The morning was taken up doing a little chasing around with Teresa, mostly getting moving boxes. We grabbed a pizza and finalized plans for the big move next week. No word from Wallace but that white-beard guy who asked about him walks past now almost every day. This area is becoming a much more desirable address as the economy continues to sink below sea level.The real estate market is experiencing a rebound, but that is all it is. What’s happening is the people who held back are starting to pick up foreclosed properties at around 25 cents on the dollar. This gives the artificial impression that sales are going up. Another side-effect is buyers competing for these foreclosed properties are sometimes causing them to bid over the asking price.
For example, a property listed at $104,000 sold for $108,000. Before you jump for joy, the same property was listed at $410,000 last year. Good, we’ll need a series of these false readings to squeeze out all the excess cash. This first round of bottom-feeding speculators are no smarter than the ones before them. The housing market is nowhere near rock bottom yet.
Arnel called for a progress report. We’ve called a meeting shortly to co-ordinate song lists and do the upgrades with Cakewalk. Some tunes are going to have to have lyrics plugged in and that is my department. I’ve shown him what I’ve done and we will exchange all midi files we have with lyrics, sort of like both of us having a full off-site backup copy. In the future if either of us is due to drop by for a jam session, this will ensure none of the music we have rehearsed together will play earlier that gig.
Jim also called. He’s got some surplus microphones to donate for my show. Remember that I never had any use for good microphones until quite recently. In fact, the ones I have are old cardoids I saved from being thrown out. Everything Jim uses is quality so they will be top of the line. As well, I got the name of that midget PA system Jim uses and he confirms it worked superbly for a Karaoke show they did at the Rip Tide two weeks ago. The brand name is “Mackie”, which I haven’t heard of in decades.
Between us, we feel we are duplicating a lot of effort. We have taken aim on this problem. Take the midi music, for instance. Arnel will choose tunes that have the lyrics where I will choose the same tunes for how realistic the music sounds and those often lack lyrics. Jim uses any material he wants. By coordinating matters, Arnel will be improving the sounds, and I will learn to inject the lyrics. While I’m at it, I’m going to take another look at midi programming because some Karaoke versions are plain wrong. Results from this are still months down the line.
The Hippie has flown into a “towering rage” over passages in this blog. In a public place he yelled that I had “no friends”. Strange, considering he was alone and I was with a date. You know how these purported New Age addicts are for twisting facts around backward. I will extend the Hippie my standard offer to change or remove any words in this blog that are not absolute truth, provided you prove in writing which words are not correct.
