busy!

Hello!

Boy have I been a busy bee.

Let's see.

1. Guitar
2. Cars
3. Paintball
4. Jobby-job
a. Demotivators calendar


There, I made a list so I could remember what I'm on about today.

Firstly, Guitar! As I mentioned, a guitar has been picked up, and some learning started. Well I've been trying to play regularly. Every day at least a little, and I've been doing great at keeping up so far, sometimes to everyone else’s displeasure. So I've learned a a few chords, less than a dozen really, but I've gotten them memorized in my mind, and have been working on translating that to my fingers. I do okay fingering the strings blind, but end up moving up and down the frets a little too much. Practice Practice Practice. Maddie and I have found a few simple songs that we're trying to master. We've been working on the Johnny Cash version of Hurt, Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams and the horse with no name thing. I saw a recommendation to record some of how you're doing as you practice.. so I did. Listen at your own peril. Its my first guitar subject audio blog. [get it here, mp3 format, ~6 minutes, 2.2M] But its going well and I'm having tons of fun, and seem to be making good progress, having gone from "Oh look, a gee-tar" to "I can play these 8 chords, and slowly play this thing that sounds like a song".

Cars! Bleh! So, I've posted before about ongoing car trouble. To reiterate, we have an '02 saturn and an '89 berretta. The saturn we bought new, the berretta was given to us by Krissi's family. For the last couple years we've worked in the same building and so were able to for the most part carpool all the time, which was convenient. The berretta is paid for, and the Saturn car payments are pretty reasonable. Well, and to be brief, the berretta has been less than reliable in the past. We spent $500 on it just a month or two ago, and then this past Friday morning it refused to start. So we have two options: A- continue to dump money and time in the old berretta, hoping to stave off its inevitable demise. B- buy a car. Now like I said, the berretta is paid for, which is a big plus. Heck, a $300 a month car payment, which is, I think, low by most standards, is still $10 a day if you break it down. Last night I wondered to myself whether we needed another car for another $10+ a day. That’s like, practically an album off of itunes. Anyway, transportation is transportation, but it makes me consider getting a bicycle to carry me to and from work. So…. Saturday afternoon we set off to look at used cars. We knew what we wanted to spend, we knew what we could spend. We’ve been living from paycheck to paycheck for a long time (hoping that will change) and so don’t really have a cash reserve built up, so of course we were walking in with no money in our pocket to hand over, but could come up with some money down if they could make a deal with us and we could get them the money. Anyway we hit a car place in Memphis that made me think of William H. Macy’s character in Fargo. “Now that clear-coat…..” We did not buy a car from them. We then headed to a car lot in Southaven. We thought we were doing better, found a couple used vehicles, did some test driving, filled out some paperwork, went into the finance office and then they realized that we weren’t going to hand them $1,000. We made what I thought was a perfectly reasonable offer – to get the money within X period of time, but they didn’t like it apparently, and suddenly were incredibly rude and basically were like “get the fuck outta here.” So that was quite disappointing. Anyway, in a few weeks when we’ve squirreled away the cash, we’ll go try again at a place that isn’t the rude assholes at the Ford place in Southaven. So meanwhile, we’re doing one car. Fortunately my new job is right around the corner from the house, so Krissi drops me off in the morning before heading to her job, and will pick me up in this evening. It’ll work until we can remedy the car situation. But Bleah.

Paintball! Hot dog. Went and played on Sunday and had a blast. It’d been three months or so since I’d been able to go play, due to both time and money. It was awesome to get out and run and shoot some paint. I went to Cedar Hill Farm down in Hernando. Sunday afternoon turned out to be pretty slow for the park. There were some groups of two or three wandering around, and a couple larger groups, but really sparse. Andy joined me and brought his woman, just down from Ohio, and Andy and I played a few rounds of speedball. Then we started hitting up other groups of folks to jump in to games with them, and that worked out pretty okay as well. As the afternoon wore on we found ourselves staking out the speedball field with two or three other small groups of people, who together (much like voltron) made up about 8 folks, good enough for some good paintball action. A couple of experienced players, a bunch of newbies and in fact at least 6 people who were playing paintball for the very first time. So like I said, I had an absolute blast. Chase and Wes showed up and I got to do a few games with them as well before I, tired and painted up, headed back to Horn Lake/Southaven. Krissi and Maddie had been busy all day doing yard work, and so were sun burnt but satisfied with their labor. We finished up Sunday by watching the Sopranos (and of course continuing to strum away on the guitar).

Jobby-job! Well last week was my first week at the new job, and we’re good so far! Everyone is very nice and Jim seems like a pleasure to work with. I need a plant for my desk I think… Job related, and a little amusing.. my job is run by a gentleman who is the son of the founder (the first, if you’re counting). The grandson of the founder (the third, if you’re counting) is also working with the company, and the wife of the owner (the second, if you’re counting) also works sometimes with the company. So… I decided not to hang my Demotivators calendar near my desk this month. The reason? Well this month is Nepotism. Yeah, so I figured I’d wait until May to hang it.

So that’s what’s going on with me!