Drummer's Corner of the World

Was supposed to go see the Highland Springs house again after work today, with a friend to get a second opinion on what would/could be done to update it w/out breaking the bank.

But it's raining... and raining... and raining... and we wanted to tromp around in the yard.

So now I'm hoping that tomorrow's "partly sunny" doesn't come with a side order of "partly pouring".

I'll probably do a full pros-and-cons list for these two houses in the next day or so, but I thought I'd jot down the initial impressions here...

Yesterday after work, I went and looked at a house about three miles from where I currently live. Wonderful neighborhood, close to friends, big tree-filled lots. The house is on a 5-acre spring-fed pond and the lot is just stunning. The house is a brick-and-cedar ranch built in '77, 1580 square feet, single-story. It has a gorgeous deck with nice wide steps and a landing leading down to the yard, and there's a matching dock sitting in the edge of the pond (there's even power at the dock, and lights). Downside is that the interior needs updating... primarily, a small "bonus room" off the kitchen needs to be converted into a laundry ('cause the washer and dryer are currently down about eight steps in the garage, which just doesn't work for me), and both bathrooms need to be completely gutted and redone. Also, there's no feasible way to fence the backyard for the dogs. It's towards the top of my price range, so there wouldn't be much money for updates after the purchase was done.

Today at lunch, I went and looked at another house. The neighborhood's nothing special... standard suburban block-long street with a cul-de-sac at the end. The house is 1965 square feet, built in 1991 and pretty much in move-in condition. Over time, I'd want to replace carpeting with hardwood, but what's there is certainly livable. .83 acre lot at the end of the cul-de-sac, and the house sits close to the street, so the bulk of the land is in the huge fenced backyard. Large screened porch plus a two-tier deck. The house exterior doesn't have much personality (and for some reason the master bedroom is the only one with no windows overlooking the gorgeous backyard), but the backyard says "Come hang out and play with the dogs!" The primary fencing (front sections and sides between neighboring yards) is 5-ft black chain link and seems well-installed. The back fence is along the boundary of the woods and is mostly pasture-fencing and not terribly sturdy. However, it's in the edges of the tree/scrub line and I honestly don't think my dogs would have any immediate reason to challenge it (since they won't be left outside without supervision anyway) so it would be okay for now. Eventually, I'd probably want to come just inside that treeline and finish off the chain link just to be sure it was secure. House is listing for $15k less than the one on the lake. Oh... two-story, w/ all bedrooms upstairs (which is a negative since I'm hoping this is the house that I'll retire in... master downstairs would be preferable).

I should be seeing a couple more houses tomorrow, but both of those are back out in the country, so a different set of criteria applies.

These two houses are both in established neighborhoods (so no room for the kind of development that's made my current neighborhood such a mess), both easy driving distance to work (less than nine miles in both cases, on streets w/ not horrible traffic), both close to friends and my vet.

Decisions decisions...

You know, it doesn't matter how many times I check the files, or proof the text, or double-check that I put the right CD in the envelope, there's always this vaguely scary (but mostly exciting) feeling that comes from sealing up the package to Groovehouse and handing it to the UPS guy (or, in this case, to our mailroom supervisor at work, who will hand it to the UPS guy). Are the files okay? Did I fill out all the paperwork right?

It's done... finis... "Dream of a Far Light" printed materials are being processed at Groovehouse today, and they'll have the Red Book master CD in their hot little hands tomorrow.

After many years as a QuarkXPress person, this is my first big print project done in InDesign, so now I wait for the graphics department to email and tell me all the files processed okay! *gulp*

Well, everybody's been asking, so I finally did it... I set up a MySpace Music page for Wild Mercy.

Four sample tracks from "Dream of a Far Light" are there, along with one track each from the other two CDs.

http://www.myspace.com/wildmercyband

(Edited to fix link... d'oh!)

30 years in the writing... almost two years of recording and three months of mixing... five musicians, at least three times as many instruments (we should count them all, at some point)... and Dream of a Far Light is done. The files for the printed materials went to Groovehouse today, and Rick, our amazing engineer, is burning the red book master disk right now, after putting the final touches on it this evening, so it'll go off to Groovehouse tomorrow.

