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When you ask your administrative assistant to make reservations for taking a team out for happy hour to demonstrate appreciation after accomplishing some very challenging work, give some guidance on the location instead of saying "anywhere is fine."  It turns out that Chicago has some very expensive bars.

Fortunately, I was working 'on loan' to a different team than my own, so I submitted it on an expense report to someone else's budget. 

However, that reminds me of a story from when I was in a sales and marketing fraternity in college.  We had arranged for a senior vice president for a large insurance company to speak at our meeting and then we arranged a happy hour afterwards.  So we go to the happy hour, one very successful and wealthy business executive with forty broke college students.  We get to the location and he announced that he was covering the first round.  So our 'first round' was pitchers and appetizers all around rather than just a drink.  When the bill came for that round, most of us were careful to be ready to bolt the premises.  Instead of being upset he said, "Is that all?  Hey!  I'll pick up the last round too."  I can only imagine him submitting what must have been a $1500 expense report and explaining that he took an entire fraternity out for drinks. 

- Zurf

Change that.  Google is my friend.  I'm not sure it's a reasonable distance from my hotel, but it's looking like Tin Angel has some live acoustic music starting at 8PM.  I'm making tentative plans to be there given meetings don't run long and tickets/seating are available and the cabs are reasonably priced. 

If you are there and see me (I'm white, a kind of big fellow, about 6'3" tall, bald with a short brown fringe, have a salt and pepper goatee, and wear glasses) drop by my table or barstool and say hi.  If you tell me you're from Chordie, I'll buy you a round.  I actually go by "Zurf" as a nickname, so I'll answer to that as easy as my Christian name.   On the offer of buying rounds, I reserve the right to limit the offer based on how many people drop by.  I don't think my wife will be too happy with me coming back from business travel with another $300 bar tab. 

- Zurf

Huh.  I never paid much attention.  I know I play the same patterns over and over, but I haven't paid much attention to how I got to them.  Usually, I mess around with a new song until I get a sound that I like (which is almost never anything similar to the original artist) and then every time afterwards when I play the song, I use that pattern for it.  But how I get to it is a mystery to me.  I guess I ought to pay more attention to myself.  However, this is a good example of what I mean about the difference between playing guitar (which requires one to actually know what one is up to) and playing songs on the guitar (which frequently surprises the picker as much as the audience). 

- Zurf

It was warm here too and I had some cabin fever driving me bonkers.  So the kids and I loaded up in the truck to try and find something to do.  We found mini-golf.  The kids were rude and had very unsportsmanlike behavior while we played.  So bad that I nearly loaded them up in the truck at about the 11th hole.  But they finally heard me and we finished up the game with a lot more fun that battle.  We then got some ice cream, during which the kids were well behaved, but the youngest was rude and selfish the whole way home.  Pretty soon, the youngest asked whether they could go to bed early.  She slept for 11 hours and the youngest slept for over 12 hours, so I'm hoping that today will be a better more relaxed and enjoyable day. 

Because we are going to a dinner party at a friend's house this evening, my wife cooked pork and sauerkraut for me last night and I'll have it again for lunch today.

I would like to restart my tradition of fishing on New Years Day to break in my new license.  Herschel (only Dirty Ed knows him) extended an open invitation.  He's a regular paddling partner, the only kind I will paddle with during cold water season, and so I was tempted - but my wife would be understandably very upset if I went paddling when we have the dinner plans for tonight. 

- Zurf

If the level of musicianship you are looking for is campfire fodder, then you don't need to know how to play the guitar.  You need to learn how to play songs on the guitar.  That's much easier. 

For motivation, go to the "Public books" tab on Chordie, search on "beginner", and take a look through to see if there are any songs that you'd like to do.  Preferably one for which you are already deeply familiar with the lyrics.  Then learn the chords for that song, and the changes between the chords in that song.  Start very, very slowly just playing steady down-strums on the beat of the music (to find the beat of the music, it's usually the underlying steady pattern) and go through the song one beat and one chord change at a time.  It may take you two months or even three to get your first song.  The second song comes easier.  By the time you've played three or four beginner rock or country songs, you'll have a decent repertoir of chords and chord changes to build upon.

Further, don't push too hard.  It takes six months to begin to feel competent.  It takes a year to feel like playing in front of others.  By the end of two years with steady work, you'll be asked to play.  By the end of three years, folks will ask if you've brought your guitar when you show up. 

Also, record yourself at the beginning.  Play it back when you feel discouraged.  I guarantee you each time you feel as if you haven't made progress it's because you've been there with yourself the whole time.  It's like kids.  You don't see them grow day to day, but if you don't see one for six months it's an amazement at how tall they've gotten.  So record yourself and allow yourself to go back and hear how little you knew months ago and how well you're doing now. 

Good luck.  We've all been through it.  Don't feel alone, and don't let the temporary discouragement stop you. 

- Zurf

Yeah.  You wouldn't want that humidity getting into your guitar and making it reverberate better and improving the tone or anything.  It'd lose all the buzz and rattle that way.   I'm wondering where a humidity free environment is in Georgia. 

- Zurf

Cool DE.  It's a good time with lots of folks you know.  If you come, you'll have fun.  The fishing on the Shenandoah is doing a lot better. It's surely not recovered to its former glory, but all those five and six year old fish that the kills didn't get have had the opportunity to eat as much as they like without competition from the 'big guys', and now they are the big guys.  You won't catch any trophies, but the opportunity at catching a bunch of 13" -15" footballs with broad shoulders is there.

Bump.

Some folks are going to have to request vacation time for 2011 soon, so I am bumping this up as a reminder.

- Zurf

Not so funny.  Robert Johnson played the pre-cursor to that guitar - a parlor sized steel string Gibson.  Before he got a Guild, it was what Mississippi John Hurt played as well, if my memory serves.  Those Gibsons were THE blues guitar until Fender came along and electrified things. 

- Zurf

Fix it up and play the blues.  I'm sorry to hear of your parent's passing and the circumstances under which you came into possession of it, but I'm excited for you at the prospect of playing on that little piece of personal history. 

- Zurf