Wade Alin's Blog

Adat.

2008-03-09T06:31:00.000-07:00

I hate this.

Catherine and I, as our friends may have already noticed, have both been sick most of the winter. It’s been a rough winter. We, like many people in Chicago this year, have been locked inside since like early November. It’s 22 right now. It’s the middle of March. I was lucky enough to get hired to do a full U.S. tour in Nov/Dec – half of which was even colder than Chicago but the other half was in warm, sunny California, Texas, and Florida. The only real good news this winter is – after 20+ months of total sleep deprivation – Ella is becoming a pretty good sleeper. She sleeps at least 5-6 uninterrupted hours every night. In theory, this lets us return to feeling almost human. But we have another problem.

Our 15 year old cat, Adat, has always been a little crazy. He likes to roam the apartment and meow at himself in the middle of the night. He used to bother the other cats doing this and they ultimately started to hunt him down in the middle of the night. Lots of 2 a.m. cat fights later, he finally calmed down. But Korg and Neuman have both died in the last couple years and we’re left with only Adat. And he’s back to his bad habits. And we haven’t slept properly for a year and a half. You can probably see where I’m going with this. This week he’s woken us up at 2-3 a.m. every morning. He’s woken Ella up. Catherine has been sick for over a week. Locking him in a room doesn’t work, he’s just too fucking loud. We can’t take it. We’re at the point that we’re thinking of taking our 15 year old, thyroid medicated pet to a shelter. I don’t feel like we have any other choice. So that’s why I’m writing this blog. In hopes that someone out there is crazy enough or knows someone crazy enough to want our cat. He doesn’t do the meowing thing with other cats around, he’s a sweet cat, overall. Even if you know a good shelter, anything you can think of to help our situation, please contact me.

hey

2008-02-25T10:49:00.000-08:00

After getting all frustrated last week - seems I've turned a corner. Catherine went out to her parents on Saturday leaving me here to work, uninterrupted. I got a ton of work done, incuding these new outlets in the dining room!

I only have 1 more wall to tear into, then the destruction part is all done for now. I have a few more things to sand but we should be drywall dust free by the end of the month!!

some apt. pics

2008-02-23T18:15:00.000-08:00

2008-02-23T15:28:00.000-08:00

I hit a wall yesterday. Tired of living in drywall. Tired of putting 30% in to fixing our place up, 30% into caring for Ella, 30% into work, and 10% into my marriage. I love our place, if we’d bought something other than a fixer upper, I’d be bored and frustrated with the limitations.. Not to mention, Catherine hated everything new we looked at. Boring places for boring people. But sometimes having to tear out 2 inches of plaster to put in an outlet is just crazy. It takes me 2 days to do what I could normally do in 5 minutes. And the condition of some of the drywall in here is just begging to be torn down and replaced. Catherine and I are fantasizing about taking the whole family to Australia to see our friend Chris (and his FIVE kids) the winter after next and letting a good contractor just tear this place to the ground and start over. A full rehab. But those are dreams. For now, we’re doing what we can afford and what we can manage.

I’m so looking forward to spring. Ella and I have reached a near intolerable state of stir crazy. We need the park. The sun. The light. Next winter we’re going to fucking Sea World. If anyone wants to get us a Xmas present next year, make it 3 tickets to Sea World. We’re still planning a trip out to the Northwest this summer, and I’ve got a California vacation coming up in April (a job doing sound for Stromkern in San Francisco and Los Angeles.)

Work has been dreadfully slow for me lately. However, I’m putting together something for a company in L.A. that could lead to me scoring film trailers. That would be an absolute dream, a culmination of every talent I have and every skill I’ve developed over the years. I’m crossing my fingers. I’ve always, always said I’d be doing very well financially at the age of 40. It’s not a goal, but rather a gut feeling.

iBroke

2008-02-21T06:37:00.000-08:00

Ella broke my iPod. It happens, she's a little moster roaming around our apartment looking for stuff to break.

I was able to fix it this morning, thanks to this thread!

more ella

2008-02-21T06:29:00.001-08:00

let there be light!

