What a week. There are a lot of things in this house, and I have done a little bit of everything. Swimming pool, kayaks, beach, hot tub, billiards. We have gone out to the beach a couple times (that's enough to get my fill for the next decade). We had a forecast of rain every day this week, and it only ended up raining twice. After the rain, the mosquitoes and gnats came out in full force. Yesterday we went swimming at 10:30pm and our heads were surrounded by a swarm of bugs every time we popped out of the water. That swim was short-lived.

Other notable things from this week:

• Stephen pooped in the bath tub... twice
• I am still not into taking photos, apparently. Today I have to force myself to make up for lost time
• We went to Food Lion more than once a day on average
• The bugs here are horrendous
• The wireless router in this house is not password-protected, and everyone in the neighborhood uses it. Sloooow
• I love to come in second place in Yahtzee
• Parcheesi is a horrible game of back-stabbing and betrayal. Don't play it unless you want a divorce
• Homemade ice cream sundaes are a great idea, any day of the week
• I really, really like swimming pools. The ocean? Not so much

More later? Who am I kidding?

Edit: I now realize that this sounds like a negative post. That was not my intent. I had a great time.

We're here. And it's a very nice place. Much cooler than I thought. I've already been swimming twice, kayaking. Played Mario 3 on the Wii. Just got the camera and laptop out for the first time.

Though we don't like to admit it, our lives are mostly shaped by accidents and not by our intentions. I was always surrounded by music, but I never had any interest in music until I was grounded (made to stay home and not allowed to use my own computer) for most of December 1996. (I'm not trying to paint a picture of abuse here; it was my fault). I downloaded a copy of Scream Tracker on my parents' computer (loophole) and spent most of the month writing my first song, which I still have. At the time I didn't play any instruments or understand anything about music. My father gave me a crash course in music theory--showing me the Cmaj key--on the piano at my request. Of course I didn't know at the time that it would change my life so drastically.

I never had any interest in taking photographs until I was about 21. My cousin gave me his Chameleon Largon Mega digital camera that came with his new dell. This was a completely trifling 1mp camera with fixed focal length and fixed focal distance. BUT, it was compact (smaller than a modern iPhone) and completely portable--great for a college student that used a bicycle to get around. I played with that camera for about four years, and I have only owned two cameras since then. Now I am fortunate enough to own "the super camera," and there are very few cameras on the market that I would rather own (with outlandish pricetags much higher than my Canon 40D).

Through a bizarre twist of fate and some longtime friendships of my Grandparents', I found out about an acquaintance of mine that was in need of a roommate where I was going to college. It turned out to be an excellent roommate situation, and our two years living together had a lasting, positive effect on both of us. We spent six months showing each other all of our favorite movies and music, but after that, our interests sort of merged into one. We both got heavily into American Folk Music and finding/collecting bizarre records. I taught him to use buzz and we collaborated on a lot of ambient music. That list could go on and on. We had no internet (not even dialup) and no tv (not even an antenna) for two years that we lived together, so we had very little outside influence.

I met my wife while playing L.O.R.D. via telnet in 2000. She was attending Virginia Tech at the time and I was living with my parents in Georgia. Our relationship slowly grew over AIM, until I was visiting her with more and more frequency and she moved in with me in Georgia for a year. This was all because I messaged her within L.O.R.D. and told her to stop killing my cousin, haha.

That rounds up a lot of the important things in my life, and they were all the result of accidents. My marriage and my son, however, were not the result of accidents =]

This weekend was more my speed. We took Stephen to the real pool for the first time yesterday. There was no one there despite the weather being perfect for swimming. Stephen can stand in the kiddie pool but struggles to walk. We actually spent most of the time in the regular pool, alternating between holding Stephen and swimming around for pleasure. There was shade from a tree in the late day. It was nice. By the time we got out, Stephen was dunking his face in the pool over and over and loving it. Jaime was standing in three feet of water and he kept holding his breath and bobbing into the water.

Today Stephen's Grandparents did some babysitting while Jaime and I had a mid-day date. It's nice to get babysitting in your own home. It simplifies the whole thing. We had a good 4.5 hours out of the house at a movie and lunch at Don Pablo's. Of course, during all this relaxing (never more than 3.5mi from the house), we failed to go back to the swimming pool today or go grocery shopping. Jaime's car is getting some body work done this week so I do not have a car. This means I/we have to go grocery shopping tomorrow after Jaime gets home from work. Blech.

In a month, I will be on vacation.

Song info pasted from site...

song still needs:

re-record vocals at beginning (with real lyrics)
bass
strings
[maybe] another simple beat to go over the top

Okay, I think I am finally done working on it for now. That is to say, until the next time Steve comes over here. I added a fake chorus of my own voice at the end and made endless mixing adjustments. Making music this way can be maddening. You spend the first day making loops and getting all the components to meld smoothly, and then you spend three more days making minute adjustments to seemingly insignificant settings on all your sounds and effects.

This song is just a few loops

1 short ukulele loop
1 short piano loop (to match)
5 piano samples (low piano)
1 drum loop
2 voice loops (for refrain during last half of song)

It really is that simple. Even the high piano stuff is the same piano loop played at a higher octave. All of it was recorded by me except for the drum loop. So the song wasn't very hard to construct, but most of the ambiance is created by stringing effects together and splitting the sounds up into multiple channels that can each be processed differently. This results in me looping portions of the song in headphones for hours on end while I pace around the basement floor (the paint is worn off by my computer), occasionally making changes to various settings. I always have to make sure I do not over-listen to a song during this process, lest I lose all interest in the song and it falls by the wayside.

I realize that some of the chorus at the end sounds fake. It sounds like some alien altos are singing with me. That is intentional.