campfire anthems

i finally got to really play my new guitar today at church, and man does that thing rock. so much so that i don’t think i would ever want to play a different brand of instruments. that being said, i’m selling my les paul. i’ll spare all the details of the guitar for those of you who might actually be interested in it, or in the market for one. its been a great guitar for me but i think i can finally let her go. so if you are interested leave me a comment or email me and i’ll tell you anything you want to know about it. there is also a possibility that even if you aren’t a local reader we can work out some shipping for it.

i’m also selling a hagstrom semi-hollow body guitar…

and a quiet flight surf board

let me know if you are intersted.

so i’ve been playing guitar now for about 13 years.  ever since i first started playing i have lusted after owning a paul reed smith.  trust me, i have owned a lot of guitars since i started but none have ever really satisfied me or given me the look/sound/feel that i have coveted.  i have been watching a used prs guitar at the local guitar store for a while now.  i have saved my money, sold some personal goods i don’t use/need/want anymore, and worked extra hours at work and finally had enough $ to get the guitar i have waited for for so long.  its beautiful.  it sounds amazing.  i can’t wait to play it tomorrow at church.  so here it is guys.  have a look.

my wife had a moment of absolute genius last night around 9:30 pm. i was laying in bed and travis called. from the side of the room i hear a struggle with the pocket door that slides open and closed to the bathroom. i look over to the closed door and see a set of fingers sliding underneath as the door begins to shake. at this point, i put travis on hold, walk to the door and ask an easy question, “what’s wrong?” “i can’t get the door open. i’m trapped inside the bathroom,” a voice calls out to me from the other side. i grab the handle and sure enough it doesn’t slide open. i now ask a very important question.

“is

the

door

locked?”

“of course not. why would the door be locked?” then i hear the click. the beautiful, melodious, heavenly sound of the door unlocking. guess what guys. my wife locked herself in the bathroom. i don’t even know what to say.

i’m back guys and what a weekend i had. it was a pretty good trip all in all, but i’ll just fill you in on the really cool stuff and spare you the monotonous details. the drive up to tennessee was not as bad as i thought it was going to be. the tour bus is quite comfortable, and if you have to drive, that’s just about the best way to do it. with plush leather seats, full bathroom, stocked refrigerator and a satellite television with bose® theater system, it was almost an enjoyable 10 hour trip. that night for dinner, we stopped just south of atlanta and ate at joe’s crab shack. i must have eaten about a pound and a half of shrimp (coconut, parmesan crusted, and fried) and french fries. for an appetizer we got the great balls of fire, which were pretty amazing. they were crab cake balls stuffed with jalapenos, which were then battered and deep fried. back on the road, we turned on the tv and watched the longest yard. i liked it a lot, mainly because it helped pass the time on the road. we got in to our hotel in cleveland, tn about 10:45 that night. i crashed from our long drive and in preparation for the next morning.

i woke up saturday morning to the sound of my wake up call ringing through on the hotel room phone. 6:15 am. the plan was to meet in the lobby to grab breakfast at 7, and then head up the mountain to go white water rafting the ocoee river. i haven’t rafter in many years, so when i found out that the ocoee was the river of the 96 or 97 summer olympics, i got a little nervous. i figured if this was an olympic river, it must be pretty intense. after breakfast and a relatively short bus trip, we arrived at wild water rafting, where we geared up and hit the water. i had a blast. it was one of the most incredible 2 hours i have ever spent in nature. i can’t really even describe the rush you get while speeding through raging waters, inches away from being capsized. the 50 degree water aided the adrenaline too. here are a couple of pictures i took of the river with my camera phone.

below is a picture i took of the lower section of the river, which looks great for trout and bass fishing. its not the best picture because it was taken out of the bus window while driving back to the hotel.

when we got back to our hotel we had to get ready for the sale, the real reason i went on the trip to begin with. this is the first time i saw our surroundings in daylight. it was a great view, situated in the mountains. i snapped a couple of pictures and headed into the conference room to set up.

after the sale we packed up and drove several hours to nashville. once again, we checked into the hotel and crashed. i had a very early morning ahead of me.

sunday morning the phone in the hotel rang. another wake up call.

4

o’clock

a.m.

ouch. that’s a bit early for me guys, but we had to catch a 6am flight back into tampa. aside from multiple thunder storms we encountered in flight, the airplane ride was pretty painless. i think i slept for about a half an hour before the captain came over the intercom to let us know there might be some turbulence ahead.  we weaved our was between two thunderstorms and landed on the runway.  when i got back to my house i slept for about 5 hours.

all in all i had a pretty good trip.  i’m really looking forward to the next time i get to go to a new place for work, but at the same time i’m really glad to be back.  i’m also ready for a vacation.

this friday i get to travel again for business purposes.  it should be a pretty interesting trip because i’ll be traveling on the private tour bus for this trip.  we leave mid morning on friday and drive pretty much all day.  the sale i’m going to is in cleveland, tn, and will be the first of its kind.  we are auctioning property in tennessee, but the auctioneer will be in lakeland, fl.  my job, if i choose to accept it, will be setting up a live video feed of the ballroom audience and sending it back to florida, while the florida person sends a live video feed of the auctioneer up to me.  each of us will project the video feed so that it will seem as though everyone is in the same room at the same time.  we tested it out yesterday and there is only about a half second a/v lag.  not bad.  kudos to me by the way.  i’m the one who figured out the best and most efficient way to set this whole thing up.