2008-02-20T10:30:00.000-08:00

I spent yesterday, and I mean all day yesterday, wiring this light. It was an experience - drilling holes in studs, cutting through layers and layers of plaster, and routing wires inside the wall. I'm sure it's not a proper tool, but a digital camera can really come in handy when you can't see what you're doing.

So this is the extent of what we're doing in the kitchen. Everything else will be simply cosmetic - painting, adding a little island, those sorts of things.

Catherine's Dad has been helping us with some of the hardcore stuff . . fixing water pipes, leveling walls, and we've realized, we don't really know what we want to do with this space yet. We've only lived here for 4 weeks and we've been covered in drywall dust the entire time. So we're backing off. I can do all of the little stuff. We've decided to come up with a "5 year plan" for the space. Right now that is not much more than adding more outlets, painting, and tolerating the imperfections. We'll deal with the major issues when we come to them, there's no reason for us to be all stressed out. We just moved in. We're in a great location, we have a big space to work with, and 2 out of 3 ain't bad. Atleast we weren't dumb enough to spend $450k on the generic new condos that sit next door to us. Yuck!

the downfall

2008-02-14T08:34:00.001-08:00

let the healing begin!

2008-02-12T09:32:00.002-08:00

I'm working on replacing the warped out drywall in our hallway this afternoon. I'm not a professional at this by any means, not really good at it at all. But I've managed to make what was really bothering us not bother us anymore.

It's so warm in here today I'm actually breaking a sweat. It was too warm for Ella to sleep at one point last night. Why, you ask? Or how? First off, I bought some serious space heaters. Um, 4 of them. I couldn't help it, they were 75% off at Home Depot and for some reason I figure you can never have enough space heaters. Also, it's 20 outside today. Once the outside temperature gets above 15 - our furnace seems to work just fine. It's 70 in here right now and the heat isn't even on.

brrrrrrrrrrrr

2008-02-11T08:19:00.000-08:00

it's 1 outside today. it's 57 inside. our furnace is either broken, breaking, or just very underpowered. need i say more? it's freezing in here.

our condo sucks!

2008-02-07T08:51:00.001-08:00

Ha, I'm just kidding, we love it. In the way one loves an old broken down car. Here's is a lovely photo of our wall torn apart and the old mint green colored plaster underneath. The drywall was so warped out that it was overlapping with the door frame. Very difficult to paint, very difficult to look at every day. As was our choice of paints. It was a pretty awesome chocolate/espresso color but kind of hard to live with everyday. So we're fixing the warped drywall and repainting this wall.

This is an interesting one. The electical box is set in the plaster so it doesn't really go out all the way to the drywall layer. The solution? Well, we're going to put in a new box that does. But the old solution (the one our rehabbers used) was to apply a 1/2 inch layer of caulk to extend the box outward. Awesome.

We have a nice marble counter in our kitchen. It has a nice marble backsplash. For some reason, the backsplash wasn't really set to the wall. It kept coming loose so I decided to investigate. the reason it won't set to the wall is because THERE'S A BIG HOLE IN THE WALL BEHIND IT! Wow, do you think it would have been so hard to just fix it?

Luckily, I don't have any pictures of our shower. I put in a new shower head yesterday which involved replacing the flange and the whole configuration. We figured out the only thing keeping the actual water pipe in place was - you guessed it, caulk. So now there's a big hole in the shower. We're going to try to clamp the pipe to something, anything.

I'm gonna be busy and we're calling in the big guns (Catherine's Dad) for this as well.

On the plus side, I bought a Dyson for cheap off eBay!!

2008-02-05T03:48:00.001-08:00

When I was much younger I was a very gifted athlete. Always first or second in anything track related, an excellent basketball player, an all star caliber (at the high school level) pitcher. My first interest in going to college, which never actually happened, was to ultimately become a statistician. I liked pure, undeniable results. I still do.

