Pedal to the Metal

Maybe it was premature of me to mention a few posts ago that I already got my mid-life crisis out of the way. Well, I haven't gone out and bought a red sports car or anything, but I did buy a guitar effects pedal. Matt, a friend from the ward, had been pressing me to come over to jam in his basement studio ever since he found out I used to play the guitar (emphasis on "used to"). Well, I thought about perhaps supplementing my modest bag of tricks with some new effects and asked the guy in the music store if he had any pedal that could make a crap guitarist sound like a good one. Turns out they haven't quite perfected the "Crap --> Chops" formula yet, but I still walked out of the store with the DigiTech RP250. It's been fun to play with. And it gives me the chance to not so much call attention to what I'm playing but rather to elicit responses like, "Hey, THAT'S a weird sound!" That works in my favor.

We had our friends Ana and Andy and their kids over for dinner on Saturday. We had a great time with them. It's rare that I can have someone over to our house for three hours and then regret that it's time for them to go. Ana had lent me some music from the Mirando do Douro region of Portugal where her family is from and Andy and I had just gotten going on the subject of world music--and the "have you ever heard?" game--when it was time to close up shop. As the saying goes, "we'll have to do this again sometime."