It’s time for yet another Jam Night at Walton Manor!  I’m packing up the strat and the Blues Junior, after this week it’s time to unwind!

Maybe next Jam Night I’ll have a new guitar to bring along…

Today was a real barnburner of a day at the office… had a particularly nasty bug to contend with and things aren’t tying up nicely.  On the upside, I had a nice hour-long conversation with our system architect about process changes so hopefully I’ll be able to help get some things changed in our organization.

But enough about work… tomorrow night is a jam night at Walton Manor, so I’m practicing some songs tonight in preparation.  It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to attend a jam night and it’s going to be a blast!  Hopefully tomorrow is a better day, for now I’m off to relax!

Today was a going-away party for a friend of ours at the office.  He’s moving on to a different company, and he wanted to go to Three Margaritas for Mexican food.  He had a very good time at his lunch, while I was beginning a process of slowly inflating throughout the afternoon.

I don’t know what it was about my nachos with beef and cheese, but it is now causing me moderate amounts of discomfort.

Why I feel compelled to share this with the rest of the Internet I don’t really know… I have a feeling its mostly because my friends back at home (looking at you Dave!) would likely have some clever comments to share in this situation.

And now excuse me, I’m going to go attempt to summon a cyclone in my bathroom.  Adieu!

Today was a long day at the office.  The Other Josh and I were fighting a particularly aggravating bug, and we’ve entered the portion of the release cycle where people bother you every few hours for status (we’ve taken to vague gestures and grunting to make them go away now).  We finished up that effort around 2pm, so I finished up some administrative work, emails, and other testing and realized that it was right about 4:30.  I had hit a good rational stopping point for the day, and decided it would be nice if I got out of the office on time.

I quickly snatched up my jacket and headed out, slightly giddy at the prospect of leaving on time.  As I burst out the back door of the office to freedom, I ran right into my boss, the marketing manager, and our general manager on their way back in to the office from a coffee break.  They greeted me, and I said something to the effect of “oh, the ONE TIME in two weeks when I try to leave the office on time and I run in to you three!”

We all had a good laugh and they implored me not to think another moment about it and to get out of here.  I’m lucky I work for decent guys.

I spent the rest of the evening having a short nap, eating dinner, and reviewing my buddy’s new CD.  He asked me and a few of my other friends to listen through it and provide him feedback.  It’s a good mix of a variety of different sounds, I’ll be sure to put the link up when its released in case anyone is curious.

Tonight Tasha and I set out to make our May budget… our first spending month after becoming debt free.  Let’s just say it was a very exciting time… turns out there will be more than a few major fun things in our immediate future.  Me?  I’m looking very seriously at Brian May’s Red Special guitar and an iPad 3G.  It’s going to be a fun time!

Tasha’s got her eye on a big basket order and an iPad of her own.

Being debt-free rules!

Last night’s anniversary celebration went off without a hitch… we met Paul and Kara for dinner and the Meniskus show, and the band dedicated a song to us for our anniversary (The Partyer, for those familiar with Meniskus).

After sleeping in a ridiculous amount, it was time for some D&D this afternoon.  It was a fun session, we ordered Chinese food so by the end of the night there was an epic battle between Atlantic Cod and 10,000 Chinese Warriors in my stomach… I’m not cut out for that much good food all in one 24 hour period.

I’m going to let the battle calm down now and relax before it’s back to work tomorrow!

Today is our sixth wedding anniversary! We celebrated with lunch out, and later tonight we are going to see Meniskus and eat at the Baker St. Pub.

This continues our anniversary tradition of eating at a new spot every year and we are happy to see Meniskus at the same time!

That’s all for now!

After a long day at work, Tasha and I went out to dinner and then headed to the Apple Store to finally test out the iPad.

It’s a pretty amazing little device… I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did.  The screen is gorgeous, but the most compelling feature of the thing is the apps.  The ones on the demo unit really made great use of the extra screen size, and the gestures to control everything gave the whole unit a very comprehensive, tactile feel.  One of the things I was most worried about was the typing… but I was pleasantly surprised there as well.  I was able to type a few sentences with no real problems.

It was as I suspected… after getting to use one of these I want one more than I expected.  Tasha’s going to get one next month out of her spending money, and I’m thinking about it as well.

Slept like crap last night, so I’m going to spend the evening relaxing and trying to stay awake.

Today was a busy day at the office, with a series of hilariously bad meetings followed by some bug hunting and squashing.  This trend will likely continue for a week or so, then things should quiet down for a bit.  After that, we’ll see.

Time to dig up some dinner!  I don’t have much else to say tonight.

My Amazon order arrived today, I got The Fender Stratocaster Handbook and The Stratocaster Chronicles. The latter is a 50-year anniversary retrospective of how Fender came to be, famous players, notable guitars, and all sorts of excellent details about the company’s history.

The prior book is all about setting up, maintaining, troubleshooting, and modifying a Stratocaster. A professional luthier takes you through all the steps needed to perform general maintenance, and even in-depth changes like fixing the finish on the neck or body of the guitar. I find the whole thing very interesting and would love to get more into doing my own guitar maintenance.

Fun stuff!