I just read some idiots comment about the Chemlab live sound. I got a few comments on the tour as well. From idiots. The first time I ever did sound for Iris - I literally had some huge guy in the booth telling me what to do and asking what different buttons did so he could fix it for me. Security had to take him away. I've gotten advice from other sound men, fans of bands, relatives of bands, drunks walking by the club, rodents in the alley. None of these people have any idea what the fuck they're talking about. HOWEVER, good sound is subjective. So it's a party.

Music is subjective. Art is subjective. Web design is subjective. Fucking is subjective (unless your goal is to have children - that's more of a pass/fail situation.) My point - the things I was involved with as a kid were quite the opposite. If I scored 30 points in a ballgame . .well, you can't really argue whether or not I scored 30 points. And at this phase in my career, I sometimes long for the inargueable truth to resurface, if only for a little while.

2008-02-04T07:26:00.001-08:00

We've now been here for 2+ weeks. Of all the places we've lived, this is absolutely the quietest neighborhood we've seen in Chicago. Our street dead ends into a school with police cameras all over the place. It's kind of like the eye of a tornado in that regard. Last night Catherine noticed that there is a huge, old tree right in front of Ella's window. Nice. Not something we noticed in the dead of winter, but that'll be really nice next spring. We have a ton of light in here, more than any other place we've lived. I've already bought some plants and flower boxes aren't far behind.

We are really, really happy that we bought into an older building. Not everyone gets that - and a lot of the things wrong with this place would be non-issues with new construction but neither Catherine or myself can stand all of the new construction condos around here. They're architectural voids. Amazingly uninteresting, complete with all of the easy access excess we don't really want to be a part of. I think the greatest lesson we learned from living in New York was that people don't need near as much as they take when it comes to well, everything. We admired the way people lived with so much less space and pushed themselves to be creative instead of lazy. While our new place is certainly big enough, it does inspire that kind of creativity.

The first major project we have in this place . . we have a window in the bathroom. A wood frame window that gets wet everytime we shower. The paint is already peeling off. There are a lot of things wrong with the bathroom. It's drywall over lathe with no waterproof anything anywhere in site. To be short, it's a tear down. We're already considering the cost of just redoing the entire bathroom. Stay tuned . .

2008-02-02T04:18:00.000-08:00

I'm in the middle of tearing up some bothersome areas of our apartment, resisting the urge to get a 20k loan, tear all of the walls down, and remodel the entire place. I think construction has become my new hobby. If not my new hobby, certainly my new expense.

2008-01-30T08:49:00.001-08:00

handles on our kitchen cabinets and a new water heater. it's near bliss. this is what our lives have been reduced to.

just thinking . .

2008-01-24T10:44:00.001-08:00

This morning I was listening to a story about the Islamist/Feminist movement and how some women are turning to the more radical side of Islam. What’s more interesting is that there are apparently radical Islamic elementary schools that begin teachings at the age of 5 through 13. It’s scary the way faith and a certain way of thinking can be imposed upon people. That got me to thinking, after recently seeing a really embarrassing (for him) interview with Tom Cruise about Scientology – is this just human nature? Well off (especially compared to those in some Middle Eastern countries) average white people actually seek out these same brainwashing techniques to be administered upon them, by their own free will. Some people even pay to be told how to think, how to approach conflict, how to feel a part of something greater. I’m sure they don’t see it the same way and think they’re improving themselves and the world around them. But what do radical Islamist think? They're certainly not made of pure evil. I’m sure they aim to improve themselves as people, to further their cause, and ultimately make the world into the image of what they believe is right. It’s practically one in the same. It’s a very big reason, as harmless as some people think it may be to partake in self help groups, semi-cults, etc. that I’ve opted to form my own opinions, my own beliefs, and if I struggle at something in life – I try to work my way out of it, on my own. This is just a train of thought I’m having. The moral to my train of thought? Be your own person.

photos from the move, 02

2008-01-21T15:05:00.001-08:00

photos from the move, 01

2008-01-21T15:03:00.001-08:00

2008-01-20T08:50:00.000-08:00

today's list -

4 take offs
8 registers (4x10)
metal and duct tape
duct screws
insulation blanket for water heater

well, it's official, i'm a homeowner. the move was flawless, the movers were great, we came in under our expected cost and spent the rest on pizza @ Humboldt Pie, a cute little cafe up the block.

