i had it pretty much narrowed down to 2 options of places that seemed to have good prices and reputations, and after working out some final details this morning i’ve picked one! which means that now i’m starting to download and look over things like this:

i know that’s pretty small and hard to see, but it’s one of many templates they give you for the design of the cd — front, back, cd face, folding insert, the whole 9 yards. i’m pretty excited about playing around with it.

i have discovered i do need to borrow a decent digital camera, though — one with high enough resolution to take a couple pictures to go in a print piece like this. mine is an embarrassment to nature — one that came free with a laptop i bought maybe 6 years ago — and it doesn’t do the job. so i’ve been hunting for one this morning and have got a lead.

also i’ve been having some self-induced drama about the name of the record. i won’t go into all the details about it because, well, frankly it’s pretty stupid trivial stuff that i’m obsessing over. but i finally came to a solution last night i think and now i’ve got a name. what is it? i will tell you when everything is done. ha!

thoughts on the design: after looking through all the options (there are a lot) i decided on doing one of those 8-panel folding insert things that sits in the front cover of the case. i know for sure that i’m going to put all the lyrics in there, because i hate when i don’t know what someone is saying and they don’t put the lyrics in. drives me nuts. and i know i’ll want the ‘thank you’ list — i wrote my first version of that quite awhile ago and have been re-opening and revising and adding to it periodically as we’ve gone further into the process. so that part is pretty much done. then i’ve been thinking about pictures…..i’ll probably put a picture of me in there somewhere, but mostly because i feel like i need to. as for other pictures — when i was writing i would write all over everything — papers, napkins, post-its, you name it. so i liked the idea of getting all that crap out and putting a picture of that in there. it sounded like a cool idea. so once i get the camera i’ll have to mess with that and see if it comes out looking good or if i’ll have to try something else.

so anyway, that’s about it. travis is supposed to submit the final mixes to the mastering guy this week, so i’ll let you know when i hear what’s next on that, how long it will take for me to hear the first master mix, etc.

i think i also need to go ahead and start making decisions about song order. there’s a couple songs that i already know where they go, but i need to fill in the holes. i’ll probably post that when i’ve got it. heck, maybe i’ll make that into a whole post, complete with all the (probably ridiculous) reasons why certain songs have to go in certain places. won’t that be fun?