Vacations, Funny Stories, Venison.

Posted on by kylar

Thanks to the great SJ, I had all of last week off, and in true american style, the family went to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm and California Adventure instead of staying home. Our families all live on the other side of the country, so why not! It was a great trip overall, one of the best family vacations that we’ve ever had (by my judgement). I took beanie on her first roller coaster (Sidewinder), as well as Space Mountain (She hated it.) McGough got to ride the monorail in the driver’s car, and that was awesome.

On another note, I was talking to a friend of mine who’s a budding photographer (she’ll remain nameless for embarrassment’s sake.) We were talking about some of the pictures that Kelly & I had taken at Disneyland and she mentioned that she had been having trouble with one of her lenses, that the photos that she’d been taking had been a bit blurry, not quite sharply focused, and she thought that something might have been bad in the lens, an element out of place a tiny bit or something wrong with the autofocus mechanism. I told her to try another lens and the pictures came out razor sharp, so her diagnosis seemed likely. Later I was looking at her camera bag and lenses, admiring them, and looked at her range of filters – UV, Polarizing, Diffusion, etc. I asked her about them, and she filled me in, but I noticed the diffusion filter wasn’t in the box. I asked and she said “Oh, it’s on my lens (the ‘broken’ one) – I put it on a few weeks ago to play around with it.” I replied something to the effect of “right around when it ‘broke’?” She stared at me for a minute until it set in… and now the lens takes sharp pictures again.

State Of The World, Pre-Halloween

Posted on by kylar

So I’ve been wanting a ‘classic’ strat for a while, and when I got a small bonus at work recently, I decided that I was going to sell my other strat (2000 American Standard) and buy a ’62 reissue. I sold it this week and have been checking around to see where I can get a good deal. They had one at Guitar Showcase but not in any of the colors I want (I wanted Olympic White, Seafoam Green or 3-tone sunburst). List $2K, Sale price $1399. I have a friend that works at an online music retailer who said he could get it for around $1100-1150, depending on the color (apparently the sunburst is more expensive.) And he could either get it during the Christmas window or here at their local store when he was back for Thanksgiving. I went over to the store and they didn’t have any of them in stock, and said they’d have to special order it (with a deposit) if I wanted it. After hanging out with my wife, I convinced her to come back to Guitar Showcase and check out the guitar and show her the colors I was thinking of. (She rolls her eyes but puts up with me! Love ya hun!) And after we do that, I show her the ‘vintage’ room where they have some amazing guitars and such behind glass, and a bunch of Fender Custom shop stuff, custom relic’s etc. And as we’re leaving the vintage room, I see tucked behind another guitar, a ’62 reissue sunburst. I check the tag and it’s on Consignment. I pull it out and look it over, and it’s unreal, completely unused, tags and plastic still on the pickguard.
It looked as though it had never been used, ever. The guy goes to check on the listing and eventually comes back with the case, brown tolex, perfect shape, not a single nick even on the case. So what do I do? Look with pleading eyes at my amazing wife who, with great wisdom tells me “Pay for it so we can go get the kids.” Pictures coming soon.

In Other News: We appeared on Mystery Diagnosis this week, the episode was called “The Woman Who Craved Pickles”, and it wasn’t as horrible as I thought it was going to be.

Also, my virtual band is going to play a real gig. Well, half of us anyways. Will update further.

Dreaming…

Posted on by kylar

A strange dream last night. I had gone to SF last night to see the Hip and had a stroll through part of the Mission district at dinner.

To the dream:
I had taken Christian somewhere on the bus, and the bus stop where we had gotten on was right in front of a library (I think the San Jose library near Rainbow Drive?) and taken the bus to the midsts of this large city, in a neighbourhood that wasn’t absolutely horrible, but was definately less safe than I’d want to be in with a 3 year old, past midnight. When we got off the bus, it was very late. The area around the bus stop was fairly well lit with streetlights, and I saw across the street another large library. I thought that it would be a good idea to take Christian into it, since being out here, despite the fact that there were 20+ people waiting for the bus, I felt distinctly unsafe. So I picked him up and took him across the street, and of course it was closed, and furthermore several homeless people were sleeping on it’s steps. I hadn’t gotten *to* the steps, I was still perhaps 20 or 30 feet away, and I realized that I was right on the very edge of the light projected by the pseudo-safe zone of light projected near the bus stop. I stopped and turned around and tried not to hurry back to the bus stop, holding Christian in my arms and hoping I was projecting an aura of cool calm detachment, while keeping my terror filled heart from bursting out of my chest. I was absolutely scared out of my wits that something would happen. I got back to the bus stop and a bus came around the corner, but it was a mini-coach bus, going to somewhere near LA (some kind of express). I found a well lit place to sit, and Christian nestled his head against my shoulder, and I awoke.