I bet there is a note somewhere on our Charter cable account that says, "dog barks non-stop."

Dude...two nights in a row! Don't get spoiled now, it won't last forever.

Today was another good day. I woke up around 8 and took Lucy over to my parents' house. I needed to get a check for the guy coming to repair the piano that they gave me, and since Lucy hates strangers I figured it would be nice to get her out of the house. I don't think workers enjoy being growled at the entire time they are at our house.

So my parents gave me this piano, it's from the 1920's, and it's a player piano...you know, the kind with the paper rolls and the bellows that you pump. It was actually my great grandfather's piano. Mom says that a man came to my great grandfather's farm trying to sell a piano because he needed money to feed his family. My great grandfather apparently was a very kind person, and so he scrounged up what he could, which was $100, and bought the piano. Alot of family members have learned to play on the piano, including my sister and I, so there is alot of special history to it. Since it is so old, there were a few dead keys, and the ivory was missing on a few. Mom finally found a guy that was willing to work on the piano. It is kind of an art form to repair player pianos, and most people she talked to weren't willing to do it. Some of them were willing to fix the dead keys, but said that would not guarantee they would be able to get the player mechanism back in correctly. The guy that mom found has been fixing pianos and organs since the 1950's, and really knows his stuff. He was disappointed that we weren't getting the player mechanism fixed right now, but it is quite a bit of money. Apparently there were 3 brands of player pianos that are worth something now, and Milton is one of them, which is what ours is. I took some pictures of the sounding board and keys when he had everything disassembled today:

He put all new hammers on, fixed the action, and reinstalled everything. I am pretty excited, except it is extremely out of tune, so I need to call someone and get them out here to tune it.

After he was done I went and ate lunch with my mom, picked up Lucy, and after dropping her off headed to work. I didn't have a ton to do at work, but I had a few things to set up. The sax player couldn't come tonight, so we had an electric guitar soloist instead. He was very good, and the amp he played through really interested me. I was not aware of this line before, but it sounded really good, and I really like the features. It's a special line done by Crate, who I am not a fan of as a company, but it sounded really good. I am definitely going to look into them before I buy my Fender Tweed Blues Jr. He had the 3/5 watt version, but I might be more interested to play/hear the 7/15 watt version. You can see it's features here. I highly doubt that I will end up liking it over the Fender Blues Jr., as I am normally a fan of proven, highly used brands...but it is the first other small affordable amp that has interested me.

Originally I was going to just throw an SM57 on the amp like usual, but then I had a better idea. I like to read geeky sound forums, one of which is homerecording.com. One of the guys on the site has a small studio, and started making his own condensers. You can check out his work and mic options at his studio website.They are so cheap that I had Kristi buy two of them for me for Christmas the other year, but I haven't used them all that much. I decided to use one on the guitar, and it really sounded great. It's a pretty cool little mic. Here's a picture I took of the amp all miced up and ready to go:

I also took a picture of the Shure LDC that I placed in front of the kick drum. Apparently my auto focus wasn't focused correctly for this picture...sorry:
And just for fun I took a picture of the trusty SM57 on the snare. I put a Beta 57A on for Jingle Jazz originally, but didn't like it in rehearsal.
Tonight's show turned out to be a frustrating one. The piano and guitar mic kept wanting to feed back, which I knew would be an issue. I obviously didn't get to test every situation in all the songs with the guitar like I did with the saxophone. There were also a few other mistakes that I really had no control over that were very frustrating to me. Reflecting over the whole night, I think it was good overall, but it's hard for me not to be frustrated in the moment.

After the show Matt took band and tech people to TGIF, and it was really good. I enjoyed talking to the band members, and also really enjoyed the food. I got home around 1 and after taking Lucy out got into bed.

Tomorrow should be another good day. I am taking Kristi's car in to somewhere to get the tire put back on. She decided to hit a huge pothole the other day and destroy her wheel, but thankfully it's just a cheap steel rim (the kind you put a hubcap on), and I got another on ebay for $35 shipped. Not too shabby I say. After that I'll probably just hang out and then go into work around 3 or 4. Too bad there's not any college football on!

If I were on a island for the rest of my life, I don't know what I'd rather have for food....fried rice or french fries?

