Saturday's Show at Searchmont is Cancelled.

Current Fixations (Pt. 2)

Music.

This Saturday, Oct. 25th I will be filling in on guitar for Tim, (who recently left for Korea) with Woody Sims. We'll be playing three sets at Coch's Corner (the old Cellar Tap) across from the Essar Centre. Described as: "LIVE ORIGINAL MUSIC POP/FOLK/ROCK.UPBEAT LIVELY MUSIC"

This Sunday, Oct. 26th I will be reuniting with the Octoberists (again) to play at the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library. I think we'll be starting at 2:15/2:30ish.


Next Saturday, Nov. 1st I will be playing again with Woody Sims at Searchmont Ski Resort as a fund-raiser. We'll be playing with Bruized Orange. Event described as: "oysters . roast pig . cocktails by campfire light . dancing under the stars . live entertainment Saturday, November 1, 6pm . call 781-2340 for tickets ."

click (most of) the colours to visit the links.

Current Fixations (Pt. 1)

Refinishing

Work has been slow lately so here's what has been occupying my time.

I had one last guitar available to me to paint - my 1989 MIK Squier II Stratocaster. This was my first ever electric guitar purchased from Arnill's Music. Using money I made from doing yard-work at Aunty Rita's house and with Ernie topping off the difference I finally had this black beauty. I loved that guitar so much I memorized the serial number (still know it!) and made a glass case for it. (Nerd!) Check out those cool stickers I made with some sign vinyl and an xacto knife in grade 9. haha

Notice the broken E tuner. I found a new set of tuners from a guy on offset-guitars.com. Got a good deal on them but they were too large for the existing holes. Enter Uncle Evert who widened the holes for a perfect fit and routed out the body cavity for the new pickguard too.


Here it is taken apart:

And sanded down:


And taped up:


Six weeks later...right after sanding and sanding and sanding and buffing. This is my best paint job yet. No sand-throughs! I was extremely happy.

Krylon's 'Fairytale Pink':

Indoor lighting:

And outdoors:


And now the sad news. I tried using a cheap type of gloss and a week or two after I did the final buffing these weird scratches and a 'fog' of sorts began to show in places. I'm not redoing it so I'll just pass it off as a 'relic'. haha

For those of you not familiar with the idiotic guitar market, to relic a guitar is to take a perfectly fine guitar and scratch it up with a belt sander, age the parts in muriatic acid, sit it in the sun to fade the paintjob, stuff it in a box of lit cigarettes and wear the fretboard down in an attempt to make it look like they used the guitar for decades in smoky dives. In a word, Dumb.


I don't mind the look of a well played guitar, but get that look from PLAYING THE GUITAR! Anyway, enough nerdy talk. What has been keeping you busy?

Mira and Leo

We adopted two new greyhounds. Here's what they looked like on the adoption website:


Their racing names were "Bally's Lori" and "I'm Jimney". We looked up their racing information at greyhound-data.com and found out that Lori (now known as Mira) only raced 6 races and Jimney (a.k.a. Leo) didn't race at all. In contrast, Rosa (Rosa Martina) raced 156 times and Al (Nita's Rowdy) had 55 races under his belt. Rosa and Al were both 5 when we adopted them. This time Mira and Leo are both 2.

We were unsure of how they would deal with each other in a confined space so we muzzled them. They got along pretty well - a couple of growls but nothing major. This time the drive was much more pleasant than when we got Rosa (no speeding tickets - two last time!, no van filled with diarrhea and the drive was 2 hours shorter.)

This is Mira. She's tiny. She is so sweet. She wraps her body around you when you pet her.

She is stubborn and will definitely be trouble. Here she is learning about windows.

Here's Leo. He's small too (compared to Al). He is very chill. He's very food motivated and already learned to sit.

Here he is doing what greys do best. Also, we'll have to fatten him up.

You can see the baldness on Leo's back thighs from "crate rub". Al had it too but it grew in nicely. Also check out the chunk of ear missing from Leo.

They've learned stairs - good thing because our house has a lot of them. It's nice to have dogs around again.

Here's some video: