Evan Valentine, Stay-at-Home Dad

There are rumors of another big snowstorm on the horizon. No one is saying how big or what portion of it is hysteria, but the current Wolfram|Alpha prediction for Manassas is snow all day Monday and Tuesday (Feb. 22nd and 23rd). I still haven't dug my car out of the snow from Feb. 6th and 9th.

We got another fish for our one-fish bowl this weekend. He is a red Betta named Monte. I took several pictures, but none are any good. I'll get one eventually. Aquarium photography is nearly impossible.

Steve (my friend) and I were watching this video last night, and it made Stephen (my son) so happy for some reason. He had a big huge smile while he rocked his head and pulled on some guitar strings. It was quite adorable.

Well, I took Scott to the Vienna Metro stop today, but only after stopping at three places first. The only notable stop was the Udvar-Hazy National Air and Space Museum, which was excellent as always. Last time I was there, the NASA wing of the museum was closed, so it was nice to be able to fully explore that section.

I have barely been able to glance at the photos from today's trip, but this one caught my eye right off. I stupidly brought my 50mm lens, so everything was automatically a close-up. There are many disadvantages to prime lenses, but the advantages generally outweigh them in my opinion. The main problem is that I typically bring the wrong lens. This is a photo of some prototypical turbine from the 60's. Scott and I did everything we set out to do. We made oil paintings, visited the museum, traded banjo-playing wisdom (he has really improved from last year; I had no wisdom to offer), and watched a few documentaries. After completing all items on our to-do list, we commented that things are not as they used to be.. we are finally grown-up. It's not like the college days. As far as the banjo goes, I have re-dedicated myself (for the fifth time) to learning the banjo the right way. I'm stuck on Mike Iverson's instructional page for clawhammer style. It seems I was setting my sights too high with my previous attempts at the Bluegrass style of banjo playing. Multi-instrumentalists typically say that the banjo is one of the easiest instruments to learn, but I disagree. Maybe it's my inability to follow instruction and practice on a regular basis. I don't know. The banjo is hard!

This is the oil painting I did yesterday. It looks slightly better in person (the camera flash kind of ruined it), but I still need to go back and lay some thicker paint on a few parts. The texture that thick oil paint leaves is part of the appeal of buying oils. This type of paint can take months to dry, so I am done for now. I painted over an old painting of mine, and believe it or not, this is a massive improvement. I actually kind of like this one, unlike what was on this canvas before.

So, now another long-term friend of mine has met my baby. He (Scott) kept saying how cute he (Stephen) is, which we never get tired of hearing. Stephen can crawl around like a champion now, and can sit up with ease (in less than 2 seconds). He is becoming a menace. Not too much of a menace... he went on a 3.5hour field trip with me and Scott today and didn't particularly act up. He had a lot of stimulation and was quite overdue for a nap. His long late-day nap is what has allowed me to write all this.

We are spending Thanksgiving at S&S' house, and driving down to Chapel Hill on Friday. It has become a tradition to meet my parents halfway the day after Thanksgiving. We barge in and take over my aunt and uncle's house in order to have a second Thanksgiving. We bought Stephen a walker specifically for this trip. The place we are going has several dogs and lots of hardwood. We'd like to keep Stephen from being trampled, and he seems to already like the walker. I already feel bad enough for my aunt/uncle; they shouldn't have to worry about their dogs trampling my baby on top of everything else.

Some Thanksgiving traditions have been established. Scott stops at my house for a few days on his way to Baltimore. We spend Thanksgiving at Jaime's parents' house. And we go to Chapel Hill to meet my family the day after. Busy, but nice. I look forward to it every year. Tomorrow I am taking Stephen down to Jaime's work so she can show off the baby. He's six months old now; it's about time.

Friday night, we went to eat at Chili's with Martha, Eric, and Brad. Our son started to be a little bit of a pain at the end, but everything turned out all right. When we got back, we all watched some bad youtube videos. I have been needing to replace our kitchen faucet for 2 years, but Eric helped me along by snapping off the faucet handle when he tried to get a glass of water.

Saturday morning, I went to the Grahams' house to take pictures of their children for a Christmas card. It was a lot of fun and I think I got a few good group shots. His kids were quite entertained by our baby, which made the job a lot easier. Stephen is a good prop.

Then I had to go drop Jaime and Stephen off at the house and pick Scott up at the airport. That went without a hitch, and it was so fast that I didn't even get charged for parking in the hourly parking lot at Dulles.

Today, Scott and I went and ran errands at four different locations (one was Total Wine and More, so that doesn't count), and we have all just been watching football all day. Within the past hour, I am getting caught up on laundry, and I cleaned out underneath the sink and started to take the faucet assembly apart. Good, busy weekend. Tomorrow, Scott and I plan to go to the Air and Space museum near Dulles, and maybe do a few abstract paintings. Good visit, good visit.

