We’re driving across country to Illinois today!  Don’t expect much from Tasha and I, aside from the occasional “on the road” blog.  Well… maybe if something interesting happens on the way.

We are a quarter of the way through Iowa! Trip has been uneventful so far!

I spent an extremely productive day at work today (really, I did!) and now we’re getting things packed up to head back to Illinois for the week.  I’m looking forward to a long week of hanging out with friends and family, playing my guitar, and karate.

Now I’ve gotta go drop Teddy off at our friends house, who will be watching him while we are away.

This week I had the rare circumstance to actually code, then work on some documentation.  Both of these tasks allow me listen to music while I work, and I created a Genius playlist based off of the track “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead” by Stars.  A few tracks later a song by The Postal Service called “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” came up, and it bored its way into my skull and I’ve been hopelessly listening to it this week.

Tomorrow should be an action-packed day at the office prior to my vacation, but I am looking forward to getting it behind me.  Hopefully The Postal Service will continue to make my day pass quickly as well.

My Fender Blues Junior arrived today!  It works just great, however I found out that my Fender Strat has very noisy pickups so John is going to help me shield it up and resolder my ground when I’m home next week.  The hum sound is so loud that I can hear it under the chords, and it gives Tasha an instant migrane.

It’s fixable, so I’ll get it sorted out next week… the amp is completely worth the money, loud and bluesy aside from that annoying hum!

We’re having a Tuesday night D&D session tonight in order to accomodate our group’s hectic schedule.  That means it will be a later night tonight, but much fun will be had by all.

In other news, my car’s window miraculously started working today.  When leaving the office, I inadvertently hit the switch to roll it down and it worked.  My sunroof is still acting up, so I’m still going to have Tasha take it in to get fixed.  Plus, we’ve got to drive it across country this week and I’d rather have it generally checked out first.  Plus, having the sunroof working will be nice for the drive.

Time to go get ready for D&D, more tomorrow!

Since we’re having our rabbits cared for over the week of our vacation, I opted to clean up their houses tonight.  Instead of my normal once-over with new litter, I opted to put the rabbits in their travel carriers and take their cages outside and hose them down.  This needed to be done for a very long time, so it was a pretty gross job and took a long time.

While I was spraying and paper-toweling, a neighbor down the block got home.  He’s an older guy, and he happily shouted down the street “Hi!  Do you know what the hell you’re doing?” and I assured him that I did.  After I thought about it for awhile, I couldn’t fully determine if he was just being an overly familiar ol’ guy or if he was actually annoyed at some aspect of my rabbit cleaning ritual.

Now, it would surprise me VERY little if our Homeowners Association has some sort of rules against overt hoseplay in the middle of the evening, or perhaps some restriction on how many grams of rabbit poo you can have present in your driveway at a given time.  So I’m half expecting to get a letter chastising me for either of those options.  But the rabbits are clean, and I don’t feel bad about it.

On Thursday, I was driving home from work and decided to roll down my window.  My driver’s side window stopped rolling down halfway through.  I was able to eventually get it rolled up by pulling up on the window and trying to roll it up with the switch.

So now I have to go get that fixed.  Oh joy.  Either that, or tolerate the problem… or try to fix it myself.  Yeah, sounds like I’ll be calling the dealership soon.  *sigh*

Since I got my Brian May pedal, I’ve been working on some Queen songs.  Specifically, I’ve been working on the solo from Bohemian Rhapsody and its been difficult.  I really need to get back to working on my Fretboard Logic books and learning technique in order to get better, but I’m having trouble resisting the “learning songs I know” urge.  I should try to find a balance between the two that lets me get technically better and still learn some new tunes.

In the meantime, my cousin John has been teaching me more about gear (amps/pedals/etc) and its fun to know more about how this stuff works, what is good, and why.  This is turning in to being a fun hobby!

Hardly a surprise, but The Beatles: Rock Band has touched off a new, virulent case of Beatlemania in our household.  The newly remastered tracks sound awesome, and I’m pretty excited about picking up their new box set eventually.  Also, with Tasha working for Black & Read, we have a ready supply of actual used Beatles vinyl which is growing more and more tempting as time goes on.

It doesn’t help matters much that most of my office are raging Beatles fans and want to come over to play Rock Band regularly.  Over the next few months, they are releasing albums as downloadable content, starting with Abbey Road in October, Sergeant Pepper in November, and Rubber Soul in December.  It’s going to be a good winter!