saturday night, after the sale is over, we are going to pack up the bus again and drive a couple hours away to nashville where we will lodge for the night.  i’m pretty disappointed about the timing of all these events.  we will arrive in nashville between 10 and 11 pm, which means that i won’t even be able to walk around and visit the cool little guitar and music shops that are scattered about.  sunday morning, a fellow associate and i will be heading via airplane back to florida.  the flight is at 6 am.  that means that we should be arriving at the airport around 4 or 4:30 am, which also means that we will probably be getting up around 3 am.  do the math.  that’s about 3 hours of sleep saturday night.  our plane should arrive in tampa around 8:30 sunday morning so i won’t be playing guitar at church this weekend.  i plan on taking a pretty good nap when i finally get back to my house.

if i do get a chance to walk around a little bit saturday night, and pull an all nighter, i’ll need some interesting places to go.  so, if you’ve been to nashville, leave a comment and let me know what to do and where to go.  i’d love your advice.

i have your rug. you know who you are. if you ever want to see it again in one piece, or feels its furry goodness under your bare feet, you will comply with all my demands. i need 2 tickets to disney world with a vip pass to the castle, a bottle of original dr. pepper, a pack of cherry twizzler bites, 2 bone-in rib eyes steaks, and home made banana pudding - the kind with individually torched banana slices on the top.  if you do not meet my demands you will start receiving mail on a daily basis with pieces of your beloved carpet. there may also be red wine stains that will never wash out. you have 3 day, 15 hours, 41 minutes and 16…15…14…13 seconds.

tonight should be the last sitting it takes to finish my st. michael stained glass window tattoo.  there is a funny little story about this, but i’ll get to that in just a minute.  i’m really looking forward to getting this piece accomplished - its been an on going thing since september of last year.  i can’t wait to see what it looks like as a whole tonight when i leave the tattoo shop.

yesterday, i twittered that i was getting it finished.  i actually thought that i was.  tuesday at 6pm i told myself.  that’s the way its been since i started.  i always went in for sessions on tuesdays, at roughly 6pm.  for months that has been habit to me.  i showed up at the shop yesterday and trevor, the artist responsible for the brilliant artwork on my left arm, looks at me like “what are you doing here?”  at this point i’m wondering why he is looking at me that way and why he is talking to another client about getting ready to start.  come to find out (i actually remember this in retrospect) my appointment was for today at 6pm.  i think this was a good thing though.  i was so physically and mentally drained that i don’t know if i would have actually been able to endure it last night.

so tonight it is.  i will try to post pictures within the next couple of days so that you guys can have a look.

the final review of this series come with disappointment.  i saved this flavor for last because it is ranked first on the official poll.  i can honestly say i don’t know why.  mountain dew voltage™ is “dew charged with raspberry citrus flavor and ginseng.”  this drink was very deceptive to me at first.  upon my initial taste i found it to be pretty good, very crisp.  after i swallowed, however, i noticed a new taste.  i couldn’t quite pinpoint it so i drank again.  after a few run throughs of this process i finally was able to put my finger on the flavor i was tasting.  the after taste left behind from this dew® was that of a very bad cotton candy bubble gum.  the only reason i finished the bottle was so i could get the picture.

with all three new flavors sampled, i can honestly say that none of them should qualify to become a new flavor line for mountain dew®.  if i must choose one of them, however, i suppose that revolution™,  from day 1 would top my list.  actually, the order that i drank them in would be the order that i ranked these drinks.  i guess code red™ will continue to be the dominant dew® in my eyes.

its now day 2 of my mountain dew® competition.  with mountain dew revolution™ behind me, i have now looked upon mountain dew super nova™.  super nova is classified as “dew® with a blast of strawberry melon flavor and ginseng.”  i’ll be honest, i wasn’t impressed.  the color threw me off to begin with.  its a pale, pinkish-red color resembling that of a mulberry.  the first sip wasn’t bad, but it got progressively less tasty as the bottle went on.  i found the flavor to be more citrus like, rather than strawberry melon.  the after taste left behind is almost reminiscent of children’s chewable tylenole™.  yet again, however, the ginseng seemed to add a better boost for me, maybe its just in my head.  i don’t see myself drinking this flavor regularly so i couldn’t say that i think this is the one that should win.  i was really hoping that super nova™ would bring a strong showing to the table, but alas, it fizzled out and died only minutes of unscrewing the cap.  maybe tomorrow will bring a strong front runner to the game.  only time will tell.  have any of you tried mountain dew super nova™ yet?

i’m pretty excited about a new campaign mountain dew® is currently in the middle of.  they have released 3 new flavors, for a limited time, and we get to vote on which flavor stays.  they are calling it dewmocracy.  i think its absolutely genius, especially since its going in conjunction with the presidential elections.  since i love mountain dew® so much, especially code red™, i though i would go ahead and buy one of each of the flavors and drink one a day and write up a review of them.

today’s flavor i am currently drinking (even as i write this post i have to stop for a sip) is mountain dew revolution™.  on the bottle it describes the beverage as “dew® infused with wild berry fruit flavor and ginseng.”  i would say that this is a pretty accurate statement.  you can taste trace hints of the original flavor, but the wild berry really stands out.  the ginseng also adds a better kick than the original dew®.  ::note - ginseng is in all 3 of the new flavors - end note::  i don’t know that i would drink this over my favored code red™ but it is definitely a nice change in pace.  now that i think about it, i think it might be a little addictive, because i just downed the whole thing while writing this.

mountain dew revolution™ made a strong stand on day one of competition.  i hope the other two flavors can bring something comparable, if not better, to the table in the upcoming rounds.  i’ll definitely keep you informed.