So I'm finally back. I know you've been wondering where my posts have been. I have been so crazy busy that I haven't really had time to even sleep that much, so posting was obviously not something I felt like doing. Joe is faithful in posting every day, no matter how much sleep he gets, but I guess I am just not that dedicated. That's one reason why his blog is better. I won't bore you by trying to remember everything that's happened in the past two weeks. Just imagine lots of studying, working, and general busyness. It all came to a head on Tuesday night when I only went to sleep around 4 and had to be up a little after 6 to leave for an exam. Right after my two exams I went straight to work and set things up for Jingle Jazz, which started at 7:30. I'm pretty sure the stress of no sleep, exams, and the nervousness of it being opening night will make all the other nights seem easy.

Today was great. I slept in until 10, which felt wonderful. Lucy was tired too from spending a few days at my parents' house playing with Molly and Carter, so she slept in too. It was really helpful that my mom was willing to watch Lucy some this week, I don't know what I would have done without that since there were a few days I was literally gone all day. I don't know what Oliver did all that time...probably destroyed the Christmas tree. We got one last week, and Oliver just can't keep himself off of it. Funny story...last year since our apartments were literally next door to Home Depot, we bought a tree there and I just held it through my sun roof to get it home. Since Home Depot isn't too far from our house, I decided to do the same thing this year. It was a big mistake...even though I wore a warm sock on my hand to keep it warm, it is probably a mile or two to Home Depot, and my hand was numb by the time we got back. Not only that, but there were alot of sharp turns that made it hard to keep the tree from rolling off. I think next year we'll have to do something different.

But anyways, after waking up I got ready and took Lucy for a really long walk. I then left to run some errands and go to work. Kristi's Chi flat iron broke, and she was pretty distraught this morning. So, being the good husband I am I decided to go get her a new one at Ulta. I drove to the Shops at Greenridge, went in Ulta, and found the Chi. It was $140! I just couldn't make myself get it, and there were so many other options I didn't know what else to get. Kristi is going to go herself and look at some of the other options, just in case there is another good one that is cheaper.

After shopping I called Joe to see if he needed lunch. He has been spending so much time editing and rendering videos that he hasn't been able to go get food much. I am amazed at some of the stuff he does, and the videos for Jingle Jazz are awesome. Sometimes I feel like people don't really appreciate all that goes into sound, they just think "Oh, that sounds good." They don't see or understand all the different compression, mic choices, mic placements, reverb settings, panning, and EQing that goes into it. But even so, I don't think it is anything compared to the lack of appreciation for the video stuff. I think people enjoy the videos, but don't appreciate all the planning, lighting, filming, keying with the green screen, editing, after effects stuff, etc. etc. that goes into it. Of course, the same thing could be said for the lights, which Tyler and Nathaniel did an awesome job with. I like to think there are at least a couple people in the audience that sort of know what goes into it and appreciate all the work.

Man I keep getting sidetracked...where was I. So Joe did need lunch and I decided to try this place I had seen at Greenridge called "Oriental House." They just remodeled, and I was impressed by how nice and clean it was when I went in. I was expecting your usual run down Chinese fast food restaurant, but this was way nicer. Still, you order at the counter and the food is very affordable.

To give you some background, my favorite food is probably fried rice. I love Miyabi's fried rice for just straight up rice, but when you start mixing ingredients it gets trickier. I used to love this place called Red Bowl, that was right outside of my neighborhood in Mauldin. Their "house fried rice" was delicious, and I went there a few times every week during the summer when I was in college. I actually kept salt and pepper in my car so that I could order to go and enjoy it to it's fullest potential. I had the number memorized and they knew me by just my voice. Sadly, the week I went on my honeymoon my dad called me and told me it shut down. I think I was one of their only regular customers, and they must have known that I was moving. Ever since then I have been unable to find house fried rice as good. There have been some OK attempts, but nothing that has gotten me excited....until today.

I ordered some house fried rice, no peas or carrots, extra spicy at Oriental House, and it was amazing. So amazing that I am tempted to say it is better than Red Bowl's...but I did love Red Bowl's, and it's been over a year, so it's hard to say for sure. Either way, I am just so excited. Not only that, but it looked like they had some stuff Kristi would like, so I'm hoping this becomes a regular restaurant of ours. I'm not joking when I say that finding this place was probably one of the most exciting things that's happened in a while.

