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Tag: iphoneography
Two Days in a Row?
I practiced again tonight. That’s two nights in a row. Oh. My. God. Woah, wait a second… I was at a band practice on Sunday too so I actually practiced THREE NIGHTS IN A ROW!!!!
Last night I played the first set on our rough draft setlist and the first two songs on the second set. My playlist for some reason skipped a song from set 1 though and I didn’t notice until later. Tonight I started with the song I missed and then did the whole second set and the first song from the third set.
It wasn’t quite as thorough as last night. Last night I played through the full rig I am planning on using at the gig, and I stood for the whole time and I didn’t take any breaks. Tonight I didn’t have the house to myself so I played through an app on my iPad while listening to the playlist on my phone. I also had to take a break when the love of my life came home and we had to shuffle the cars around and I sat down for a lot of it.
Still… I played for a solid hour for the second night in a row. I am shocked.
Practice Goal Achieved (for today)
Raise your hand if you’re sick of guitar/Lizardfish/gig posts.
On second thought, don’t raise your hand. I don’t care what you think. Here’s another one.
Earlier today one of the guys in the band submitted 2/1/20 Set List Draft #2. I was in the middle of my lunch break at the time so I typed the list into a Google Doc and sent it around, and then went to hearthis.at and built a playlist of the entire list and shared that around too. I had an ulterior motive for that one though.
Jen has a work dinner thing tonight and I knew she wouldn’t be home until late. Tonight is a dad night for the kids so I had the house all to myself for an hour. I took that new playlist, ran my phone through a blue tooth speaker, plugged in the guitar with the full pedal board, turned up to (slightly less than) gig volume and played.
I made it into the second set, only one or two songs. I think one song was missing from the first set though so I have to check on that. I played for an hour solid without a break. I did have some real pain in my left hand for about two songs but it lessened as I went along. By the end of the hour I was noticeably tired and it was getting hard to bend the strings. That’s time to stop for tonight.
I played a lot in a short time. Notice that I did not say I played well. I guess I still have to work on that. My improv skills are down to about 10% right now, Captain. I need to open a ticket with engineering and get Geordi LaForge to work on that for me.
The gig starts almost exactly four days from now (9:00PM on Saturday). I need a lot more practice.
I’m pleased with my dumb ass for the moment though. I’m proud of me, fat boy.
My ears are ringing.
Tetris
I haven’t plugged it in yet. Let’s hope I got the wiring correct. Fingers crossed.
I added two Donner pedals, the Harmonic Square pitch shifter, and the Yellow Fall analog delay. I also added the Wren and Cuff Tri Pi ’70 fuzz pedal because after practice last night I decided I couldn’t live without fuzz. I put it before the Klon KTR in the hopes that the Klon’s mid push would fill in the gaps from the Big Muff clone’s mid scoop. If that doesn’t cut through the mix I can add volume with the Spark booster.
Like I said, fingers crossed.
That Went Well
The last Lizardfish rehearsal before our 2/1/20 gig went well. I had some minor pedal board problems but otherwise it was pretty smooth.
Driving Around Town
I took a leisurely drive* around the city of Methuen on this fine Sunday morning and snapped a few pics of some of the stone walls and random castle-ish looking things that are all over the place.
This one is officially my pic for the photo a day thing.
I stopped here once and took some pictures with my D90. I couldn’t find a way into the little building thingie, but it is two stories high. Why is it there?
…and of course…
*Okay, here’s the real story. My beloved wife asked me to go out and pick up some breakfast for her. I drove past some stone walls on Pond Street and thought I should snap a pic but I didn’t. I drove to the store, got into the line, got right up to the front, and realized I forgot my wallet. I had to drive home, pick up my wallet, embarrassingly laugh at my own doofusness with my wife, then drive back. On the second trip I had the camera open and ready.
Hello There, Restaurant
Out to dinner with my best girl, taking artsy-fartsy pictures of the lights. Like ya do.
Hello There, Spicket
I have a couple of new pictures of the Mighty Spicket River in Salem, NH…
These of course are taken from the Weight Watchers parking lot, which means I went to weight watchers today. I don’t want to talk about weight loss on the blog anymore, for now at least. Every once in a while I need to search for something here and I end up reading some happy post from years ago about how I lost two pounds or some nonsense. When that happens it is really depressing. It’s like saying, look how good I used to be doing before I started to suck again. I hate feeling that way so I am not going to keep track of stats or anything, My first week back was good. Enough said.
Except that I also went to the gym. I walked on a treadmill until my sore foot woke up. 15 minutes at a very slow pace. That’s a good start. We’re a month away from Disney and I need to be able to walk around all over Florida so I need to start practicing now.