it's cold. no, let me rephrase that, it's really really super fucking cold. 5 below this morning, the wind chill is negative 30. it's a not so much needed test on our furnace. the plus side - we've found every source of cold air in this new place. the downside - there are many of them. we can't seem to get it above 52 in here at night, regardless of what we do. it's going to be a rough winter. here's where my newfound homeowner mentality comes in - it's not our only winder here. we'll take care of all these silly air leaks, look into a more efficient furnace, undo some of the ukrainian magic on our ducting system - we will have this fixed up one way or another. i'm trying to convince catherine that exposed ducts aren't just trendy, but perfectly logical. anyway, we've got blankets- and we've got time.

2008-01-15T15:07:00.000-08:00

If you are one of many people thinking "gosh, Wade hasn't returned my email" then have a look at just a small part of my life. This is the current state of our new place. We move in 3 days. We're moving without a babysitter to help with Ella. I'm working on a job right now. Catherine has a huge court case tomorrow. We'll talk to you all later.

Quite a weekend.

2008-01-06T19:10:00.001-08:00

I feel like a construction worker. An out of shape, overworked construction worker with a screaming little girl and a headache. It was a very busy weekend. I spent the majority of it at our new condo, patching drywall, leveling heavy appliances, removing caulking (which seems to be the most plentiful resource of the Ukraine) and destroying things with my new Dremel. I have a ways to go, but it was a good start. I’ll be spending both of my non-Ella days there this week. Ahhhh, who am I kidding? It’s really exciting to finally have my own place.

Iowa

2008-01-03T16:18:00.000-08:00

Hillary wins best ad today - I'm still partial to Barack Obama. Can't help it. He's like Kaa in the Jungle Book. Puts me in a trance and shit.

happy new year!

2008-01-01T06:30:00.001-08:00

2007 has come and gone. It was, by far, the blurriest year of my life. On this very day last year I bought 2 new domains. Along with these domains came big plans, new ideas, and a renewed determination. What came out of it was a lot of time spent running in circles, taking care of my girls, and very little else. Sure, I did another Atomica album, produced records by SMP, Cylab, and iScintilla. I did a tour with Chemlab. But in comparison to my original goals . . You know, it comes down to this, If you can't take 3 years off to watch your little girl grow up, you probably shouldn't have a kid. I'm lucky to be able to watch her grow up myself instead of having someone do it for me. So this year, instead of predicting all kinds of Wade style productivity, I'm going to sit back and do my thing. If that means 5 new albums, so be it. If it means nothing at all, so be it. I'll take one year of my life where I don't dictate the process by force of will, and just let things happen like - well, I guess like a lot of people in this world do. I'm goalless. But only for a year. If you know me at all, you know that's impossible, but my goals are minimal and flexible, how about that.

It's a wonderful . . .

2007-12-30T17:19:00.000-08:00

I just manned up and bought a TV! It's actually more of a child deterrent than anything else. I've been letting Ella watch movies on both of my computers and it's gotten to the point where I can't even check my email, let alone work on music, without some serious drama taking place. She's 19 months in a couple days and is, at this age, the epitome of impatient. So I guess, technically, she talked Daddy into buying her a television. Shhh, don't tell her I'm soft like that.

So - as far a tech specs - I got a 32" Sony HD Bravia flatscreen and a Sony upconversion DVD player. They're both really nice, I felt like I was shoplifting. But I've had a great year and haven't had my usual work related spending spree. My studio is actually in pretty good shape for the first time in - well, ever. But there are no major upgrades I need to do and that's a first in my world. Next year is a different story, but I've already made that worth it with some of the projects I have lined up.

In celebration of our purchase, Catherine and I (Ella willing) are going to curl up on the sofa and watch "It's a Wonderful Life" tomorrow night. I can't think of a better way to spend New Years Eve.