Once I got to work I ate my lunch and then worked on a few things. I didn't have a whole lot to finish up on the sound end, so I did a few things here and there for Joe. Matt wanted a Christmas tree montage for "O Tannenbaum," so I spent an hour finding good stock photos of Christmas trees and putting them in a slide show. I found some pretty cool ones. A little after 6 I changed into my black clothes and got ready for the show.

Jingle Jazz went really well tonight. I was on top of all my cues and felt like I had a better handle on things than last night. I was able to do some different things with mics that ended up working really well. For instance, I was getting tons of drum bleed with the Shure LDC for the sax...so much so I doubted it would be very usable. Joe suggested I rig something to be able to clip a mic on the bell, so that's what I did. I found a lapel clip that was big enough to hold one of our micro Audix condensers, and taped it all together. It is a little airy sounding being right on the bell, but all in all it sounds amazing. Not only that, but there is practically no drum bleed at all. Another thing I did was put a Shure LDC a few inches in front of the kick drum. It really livens up the kick alot, and even the toms a little. I used some MXL 991's (some of my favorite cheap mics) as OH's on the drums, and those sound really good too. I think I may switch the AKG's I usually use as OH's for something else, because the 991's sound way better to me.

This weird thing happens when I run sound where I constantly tweak up to a certain point and never really hear things as a whole. When I finally get to sit back and just listen, I am usually shocked that it sounds so good. It's almost like an epiphany. I remember a jazz mixing project in college that I worked on for a few days. I was still not completely happy with everything, but when I sat back with the whole class to listen to my work, I realized it sounded amazing, and got several comments to that effect. Tonight was kind of one of those moments. I had been tweaking everything for the past few days. With sound, there really is endless artistic possibilities, so something can always be changed. Tonight was the first time I was able to really sit back during some songs and listen to everything, and it sounded really good. I'm sure with more time there are things I would try, but I couldn't really find anything I didn't like.

Once Jingle Jazz was over I came home and got ready for bed. I feel like I haven't seen my wife or my pets this week, so it will be good when things get back to normal. Tomorrow a guy is coming to fix the old piano my parents gave me. I'll have to give you its history some other time. I am really excited that I will soon be able to play a real piano in my own house. By the way, have you looked at my soundclick page lately? There's some new stuff up, so you should.

USCjr, Lamecocks, Shamecocks, etc....they're all good nicknames

In case you didn't already know, this blog is pretty much a rip-off of my friend/boss's blog which you can read here: Resurfaced. Sometimes I tell people my blog is better, which I think is hilarious considering the situation. If you look at Sunday's post, you can see a sweet picture from the service of the stage over my shoulder at the sound booth. Yes that coat is wool, and yes it is amazing!

Sorry I took such a long period off. I wanted a break for the Thanksgiving holiday. Actually these next two weeks are going to be insane and I make no promises when it comes to post consistency. I've had some pretty intense weeks in my life, but I think these next two are going to be up there with the best of them. It's always so sweet when you come through on the other side of a hard period of responsibilities successfully, so I look forward to that.

So much that has happened since I last posted...I'll start with the disappointments. My Thanksgiving cheesecake was a disaster. You know what they say: "Pride goes before the fall." I was pretty proud of my last cheesecake success, so I offered to make one for this Thanksgiving. The night before I forgot to leave out the cream cheese and let it warm to room temperature, but I figured it would be fine if I mixed everything real well. Boy was I extremely wrong. The cake came out totally wrong...wrong consistency, wrong taste, wrong look, just wrong. We didn't even take it to the meal.

Another big disappointment was my haircut today. In Columbia this bald dude cut my hair (kind of funny), and he was awesome. I would just give him a basic idea and then tell him to do what looks good, and he never let me down. Up here I have gone to two different people and tried this strategy and have been sorely disappointed, especially today. I told the girl I didn't want it a whole lot shorter, and it looks like she didn't do anything at all. She also didn't really thin out my sideburns, which I specifically asked for. I ended up doing that myself when I got home, which is dangerous. I guess I'll keep looking for a hairdresser. I plan on just trying various people at cheap places until I find the right one. The guy that cut my hair in Columbia was just at Hair Cuttery, but he had been doing it for so long that he was very knowledgeable.