Wheeeee!!

When I'm on the computer in the evening, I'm usually surrounded by cats... one or two on each side, usually, snuggled up against me and occasionally resting a chin on the laptop.

A few minutes ago, I set the laptop over on the sofa for a few minutes, with Gorby curled up on my left side facing me.

Izzie took advantage of the empty spot and crawled into my lap... facing right.

This left Izzie's tail tip just barely brushing Gorby's face, causing her to twitch in annoyance.

Swish...

Twitch...

Swish...

Twitch...

Swish...

Nibble...

Annoyed Swish...

CHOMP!!

Zoooooooom!

Ow. I think she left claw marks when she went leaping out of my lap.

I'm still not in the studio tonight, but our engineer apparently had a sleepless night last night, so he got the tracks all laid out and levels set and burned a test master so I've got something to listen to while he and Barry and Sally are finalizing the transition timing for the last half of the project.

I had to crawl around in the floor and figure out what the cats had done to unplug the right-hand main speaker in the livingroom... since the center channel is dominant when I'm watching TV, I hadn't noticed the missing right speaker 'til I put the CD on and went "Hmmm... that's a bit lopsided."

It's funny... some of the tracks that weren't my favorites in the beginning have turned into my favorites over the course of the project. I knew it was happening with some ("Your Cosmos, Cavalier" was my nemesis... it took me forever to find a harmony part, but once I could quit fighting it I really liked the song!), but others just kinda snuck up on me... I find myself listening to "Doomsday Blues" and going "Oooooh... that's _sweet_!"

Damn this sounds good...

Almost there!

Barry and Sally are off to the studio to record one last drum track and mix the last two tracks for Dream of a Far Light. After being there for all the mixing sessions to date, I have to miss this one because a persistent case of what I thought was allergic bronchitis turned out not to be allergic, and I really don't want to risk inflicting this on my bandmates.

So I'm sitting at home and missing the last mixing session. Mixing is one of my favorite parts of the process, so I'm bummed.

Stupid bronchitis.

Downsides of today... I'm sick (my annual all-spring-long case of allergic bronchitis, with bonus head cold), and I just got back from looking at houses w/ my agent and none of them were anything that made me jump up and down wanting to make an offer.

Upsides of today... it's an absolutely gorgeous bright sunny day, and I hung my lovely copper and beach glass wind chimes on the corner of the front porch, where they get just the right amount of breeze. Windows are open, airing out the house. Cats are snuggly. Dogs are silly. Salad from Moe's was just spicy enough that I could actually taste it (yay for something tasting reasonably normal through the stuffy head).

( houses, houses, houses... )

This week, we'll go see the inside of a house that's very near several friends (and my veterinarian's office!) and has a huge already-fenced backyard, and we'll try yet again to go see inside the cool-looking farmhouse out from Lapel.

So, I met w/ my real estate agent this morning and we did all the paperwork to make the offer on the river house. I spent a couple of hours up there last night looking around again, to make sure it was still the right house. Then, before I was even home from doing the paperwork this morning, my agent calls... the listing agent, who's been a complete pain in the ass to deal with through all of this, but who had been asked repeatedly to let my agent know if there was any activity on the house, just told her (when she faxed over my offer) that they accepted an offer on the house yesterday.

This guy has blocked us at every opportunity. I would have made an offer earlier, but he said the bank "wouldn't accept it with the closing date that far out". I also could have made the offer yesterday morning first thing (including a copy of the Intent to Close letter from the developer buying my current house), if he'd bothered to either tell Hariette that he had an offer in play or if he'd updated the MLS listing, which still shows the house in Active status.

But no. He continued to be a lazy ass who didn't do his job, didn't return phone calls, didn't follow through, and now because of him, I've lost my shot at that house. By one lousy day. And the bank lost money, because I thought the house was a good deal before they dropped the listing price by $20k, so I would have happily countered back up above list if I'd known I needed to be in a bidding war. Common courtesy... apparently not so common any more.

So now the clock is ticking towards when I have to be out of this house, and I'm starting the search over from scratch.

*sigh*