A little catchup...

The holidays, thankfully, are over and with them a bit of my depression. For whatever reason, in about the past 15 minutes I started to feel pretty good about things. I just feel "better" all of a sudden. Lets see if it holds. Someone also suggested I keep a time record of how I'm doing - so why not start here and now...

1/6/2005 4:50 PM - Feeling good. Not great...Good...From a relative perspective that is... I've been better. Of course I had a nice fudge brownie about 15 min ago. Lets see how much better "better" is when I recover from the insulin shock.

Lets rewind a bit to New Years Eve and New Years Day. Our New Years Eve Plans fell through suddenly on the 31st, just hours before we were supposed to head out to see some friends in Hyde Park. The reason being that their house was a wreck and they were particularly stressed out. Why you ask? Well, the deal is that they had bought a 9 month old golden retriever as a Christmas gift for their 4 year old, Zack. In theory, its a great idea. A boy. His dog. Bonding. Face licking. The fetching of slippers. Squeals of delight. Lots of Kodak moments. You get it. However, and you knew there was a however coming, right? Otherwise what's the point of all of this? Well, the however is that this dog turns out to be 12 Monkeys kind of crazy. It bites the kid, it shits and it pisses everywhere at any moment. They take it for a hour walk and it pees and poops. The moment they get back inside, Star ("the dog" up to this point) taps into a reserve bladder and whizzes all over the living room. Star is supposed to be crate trained, but star is is whizzing and pooping all over his cage and all over himself. While not whizzing, shitting or biting people, Star is chewing everything. The Couch. The Carpet. The Kitchen. Yeah - the dog tried to eat the kitchen. The family - not so pleased.

So here we have a terrified 4 year old that wants Santa to take the dog back but is also afraid that Santa will be upset with him. Angry even. So the dog winds up in the kitchen, the kid is hiding in his room and the parents are like -- we need to find pooch a new home ASAP. Naturally the breeder will not take it back. Eventually they get a single woman with the patience of Job that must own lots of brushed steel furnishings to buy the dog. Zack is ecstatic that the dog got taken away, but still worried that Santa has some sort of retribution in store for ungrateful children. However -- I have the feeling that Santa just might write Zack a letter telling him its ok. Nice one, right?

And that, dear Internet, is the story of how New Years Eve was almost lost. Almost I say, because our friends Dave & Jacquie either had nothing better to do or took pity on us and came over to hang out with us. It was a fairly uneventful evening, with the ladies watching some movies and Dave and me putzing around in the office with my computer. I showed him the graphical sweetness of Half Life 2 and the awesome fury of Counsterstrike Source and demo'd my GuitarPort software by Line 6. The GuitarPort is a nice little device that allows you to get just about any guitar sound you want with a mouse click and also provides a wealth of lessons, licks, full tracks and sheet music. Its really helpful. If you are starting to play or have been playing for a while but are not rigged up completely, this is a great investment for a hobbyist or mature player. Of course, Line 6 sells all sorts of other goodies as well. If you play, check em out if you haven't. Anyhoo, Dave got so excited by it that he came over on Tuesday night and we played around a bit. He is a lot more skilled than I am, so he kindly assumed the role of instructor and showed me some stuff. As a direct result of his visit I'm working on 10 Years Gone by Led Zeppelin. Sounds good, not boring to learn and challenging but not impossible for my skill level. Back to the roots of things man, back with Led Zeppelin. Tell you what, its a lot different now than 20 yrs ago or so when I first attempted to play guitar and I tried to play Heartbreaker for my friend Tom. I remember laying down the main lick or so for him and he asked me what it was. "'Heartbreaker'", I said.

"No its not." Tom said.

Lol, I was heartbroken. Of course what I was hearing in my mind vs what was coming out of the amp were two completely different things. I'm not great now, I know that, but I know I am getting better and better and what's more I am enjoying it. Plus I have a few folks around now patient enough to help me learn and cool enough to jam.

Ok getting back from the tangent there... So New Years was saved by Dave and Jacquie and Clarisa and I woke up on New Years Day after having slept in a bit. I surfed the net, blogged a while and just felt generally morose and quiet. It was going to be a cave day. But - we got a call from Christine and Barry asking us to come up. I was like, Ok, but not super excited. I was feeling pretty crappy that day. Just read the last post and you will get the gist of my mood. Still, mainly because I felt that way I thought it important to get out of the house and actually do something. I asked Clarisa to ask them if it would be cool if I brought my guitar. I knew Barry played, but we had never done anything like that together. It turns out it was a great idea. We played most of the evening and had a big sing along, with Clarisa and Christine even butchering an acoustic version of "Times Like These". We had a blast playing and singing. But the highlight of the evening came a bit later on when we went to check out the new stuff in Zack's bedroom. Under a plush toy or two I saw a table hockey game. A brand new Stiga NHL table top game. I immediately waxed nostalgic and I had to play. I grabbed the game up and called to Barry. "We HAVE to play" this. Immediately it became obvious we were both big fans of the game and "understood it." The old moves from hours (well, days really) of playing in my youth came back pretty fast. We were both a little rusty though and could not pull off some of the trickery we once knew - like bank shots and deflections and such. Despite our rustiness, our enthusiasm more than made up for it. We had a blast and eventually had to be dragged away because it was getting too late. I was like there is more hockey to play and more music to talk about and more hockey to talk about...but the night was over. I actually didn't want it to end. It was the most fun I had in a long time. Between the hockey, the guitar and playing around with Zack, I was really happy. It was nice man, I'll tell you.

The crazy thing is that Christine and Clarisa have known each other for close to ten years and Barry and I just bonded a week ago. Go figure. Everything in its time I guess. Next weekend we are supposed to be heading up again. Clarisa is jokingly calling it a "play date". Great...

BTW its 11:31AM on Jan 7th and I am still feeling "better". No sugar rush. Just some caffeine from a coffee this morning and a diet coke right now. Looking forward to getting home and a weekend with my guitar. My foots still to banged up to do much else. Soon though - or else I am going to need to switch to the "fat" jeans again.


And - before closing this long winding post, I'd just like to say thanks to the folks who took the time to email me about my depression. I really love you for it. Thanks