campfire anthems

man did i have a busy weekend. saturday morning emily and i had to be in winter haven at 8:30 to meet the home inspector at the house we are trying to buy. tabby bottoms did us a huge favor and got her dad, who is a home inspector in orlando, to drive over for the morning and give us the complete run down of the place. first of all, her parents are awesome. we all walked through the house, attic, yard, etc. after about 2 hours, a bloody finger, and a little sweat tabby’s dad told us that it is a great home. there were a couple of minor issues to take care of, like the structural warranty from the builder and putting some gutters on the roof, but all in all this place turned out to be in good shape.

after the home meeting we were starving. there was much debate about where to eat lunch, and it was only about 10:45, which made the prospects even slimmer. we drove over to lakeside village because i wanted a greek salad from louis pappas, but they didn’t open until 11:00. to pass the time we wandered around bed bath and beyond for a bit and then drove back over the restaurant…and decided we didn’t want to eat there. heading back down the road we finally agreed on fred’s market, which was a good call if you ask me. chicken, ribs, mashed potatoes, green beans, and peach cobler is a good lunch any day in my book. our next stop was carlton music center. i decided that i wanted to buy a glass slide and teach myself how to play slide guitar. it has such a cool sound. i hope i am successful.

we finally got home in the early afternoon. emily decided to take a nap, so i changed the strings on my acoustic guitar and watch ultimate fighter on spike tv. i love that show. by the time i was all done with this, emily was awake and it was time to get ready to go to betsy’s wedding. i was originally suppose to play guitar and sing in it, but then i had the tragic knife accident and was replaced by my beautiful wife. good call betsy. the wedding began at 5:00 and laster for just over a half hour. on to the reception we go. dinner, toasts, and and hour and a half later we decided to leave due to the early morning we have every sunday. when we got home we decided to hang out together and watch a movie. i got to choose. normally this could be a bad thing for emily, but she actually liked what we watched. let me tell you, blades of glory is very funny. bed time.

awakened by music at 5:30 sunday morning, i knew it was church day. everything went really well for the services. we did a stripped down acoustic set, due to everyone being on vacation. timm gave the second sermon in the squeaky clean series, and overall it seemed like there were more people in both services. a few of us decided to go to abuelos for lunch. i love that place. their pappas con chile is simply divine. after lunch we were still in house mode, so we drove way down into south lakeland to visit famous tate. i was very disappointed with the prices and selection. since it was on the way home, we stopped in the home depot next. once again, i was very disappointed with this establishment. we had been to lowes earlier in the week shopping for appliances, and i’m pretty sure that this will be where we do business. when we got home it was nap time again. this time i actually took one as well. i’m not sure if it was on purpose though, since i was watching csi and the next thing i knew it was 2 hours later. sunday night we had plans to go out to tampa to watch timm bottoms perform his senior recital for his masters degree at usf. he did very good. i’m proud of my buddy, and let me tell you, that boy can play a tuba. we did a little celebrating and hanging out afterward and finally arrived back home at 11:30.

monday morning. here i sit at work. overall it was a great weekend. i can’t wait to hear about the offer we made on the house. i can’t wait to go to lowes again and actually buy kitchen appliances. i can’t wait until saturday so i can sleep in.

as much as a blog or website is to express the ideas of the author, i feel that, especially in the case of campfire anthems, it is just as much about the reader.  without you this site would be pointless.  so i must ask you all to do me a favor.  i need a critique.  i have so much going on in my life these days it would be nearly impossible to document it all.  from buying a house, things at work, church, ranting about this and that, and other random ramblings i may post, it seems like this could become a full-time job on its own.

so here here is your chance to become interactive with me.  i want you to tell me what you like, what you don’t like, what i’m doing well, what i should improve on.  if there are certain categories that you enjoy reading over others, let me know.  i want to keep you guys, and gals, satisfied, because as i said before, without you this whole thing would be pointless.

thanks for reading.

so i took yesterday off from the blog world. what you missed was huge. we pulled our offer on the house in lakeland and made an offer on a house in winter haven. its a better house, bigger, cheaper, lower property taxes, and would be on teco rather than lakeland electric. i’m pretty excited about all of this. tabby bottoms is hookin’ us up too. on saturday morning her dad is coming to the house to inspect it, since he is a home inspector in orlando. so once again we will see how this goes. this time, however, there will be a pool party in addition to the bbq. do you have a bathing suit?

a while back i hacked into emily’s blog and wrote a lovely post about myself.  that is good quality humor.  well this morning when i arrived at work, i found an email waiting for me from facebook telling me that my profile had been breached and they reset my password.  how delightful.  now i look like an idiot because my account sent a comment to everybody on my friends list.  on their “walls” it wrote something about an ipod touch.  thankfully it wasn’t a comment that was bad.  so if you read this post you now know the truth.  don’t condemn me for this…it could happen to you.