Now for the good stuff. Thanksgiving was alot of fun at both houses. We had a game night with my family the night before, which was exciting. Apples to Apples frustrated me like always, but Catch Phrase was fun. Apparently Taboo is not Kristi and I's game, but we did have some ridiculous cards...such as "sulk" and "cantaloupe." On Thanksgiving we went to my parents' house for lunch and Kristi's Aunt and Uncle's for dinner. Some old family friends, the Greaves, came to my parents' house and it was good to see them. We always go around and say what we're thankful for, which gets a little emotional, and then sometimes play Thanksgiving trivia. This year the stakes were high; a $25 gift card to Outback, so Kristi studied for 5 minutes. She came in first, but for the record I came in a close second. I tried to save room for dinner, but it was still rough. Eating that much turkey in one day makes me not really care for left overs like I used to.

The day after Thanksgiving just consisted of shopping and work. I don't really buy much when I go shopping after holidays, but I enjoy the hustle and bustle. The mall mainly gets me in the Christmas spirit. That's right, nothing says Christ coming to earth quite like good ol' American consumerism. Seriously though, I do enjoy the mall around the holidays, especially on the day before Christmas. This year I did buy some Clemson sweatshirts for my dad and I and some t-shirts for my community group leader. He is a big Mizzou fan, but has kind of adopted Clemson as another team he cheers for.

Speaking of which, Saturday came and it was time for the big game. As I mentioned before, Matt gave his tickets to me so I could take my dad to the game. We left around 9:15, stopping at McDonald's for some breakfast on the way down. It was really cold, so I was glad I had bought an orange sweatshirt. I was pretty apprehensive about the game, but it turned out to be amazing. Our line has improved so much over the last few games, it makes me excited about the future. I also want to point out that my predictions all came true. My first, the most impressive perhaps, was that we would only lose one game after GT, and it would either be to FSU or USC. My second was that USC was not as good as people thought, and we were improving, and that if our defense hung in there we would have a chance to beat the Gamecocks soundly. Oh how true that turned out to be. We went to Anchaeux's after the game for my usual Blackjack sandwich, and then came home. It was a really fun day, especially to be able to spend with my dad. Here's a picture of us where we sat:

Our seats were actually right under the upper deck overhang, which was nice because we didn't get wet. Here's a picture of a prayer huddle before the game:
And here's a good picture of the scoreboard afterwards:
I figure that game had to be tougher than usual, even for Gamecock fans, so much so that I actually felt bad for them while leaving. I've seen several pictures of Spurrier where he wouldn't really even look Dabo in the eye afterwards. I think he was pretty exasperated...here's a video that shows what I'm talking about:

Sunday was a good day too. I felt like the morning sounded really good, and there was not really any mistakes on my part. In the evening I worked on recording a new song I wrote. I am going to try to write more often, just to keep the creative juices flowing. Also it will give me a chance to try new mixing techniques. This track I used an interesting stereo mic setup for the acoustic, and carefully chose a pick to get the right attack sound. I also pretty much ate the mic for the vocal track, pressing my nose against the pop filter. I used a limiter pretty liberally on both the acoustic and vocal tracks. I had a cold, so I couldn't pronunciate very well, but I was really happy with the vocal sound I got. I was also pretty happy with the acoustic sound, although there is a little comb filtering, and I recorded it a little hot so there is a little distortion in the low end at loud parts. All in all it's really good sounding, and an alright song. Here's a link if you are interested in listening: It Starts Tonight.

This is a long post, but I definitely need to talk about today. I spent most of the morning and the afternoon waiting to talk to a financial aid advisor. My new academic advisor told me I should be eligible for lottery assistance, so I wanted to ask about that before I payed this semester's bill. All the waiting was worth it, because I will be getting tons of money back from this past semester, and will only have to pay half of the spring semester. Talk about some good news. They should do a better job telling students about that.

After Tech, I got my disappointing haircut and then stopped at a Simpsonville Chinese restaurant for lunch. Their house fried rice was OK; I guess I will just never find anything as good as Red Bowl (r.i.p.). I came home, took Lucy for a really long walk, and then looked up some drum technique videos on YouTube and practiced some. YouTube is amazing...seriously.

Around 5 I made sure to watch the press conference with Dabo Swinney, where he was officially announced as head coach. I don't know how anyone could have watched that and not have gotten really excited about the future of the program. If you didn't see it, you really should watch the first little bit, which you can find here. If not, at least please read this article about the guy. I am pretty excited to have him representing our program, and I really hope he turns out to be the great coach everyone thinks he will be. He's already got a good start!

