I’ve been writing different kinds of songs (other than hair-pulling metal), and it’s turned out to be much harder than I imagined.  I mean, it’s easy to spew hatred and anger onto the page (for me anyway), but to actually put some thought and emotion into a song that has meaning is a little more daunting.

A good friend and co-worker has been coming over to the house and jamming, and I’ve been having lots of fun doing that.  We’re playing mainly covers (from Counting Crows to Eric Clapton and some stuff in-between), and it got me started on writing some songs.  Just a few “bridge” songs to get my writing chops dusted off, and to acclimate myself to a different style of music.  It is a challenge.

I guess when you hard-wire your brain to write in a specific style for so many years, it takes a considerable amount of effort to change that programming.  I’m not nearly the angry young man I was (mostly I’m not that young any more), but also I’m finding it much harder to write something simple and straightforward that doesn’t sound formulaic or just pedestrian.

The cool thing about metal music is that it is complex and involved, and I thought that writing blues and rock would be easier, because it’s usually just 3 chords and a bridge.  But that’s the problem:  metal didn’t have to sound melodic… but rock does.  I found my first few attempts either just being blatant rip-offs of other songs I’ve heard, or they just didn’t sound right.

Compound upon that my current trend of learning how to solo over the blues, and you’ve found my current conundrum.  It’s fun, and it’s a great learning experience… but damn it’s hard!

In the past, my song-writing talents have been limited strictly to metal songs.  And they are not very hard to write.  You shape a power chord, slide it up and down a few frets, and scream whatever you have to say into the mic.  Done.  OK, it’s not actually that easy, but it’s not necessarily what I could consider “hard”.

But writing songs where the key matters (and isn’t always just a down-tuned D), and you have to consider chord progressions and *gasp* guitar leads, it’s definitely a beast of a different sort.  However, I have been making some headway.

I’m amazed at how much I have been influenced over the last few months to write, and not just because of the guitar lessons my wife got me (although that hasn’t hurt).  More than anything else, it’s the style of music I’ve been listening to that has really helped stir my creative juices.  A healthy does of bluegrass,  folk singer-songwriters, some old classic rock and (of course) a sprinkling of thrash metal have given me a lot of room musically to just experiment and try to come up with something.

None of the material I’ve written is terribly original.  In fact, I try desperately to hide its derivative nature.  But I look at these songs as practice… something to get me started.  Melody lines are a little hard for me (see paragraph one), so I am taking a lot of time making sure the melody fits the chords I am using in the song.

I’m pretty much just picking a key, and experimenting with chord combinations.  As I have been watching and attending live music shows (for added inspiration), one thing that has so far baffled me is when to and when not to use the capo.  I didn’t see much need for it.  That is, until I was putting some chords to lyrics I wrote down yesterday.  The chords I had sounded good, but they were just not in the key I wanted.  For the roots of the melody I had in my head, they needed to be up a couple of notes.

Duh!  I threw a capo on the 3rd fret and tried my chords again.  Voila!  The song sounded much closer to what I wanted, and I was able to get the first half of the song wrote, as well as putting down a melody line (the first time I’ve actually written down the notes to a vocal line).  I was pretty excited!

My song-writing challenges continue.  I feel like I’m working backwards a little.  We’ve moved onto the electric guitar and classic rock/blues leads in my weekly lessons.  But I am using the stuff I’ve learned on the acoustic to write these practice songs.  I guess it’s just more what you are motivated to write, because all I want to do right now is write acoustic stuff.  Maybe once I get more comfortable doing leads and getting confidence in that area, maybe I’ll have to throw out a rock song.

Who knows?  It might even have a couple of power chords in it… and some screaming.

Once I got my awesome guitar amp, it opened up a whole new world for me.  And one set of headphones later (much to my wife’s delight), and I’ve been practicing more pure rock stuff and getting a little bit better each time.

Last week my teacher showed me the lead for AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”.  A great rock standard, and the lead in it isn’t too bad.  My amp has an iPod input, so I can hook it right in and play along with the song.  Although the chord changes are a little hard for me now, I’m slowly getting faster and more accurate with them.

The thing I really like are the blues scales, and being able to use them along with some easy riffs to actually sound like I know what I’m doing.  Although it takes a while to get any of these techniques down well so they sound good, I feel like all those years of playing bass in the garages and basements of my youth are finally paying off.

Probably this week I’ll try and run through the lead of “Stairway to Heaven”, and see how much more wanking I can do on it.  And then who knows?  Maybe I’ll grow out my hair, wear tiger-striped spandex, and join a retro hair band…

… or maybe not.

