Becoming a less-screwed up version of yourself is hard work. Actually, it’s really kind of exhausting.
Old dog, new….yeah.
This also reminds me why reading is so hard. Books aren’t back lit.
Don’t kindlekindlekindlekindle me, I don’t need one of those. Relatively speaking, by the time I get my hands on a tablet PC, people will have microwave chips beaming the internet directly into their brains.
I really need to relax. The meditation route never really works for me – it’s a LOT of work to keep still. Perhaps I need to investigate taking yoga again. It’s relaxing to the Nth degree and also affords flexibility. Unfortunately, my twerpy ankle is still wincing. It’s been a few years now, and the only thing that manages to make it feel better is intense exercise.
I’m sure that a little over half of my blog followers were following because of guitar related content. Sorry, not much going on there. My buddy built me a small pedal board and I’ve been sporadically picking up my Robin here and there. My self-improvement doesn’t involve much guitar playing….at least not right now anyway.
I talked it over with that guitar tech, and turns out I gotta find some nitrocellulose lacquer to go over those rough spots. After I sand them down. Such an odd shaped guitar, but what a sweet player!
I’ve got a pretty bad habit of remembering things. Not entirely intentional, I read somewhere that Albert Einstein once said, “Never memorizesomething that you can look up.” Recently I’ve used this as a justification for my forgetfulness, but throughout my life I’ve let things slip, much to the dismay of various wives, girlfriends and daughters (not all my own).
The other night, my own personal haziness came into sharp relief. I was in a bar discussion (as I am wont to do).
After I had professed my daughter’s age, I was then prompted for how long I was married. And then I was asked how old I was. Rather than letting them off the hook, I asked them to do some boozy math.
During the requisite pause, I did some thinking on it. Like some weird algebraic equation x+y-c did not equal z. I started rethinking it – double checking my work if you will.
I couldn’t figure out where I went wrong until I determined that I was quoting an incorrect age when I was actually (previously) married. How or why would I have done this? Strange?
My initial stance was that I was married at age 25. After I checked my numbers (carry the two), I realized that I had gotten married at 23. Young, YOUNG marriage. When people that age tell me now that they’re going to get married, I immediately think, “Oh wow, too young”. But I never apply my own personal experience to that. Obviously I don’t even remember that I got married that young. Perhaps fatherhood wipes some memories clean? Or was that a part of the raucous 90’s that I was just too…..altered….to remember? (Amid the nose ring and tattoos?)
At my nephew’s birthday party the other day, I was talking to one of my brother’s friends and she said, “Yeah, I’m glad to have gotten to have fun before having all our children”, which I guess I can’t relate to on some level. I was married young, but I don’t feel like I consciously “missed out” on my 20’s. If any thing, my early 20’s were a mishmash of bad decisions as it was, so I’m lucky to have survived most of them.
My father always carried around index cards with lists of things he needed to remember. We would meet up, and he’d whip out an index card and discuss all the things on the list that he NEEDED to cover, then once we’d finished, he put them away. As of late, I almost feel like I should be doing that. But, of course, I have a smart phone. So I let Google Calendar take care of most of the heavy lifting. I refuse to let “The Big Blue F” handle birthday reminders. In fact, in one of my periodic disconnects from that site, I deleted my birthday.
Sure enough, my birthday rolled around and there were NO well wishers clogging up my page with birthday status updates. I thought it was curious rather than disturbing. I don’t think any less of my close friends for not remembering since I can hardly remember those things myself (see above for lifelong habit of). But curious nonetheless. I’ve taken to sending cards to some of my friends – something I rebelled against for the longest time as something that was “expected” of you rather than doing it just because it’s a nice thing to do.
As last weekend rolled into the second day, I woke up late thanks to some bad decisions that I had made shortly after I had gotten my hair cut. It’s one thing to feel like a million bucks, it’s quite another to throw caution to the wind and be a man-about-town. I completely give myself credit for keeping my wits about me for getting my ex-brother-in-law safely home at errr…..ahem…three a.m. On the other hand, poor decision-making caused me to lose a pair of sunglasses and him losing his phone. I liked those sunglasses a lot, kind of a bummer.
Oddly enough, each time someone nods out while I’m driving them home, I start getting REALLY nervous. Visions of Jimi Hendrix and Bonn Scott float through my head when their head starts bobbing – I’ve got one eye on the road, the other on them. Silly boy, it’s not like you can check their breathing at 60 miles per hour!
Sure enough he was fine. I made sure he could stagger into the house and put him to bed.
So, as to my other post, I have to say it’s tough to come to a realization about your life that’s life changing and not be able to really do anything about it……I mean, of course I’m talking about more cat pictures:
Wow. As much as I complain about the internet in general, scattered throughout the detritus, there are many nuggets of value. Someone that I’m peripherally friends with on FB, (which henceforth I will call, “the big blue F”) posted something that really hit home. Really, REALLY hit home. I’m going to be intentionally and irritatingly vague here, sorry. But it was one of those things that kind of stops you in your tracks and makes you reexamine a few things. I also managed to have a rather mindexpanding conversation at dinner last night with someone some of you might know as theBlowPhish. Maybe 2013 is just going to be that kind of year?
After the first evening of a rather self-destructive (and yet somehow productive) weekend, I went and got my hair cut on Saturday. As I walked in, my notable barber was discussing one of the things that I’ve never found that enjoyable – camping out. Several times I have been camping, and not just because I am a city-boy, the experiences I had never seemed to live up to the golden glory of the Great-American-Campout™.
Since my barber is a rather self-sufficient kind of guy, he’s got deer antlers and pictures of himself with giant catfish all over the walls of his, uh, barber shack. Really cool guy, we had a great discussion about his pecan trees all over his lot when it was my turn.
