The Summer of George

Five Alarm Glass

I spent about half of my day and most of my evening working on "Five Alarm Glass." It was one of the first songs that Scott and I worked on together - excepting a cover of Britney Spears' "Everytime," of course - and we wanted to rework it to make it fit in better with our most recent work. You can actually download an older version of the song here. It should be the first song playing. The thing is, I love that version of the song. John, our close friend and producer, worked really hard on mixing that song together, and we don't want him to hate us, but we think that what we came up with today is just as good, if not better.


Let's put it this way - there's a full-fledged chorus on this version of the song. Jenn from around the block came over and laid down about six vocal tracks for us, coupled with about two sets of vocals apiece from Scott and myself, and suddenly a simple, slightly anthemic chorus melody turns into a chorus. It sounds totally awesome, and I'm extremely proud of it. Again, if anyone has space for me to host some of these tunes to be able to put them up here, that would be awesome.

I also kept myself busy this morning with various projects associated with Annie and I buying a house! It's kind of hard to believe. We will own our own home in mid-July. We've signed the contracts, our bid's been accepted, and now we've got to get through all of the legwork. We hired a lawyer while our real-estate agent contacted the home inspector, and we also have an appointment with the bank to finalize the loan. It's all very exciting, and very nerve-wracking at the same time. The largest purchase I've made in my life was my car, which I bought off of my own mother, so it's not like I was getting completely hosed on the deal. This is way different.

Long story short: we had a real estate agent, she showed us this house that we loved, we told her we loved it, we set up another appointment to see it again and double-check some things, somebody else put a bid on it, our agent didn't have her stuff together, we didn't get the house, we dropped the agent, we got a new agent (who happened to be the guy selling the house we loved in the first place), the original bid for the house fell through, we found out that the original bid fell through, we said "We want that house!" and we got the house.

It's in Berkeley, Illinois, just near where I-290 meets I-294. It's got two bedrooms, a living room that is rather large, a kitchen, and a fully finished basement with plenty of space to put in a recording studio/office! There's a garage and a fairly decent-sized backyard. I think that we're going to be comfortable there. There's plenty of place to store our stuff. There's plenty of room to expand into over time. And, as an added bonus, it comes with this killer pool table. The lining is cream and the felt is this rust color. The basement will definitely be the spot to play poker.

I'm excited, and nervous, but as time goes on, I get more and more excited. It's a change of lifestyle, or so Annie says. It actually makes me feel like a grown-up. Very few things make me feel that way. Maybe that's because I occupy myself with the same things that 12-year-old boys occupy themselves with: video games, sports, guitar, and playing with my friends. No joke, Annie spent quite a while talking to a 12-year-old at her center about his intentions to spend his summer doing the exact same things. But he couldn't buy a house ... not even if he wanted to.

posted by The Nightmare @ 12:24 AM