I've been playing my electric guitar a lot lately. I love the thing - it's so much nicer than my other worn-out electric. It looks great and plays better. Also, there's a certain satisfaction to turning my 200w amp up to about 3 and filling my house with sound.

Now I just wish I could think of something to play.

For a while now, I've been trying to come up with some new riffs or progressions, but I'm just not finding anything good enough. Sure, I've come up with some stuff that's alright, but nothing I can get really excited about.

I like playing stuff other people have written, but there's some deep-rooted compulsion to make up my own stuff - and I'm no longer satisfied with what I've been coming up with.

I need inspiration, or at least some new ideas.

~PS

Well, tonight was the last night of VBS. We all survived. It went very well, despite our directors nervousness about it.

Sheri led music, most of the opening and closing and one of the classes. She had a lot of work to do for it.

I just ran the powerpoint & projector for the words for the songs.

Oh, and I got to be a puppet. A dog puppet called 'Digger', to be precise. It was a big hit. Everyone loved it, and I had a lot of fun doing it. I used to do puppets at my church back in jr high. Kinda forgot how much fun it was. Especially with all the improv/ad-lib I got to do with Sam (since none of this was scripted). I also had a lot of fun putting bandannas, hats and sunglasses on him, and I even got to work in my little penguin hand puppet for a cameo tonight.

It was great! I mean, when you're as easily amused as I am, what could be better than puppets? :-)

Well, Sheri's parents are to arrive tomorrow, and i've got some stuff to do, so I'm off...

~PS

I really wish I wasn't continually asked to do inane, mindless tasks. I realize this is unavoidable to a certain extent, but I feel like my skills are being wasted on things I'm reasonably sure our dog Ally could do.

This is not what I do. I don't *like* spending hours changing html text, when I could be developing new web apps and/or modules for our system or even designing new and better ways of doing our job.

But no.

"Change 'Text X' to say 'The Text X'" (real, actual example)

grr.

sigh.

~PS

Yesterday started off early for a saturday. About 7:30am actually. I'm pretty sure that shouldn't be legal.

We got to our church in Erwin just before 9 so that we (the band) could practice a bit before everything started that afternoon. See, yesterday was our VBS 'kickoff', which we did by having a sort of all-afternoon party in the field behind the church. Among other activities, our band and another band played on the stage they had set up (which was actually a flat-bed semi trailer) and Toby grilled some hot dogs and made some other stuff.

It was pretty fun. Everyone said our band sounded great - though honestly I couldn't tell because the monitors pointed at me let me hear sam's guitar really well, and very little else. But I'll take their word(s) for it. It was pretty fun to be able to play some of our hymns a bit louder (and with more distortion :-D) than usual because it wasn't for a formal service. Not that that necessarily stops us.

We were pondering how good we'd probably be if we'd practiced more than about 6 times for this gig.

At about 6pm, the festivities wrapped up and we headed out. I was pretty tired. We played our 10-12 song set through about 4 times, and I can only sing and play for so long. Also my fingers were on the verge of serving a restraining order to my guitar strings.

I had heard a rumor that a forum friend of ours was going to be in town, so we gave Llama a call as we left. We ended up going to the home of one 'smellie_hippie' (and i got incontrovertible proof that he does exist!) to meet him and his wife and kids, and there we also met 'Ceika'. Other Playgrounders present included me, the Llama and the ArchivesNinja. We proceeded to hang out, eat ice cream and play Kubb and Killer Bunnies. Good times.

I had wanted to meet the hippie for some time, so that was cool, and I'd heard quite a bit about Ceika - especially with respect to her avatar-fu. It was really cool to get to meet people I'd seen online but never met in real life - especially when they turn out to be great people to hang out with. :-D

So by 11pm(ish) when this was all over, I was quite tired (though probably not as tired as Ceika who'd been up for about 24 hours and driven from Dallas, TX). Didn't take me any time at all to get to sleep.

Probably won't get to do anything as cool as any of that for a while...

~PS

Have you ever played Jenga with boxes of soda cans?

I have.

Hey, when the soda you want is buried half-way down the stack, you do what you gotta do...right?

