A few weeks ago, a friend of my wife’s shot her a text asking if she or I would be interested in accompanying him to listen to Geddy Lee, bassist of Canadian band Rush, discussing his new book, My Effin’ Life.
I consider myself unreasonably lucky. In 1999, I moved into my current home, which is one of a block of nine townhouses. The houses were built in 1986 as what’s known in Toronto as infill housing. The land was part of a farm in the late 1800s, and as Toronto spread outward, the land was sold off in parcels. Encircled by houses, ours was the last remaining undeveloped lot in the area, which is less than two miles from the city’s core.
I have this recurring dream that hits me about once every six months. I’m back in university, it’s getting close to the end of the year, and I realize that I haven’t attended a single class for one particular course. I’m now silently dream-freaking. I realize I can’t complete the course, I can’t drop it, and it’s all my own fault.
SoundStage! isn’t my only side hustle. Through the spring, summer, and fall here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, I also moonlight as senior editor of Inside Motorcycles, a Canadian print magazine. My duties at IM mirror those here at SoundStage!—I test stuff and write about it. I test motorcycles, helmets, clothing, and parts, and I write touring travel articles. But mostly I test motorcycles.
It’s not often that I second guess my choices of review gear. For the most part, I’m left to my own devices for arranging products, although a fair number of items come my way by recommendations from Doug Schneider or Jeff Fritz, who manage SoundStage! But they know my system and my preferences. And for damn sure, they know the size of my room when they’re choosing speakers.
I hate water. Over the past 20 years, I’ve had a number of house-related floods, including a sewer-backup shit-water apocalypse, two washing-machine overflows, and a leak behind a wall that required removing and replacing the entire wastewater stack, spanning four floors of my home.
So in order to fix a burst pipe, I had to cut a big honking hole in the wall right behind my equipment rack. I didn't really expect such an activity to affect the sound quality of my system -- not in the least. But I distinctly noticed two effects.
"That can't be right," I thought as I looked at my phone. The UPS tracking info said that the Nordost cable shipment I was expecting was Delivered. But there was nobody home during the day to accept the package. Surely it should have read: The customer was not available on the first attempt. They wouldn't have left a box containing many thousands of dollars' worth of cables on my front doorstep like it was a sample of laundry soap, would they?
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