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...
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