…to the edge, and i’m about to break.  well, not quite.  we are, however, one step closer to being home owners.  yesterday morning at church, our realtor informed us that the house we made an offer on is getting closer and closer to becoming ours.  originally, about a month or so ago, our offer along with 4 others were taken to the bank.  i actually liked our 20% chances back then.  i just had a good feeling that we were going to get this house.  ok, so then yesterday he told us that there are only 2 offers left with the bank and ours was one of them.  our chances went from 20% to 50%, which obviously i like even more.  so now we wait again to see what happens.  i hope it is soon though, our apartment lease is up at the end of april and we need to know where we are going to live.  i still have a really good feeling about it, so get ready to come over and help me weed, remove ant beds, and landscape the yard.  it needs more love than i can give on my own.  i’ll see you at the new home bbq!

happy easter first of all.  i apologize about the picture in case it offends anyone.  as morbid as it is i just find it hilarious.  ::moving on:: we just finished up with all of the day’s activities and boy am i tired.  the day started early.  i got up at about 5:30 this morning, for church and took out our dog puma.  emily got up at the butt crack of dawn and took out puma while i laid in bed until about 6.  we got to church at 7 this morning to have band practice again before the first service.  justin was in the kitchen making the whole band breakfast.  pancakes, eggs, bacon…the whole spread.  what a nice worship leader.  the new song we did today went perfectly.  it was pretty much the best song we have ever done, maybe even the best song we will ever do.  the whole band nailed it too.  anyways, there were a ton of people there this morning.  i guess everyone goes to church on easter and christmas.  there were a ton of new faces, hopefully many will return and become part of the usual crowd.  once again timm’s sermon was knocked out of the park.

we spent lunch and the early part of the afternoon with some family.  i love eating with family because it is always a delicious meal that i don’t have to pay for or prepare.  go family.  i guess one day that will be me in that position, so i’m just going to take advantage of it while i can.  no fat camp this week.  i need a week off for the holiday.  sorry but you’ll just have to get over it.  its not like its the best thing on this website…or is it?  i hope not.  that would make me sad.

so to all of you out there, i hope you have a great holiday, weekend, and evening.  i’ll see you tomorrow.

well i am smart. at least that what i like to think. i changed the ram and hard drive in my computer. i can do algebra and trigonometry. i can even convert picas to inches when designing in adobe cs3. when it comes to building things, however, i’m basically about as useful as a poopie flavored lolly pop. i can’t craft things from wood or various metals - i can barely hang a picture on the wall straight. i mean, i use to be kick butt with some legos® but my craftsmanship has dwindled away since my youth. what i’m getting at is the picture above. as most of you know i am a musician, namely a guitarist. because of this i think it is an innate characteristic that i am in love with guitar hero. this dude was telling me that i could even use my guitar hero controller from my xbox 360 and turn it into a midi device on my macbook to use for garageband.

::sidebar:: there are thousands of tiny girls screaming and running around outside of my window. where are their parents? probably smoking drugs and partaking in casual sex to reproduce even more probably raising their family to be good citizens and even better christians.

i digress. the man pictured above, i have no idea who he is, took a real/full sized squir stratocaster, put guitar here parts in it and made it a video game controller. sick i say. i have to go take excederin now for my headache…not for the thought of this great guitar feat but for the pain these girls have instilled deeply in my temple and behind my eyes. farewell friends.

i updated the “music in my head” page up at the top to include a new music playlist.  now you have a second one to choose from if you wish.  check it out.

over the course of my musical life i have often commented on how music can be disappointing. it seems like, these days, all the new bands and music that is hitting the airwaves and record stores all sounds the same. everyone screams. every uses the same progressions, adding only their little lead licks to give it a somewhat unique flair. hip hop artists sample other people’s music. country artists remake rock songs. what’s wrong with this scenario? are these artists so desperate to make a catchy tune/lost their creative ability, or are we (as buyers/listeners/fans) that blinded that we can’t recognize that there is a steady decline in this generation’s quality of music? i don’t have the answer. i even venture to say that no one does.

i remember several years back, either in high school or middle school, when the godzilla movie came out. puff daddy p diddy diddy sean jean the enigma that rapped with notorious big sampled kasmir, a led zeppelin song for the movie’s soundtrack. jimmy page even played on the track and appeared in the music video. everyone i went to school with thought that this was the greatest new song out - having absolutely no idea what the original song was, or even ever hearing of zeppelin. ridiculous i say. and then, maybe last year, some country band redid lips of an angel, originally by hinder. i admit, that wasn’t the greatest song as it was, but it was made even worse with a country flair.

::blows steam from ears::

which leads me to my main point today. for years i have been saying that nickelback has been doing something with their music which is far worse than the actions of these other artists. what is it you ask? they haven’t sampled other’s music…no…they have ripped themselves off. i once said that they took the same exact music from how you remind me and just came up with some new words - creating someday. now i have the proof. someone, i love you whoever you are, took the time to mix the audio tracks of these two songs together, and reveal for you america the world the galaxy the universe to see/hear. so hear it is. my proof. but you don’t have to take my word for it.

i can’t wait until sunday.  i know i always complain about the holidays and how busy they are, but i don’t even care this year.  for church sunday morning we are doing a really cool song.  i haven’t been excited about any of the songs we do in quite some time.  justin, however, has got my interest up this week.  first of all, this song is awesome.  its great just the way it is on the album, but to make things even better, we are doing this kickin’ arrangement for it.  i am almost even looking forward to practice tomorrow night.  i spent my lunch break today changing the strings on my les paul and learning all the lead parts i will be playing.  i didn’t even eat.  now you know i must be completely enthralled in something if i intentionally miss a meal.  so have i got your interest up?  if you want find out what i’m talking about you will just have to visit ridgepoint church this sunday for easter.  you don’t want to miss it.