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!