It's time for Evan to pass the hat. Steve and I need money to get our album mastered. We get a surprisingly good response to this old album when we give it out, so we thought we'd set up a system for donations. If you click "download" on the link below, it will bring up a Paypal payment screen. If you have a Paypal account, it couldn't be easier to donate seven dollars. If you do not have a Paypal account, it is still easy to purchase/download the album with a secure credit card payment. We have it set up for a minimum of $7, in case our relatives wanted to give us more as a Christmas present or something. You can stream all the tracks for free below, or visit the actual site on which it is hosted. It is an easy, convenient system. Anyway, throw us a bone! $7 for the album means a) less than 34 cents per track and b) less than ten cents per minute of audio. Also, if you like it, you can click the "share" link below and post a link to it on your Facebook/Twitter/Livejournal/What have you. Thanks in advance.

This is a set of self-produced home recordings. All 21 songs run together seamlessly to create the feeling that the listener is hearing a jam session. This album will never be released as-is except through bandcamp.com. Proceeds from downloads of "innovation avenue" will go towards the mastering of our next album, for which we will be seeking representation from record labels.

CREDITS:
Released 19 July 2009
All songs composed, arranged, performed, recorded, and produced by Evan Valentine and Steve Bower
Cover art by J. Adam Morris
Hosted by bandcamp.com
©All rights reserved

earsauce (no majuscules allowed) is a studio music project involving only Steve Bower and myself. We have focused solely on the recording of songs. We make something up, slowly record the parts in my basement (over a period of weeks or months), then forget how to play them. On to the next song. Don't look back. We have begun well over 50 songs using this method, and finished about 60% of them so far.

There are obvious drawbacks to making music this way. With two albums worth of finished songs, we have no way to play most of the music live. No way to reproduce the layers and parts with just two people on stage. So now we're going back and making stage versions of the songs (take the 'album version' and cut out the guitar/bass/vocals, and leave the rest as a fake backup band). Even still, we have to go back and re-learn most of our own parts.

My plan is to have a mastered album that we can promote sometime in the first half of 2010. That would still mean it took us five years to make one album.

I don't know how to describe the style of music--not because it is unique, but because it is so varied. Between the two of us, there are many musical influences, and we try to let them all shine through. Some stuff is electronic (my department), some stuff is folksy (both), and some of it has a tinge of rock (Steve). We also split the duties pretty evenly:

Songwriting - both
Lyrics - both
Guitar - both
Vocals - both
Bass - Steve
Hand Drums - Steve
Harmonica - Evan
Piano - both (but mostly Evan)
Banjo - both
Violin - Steve
Synthesizers - Evan
Recording Engineer - both
Production (beats, levels, etc) - Evan

At times we're really interested in recording new stuff, and at times we're not. That's the beauty of the arrangement. We're not 'on the clock' paying for studio time. No schedules. Nothing is forced. That's the way it should be. Hopefully the relaxed attitude comes through in the music, because that's what I like.

Camping trip turned out to be really good. Fortunate breaks in the weather (though we never saw the sun) and a good impromptu camp site made all of our other short-comings disappear. We kept the same fire going with wet wood and on-and-off rain for almost 40 hours, made coffee, and cooked italian sausages over the fire.

Fire Pit at the Site

We definitely did not make it to the shelter. We couldn't find the back way to get in that is "off the books." See, you're supposed to have a 3mi hike to get to the shelter, but someone knew about a place to park where you had a 1mi hike to the shelter. We just had too much stuff to hike 3mi up a mountain. The person who knew this secret location was not able to make it on the trip, so we had to wing it. Luckily we had tents and we didn't need the shelter. Because of the rainy weather, I just packed up Jaime's old Canon point-and-shoot, so I only took a few pictures. We were forced to burn a lot of old, rotten, wet wood, but it made for some cool smoke patterns in the logs. Several logs had the center rotted out, so the smoke could travel through the log and exit out of other holes that had no fire anywhere near them. We had fun with that because we are simple.

Smoking from Both Ends

I severely under-dressed the first night and only got 3-4 hours of sleep, but the second night, I was warm throughout the night and it was quite nice.

By the way, it appears that both Jaime and I have beaten our sicknesses without the baby getting sick. I guess it's true what they say:

When you have a contagious illness such as a cold, flu, or other mild virus, your baby was exposed to the illness before you even knew you were sick. Your milk will not transmit your illness to baby, but it does have antibodies in it that are specific to your illness (plus anything else you or baby have been exposed to) - they'll help prevent baby from getting sick, or if he does get sick, he'll probably not be as sick as you. -kellymom.com

Also, my wife and I currently manage the worst fantasy football team in history. It is no longer a matter of how many points we get beaten by, it's about the ratio of scores. This week we got beaten by a ratio of almost 5:2. At about 4pm yesterday we were getting beaten 10:1 (90 to 9). I also watched the Redskins lose to yet another no-win team this weekend. That's always nice.