Underappreciated.

This entry is inspired by a some time I spent with my 16 year-old sister, who in a week of driving has collided with more stationary objects than a blindfolded toddler on Pixie-Stix. And to hear her side of the story, it was really quite out of her control.
It made me think through all the things I didn't appreciate at the time, like, for example, not being a girl. Not to say that boys are better drivers than girls, but... wait, yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

Here are a few things that come to mind:

My Dad suggesting I not get too involved with that girl from Texas.

Rudimentary sewing skills.

Being the skinniest boy amongst my peers.

More common sense than some.

More sense of humor than some.

My first car being a manual transmission.

Being prodded to practice the banjo.

Not having a Nintendo.

Knowing how to splice tape.

A short list, I know, but it's all that comes to mind at the moment.

The intrinsic link between age and perspective is my favorite part about growing up. If you ever want to know more about that, go have a long talk with a 16 year-old.
But now while she's driving.

The dissasembly and reassembly of stuff in the name of feeling productive.

Let me tell you the story of a bass:
There once was a bass - a decent little bass, made in America by a reputable but not highly-esteemed maker, sold to me by a friend for $25. In the name of "making it my own", I immediately stripped all the paint off, swapped out the pickups, drilled a giant hole in the back for batteries, hacked on the pick-guard a little bit, and (last but not least) ripped the frets out with pliers.
Voila.
My first fretless bass.
But make a bass fretless is apparently a little more complicated that the removal of frets. The bass went from sounding bad, playing OK, and looking good to sounding great, looking weird, and playing really badly. I used it on a handful of recordings and made a careful map of the fingerboard in my head of the parts of the neck that made bass-sounds and the parts that made buzz-sounds.
Until I got bored. What else is the off-season for? So (with a little help from Craig) I planed off the old fretboard, glued a new one on, sanded and reshaped the neck a little, and arranged to have the bass painted silver-sparkle. All that's left is to put in the frets that I should have left in in the first place.

And last but not least, I have just finished up an album of hymns on solo guitar. It's called "Guitar Hymns" and you can check out the album here or on iTunes.