Guitar lessons

I've finally gotten down to starting guitar lessons. For over 15 years of my life, I never had the patience to sit my ass down long enough to actually learn how to play the guitar. Always had the desire to learn though, as all the guitarists in the band always seem to get the chicks (see Richie Sambora from Bon Jovi, Dave Navarro from Red Hot Chili Peppers, among the many). Guess it was a case of 'mind is willing but the body is weak'.

I used to play a bit of bass, which was much easier. It was just press with one finger on the left hand and pluck with one on the right. Bed of roses considering the fact that the songs (mainly punk ditties from the Ramones) I played back in those days consisted only of three or four chords at most. Which also explains why I picked up the drums then cos I'm impatient that way. Just sit and whack and you get results!

With the guitar, it's a little different. You have to contort the fingers on your left hand to unimaginable positions and strum with the right hand. And you have to get the strumming right as the upwards and downwards strumming movements will give you different sounds, blah, blah.

Today, my motivations to pursue the guitar has drifted from impressing bevies of young chicks to a desire to praise and worship an awesome God. I found this young chap over the internet who teaches both the acoustic and electric guitar. Great for me since I don't reckon I would want to torture myself by learning the acoustic, then the electric. So far I've only learned four chords and played one song (Brian McKnight's One).

Not too bad for an hour. Now, I just need another gazillion hours of practise and more chords to start rocking the house.

Hail, hail rock n roll!

Removing clutter

We've had it with our wardrobe. After being so badly warped and as a result wreaking havoc on the rollers (this one came with sliding doors), we finally decided to replace it before the doors fell off and hit one of us while we were asleep (some of the brackets holding the shelves had already given way due to the intense warping of the sides).

So Penny and I removed all the stuff from the old wardrobe and, boy, was it a tiring job! I never knew I had so much junk accumulated over the years - old notes and newspaper articles from my Adv Dip days, comics, prayer beads (used to be a Soka member), old DVDs and games, G.I. Joes in little Ziploc bags and more toys that were long forgotten (a Star Wars Snowspeeder complete with two Rebel Alliance pilots!).

We ended up with 4 large garbage bags of trash (our wardrobe could really gooble a lot of junk!) and we still had things that we wanted enough to clog up our room, the living room and parts of the kitchen! What can I say, we're sentimental people.

After that, we had to take the old monster apart, which was the fun part. How often do you get to rip something apart with your bare hands? We had to remove the old wardrobe and clean up the whole area before the new wardrobe arrived. You can never imagine the amount of dust that can accumulate in 10 years.

Obviously, we were both dead tired after that. But that was not the end. We had to wait for the new wardrobe to arrive and move back all the stuff that we wanted!