Today is Wednesday January 8th 2008.

I haven't done an update in over a year! Wow. It's been a busy year. Lots to tell you about.

First of all, we bought a house! As unbelievable as it may sound, we got financed. It's a real "fixer upper", but the location is heaven. We have two ponds (one with a diving board), an apple orchard and 5 acres all on a ridge in Vermont just a mile from Burke Mountain Ski Area.

The fact that we were approved for the loan was miraculous, but the real strange stuff occurred when we needed the down payment. We had to have $7000 down. Keep in mind that we feel lucky when we have $100 to spend so $7k was out of the question. On the day that we got approved and were ready to proceed, I got a call out of the blue from a guy in South Carolina. He wanted to buy a domain name that I owned. The domain was left to me by a friend when he died. I had kept the domain registered and up, but never really did anything with it. This man paid me $7k for the domain. This is like unheard of. My wife I nearly fell over, but it made us feel like we are really supposed to be in this house. What a wonderful thing. The house is about 3000 sq ft. We are expecting to go through 12 to 15 cords of wood to heat this year. I am insulating and plugging holes as quickly as I can. The house was built in 1850 so it's going to need alot of work. We moved in June 2007.

I have a really nice sounding studio setup in our house. When I say "really nice" I mean gear wise. The room is noisy and in the middle of everything downstairs. When I record, I have to do it while the kids are at school which cuts into my working time. I am hopeful that we will win the lottery and I will be able to build a new out building with a barn for the goats and a studio upstairs. Oh yea, we have goats again for the first time since we left Iowa.

In an effort to make a little money, I wrote a recording guide. Its a simple little 14 page booklet in which I list my equipment and software. I also talk about what I have learned about studio recording in the last 20 years. I talk about how I get my acoustic guitar sounds and how to configure and connect it all. I include a bonus CD that has the drum sounds I use, a sample recording session of "Mae Pyle" and some other cools stuff. I am selling it on Ebay and here on this page. Again, if it is interesting to you, now is the time to buy!

My brother and I are hoping to do a PodCast soon. Something tech and geeky. It will be fun and entertaining too.

Thats the news from the Davis Family Chaos. I will attempt to be more in touch via these newsletters this year.

Val

Val conf