy Worship for Joe and ate a wonderful Healthy Choice Chicken Marsala meal for lunch. I have been eating their cafe steamers for meals lately because they are cheap, and they really are very good. Joe thinks they smell like feet, but whatever dude.

After work I headed to the Mauldin Library for some tutoring with Jake. He was a little more distracted than usual today, but things are going well overall. He seems to be understanding the material and is able to answer questions on his own more and more. When we were done I came home and took Lucy for a quick walk before Kristi and I left for dinner. We were meeting some friends downtown, so we dropped Lucy off with dad on the way. Mom had gone dress shopping in Atlanta for the day, so we thought he needed some company....actually we just thought Lucy would prefer to play with Molly since she had been by herself all day. We ate at TacoSushi and then went to Spill the Beans afterwards. Downtown was very busy tonight, more so than usual...maybe because of the very pleasant weather. After that we picked Lucy up and then came home.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to run. I haven't in a week because of the rain, snow, and one day of just being lazy. Hopefully I will feel great tomorrow since I have had a nice rest...I think I'll bump up to 6.5 miles. After that I don't think there's any specific plans, so it should be a great day! Maybe I'll do some recording...we'll see...

That's right...only 3 paragraphs...

This morning was another fairly lazy one. It is still just so cold and I don't think I want to suffer through running until it gets a little warmer. I woke up at 8, but everyone else was still sleeping (well except Oliver, but I don't think he sleeps), so I just did some online reading until 9. I got ready and took Lucy for a pretty long walk after that. I always wonder if her paws feel cold. She doesn't seem to mind walking through half frozen puddles and piles of snow, so I guess she doesn't notice it.

We got back and I played drums for a little bit, and then Kristi and I left to eat lunch at Oriental House. She has had the past 2 days off from school due to the snow and power outages. Lunch was delicious as usual, and afterwards I made a quick stop at Lowes to get some contact cement for a project I will post more about later. After Lowes I was off to work, where I spent the whole day redoing the stage and organizing. I get fed up with all the old, half broken stuff in the closet today and decided to do a massive clean up. There were so many pieces to microphone stands laying around, so I figured out which pieces were actual functional, assembled as many stands as I could from those pieces, and threw all the broken stuff in the dumpster. I also moved some things that we never use up to the lighting loft. I wanted to put the stuff in the other loft, but apparently that one is no longer a tech storage area...oh well.

That was really all I did today. I just realized that I forgot to do my lab for physiology, so I will have to do that tomorrow morning before I leave to tutor Jake. I also have to take an online Sociology test before Thursday night...wow I have really slacked off this week. Oh well, I'm not concerned...and speaking of Greenville Tech, I really want to get my acceptance letter for clinicals soon! That is, if I got accepted...

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...in March...

I feel a little guilty about not posting great pictures. We ended up going to "Slumdog Millionaire" with Chad and Jamie on Saturday night. It was very spontaneous, and I didn't feel like blogging when we got home since it was late. By the way, it really is a great movie.

Yesterday was a very fun day. I thought the music sounded great, and I didn't even put that much effort into it. Things seemed to kind of mix themselves, which made my job easy. When Charlie got up to speak in the third service, something was wrong with his mic. It was sort of coming through, but not really, and I had to jack up the gain and the fader to get it loud enough. Even then it still sounded weird, and so I looked at a camera screen beside me and saw that the mic was laying on his shoulder...he hadn't put it on his ear! After that Joe and I debated whether he would ever notice, whether he would notice and just leave it, or whether he would notice and put it on. He talked for a few minutes, but eventually hit it when making a gesture and realized what was going on. All in all, it was a pretty funny situation.

That evening we were supposed to move some furniture for Kristi's grandma, but it started snowing. I was extremely skeptical that anything would stick, but it came down hard for so long that we got about 6" on our patio table! Kristi, Lucy, Oliver and I had a great time with the snow. You can check my Facebook page for more pics, but here's a few from yesterday:

Today I slept in the longest I had in a long time. The cable/internet was out, and I couldn't run because of all the snow, so I really had no motivation for getting up. Eventually I decided to get up and go make a snowman, which I always enjoy doing. The snow stuck really well and I decided to make a huge one. The base was big, and I made a slightly smaller middle part, but I realized that it was way too heavy for me to pick up and put on top of the base. I quickly had to restructure my plans. Instead I decided to make a snow Kristi and a snow Andrew, which turned out wonderfully. I thought about making a snow Oliver and a snow Lucy, but that would have been too hard:

We lounged around for the rest of the day and finished off by going to La Fogata for dinner and then visiting my parents to try out their hot tub. They got it for Christmas, but this was the first night we were able to try it out. It was fun, but it made me a little hot after the first ten minutes or so. I'd take one if you want to give me one though...just sayin'...and while you're at it, build me a deck.

In other news, I got a grill for my birthday, which is very exciting. My dad and I assembled it on Saturday, and I plan on posting some great pictures when I cook my first meal on it on Thursday. I've also got some great new additions to my drum set, but I will wait until everything is here to update you on that. Pretty exciting stuff. Hope you had a wonderful snow day, and now that Joe's blog is ending, you have no excuse not to read mine...