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When I got mine done, the recovery was half the time he expected.  I was rowing again in two months.  I was unconscious for three days after the surgery, during which time I somehow wrote two songs that I do not recall writing.  But I looked in my hook book and there were two songs written in my left-handed scrawl (I'm ambidextrous, but am more practiced with my right hand). 

I had a full range of motion returned for the first time in a long time - a decade maybe.  I hadn't been able to put my hand over my head without tears from pain for a solid four years before the surgery.  It was one of the most sensible things I've ever done to get it fixed.  After multiple breaks, multiple dislocations, cartilage tears, and arthritis, the surgeon earned his co-pay.  I expect your shoulder has had similar or worse abuse, knowing the stresses you WW bums put your shoulders through.

Well I just put a pair of Ernie Ball coated phosphor bronze strings on.  .011's.  Eh.  They sound good and have a lot more volume than most .011's, but they don't work so well on my guitar.  I have recalled why I usually use .012s.  The .011s buzz a little on the bridge.  I think the additional tension of the .012s make up just that little bitty bit of difference needed to lose the tinny buzz. 

- Zurf

Well George Harrison IS a mutant after all.

I'm a bass player.  I had been getting my music fix by playing in a praise band.  However, that church fizzled out and so I wasn't playing any more.  I hope it wasn't my playing that cause the fizzling.  Anyway, my wife was nice enough to get me a bass trainer, but it's not the same thing as making real music with real people.  They're good for practice, but it didn't satisfy me. 

So I took up guitar because I can make what felt like real music to me without anyone else playing along. 

Now, the timing of guitar was to learn it in time to sing "Forever and Ever Amen" to my wife on our 20th anniversary.  I gave myself two years to learn guitar well enough to learn the instrument, the song, and the lyrics to do this.  No problem.  Ends up though that she had heard me sing it in practice SO many times by our 20th, that it wasn't going to be special any more.  So I stealth learned "Flesh and Blood" by Johnny Cash.  I was all set to play it for her on our 20th, when I came down with a case of laryngitis.  Couldn't even whisper.  So we had a quiet 20th anniversary.  The 25th is coming up in three more years, so maybe I should start working on something...

I should also mention the important part a fellow named Bo Crowder had.  I was at a campfire where Dirty Ed and Bo Crowder and a couple other fellows were picking.  One fellow who was hanging out with us said, "I sure which I could play like that" about the time Bo finished his turn playing.  Well Bo said, "All you need is 15 minutes a day and the sound will come."  The fellow who made the comment said, "Yeah, right!"  But my mind clicked and I was thinking, "I can find 15 minutes a day..."   As time went on, Bo and Dirty Ed both continued to be encouraging to me, and so I thank them both here publicly, though Bo won't ever read it. 

- Zurf

No Jeff, that's the Appalachians.  Some of the other pictures in my Facebook panorama album were taken in Alaska.

How about a little more obscure?  The third verse of Neil Young's "After The Gold Rush" is a retelling of a book by Ursula le Guine titled "The Dispossessed" in which space aliens come and take all children from Earth.

Hydraulic underwear. 

- Zurf

Something fun we do at campfire sessions is where we take turns.  Everyone has to do a song.  Anyone is welcome to join any song they know, but each person in turn does a song.  One fellow who brings an acoustic bass always just bangs out some riff that sort of kind of works and then gives it some crazy title like "Possums in a Can" when it's his turn and then plays bass lines on other people's songs.  It's a fun way to do a few rounds.  Topdown and I did something like that, except we'd get all excited and do two or three in a row.

- Zurf

Of course you would be welcome Pix.  I wonder if it would be fun to rent a few spaces at a campground and make it an outdoor event.  Would anyone care for that?  I know I would, but others may not enjoy being outdoors so much.  I've got tents and cots and stuff to loan to folks who haven't got gear and I have cooked for up to ten folks out of my camp kitchen.  Last time I camped, we had a kitchen, a gathering space for music, and a bar all under cover.   If we put it near a river with fish in it, perhaps Dirty Ed would come.  I know of a party on the Shenandoah River in June that includes a big feast, paddling, and it would be fun to get a bunch of spaces near one another to do some jamming during the nights. 

Cam - Best of luck to your kin.  If she's not a believer, you know what you should do. 

- Zurf

Google says six hours, and that's about right compared to other trips I've made to Winston-Salem area.  I wouldn't count on me coming down for a weekend given how we're doing the Zurf family Thanksgivmas celebration at my house this year.  We've got a lot to do before family invades, er uh, visits.  I'm out for this one, but keep me in mind for other ones.  I'll drive twelve hours for a music party in a man-cave. 

- Zurf