Things That Are Flat

Hey... What happened to my site traffic?  It's flatlined!  Maybe it has to do with not writing anything new in months... Man, people are fickle.

Speaking of things that are flat, I replaced my first bike tire in about three decades. Luckily, I wasn't riding at the time - I walked into the garage one day and glanced over at my bike and saw the front tire was completely flat. Not just low - sitting on the garage floor on its rim. This was especially weird because I had just ridden it a couple of days earlier. 

It wouldn't take any air, so there was nothing for it but to see what was up with the tube. On my workbench I found the hole - actually a quarter-inch split in the rubber along the seam. When I bought the bike I had the foresight to buy a patch kit and a new tire. I debated taking the opportunity to learn how to patch the tire but decided to go with replacing the whole thing. Oh, its not like patching a tire is tough to do - I figured it was just as likely another split would happen elsewhere and it was probably best to conserve patches anyway in case of a real emergency.  So the tire is replaced and I earned, like, 4 XP. Easy-peasy. 

And there you have it, folks... The least fascinating paragraphs in human history.  Boy, it's gonna be tough to follow that act.  

Or is it?

Continuing on with flat things, I finally replaced the ancient strings on my acoustic. The last person (well, besides me) who picked it up complained about the flat, muddy sound.  That was a year ago, and I was pretty sure that he was going to be at a party we were hosting earlier last month. I didn't want to hear him mock my guitar again, and, to be fair, it did sound like I was playing an instrument carved from a solid hunk of beeswax so I stepped up and finally did the deed.  

It was my first time doing this solo, and I remembered everything I was taught except for the part about "guitar strings are really sproingy so watch out that you don't pierce your thumb or something".  I only got stung once and I also took advantage of the string swap to give the guitar a really good cleaning. So, another 5 or 6 XP there.

Compelled to read on?  Heh, heh... I thought you might be.

He didn't end up showing up to the party but 30 others did. Rewinding a bit, I knew at least three of the folks there (turned out to be 5) played so the month before the event I knew I would have to practice so I wouldn't embarrass myself too badly. 

It had been a couple of months since I played Rocksmith.  I knew I was very rusty and I had no desire to try and jump right in with Level 9 songs.  That would have just been a waste of time. 

Instead I switched to a different profile and started over. Now, it took me about 8 months of playing about 90 minutes a night to get to Level 8 when I first started playing, never really having had picked up a guitar before. This time around I got to Level 8 in 20 days spending about 45-60 minutes a day.  Sweet.  

Co-op mode was a blast and a good time was had by all.  It was basically like karaoke but instead of drunken strangers filling the air with heartfelt, off-tune caterwauling there were drunken strangers filling the air with heartfelt, off-key, off-tempo, and off-putting noises that sounded like they were being wrung directly from the blackened souls of a thousand hell-bound Furbies.  There was also singing.

Well, that's about it for now... Oh, wait, I forgot one more flat thing.  My wife asked me to build a table for the back porch based on an item she saw in a magazine.  She also had the stipulation that I had to use materials I already had in the garage.  Now that's exactly  the kind of challenge I like.  Here's some pics:

 

The finished product was painted with some leftover outdoor paint I had that was just taking up shelf space.  That's it there at the top of this post.

As usual, more stuff "soon".