Anyway, the discussion of the campouts reminded me of some of my out-of-country time. In the local rivers there, there were such things as fresh water eels. This could not have been more freaky for a city-boy like myself. The waters were typically crystal clear mountain snow run0ff, and while it was generally cold, the swimming was great, and the rivers full of huge boulders and rocks. BUT, around these rocks hid these freshwater eels. I’ve noted our local swimming “hole” with an asterisk. You can see more or less where my old house was (marked with the ever-present Google Maps Point “A” )
So when people are at the beach imagining sharks mere inches below them, the same was happening when we would swim in these icy clear swimming holes. Sometimes you would forget about them, but there would usually be dark overhangs of brush, and you sure as hell wasn’t going to swim in there! One time we went out on a school sponsored trip and some of the guys fished for eels and caught some. They caught the first one (I think the guy’s name was Chad if I remember) and laid him along the bank. Chad was contemplating his next catch and started tapping his foot. Right on the head of the eel. Chad was wearing the sandals that our boy’s school typically wore in the summertime. Nothing but a small flap of leather between his foot and this eel who was obviously not happy being out of the water. In a very typical lord-of-the-flies ritual, I recall them beating the eel in the head until it was dead. I also recall someone skinning it and cooking it, so I guess while it was a little barbaric, it wasn’t completely senseless violence.
Either way, those buggers are creeepy man, very creepy.
That almost dovetails the time my brother was nearly attacked by a sea-snake, but I’ll leave that for another time.
I live in a dry town, which means that we have to go outside city limits for booze. Yesterday Rod and I realized we were short some bottles. We headed down to the local store, part of the chain, and there was no hard liquor at all. At ALL. It was all wine. There’s about six other stores in the vicinity of this one store, but guess what? They’re all owned by the same company!
So I asked the guy where the closest non-Centennial owned store was, and he pointed us down the road.
We headed in that direction, and what should I behold as we come around the bend? A Spec’s. SPEC’s people! SPEC’S!!!!
A Houston import, but I didn’t realize they’d opened one so close to my house. A sign on the door read “Pardon our Construction” but they were set to sell. Yes indeed.
Really weird how SPEC’s was right there….and the other stores are now bankrupt. Weird indeed.
In another bizarre twist, it’s snowing here today. It’s quickly turning into slush, but whatever.
I sometimes get his name mixed up, sometimes I call him Robby, sometimes it’s Robbie. Either way, got some absolutely killer art from Brad McGinty – he of the Predator/Alien prints (of which I have one as well.) I had to steal the image from Brad’s Instagram page since the actual picture is too big for my scanner.
Muchas Gracias to TokenBlackGirls.com for getting this artist on my radar! And super thanks to Brad for a great job!
My TMJ is killing me. Thanks to a hellaciously stressful week at work, my jawbone muscles are sore and aching. Rather than do my facial exercises (yes, they do look as goofy as you’re imagining right now), I’m opting for the beer and Advil relaxation method. Maybe I’ll call it PBAdvil. Or Advipbr.
I don’t really feel like detailing my boring work. Let’s just boil it down to: Troubleshooting.
After five days of solving severe, severe problems, (well, severe in my line of business anyway) I took a long lunch and went to Guitar Center. Managed to get my hands on a doublecut Gibson that I’d been curious about the neck on.
Ole Yeller
I’m not a fan of doublecuts. At all. I was interested in the neck, and the P90. (PBR90?) The P90 sounded cool, but was missing some bottom end. *DING* The lightbulb goes on over my head. That’s what the bass guitar is for. Duhhh. For some reason I’ve had it in my head that some of that bass *thunk* should be pushed out of whatever guitar I’ve been playing. Duh (again). Sometimes I don’t know why my brain works that way, I swear. I would borrow the kiddo’s bass, but it’s a lefty. Last time I faked some bass I used one of my guitars and an octave pedal. Bleah.
Some of my recording equipment has made it out near the amps; I’ve now realized that I’m never going to practice enough that I feel comfortable recording – so I might as well practice while I’m writing songs and recording.
So here is my pet peeve for today: Removable Trailer Hitches
If you live anywhere in the Southern States, you’re likely to see them on the backs of big trucks. Also to be found on cars of People-who-need-to-get-stuff-done™.
Here’s my problem with them. They’re REMOVABLE. So why the HELL doesn’t anyone remove them??
When I was in my slight fender bender a while back, the truck that hit the car that hit me had one. There was a mid-size SUV behind him, impaled onto his trailer hitch. I vividly remember him jamming on the accelerator dragging her car with him (dangerous) while she had her wheels screaming in reverse (unsafe). He was obviously a working dude, so I’m not going to fault his hitch-ness. When I’m driving home, however, I have to consciously think about the truck in front of me – whether I need to possibly plan for a 6-8 inch metal spear that may pierce my radiator should I happen to rear end anyone. There was also a time at one of my old apartments where a dude in huge truck had backed up to the mailboxes, and I caught his (removable) hitch with my shin.
You know pain, right? The blinding, cripping, I’m-not-moving and unable to even cry out in pain kind of pain?
My shin had that pain. Boy oh boy did I have that pain. Luckily I was a nice guy and swore under my breath. I’m pretty sure I blamed myself for running into it. I should have….uh….ok, I’m not posting that on the internet.
My point is that there is only a small percentage of people who use trailer hitches on a daily basis. Just take the damn things off your trucks if you’re a weekend warrior or something. You really need to leave it on 24/7? Are you going to lose it if you take it off? You must have bigger problems.
