its been a long time...

Because some people (in this house) are so well-behaved at updating their blogs, I figured I should revisit mine.

So, what HAVE I been up to?

I spent last weekend winterizing the homestead. We had an energy auditor come in and take some fancy IR images. You could actually see our electrical junction boxes in the attic, so that's where I started. I spent more than 3 hours in a tiny crawlspace sprayfoaming every junction box in the attic. I was so sore that I couldn't stand up straight the rest of the day. I did some rerouting of our cold air intake, and then we went out to eat.

We love this neighborhood joint, cafe' maude. They have jazz on saturdays, so we gave a call and asked for a reservation. They said that they didn't need to take our names down, "We'll take care of you". We get there... and they tell us its a 45 minute wait. We just turned around and walked. Might be awhile before we go back. We ended up at the Blackbird. No live jazz, but the jambalaya was damn good.

In coffee news. I've returned to sweet marias for the bulk of my purchases. I was pretty disappointed by some of the offerings that were cupped in the high 80s, low 90s on the gcbc. That and their prices are not really that much of a deal. It's really been taken over my commercial interests. About the only guy I'd buy from anymore is hanannon, and he hasn't had anything lately. I will say that the doto terrazu that I got last year was phenomenal. Anyhow, for the same amount of money I can buy from SM's.

In stereo news:

My decca went in to soundsmiths for the el cheapo retip. The first week of June. They won't even email as to when I can expect it back. Not really that impressed with their service thus far. We'll see how it plays when it comes back.

I was given an Ortofon RS 212. Yeah. Given. Anyhow, I sent the gent a pair of nice output trannies from a sony R2R that he'll put to use. The RS 212 had some bearing issues, and the wiring was spotty. I ponied up for j7s audioorigami service, and just got it back. Hopefully I can get that mounted soon. I thought I had a tonearm cable lying about, but forgot that I had sold it. Guess I'll be needing one of those....

The headshell mounting is going to come in handy, since I purchased a large portion of the cartridges from J. Gordon Holt estate. Three Deccas, including a brandspanking new London Decca Gold (export version). It's mounted on the AR XB for now, and it's magic. The soundstage and dynamics are second to none. The Lyra is packed up and for sale. The AT 15Sa is mounted on the SP 10, until that arm sells. I need to make some changes, and having the ability to switch sources is mandatory.

The Proac 2.5 clones have been playing music for a couple of months. They were a little constricted at first, but after playing with the stuffing and a week or so of moving them around in the room and kaboom. Sounding VERY nice. The juice is being provided by an audiosector gainclone.

well, that's all for now. hopefully I can keep this up