Seen on this week's Post Secret:


(I didn't send it in.)

Birthday Present

Laura bought me an ipod touch for my birthday. It's pretty neat. WiFi internet, pics, video and of course music. When sideways the screen automatically flips sideways where you can scroll through all your album covers.

Bad Astronomy Blog Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2007

Some neat shots here.


And this from NASA's STEREO ( Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) - 3D pics of the sun with the moon moving across it.




p.s. Here's 50 Things We Know Now (That We Didn't Know Last Year)
and the 2006 Edition.

I used #2 a lot on my students last year.

The part of the brain that regulates reasoning, impulse control and judgment is still under construction during puberty and doesn't shift into autopilot until about age 25.

Walk About

A couple weekends ago I walked down to a matinee. I decided to snap a few pics on the way to document a regular day.









Oh yeah and COMING SOON - GDH and The Road Rockets at Bottoms Up Lounge, Feb. 29th, 2008.

Guitar ReFinishing

I belong to a message board where one of the members makes guitars for people. He offered to make bodies for members at a super cheap price (a quarter of the going rate). I decided to try and put together a Jazzmaster. By the end (hopefully this spring) it should look like this:

In order to learn how to refinish a guitar I purchased a cheap Squier Telecaster Custom and decided to turn it into a (fake) Fender Telecaster Deluxe.

Here's what I started with way back in October:


An inexpensive neck was purchased off ebay:
(not actual neck pictured)

The body and headstock were sanded down:





Primer was sprayed (poorly - lookit all those runs!):


More sanding (more mistakes):


Many products were purchased:
(most of them not needed, like these for example)


Sprayed the paint on (Krylon's Honeydew green).

Then F#*&*ING WalMart took seven (!) weeks to get Deft Gloss Clear Coat in. I went every Sunday after hockey for Seven Weeks (!). Every week the first words to Laura when I got home was "F&*&^ING WalMart!" (I know, serves me right for shopping at WalMart. In my defense they were the only place that sells it. I went to 6 other stores first.)

Applied the decal to the headstock:





Played a kick ass show with Barker:
(notice women's underwear thrown at us hanging on mic stand)

Sprayed the gloss and let it sit for a month.

Finally yesterday I wet sanded with mineral oil from 1:00 pm till 7:00 pm (minus eating time), working my way up the grits (320, 400, 600, 800, 1200) then polished it with 3M's Finesse It II. This is what I ended up with:








It's not as shiny as the guys at the ReRanch Guitar Refinishing Forum but it's acceptable for a first time.

Things I'll do differently for the Jazzmaster:
1) Use even finer grit sand paper (1500, 2000 etc) to get it like a mirror finish
2) Be more careful sanding on the edges. There are a ton of sand-throughs there.
3) Fix any sand-throughs.
4) Use the good masking tape. I used the cheap kind and it left a bunch of residue.

The City Cat

This is neat. I haven't looked through their website yet but sounds like a good idea.

The MDI Air Car.

Happy New Year.

Coch's Corner was a blast. Everyone sounded really great and the place was packed. Coch told us we had it almost to capacity (which is around 210).

We added Steve-o to the brass section:



Sarah helps out with some BGVs:


We recruited a new bass player (our fourth), introducing Dave:



Barker joins the Road Rockets for a couple tunes and gets the crowd out of their seats:




The Woody Sims Trio in the groove:

A twelve cornered stone in South America - part of a wall held together with no mortar. How'd they put this thing together?



I forgot my camera so thanks to Rob and Rhonda for these pics I lifted from Facebook.