A few things have happened in the past couple of months that could be considered "life changing" to a degree. Probably the biggest event was the burglary that happened at our house back on March 13th. We had this false sense of security that an alarm system would keep us safe. But the perps had obviously been casing all the houses on our block and in our neighborhood, because K & Brenna had left to pick up Livie from preschool and headed right back. They were gone for 15-20 minutes. When they returned, the alarm was beeping and the house was ransacked. All visible electronic devices were taken, but thankfully not my external drive with virtually all of our digital photos. K ran next door to our neighbor's house (he is somewhat older and hard of hearing so did not see what was taking place) and called 911. By then our neighbor on the other side of our house's alarm had tripped off, too, so the cops were heading their way. But it took 5-10 more minutes. See, this is also what the perps know: an alarm system is only as good as the police response time. And OPD is severely understaffed. It seems our society's zeal for "lower taxes" strikes again. Oh well, I guess the real taxation comes by way of private insurance, which thankfully was there for us to replace our (replaceable) items.
Two things cascaded from that event. The first is a brand new iMac which I am now devoting time to building a proper DAW studio once and for all. I was planning on getting Logic and building off of that, but then a friend of the family, Scott Ghene, who was visiting from Rochester, floored me with what was to come next. He was at guitar center and wanted to get me ProTools, so he showed up with Protools MP Fastrack Ultra the next day. This will help me get up to speed more quickly and start taking on more music. It has been tough since our house doesn't have enough room for me to set up all of my old (antiquated, but not vintage) analog gear...so I've sort of been lying in wait. And, it's time to wake up. Huge shoutout and thanks to Scott!
The second event was much bigger (for me): We got a dog. I was the firewall between the girls' desire to have one and the reality of us actually getting one. But the burglary breached that firewall in a big way. So we took our time to find the right rescue dog. We wanted one that was house-broken, good with kids, and also somewhat menacing looking. We found him through Coppers Dream Rescue. His name was Amos, but that name is unacceptable. So we began thinking...what would be a good name that sounded somewhat like Amos? Seamus!
And here he is.
Here are some more photos.