Mike Jutan's World: Coffee, Audio Mixer, the Dave Matthews guitar, Party

Yesterday was actually pretty busy. I started off at about 8am and headed to the Walk-In clinic to get a prescription updated. This was my first time dealing with the USA Health Care system and Michael Moore was right - literally the first or second thing the secretary asked everyone was "Do you have your Health Insurance with you?" Wow. I guess it's the same at home in Canada, "Do you have your Health Card with you?" except that EVERY SINGLE PERSON gets a Health Card. Crazyness.

Anyway it wasn't too much of a wait, just like an hour and a half, and I got to have breakfast at the famous hippie hangout "The Red Victorian" on Haight St in San Francisco for breakfast. There were hot hippie waitresses there, so that's always an added bonus!! :)

Anyhoo, after that I got my prescription sorted out and then took off downtown to the Ferry Building. I chilled there for quite a while, relaxing much more than I did last week when it was just a major schlep. It was really fun and I got some Blue Bottle Coffee (big surprise, eh) and some nice strawberries from a local farmer etc. Then Matt Parrott met me there, we chilled for a bit, took a walk and then I took off downtown on the search for toys and a french coffee press. I didn't find either, but I did wander around Macy's, The Disney Store, Urban Outfitters and a bunch of other places. I found some bad ass Ratatouille coasters at the Disney Store and talked to the girl at the counter for a bit. The coasters are awesssoome and they seemed to have a lot of that kitchen stuff on sale. Nice.

Ok next up was the Guitar Center. This is a HUGGGGGGGGGGGE music store on California St that puts Steve's in Toronto to shame!!!!! It is HHHHHHHHHHHUUUUUUUUUUUUGE. They must have had like 300 guitars there to play. It was nuts. I went into the acoustic room, then checked out the classical-acoustics (sweet), and they had quite a few acoustic basses too. Then I went into the humidified acoustic room (i.e. "the good stuff") - MAN it was sick. They had like 10 Taylors there, and I played the Dave Matthews guitar, the Taylor 914CE!!!!!! It was... wait for it... $3999 (ouch).... list price of $5200!!!!! Ahh!! So yeah it was bad ass. I wanted to plug it in but I think it needed a battery. Anyway, the sound was gorgeous.

I still prefer that Taylor Grand Auditorium guitar though, the really large Jumbo Acoustic, because it has a very very loud and powerful sound, pretty much because of it's size over a regular acoustic... pretty nice stuff. If I win the lottery I'm buying the DMB guitar. :) They had lots of other nice Martins and Gibsons but I love the Taylor sound (and I figure Dave Matthews knows what he is doing and he uses Taylors a lot) Sweeeeeeet.

My trip to the guitar store was not just to drool over guitars but really to buy an Audio Mixer. I ended up getting the Behringer Xenyx 802, it's got 8 inputs and some pretty fancy stuff for CD RCA inputs, and input/output from external FX sources (like guitar pedals) and stuff. I got some amazing Monster Cables from the guy I bought the condenser mic from, so that is going to work well. I've even got a DAC (Digital Audio Converter) which goes from the 1/8" jack input to a USB output that I can plug right into my laptop. Going to be pretty cool to see what this thing can do! The main purpose of this was that I needed a Phantom Power supply for my new condenser mic, and so this takes care of powering my mic along with letting me control audio input for the guitar as well. Also the USB input into the Laptop to me seems like an excellent idea.

Sweeeeeeet. Ok so I got the mixer along with some nice new acoustic and electric guitar strings and some new guitar picks. It is a really nice store, I think I'll head back there sometime and play some of the pedals. I've wanted a Boss Chorus pedal for ages too so I should go there and check them out and try them on the Taylor.

Then I went back home, super tired from the day but dropped off my stuff and went straight to Ciaran's. I work with Ciaran and he was having a birthday/housewarming party so it was great. He had some really nice food there and I met a bunch of his friends, good times!!

I got home about 1:30am and passed out pretty quick... and got my necessary sleep-in today... haha it's like 3:30pm now and I got up just over an hour ago. :) It's really nice weather so I should take a walk. But I am in the mood for sorting stuff today, so I should get some tunes on, get the laundry going and unpack some stuff. I also have to put together my new Ikea filing cabinet I got last week. That's going to take a while. :) Also gotta play with the new mixer!! Man, lots of stuff to do. And since I got up at like 2pm I should probably get started on all of this. :)