Oh yeah… practicing… guitar… gig… Way to ruin the good vibe and scare the crap out of yourself, fat ass.
Theme
The theme connecting these two crappy photos is actually “Japanese Take Out” but I’ll forgive you if you failed to put that together.
Saws-All and Other Fun Topics
My foot still hurts. It is more or less a non-issue when I’m barefoot, but it hurts like the dickens when I have shoes on. I think I’m a little swollen, but not a lot. It’s actually a lot better than it was last week, but it’s still an issue. I really don’t want to go to the doctor for this, but my resolve is weakening.
I was discussing Plantar Fasciitis (hence forth to be known as Plantar Fascist-itis in honor of our nazi putz of a president) with a friend today who has had it in both feet, one after the other. His suggestion was to just get it over with and cut the bastard off now. I’m not that far gone, but it’s something to keep in mind (yup yup). It actually made me think of something from a few weeks ago. My father in law and I were in a store looking for a tool to help install our new door lock. Right at the front door with a whole stack of potential impulse buys was a Saws-All. I almost got it. Why? I don’t know. Now looking back I think I should have picked one up. It would be a perfect cure for my friggin’ foot.
Yuck yuck yuck.
In the immortal words of the evil doctor in Hellraiser II, “I recommend… amputation. No anesthetic at hand… shame.”
Yuck yuck yuck.
I don’t think I’ve seen that movie since the late 80’s or early 90’s so I can’t remember for sure if those two sentences (complete with the dramatic pauses) were from the same scene or not. Probably not. That was the first horror movie I ever saw, and it lead to my becoming a serious Clive Barker fan. Not just movies, but novels (stop what you’re doing and go read Weaveworld. Right now. I’m serious. Do it right now) and short stories and even a couple of plays. It was at Brian G’s house. I can’t remember who was there exactly, but despite all of the awesome, quotable lines it had (and there were countless) the one phrase that will never leave my memory and will always come to mind as soon as I think of that movie was someone in the room saying, as the movie ended, “rewind to when Julia comes out of the mattress!”
I just took this picture while I was putting the finishing touches on our chicken and a side of quinoa dinner tonight. I thought I’d share because… why not.
The RPM Challenge is 11 days away. I haven’t given it thought one. My next gig is also 11 days away. I have given that many thoughts, most revolving around how much practice I need. Note: I am sitting at my desk typing this blither instead of practicing. I had a day off work to honor a great American even though our nation is in the hands of fascist pieces of dog shit and did I practice at all? No. I thought about it, but I didn’t do it. I even thought about asking the other guys if they wanted to try and sneak in a rehearsal tonight seeing as we wouldn’t have to wait for my endless evening commute. Nope. Nothing. I’m still physically beat from having to deal with shoveling on top of all of the previously discussed pains. I’m getting better. Don’t worry. It just sucks to be me today. It will suck less tomorrow.
My step son, Harry had the day off from school. This was a mom’s house weekend so he woke up here this morning. Mondays are dad days though so I knew he’d be leaving shortly after he woke up. I did something sneaky to try and get him to stick around and hang out with me for a little while. I watched a Marvel movie. He was still asleep when I started but I figured he’d wake up and watch it with me. It was Captain America: Civil War. Awesome freakin’ movie. It worked, but not as well as I’d hoped. When he finally woke up (teenagers and sleeping late, ya know?) there was only 30-40 minutes left in the movie. He stuck around a little after it was over. He had some breakfast and watched an episode of Phineas and Ferb because… why not? (sing it with me, doobie doobie doobah, doobie doobie doobah, A-Gent-P!!)
Speaking of Harry, we had a seriously great moment on Saturday that I think I want to share. My wife and my step son both have February birthdays. My wife thought that maybe it would be fun to celebrate her birthday at Disney World. We started making plans. Then she decided it would be better to wait a few weeks and bring my step son with us. We booked a room in the Yacht Club for a few days and made all the park arrangements. We did not tell my step son. My step daughter won’t be available due to college, and Jen has a little Canadian get away planned with her already, but we ran the plans by her just in case and she was okay with it. On Saturday we had a mini-pre-birthday-birthday celebration for Harry. We gave him two presents: His park ticket and his luggage tag. He never saw it coming. Awesome. He says he is really excited about it, even though he’s going to be stuck down there with two old people. He’ll adjust. It’s going to be fun, and I can’t wait to go away and hide from reality for a week.
Here’s hoping my foot feels better by then because if not it’s Off With His Foot!
Yuck yuck yuck.
