It's 32 outside. It was 21 overnight.

I'm drinking half-italian, half-french roast O'Houri's.

I'm typing on a 104-key CODE.

I'm listening to Adham Shaikh over Genelecs.

I'M HOME MUTHAFUCKAS

It took approximately 3 hours to terminate 18 runs of CAT5 on one end. The rack shows up this afternoon which means I can terminate the other end, install the network and have the phone system up and running. So that's about $5k I managed to save myself. I'm in such a good mood that I'm over the fact that the dentist next door to our unit killed the sump pump again by flushing tampons, thereby filling the crawlspace with sewage. 'cuz see, we now know it was tampons. And as there are only two units that use that sewer line, and as the only people in my unit are middle-aged male contractors, we can say with 100% certainty where the blame lies. And as this is the 2nd time she's killed the sump pump in as many months, perhaps a more long-term solution will present itself to our landlord which will not come out of our triple-net.

Fired up Pro Tools for the first time in six months (thenewgreen - you'll be happy to know that "charcoal" was my test project of choice) and got three computers updating just in time for a new Eventide plugin to test. Unfortunately Avid's licensing schema has changed such that I now need them to bless me with another set of licenses but it's not like I'm in a hurry. Simply writing five hard drives to the server for backups feels so... normal.

The Swampmonster Stealth is apparently all better now that I shopvac'd the pine needle out from under the seal. It's been in the rain for four days and has yet to develop a lagoon. Not only that but I decided to kludge the headliner back up with a hot melt glue gun. Elegant? hell naw. But it isn't dripping disintegrated foam on me anymore. And in an example of "when it rains, it pours"

A WILD 10 GRAND APPEARS. Opened a letter yesterday from my aunt. Enclosed was a cashier's check. Apparently my grandma said "I don't wanna give the grandkids anythang but if you do, it's on you." As the bonds have matured and my father has settled the estate, my aunt saw fit to bestow the grandkids with a little scratch.

My first instinct was to set it aside for my kid's private school next year. My wife, however, pointed out that it could easily replace the Swampmonster Stealth. She also met with a client today who mentioned how criminally cheap Leafs are these days. So. steve. rd95. Here's the battle royale:

- keep the Swampmonster Stealth, maybe change out the stereo, and throw the money at my kid (option 1)

- Buy a Nissan Leaf for ridiculously little money.

- Buy an FR-S for not too much more. That was the one useful thing about the LA auto show - it contradicted my firmly-held notion that FR-S have no back seats.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to change out my surround controller. I bought a second one (for CHEEP) to replace the first, which has a leaky cap somewhere that keeps it from firing the first few times. If I can get them both working, I can actually build a viable Atmos 7.2.4 monitoring setup, which will make me the one Atmos house in Seattle, which I might just have to do considering I know the Atmos guy at Dolby.