Guitar/Retail Therapy

I am sitting here thinking about retail therapy and guitar gear and all of that and I am trying so very hard not to do it. I want to, but I don’t want to, but I want to.

For the pedal board, I want an MXR Brick and an MXR Phase 95 and one of those cheap little Mooer E-Lady flangers.

I want to trade in my Strat and do… something. Trade it for a Les Paul Jr? Trade it for a ’68 Deluxe Reverb? The money won’t work out for either of those, but what about trade it in for money and then…

Take the ES-335 to a repair shop and redo the frets and the wiring.

Or take the Les Paul Custom to a repair shop and redo the frets and change the pickups to something nice and boutique and redo the wiring.

Or take my gorgeous new Les Paul Standard to a repair shop and change the pickups to something nice and boutique and see if there is anything else that a professional would recommend doing.

Or take my SG Standard to a repair shop and change the pickups to something either nice and boutique, or something high output and mean sounding and see if there is anything else that a professional would recommend doing, specifically to the height of the action.

AAAHHHH!!!!!

Tough Night

I hit my goal for protein yesterday and I only missed my fluid goal by one ounce. I felt like I was in a good place as bed time approached.

It was about 11:00pm and I was trying to decide if I wanted to hate watch Fear the Walking Dead on the 11:15pm AMC replay or just pack it in for the night. I was sitting up in bed surfing around on my iPad when I realized I could only see the edges of the screen.

Ah, hell.

I don’t know about anyone else, but that vision thing has happened to me 3-4 times in my life and it’s very clearly the start of a migraine. In those few previous experiences the only help was darkness and sleep. It was bed time anyway so I quickly killed the lights, put on the CPAP mask, squeezed my eyes shut, and pulled the covers over my head. Fortunately I was asleep before the headache pain kicked in. I did wake up for a while a couple of hours later and there was definitely a headache. Fortunately, again, I was able to fall back to sleep pretty quickly.

When I woke up, at around 6:30am, I was better, I guess. My head was a little mushy but the pain was pretty much gone and my eyes were back to normal. Now, about four hours later, I am better still. I’m not 100%, but I am okay. I took out the trash, scooped the litter box, filled the bird feeder, and did a load of laundry. That’s a lot of work for me right now. I think it’s time to just watch some TV and calm my ass down for a while.

Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen again, and if it does let’s hope it waits a few years at least.

Straight In

I played a little today. Nothing serious. I just plugged straight into an amp and noodled. I did do a small experiment. I am thinking of taking my Vox AC15 to the next Lizardfish practice (whenever that might be) but I have never really pushed the volume. Is it loud enough to compete with the rest of the band? More importantly, if I get it up to band practice volume, is the tone still clean?

I dimed the master volume and then brought the channel volume up a little at a time. I got up to 92 decibels (according to my AppleWatch) and it was still clean as a bell. The band does get louder than that, but my channel volume (I was using the amp’s Normal channel, not the Top Boost) was only on about four, so there is still some room available. I don’t know when that channel starts breaking up, but I wasn’t even close. I think my band practice plans are good to go.

The question then is, do I use the Normal channel or the Top Boost channel? That’s still undecided.

New Theme?

I changed the blog’s theme and layout. I don’t think it’s new though. I scrolled through the wordpress.com themes and found one that looked interesting. I activated it… and it was already customized. Huh? I think I must have used this one before. I’ll live with it for a little while and see if I want to keep it.

Nothing to Write About

I feel like I have nothing to write about. I’m sitting at my desk listening to a podcast and trying to eat a little pureed chicken. I have nothing to write about. I am so focused on getting my 60 ounces of liquids and 60 grams of protein in each day that I haven’t really worried about anything other than binge watching some TV. I’ve also spent a ton of time stressing over my mother’s situation, but I am not sharing that today so sorry not sorry.

I haven’t payed any attention to the NHL playoffs and I’ve barely payed attention to baseball, beyond checking the Red Sox scores once a day. I did finally finish reading Steve Hackett’s autobiography. There wasn’t a whole lot of detail there, but it was still a good read. I’m thinking Mike Rutherford’s book might be next. Get some of that Charterhouse story and all that.

I weighed myself today. Remember the other day when I wrote something about how I didn’t want to weigh myself all of the time? Yeah, I weighed myself again. If the scale I keep in the bedroom is accurate I have lost 60 pounds since January 19th. That is insane.

Should I play guitar after I post this meandering crap of a post? Jen is working in her office and Harry is working at his new job so why not just make a little noise on my own? I don’t know. I’m a little wary of it for some reason. I don’t know why. It’s a weird feeling. I don’t know.

Maybe I’ll goof around with the blog and see if I can find a new theme and layout. Maybe I’ll do that for a while, maybe not. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll sneak in some Breaking Bad. I only have about half of the final season left to go. Maybe I’ll check iBooks and see how much Mike Rutherfords’ book costs.