Like Some Kind of Lame Canary

I did some RPM Challenge work this morning after finishing my exercise and my breakfast and my daily writing prompt. What did I do? Vocals. I drove off to an empty parking lot in town and recorded the vocal tracks for four songs while sitting out in the cold. I really wish I wasn’t so shy about recording myself singing. It would be so much easier to just do this at home. The negative then would be all the noise I make and how annoying it would be to my wife, rather than me just being a wimp who is too shy to sing when other people can hear me. I’m fine singing with the band, but in those cases there is enough noise that I can trick myself into thinking I am hiding behind it. Also, I am playing guitar at the same time and for some illogical reason that makes a difference. Why? Who knows.

The only interesting thing about today’s car music is that I only had three songs prepared with a melody and lyrics. After I cranked out the vocal tracks for those three songs I wrote the lyrics and melody to the fourth song while I was recording. I wouldn’t say I improvised the vocal parts, but they are lame enough that you might think they were improvised. Who cares. I sure don’t. This means I have 11 songs with vocals, and the RPM Challenge definition of an album is 10 songs or 35 minutes… which means that even if I don’t record another vocal track for the rest of the month, I can still finish a full album. Nice.

Here are some pics from my “studio” for today.

Can you guess where the snowplows dump the snow when they clear the mall parking lot? I can.

Also, here’s the obligatory down town clock, because reasons…

171/365
171/365

Also, because I can’t resist, I happened to catch the cats sitting together on the old cat tree just before I left the house, so you get that picture too.

Best Gift Ever

Daily writing prompt
Share one of the best gifts you’ve ever received.
View all responses

Share one of the best gifts I’ve ever received? No. I’ll share two of them. Today’s daily writing prompt is a two-for-one special babie, yeah!

When I was a little kid one of my friends had a toy Tonka ambulance. It was awesome. It was the best ambulance on Earth. It was the best Tonka truck ever. Damn if I wasn’t one jealous miniature red head. I did what most American kids do when they want something awesome. I asked Santa Claus to bring it to me for Christmas. Santa failed me. I asked again the next year. Santa failed me again. Santa never came through at all.

Fast forward to December 2007. I’d been dating this amazing woman for about eight months. She was amazing. I was nuts about her. I think she may have liked me a little in return. I say that because she went to Ebay, found the legendary Tonka ambulance and bought it for me as a Christmas present. Holy shit, what an amazing gift! I could not, and literally still cannot believe it. I told you she was amazing. I should note that I am still absolutely crazy in love with her. We have been married since 2009. She’s the one.

The second part of this two-for-one extravaganza comes from 2021. It was my 50th birthday. Things were very tough for me that year. My father was in the hospital and my mother was dealing with an advancing case of dementia. My brother and sister and I were taking turns staying with my mother while my father was recovering. I woke up at my parent’s house on my birthday and didn’t get home until the afternoon. When I did, my wife and my step son threw me a little birthday party. I was so happy. I can’t even begin to tell you how happy they made me that day, and that was before I opened any birthday presents.

There was one gift that they were both practically giddy over. I opened it and saw this:

They bought me a guitar. Holy shit snacks, My wife got me a guitar for my birthday. What a legendary surprise! Before I even opened the case it was already tied for first for the best gift ever. Then I opened the case and found a brand new Gibson Les Paul Standard ’50s. Absolutely epic!

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There you have it. Two absolutely Earth rocking gifts. By far the two best gifts I’ve ever received. No question. I told you my wife was amazing. I told you!

Hey Gemini, generate an image of a jedi knight sitting under a christmas tree opening an amazing christmas gift.

Success at Last

We have been using the online meal prep service Dinnerly for a couple of months now. The goal was for my wife and I to cook the meals they send us together, but sometimes one of us has to run with it without the other.

I have made steak dishes on my own three times. The first time the steak was massively undercooked. The second time was better but still undercooked and the side dish burned. I was starting to believe that I just sucked at Dinnerly.

Tonight was my third try and it finally came out okay. The steak was good and the side dish, French fries from scratch, was really good.

I’m glad I no longer suck at Dinnerly. Insert the sound of my sigh of relief here.

My Fingers are Killing Me

I haven’t played enough guitar lately to rebuild my lost calluses on the tips of the fingers on my left hand. That didn’t stop me from playing today for almost two hours. My finger tips are killing me!

I put rhythm guitars onto three songs for the RPM Challenge, and then I put lead guitars onto three more. Do you know what that means? It means I have three songs that are finished recording and are ready to mix. Finally!

You can see GarageBand reflected in the pick up.

