Weekend Update

Today's title was inspired by the recent SNL retrospective! So funny!

It's been a busy weekend of small and large accomplishments, so I thought I'd do a quick summary here.

I've been invited to join the Christian DIVAs network. I know! Of course I'm a Christian diva! But in this case, DIVAs stands for Devoted Inspired Victorious Artists. This group is by-invitation only, and provides opportunities for fellowship and promotion. They have some great artists, and I'm really thankful for the opportunity.

I'm on the hunt for a producer for my CD. I really want to start recording this summer, with a release date before Christmas. I want the music to be rooted in Southern Gospel, with influences of jazz and big band. As an indie project, the producer will be a key element. On Thursday, we met with Aaron Minick, who worked on Allison Durham Speer's latest project. My meeting went well, but we still need to figure out all our options. Even though our budget is small by industry standards, it's still a lot of money for us, so we want to be wise with our choices. If you can pray for us in this process, we would really appreciate it.

But the big drama this week was the amp. Gerald is working hard to have his first CD ready within the next week or so. It's all acoustic versions of his own songs, and he's even doing all the recording himself (in our bathroom studio!) He wanted an amp to add different sounds to a few songs, and he's been searching for weeks for the right one. Well, last weekend, he found the perfect amp and ordered it. The large box arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and the excitement was palpable. We dragged the box up to Gerald's writing room, opened the cardboard top, pulled out the heavy piece, and heard the sounds of ... tinkling? Yes, little glass and metal bits tinkling around inside the amp! The speaker had completely smashed out of it's place and was floating around inside the casing of the amp. Our hearts sank! Needless to say, it was not a good day.

Friday, we declared official Amp Day. We made a list of stores, grabbed a mango sweet tea for the road, and started the new search. But it really didn't take long. In the first store, Gerald saw all 3 amps that had made his short list. He got to try them all with his T5. Because he had done so much research, he noticed that 2 of the amps seemed overpriced. He questioned the prices, the staff double-checked, and dropped the prices accordingly.

Long-story-somewhat-short, we walked out with the perfect amp at a great price. It sounds incredible, and will give Gerald the final technical tool he needs to complete the CD.

As I'm writing this, I'm watching the Dove awards ceremony that we attended just a few weeks ago. I'm revamping the calender for our upcoming tour of Southern Ontario. I'm listening to Gerald co-writing upstairs. And I'm planning my songs for tonight's show. I feel so many things swirling around me, so many plans and so much energy, and I just want to be calm and focused, and enjoy every minute of it.