Monday, February 22, 2021

Gifts keep giving

As I think I've mentioned, I've been playing more guitar during the pandemic. As I figured certain technical things out, I began to wonder what they would sound like on an electric guitar, perhaps with a little distortion, so I reached out to my friend Nick, who has made some wonderful music on his own over the years, and asked what kind of gear would be best if I just wanted to play through my computer, for myself, with no amp.

Nick got sort of excited, and asked what kind of guitar I had. When I told him none, he decided to send me one of his old ones, a banged up Telecaster with very nice Bad Brains and Dead Kennedys stickers on it.

Well, the floor of my study was pretty full of crap, including a couple of boxes of old journals from my dad that Leslie had asked for months and months ago and which I had scarcely peaked at. We also had all kinds of crap clogging up our mud room. So I decided that if I was going to be accepting a large object into my home, I needed to get rid of some. I shipped a box of journals to Leslie and set to work in other parts of the house.

Sometime during the day I walked out to the mailbox, where I saw our new neighbors across the street working on something: "We're putting in a new swing between these trees," the dad told me. They also have an outdoor trampoline for their super-friendly 8-year old daughter. Which gave me an idea. "Hey, do you guys want a little indoor trampoline?" I asked. We have one that Graham hasn't been using for some time, really he's just to big for it and it no longer provides an outlet for him. I had recently broached the topic of giving it up with him.

"You bet," said the dad, "she had actually asked for one for Christmas." So, after confirming with Graham that it was cool, I took it over there. Later that evening, as the neighbors were sitting around their fire pit in the driveway watching a Carolina game, I saw her in the garage bouncing on her new trampoline. 

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