So I woke up a little before 9, but wasn't sure if I felt good enough to run, so I watched Sportscenter until about ten. I got up and decided to take Lucy for a walk first thing, and on the walk decided I felt good enough to run. My strategy with running is to make sure I go slow enough to not feel like my lungs are about to give out. During wrestling season in high school it was all about pushing myself until I couldn't possibly go faster, but now I figure I don't need to be intense. Plus without Coach intimidating me it's hard to push myself that much anyways. Today was pretty rough. I hadn't run in a long time, and I didn't feel too great. It's days like today that I miss running with Graham, he was a great running buddy. I made it all three miles though, and it will get easier every time.
After running I showered and ate lunch. I forgot about how not hungry I am after running. It seems like it would be the opposite, but it's not. Swim practice on the other hand always made me very hungry. I practiced Sunday's songs on the drums after that only to find out later that Ryan isn't going to be using me after all. Thanks alot Ryan.
I left for work a little early today because I wanted to tune the youth group's drum set before I started my normal stuff. The biggest flaw I noticed in their sound last night was the drums. The snare sounded kind of like a fart because it was tuned so low. Perhaps this should be a page in my calendar. I can see it now..."SNART: A snare tuned so low it sounds like a fart."
Anyways, the kit had it's good and bad. The snare is an older Slingerland brass snare, which after I tuned it sounded fantastic:
Their cymbals were also decent as well. I don't know much about the hi-hat brand, but the A Custom 18" crash is one that is on my list to buy eventually.
The rest of the kit was Ben's PDP kit, which wasn't terrible, but had heads that were very old and beat up. The only thing harder than tuning toms on a cheaper kit is tuning toms with terrible heads on a cheaper kit. They didn't have any moon gels or O-rings, which are kind of a necessity in this situation, so instead I taped some folded paper to the heads. You can faintly hear the paper flap, but it is exponentially better than no muffling, plus it kind of fits with the whole SNART idea:
After I was done the kit sounded pretty decent. Later on in the evening I had Joe take a quick video of me playing it for fun. Later I thought I should have taken a video before also so you could hear the amazing difference tuning makes, but I didn't think of it. I was going to cut the video down to just me playing for a few seconds, but the whole thing is kind of funny what with my preemptive thumbs up and Joe saying, "You can edit this out later, right?"
After I tuned the drums Joe told me that the youth group used to have toms and a kick also that Dave bought back in the day. I found them in the closet, and they were some decent maple Taye's. I asked Nate why they weren't using them and he said, "they didn't sound good." Weird.
All this drum talk reminds me, I've been listening to this new band I found called "The Summer Set." They are extremely pop, but I really like them. I found them watching this kid play his Zildjian Sweet Ride on YouTube. Seems like a pretty solid drummer.
So anyways, after the drum thing and working some Joe and I left for dinner, stopping to browse at GameStop on the way. I like video games, but for one reason or another have never really gotten into them that much. If there was one game I would play non-stop, it would definitely be rock band, but I can think of alot of musical equipment I would want for how much it would cost me to get a gaming system and the game.
We ate dinner at Moe's because I had a $5 off coupon, and it was delicious as always. I wish Moe's would give you free queso though, that would be nice.
After dinner we came back and went to the pre-rehearsal meeting. It was really interesting tonight. We spent some time encouraging one another by speaking things we enjoyed about the team, and then Brian talked a little about disconnecting our worship of God from how good or bad our life is. There is alot of crazy stuff going on the the world, like Iraq, fighting in the Gaza strip, our economy, etc. If you don't keep up with the news, you should. Anyways, I wonder how our quality of life in America will change in the future and how that will affect the church. Also, am I satisfied in God alone despite any circumstances that might come my way? Serious stuff to think about.
Rehearsal was fine. I got it sounding pretty good, but the chairs were up which means there was no point in fine tuning because it will sound so different on Sunday. I did the parallel compression thing with the bass, and I kind of like it. It's a very subtle difference, but it helps the riffs on the higher strings punch through more. Joe and I took a break for him to film me in the aforementioned video, but other than that I just kind of hung out until rehearsal was over. Since Matt wasn't there I wanted to make sure everything was off before I left.
I got home late and Kristi was already in bed. Lucy must have cried for 2-3 minutes when I came inside, I don't know why. I guess she just misses me that much. Kristi woke up and we talked a little bit about our day, and then I got in bed. It's kind of a bummer not really seeing Kristi on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Tomorrow I might eat lunch with a friend and then maybe go into work since I won't be able to work Friday due to the men's retreat. I hope I get to play some basketball or football or something on the men's retreat. We'll see....I've never been on one with Southside before.
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