More Luthier Updates

The Luthier I took my 1979 Gibson ES-335 Pro to one week ago today posted two more updates on his bookfayce page. Lots more pictures.

The guitar got new frets yesterday. Today it got a new nut, a new bridge, and a new volume pot. Damn if I didn’t know there was something wrong with the wiring beyond it just being old and dirty. I feel vindicated!

Here’s hoping I will hear from him soon and I’ll be able to set a time to go and pick my semi-hollow baby up and bring it home!

I’m getting excited, folks!

I’ve Got a Feeling

I’ve got a feeling, a feeling deep inside… that today is going to be one of those days when I post a metric ton or two of updates to the ol’ blog. I’m not sure where that feeling is coming from (apart from The Beatles and it being one of only two Beatles songs that any band I’ve played in has ever covered) but it’s there so you’ve been warned.

I did not get up early enough to pull off car music today, but I will try again tomorrow. I have been out of the house once already (it is 9:38am) so enjoy some classic views…

Why yes, yes I do live in New England. Massachusetts, to be exact. How did you know?

In closing, here’s a cat near a window, just after dawn:

170/365
170/365

More to come, kids. More errands outside of the house and hopefully lots of music today. That’s the plan at least.

Budget

Daily writing prompt
Write about your approach to budgeting.
View all responses

My approach to budgeting is to lose track of everything, blow all of my money without realizing it, and then have to use credit to bail myself out of financial trouble.

Fortunately for my incompetent, dumb-ass self, my wife was an accountant before she was a software super hero and she handles our budgeting. Thanks to her immense brain we are doing okay, but there is never enough for everything that needs to be done at any given moment. I mean after yesterday’s court ruling in his fraud case even a certain orange pile of fascist goo is going to open a go fund me campaign to raise about 350 million dollars. Things are tough all over.

That is supposed to be a Jedi Knight working on his budget. I’ll buy that.

Productive Evening

I punched out of work tonight at a little after 5:30pm and started my long weekend! I took Monday off because I am going to max out my accrued vacation time next month if I don’t take two days off this month. Monday is the first of the two which means I have a long weekend.

I plan to get shit done. Get. Shit. Done.

I started tonight by writing lyrics to three RPM Challenge songs. Also, Jen and I did some work to plan for the upcoming kitchen remodeling project. When I say Jen and I, I mean Jen did planning stuff and I watched and threw out occasional comments. However it happened, I think we got some stuff done and that is good.

Car vocals tomorrow? I hope so. Run some errands? Sure thing. Play some guitar? I hope so. Repeat the whole thing on both Sunday and Monday? You betcha!

The best part about the now current three day weekend? Next weekend is a three day weekend too! My second February day off is next Friday. One week from today. I am going to Kick. RPM’s. Ass*, babie.

*Dictionary.com defines “bravado” thusly:

bravado

[ bruh–vah-doh ]

noun,plural bra·va·does, bra·va·dos.

  1. a pretentious, swaggering display of courage.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/bravado

Co-Worker

I have a co-worker with me at my desk right now.

In other news, my stomach is in revolt at the moment. Fun. It’s a gastric bypass side effect kind of thing and it will pass, but I just gagged up some icky stuff and had a full blown case of “the foamies” (look it up). Having said that, there is no complaint here. I ate my lunch too fast and my new redesigned digestive system slapped me on the wrist for it. Post operation side effects like this are 100% worth it, I promise you. Trust me, it’s not an issue at all.

In other other news, I checked the bookfayce page of the Luthier I brought my guitar to last Saturday and earlier today he posted a bunch of pictures showing the progress he’s made. There are pictures of my beloved Gibson ES-335 Pro without any frets, pictures of it with some new frets, and a picture of the neck with a full boat’s worth of lovely, shiny new frets. It still needs a new nut and a new bridge, and he didn’t mention anything about cleaning out the electronics (which is a major bitch of a job to do on an ES-335 as you have to squeeze everything in and out through the F-hole), but the new frets are in! I don’t know if I will share any of the photos he posted. I think I did when he worked on my Les Paul Custom, but not until a few days had past. We’ll see.

Try to picture this guitar with shiny new frets:

In other other other news, I am listening to Steve Hackett’s new album, which was released today. It is called The Circus and the Nightwhale. I am listening while I work and therefore not able to give it my full attention. My initial gut reaction though is this: Steve Hackett’s guitar playing gets exponentially better with each passing day. His songwriting improves in a similar manner. His singing… yeah, he’s better than he used to be but sometimes I still wish he’d hire a full time singer for his recording line up. I’m enjoying the new album. Check it out.

Okay, that’s it for this post. Lunch break is over. My stomach is settling down. Get back to work, Red Head!