Not technically IN Eureka, but still

Pete climbed El Cap again.

Things are good

Seriously. Right now, birds are literally chirping right outside the window.

I will add that this morning I lost my two favorite discs on the drive of Hole 5 at Coopers. Frustration, thy name is holeside creek. Even that isn't bumming me out.

Gourmet Sonique

Something in this photo is new....hmm....what is it.....

Just got new studio speakers (Monitors, as they're called when they start getting expensive). They look so innocent, yes?

They are Behringer Truth 2030's, and honestly, are on the low end of studio monitors. But the Huck Flint crew asked for mixing help, and how can one do that without good monitors? Exactly. Splurge!

You should come over to my house and bring your favorite CD's. Preferably some hi-fi stuff. You don't realize how much these artists actually put into a recording, knowing full-well only obsessive and freakish hi-fi nerds will ever understand.

With mixing, the devil's in the details. The stuff you hear on good monitors are the details that double the number of hours you'd normally spend mixing. Studio engineers fight over this stuff. The kiss of the pedal hitting the kick-drum skin. Amp-hiss artifacts from the electric guitars. The length of the delay on the backup vocals. And reverb trails, reverb trails, reverb trails. Stereo reverb trails, pre-master mono reverb trails, post-effects loop but pre-compression reverb trails.

The other night, Shawn, Kristen, Sara, and me were all sitting here going through Pink Floyd, Gillian Welch, Metallica, Fiona Apple, you name it. It all sounds better. And with more reverb.

Ok. So, you come over to my house and we will enjoy music like a high-schooler from the 70's. On the hi-fi. It's on.

Babe against the Machine

If only she didn't look so funny when she is about to go all Samuel Jackson....

I Saw Violence

When running through Coopers early Friday morning, I saw three people who were breaking camp. Two guys in their late 20's, one girl in her late teens (maybe). One guy was chasing her, yelling how he was going to beat her ass. "You don't want the knife!", he said.

I had my Ipod on and ran by. I stopped after a few seconds and asked the second homeless guy if the first two were going to be ok. He said they'd be fine, but she was screaming hysterically. I ran back by them, she was on the ground, missing a shoe. He was hovering over her. This other guy who was there heard the ruckus. We knoced on someone's door, borrowed a phone, called the cops. They came too late to find anybody.

In the end, doing the technical right thing (calling the cops and not jumping in) didn't really feel right.

"I should probably hang up"

Sometimes, a screaming baby can be very convenient when you don't want to talk to someone on the phone. Sometimes, not.

Good Dog.

Snoop and Modern Lullabyes

I'm techincally wrong. I've been corrected. I've been saying that Sasha is a month old, almost. When, techincally, she's at four weeks. So be it.

It's been a busy several weeks. Photos from Chris's wedding, NYE in Lodi, and Tania's visit will surely be posted. All was fun.

In the meantime, though, we're dialing the kid in. Guess what just put her to sleep? No, not rainforest music. Not singing. Not Guitar playing.

The muthafuckin' Chronic. Snoop, Dre, DOC, all "bumpin' like a mothafucka ready ta get my swerve on." That's what just put Sasha to sleep.

So, suffice to say, parenthood has been slightly different than expected. It's probably like everything else, in that the mainstream (aka Pink Plastic stuff from Target)usually sucks. Music, parenthood, clothes, whatever. You start digging, though, and you start finding the good stuff.

(Like this book "Crawling", by Elisha Cooper. Highly recommended.)

I guess the overarching theme right now is discovering how to do this with style. It's dramatic, but not overly sentimental. It's serious, but fun. It's work, but manageable. You have to hold her head up, but you can still pose her like she's swinging a punch at a friend's baby.

New Years in Lodi

Chris and Kim's Ceremony

All this junk

So it's Christmas. We have acquired more "Baby's First Christmas" stuff than I knew existed. Some of it, we bought. The rest, gifts. I got a "#1 Dad" shirt.

Better make the most of it today. Honestly, we went into this with the three "R"'s in mind.

On that note, though, young parents are great at recylcling. Curtis and Julie just dropped off a bunch of stuff their three-month old outgrew. Guess what Scott and Alison's unborn is getting in February?

Curtis also burned a "Trees rustling with Heartbeat" CD that seems, so far, to induce trancelike silence in Sasha. Awesome. We haven't found any silver bullets yet, but this sounds promising. Any tips?

Also, Lila taught me a two-step move that quiets babies. Lila said she used to be a nanny.

She agreed that "nanny" wasn't the preferred nomenclature. "Instead of 'nanny', we said I was Tess's 'best friend'. We're still 'friends' now, just without the paycheck."

My mom checked in, she's working in the delivery ward at the county hospital in the Bay Area. She works every Christmas, so other nurses can be home.

The day is young and they've already had a family name their son "Jesus". It happens every year. They take bets on what the final count will be.

A friend says that Jesus probably wasn't born today, much less in the year "0". "Shepards weren't tending sheep in December. For real." He surmised it didn't matter anyway, because it's not so much a birthday holiday.

One Week old