Kristi came home and we went to Ouback (with our giftcard), and then to TJ Maxx and Petsmart. I got Lucy the lamb and rice ScienceDiet this time, and she seemed really excited about it. I think it's just the novelty...soon she won't care about her food again...except for when Oliver tries to eat it of course.

So there you go! My past few days in a nutshell. They have definitely been great, which is nice building into a tough week or two. Tomorrow should be fun as I am going to eat lunch with my mom and then go into work. Hopefully there is some soldering for me to do!

I wondered why the dates on the shot records looked like February...

Oliver is fine. I just thought I'd get that out of the way up front, since I'm sure at least two out of the three of you that read this wouldn't have been able to focus without hearing it. You probably would have skipped over everything else just to see what was wrong with him; I'm on to your blog reading habits. The vet said that he probably just strained a little too much and to give him a little laxative over the next few days until it heals. She also gave him his shot he was supposed to get Friday, which is nice because I don't have to pay for 2 visits.

I got up at 8 this morning to call the vet actually. The lady told me that I could wait until Friday, but that his problem definitely wasn't normal, so I decided to go in. I figured if it was something bad like a bacterial infection, I didn't want it to get out of control just so I could avoid paying for two visits. Oliver slept on the bed for the first time last night. It went fine, except Lucy gets extremely grumpy when he tried to sleep next to her. It's kind of hilarious, I don't know what her deal is. I think I actually got more sleep this morning because both of them slept a little longer. We are starting to run out of room on the bed though...it's important to establish your position early on. Right now both of the pets are sleeping with their heads against Kristi, which is kind of cute. That's right, I used the word "cute" in my blog, and I'm not ashamed.

After talking to the vet receptionist I went ahead and got ready for the day, after which I quickly left for school. I enjoyed Psychology for the first time this semester, although I think the reason is totally unrelated to Psychology. We started talking about what age everyone wanted to die at, and I really enjoyed listening to what people had to say. There is this one older lady in the back who is very nice and comes across as very intelligent, and she talked alot today which I enjoyed. I didn't really add to the conversation, just listened. If I had to verbalize my feelings on the matter, I would probably say that I don't want to be a burden to my family, and I don't want to get so old that I am very lonely because most of my friends and family are gone. So I don't really think I have a specific age in mind at all. Some students said that they don't really think about it, because honestly they are a little scared to die. I have had to deal with alot of death in my life, sometimes I feel like more than others my age, so I actually have thought about the subject alot. I think it has been good for me.

After school I went straight to work and Joe and I worked on setting up a "green screen" most of the day. It's going to be used for some video shoots for Jingle Jazz...we'll see how it turns out. We ate lunch at Zaxby's, and Joe paid for my lunch which was a really nice surprise. A free CD and a free lunch in 2 weeks time...maybe he is getting ready to fire me or something and feels bad.

I had to come home from work before 4 so I could pick up Oliver and take him to the vet. I accidentally grabbed Lucy's shot records instead of Oliver's which made me feel a little dumb when the vet receptionist handed them back to me and told me they were from a dog. Thankfully they are familiar with the agency we adopted Oliver from, so they knew what he needed. I ended up waiting for almost an hour and half, but I did get to see a ton of dogs which was fun. There was only one cat in the waiting room, and it was mean and ugly. I mean literally ugly.

When I came home from the vet Kristi was there and we decided to go to Moe's for dinner. I really like Moe's, but tonight I didn't eat all of my food because I felt pretty full. We went grocery shopping afterwards and then came home. Kristi went to a friend's house for a little bit and I watched football and played guitar. I was going to work on statistics, but I am just really good at procrastinating.

I spent most of the later evening reading some pro audio forums. I was encouraged to see a bunch of people who have project studios at their houses and get a little business every now and then. I have alot more equipment I need to collect before I can start mine. But hey, I got to cross hi-hats and two snares off of my long list...that's exciting!

Tomorrow I might go to Greenville Tech in the morning to take care of some things and then I will work the rest of the day. I'm not really sure if I'll go to tech though, I might want to sleep, and sleep usually wins decisions like that. It all depends on how loud Lucy and Oliver are I guess...