;-)

~PS

Did someone move my birthday while I wasn't looking? I just got a birthday card in the mail from sheri's mom.

Now, I know she knows when my birthday actually is - but looking at it, you can probably guess why I got this card. Apparently she found this one somewhere and decided she couldn't wait 6 months.

I don't suppose the summer-themed card would go real well for my december-themed birthday either, so maybe that's a justification for its prematureness.

It is quite fun - and it makes a nice addition to my penguin-themed life.

~PS

I think there is a growing number of our population who spend more time talking to people who are not present than people who are. You know the ones I mean.

Earlier today I was at the little convenience store down the street. I was there getting some pepsi to ward off a Fiendish Dire Soda Shortage (you know how dangerous those can be). It was quite crowded at this particular time, and the line in the store was really long and it took about 10 minutes to get through.

The more annoying factor, however, was the woman in the line behind me. She came in a few minutes after I did, talking rather loudly (or, at least loudly for the otherwise quiet room) on her cell phone. She then proceeded to stand in line and complain the whole time to whoever was on the other end about how crowded it was and how long it was taking.

Seems we've taken the inconsiderate nature of using a cell phone in public a level further.

As I was pulling out, i saw her walk out of the store still on her cell phone.

Do these people ever put the thing down?

~PS

Well, my parents left to return to IN this afternoon. We had a good time hanging out this weekend. It had been quite a while since we'd gotten to spend any real time with them. I miss them.

My dad couldn't resist fixing a few things around the place (a couple repairs on my little push mower, the garden hose spigot, and my jeep's passenger window) - which i much appreciated, but I was glad that wasn't all he did this time.

It was nice just to spend some time with them. We played some quiddler, and watched a couple of movies. Went out for dinner. That kind of stuff. On sunday, we went out and played some golf. I played terribly, but it was still fun. We also taught them to play kubb - which they greatly enjoyed. I'm betting my dad makes a set when he has a chance.

edit: I should have taken more pictures while they were here.... :-(

~PS

I thought for a while about whether I wanted to say anything about this at all. And I was originally going to send this in an email, but I decided to put it up here so that everyone could get the message. I'd also like to point out that I've rewritten this a couple of times, removing various expletives.

There are some buttons you should not push with some people. Everyone has these. I would have thought that some of you might know a little bit more of my personality than this, but apparently not, so let me spell it out for you.

This is with reference to a particular set of practical jokes I do no appreciate. They go something like this:

The joker sets up some scenario that looks odd, but is not outside the possibility of being real. The "joke" is such that the intended target will react to it as though the contrived situation it is real. A little knowledge of the target allows the joker to tailor the scenario a little such that the target is more likely to buy it, or such that the reaction is more dramatic. Basically the idea is to make a fool of someone - which seems inherently mean-spirited to me.

Now, up to this point, i merely think the joke is stupid (not that most practical jokes aren't, mind you) - and I know for a fact I've had this conversation with some of you before when the target of the "joke" wasn't even me. See, the target of this kind of joke (and others like it) has no reason to think the situation is contrived beyond its oddity - and oddity alone is not sufficient for my life. The stupid aspect to me is that they're really not doing anything that anyone wouldn't fall for. How is it funny that I "fell for it" if there's really no way not to? There was no challenge there; no accomplishment. There was really no reason to be suspicious. Oh, except now. Now I'm likely to be a *lot* more suspicious of everything, since it seems my friends like to make a fool of me. Thanks.

But the part that really pisses me off, is that even AFTER I react to it, they don't come clean - they just continue to laugh about it to themselves. I'm sure they're "just kidding" - but they never let me in on the joke. So I find out about it weeks/months/years/whatever later, and now I feel stupid because I know that the jokers have been laughing about this for all that time - even though there's no way in hell I could have known. Again, thanks for that.

I know for a fact this has been done to me at least twice (and I have a one or two more general suspicions) - so now I'm telling you: I am not amused. Don't push this button with me. If you truly feel the need to laugh at me behind my back, i'm sure you can find a more legitimate reason.

PLEASE STOP IT.

~PS