Monday, November 27, 2006

YEEEAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!

*does the happy dance* I got a guitar! Yay, so excited! I went and bought it today. A beautiful shiny lovely wonderful ebony Epiphone Les Paul Standard. I got it for a good price too...the guy in the shop accidentally put through the price for the Epi Les Paul Classic, which was $220 less than the Standard...he very kindly let me keep the discount though as it was his mistake. So even with the amp (a Roland Cube-15, I like the lead channel on it!) and the hard case, I managed to stay under my $1000 budget. I'm very happy. I've been playing it all evening and it's such a lovely instrument. And I can finally play Don't Dream It's Over...yay :D

I also got a strap for the guitar...when I saw Tim Finn in October I liked his swirly black red and white strap, so I emailed him not long ago asking where he got it...not expecting a reply but he told me where his roadie got it and I emailed them and it was waiting for me when I got home with the guitar today, so it was perfect timing. I've been playing bits all night...Electric is way different to acoustic. Going to have to start all over again! Now I know why power chords are so useful. Anyway here are some photos...the computer is being a bit shite and not letting me turn them. Bleh.




-R

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Time For A Change

I've realised it's actually easier for me to record a video with my webcam and upload it to YouTube than it is for me to record something with GarageBand and stream it...so voila. This is one of my favourite Split Enz songs (of COURSE it's an Enz song, I can hear you all saying with much rolling of eyes...). It also happens to be rather easy to play so I didn't have to practise it too hard (at all) to play it...sooner or later I'll get round to those more complex pieces, but for now, here ya go.

Friday, November 17, 2006

I hope you're not squeamish

Yeah, it's been one of those days...you know, one of those blood-soaked, flesh gouging days that you have every once in a while.

To elaborate: It was the middle of lunch rush today where we got a little slammed, and I was slicing lemons with the serrated knife to put into the drinks, and the tip of my left thumb got in the way and was duly sliced off. Luckily it wasn't *too* deep and it didn't completely come off, it's still attached on one side. Now I'm not generally a squeamish person, but seeing my own thumb peel open was not entirely pleasant...it didn't hurt or bleed for about 10 seconds, in which time I thought 'Oh my f'in god, this is going to be so painful' and 'shite, there's food to go out'. Stef said when I walked into the kitchen I was white as her...well, whites, and she didn't realise what was the matter until she saw blood pouring out of my thumb. Of course, it being the lunch rush, I didn't have time to do anything other than chuck a couple of bandaids on and hope they soaked up the blood while I hustled the food out....let me tell you, it's hard to act all cheery and happy when your thumb is throbbing like mine was throbbing. After about an hour when the rush died I ran across to the chemist to get it dressed properly and assessed...thankfully I don't need stitches. She put a little sticky strip across it that acts like a stitch (and it's actually stopped bleeding now which is nice) and I have to leave it on for a few weeks...a few weeks!? Argh. Still, if I have to slice one finger open, that's a pretty good choice, because I can still play guitar.

-R

Monday, November 13, 2006

God, I still have no life, even though I've finished exams. I want to save up some money in my bank acount just in case I end up going travelling next year and also to buy my guitar, so as soon as I finished exams last week I went straight into what pretty much amounts to full time at my part time waitressing job for the summer. To give an idea of my roster - tuesday night, wednesday lunch, friday double, saturday double, sunday double (double being lunch and dinner - 10-3, 7-10 type stuff). 30+ hours. I only worked 24 this week because I only did friday night and the weekend doubles but my feet are still throbbing. I have to get used to it. Kind of jealous after reading Georgina's blog and the fun times she had at Ben's birthday, but o well...I'll be putting around $400 in my bank account each week so that's something. Also I've been offered my house sitting job from last year again. They have a swimming pool and a big plasma screen telly and they live even closer to my work than I do (which is really close, considering I live five minute's drive away - they're like five minutes walk away). So I'll probably look after their place for six weeks which is great.

Anyway I should probably go to bed...it's 3:50am and I'm still up. Just can't bring myself to stand up and walk upstairs to bed. I worked 10 hours today and my feet, knees and back are feeling it. Tomorrow's my day off...hurrah :)

-R

PS what is it with customers at work treating me like I'm an idiot? A lot of tables, when I serve their meals, before I can even open my mouth to ask if they would like parmesan cheese or pepper, butt in and say 'and we'd like some pepper' in that horrible condescending tone that I've come to associate with stuffy upper middle class boors with high opinions of themselves. I had someone order a takeaway coffee and they asked me to top it up with milk...my steaming jug was empty so I went to fill it up and they got all panicky and went 'oh I actually want HOT milk!' and I'm like '...do you think I've never made a coffee before?' honestly. I'm a little embarrassed to say that even though I really shouldn't've, I couldn't help gaping at the lady like she was a born fool as I steamed her milk, because I just couldn't believe anyone would be that stupid.

Monday, November 06, 2006

I am so sad.

I'm sitting here by myself in my bedroom on a monday night, listening to Franz Ferdinand, surfing the net and drinking. Ohhhhhh my Gooood. That's so sad and dodgy.

Okay, I kind of sort of almost have a good excuse. I'm mixing a bottle of Gin and cranberry juice to take to the Melbourne Cup picnic tomorrow, and I'm going to take it in the cranberry juice bottle, so obviously I have to take some juice out before I can put any gin in. So I poured myself a glass and went 'what the hell. I'm not driving anywhere. May as well have a drink.' (an aside: The Arcade Fire is now playing. It's actually making a really lovely soundtrack to my solitary drinking/blogging mode.) I had coffee this morning too. I never drink coffee. It's been a strange day. Actually I had coffee last night at Brendan's (in an affogato) and I had a mocha...somethingorother (it was really an espresso that we made too early and took back, hot milk and chocolate in a tall glass) on saturday at work. It would be handy if I turned into a coffee drinker. It's a better wakeup than tea, I'll give it that.

Anyway I'm going to sit back and listen to more Arcade Fire now...I haven't listened to them for a while and forgot how awesome they are...yey :)

-R

Saturday, November 04, 2006

I'm going to pimp a band.

www.myspace.com/astrotheband

The band's name is Astro. The singer is a guy I chat to occasionally on the net and he alerted me to the existence of his band. They've entered Triple J's Unearthed competition, and I happen to think they're actually pretty fucking awesome. So go to their myspace, listen to their songs...if you like em, go to the triple j unearted site (www.triplej.net.au/unearthed) and register...it takes like two seconds...then go and rate their songs. Right now they're ranked 33 but it would be awesome if they got into the top 25, because the top 25 get a bit of radio airplay.

-R