From my old metal band days, I had a bass practice amp, a bass guitar, and an old Sunn amplifier; stuff I had been carting around for several years (since the late 90’s).  I always told myself that I would use those things again, although everything else told me that I wouldn’t be using it.

A couple of years ago my brother gave me an acoustic-electric guitar, and I started learning how to play it.  My music roots came straight from the garage, and I had never really tried to learn how to play much of anything beyond power chords.  My opinion was, if it didn’t have a mountain of distortion on it, I didn’t want to play it.

But then I got older, and realized that I might actually want to learn how to play an instrument, and play it in such a way that more people would want to hear than would want to turn it off.  Last Father’s Day, my wonderful wife got me guitar lessons once a week, and it really got me going.

I started out with the acoustic, because it was what I had, but I always wanted to get myself an honest-to-goodness guitar amp and actually learn how to play it.  I was getting pretty good at the acoustic, but still wanted to be able to rock out.

It was only a couple of weeks ago when a co-worker of mine approached me with an offer to buy an amp.  It was the exact kind I was looking for, and it was at a really good price, so I just jumped and said I would buy it.  This got me motivated to take another look at all that old gear I had in the garage, because if I was going to pull off buying this amp, I had to do it in a way that wouldn’t impact the family budget.

I put the old gear up on a local free auction site, and within a week, I had successfully sold all the gear at a pretty good price, and had money to spare.  I had actually come out ahead!  It was a little sad to let go of the equipment I had been holding onto for so long, but given the trade-off of what I had gained, I was more than happy to part with it.

This past weekend, my nephew approached me at my great-niece’s birthday party and asked if I still wanted to buy his drumset.  It was a kit he got for Christmas last year, and I gave him an open invitation to buy it if he ever got sick of it.  I still had some cash left over from the great gear sell-off, and so I jumped again and said I would buy it.

Last night, he and my sister brought over the drums and we set them up in the TV room downstairs.  Some of the screws are missing, and the heads are shot (my nephew’s 17-years-old and likes pretty heavy rock; bless his soul), but the shells and hardware are still in great shape.  And, he gave it to me for a great price.

I’m not planning on fitting out the drum kit like it should be for awhile, especially purchasing the two crash cymbals that are conspicuously absent, but I know if I hadn’t jumped on the chance then, it would probably be quite some time before I could get my hands on anything like it at all.

My two-year-old loves the drums, and he was so excited when he woke up from his nap to hear his little brother playing them downstairs when he awoke.  We spent twenty minutes watching him go from drum to drum and cymbal to cymbal playing them all, and throwing his sticks up in the air when he was done (signaling applause, of course).  He cried hard when we finally put them away, but I think he’s old enough to understand that they are still there, and that he will get to play them again, sometime.

Someday those drums will probably become his full time.  But for now, we will enjoy what quiet time we can get.

My wife always say things happen for a reason, and I’m starting to believe her.  Within ten days, I had gone from having a bunch of gear that I’d had for a long time and wasn’t using, to having some gear I could actually use.  This encourages me to play more often, and to work harder to get better.  Who knows, maybe someday I’ll actually be able to write some music people will actually want to hear.

In the meantime, though, I’ve got plenty of toys to experiment with.

I have been a self-avowed coffee lover for many, many, years… going all the way back to when I started in the IT industry (circa 1994).  It’s not just something I drank – it was something I savored and immensely enjoyed.  So just saying “I quit coffee” wasn’t something to be taken lightly.

But I decided to do it.  We packed up my coffee makers (2 drip Mr. Coffee’s and a cappucinno maker), my carafe and dumped what Folgers I had left into the trash can.  With all my paraphenalia splayed out on the counter there, I started to feel like a junkie after an intervention.  What was I doing?

My new friends became Advil, water, and Mark’s old buddy Diet Coke.  I had headaches for the first three days, my appetite increased remarkably (the first two days I devoured my lunch before 11 a.m.), and I found myself driving from work down to the local gas station for a 44 oz. infusion of carbonated sugar-free cold caffeine.

Mark, on the other hand, was lowered to the much-maligned caffeine-free Diet Coke, and the occasional Fresca.  While I was still allowed to sip on the “cold” stuff, poor Mark had to go cold turkey.

But a week later, and I’m happy to say that I, while not being completely free of caffeine, have not had a single sip of coffee or tea, and I’m weaning myself off the Diet Coke (slowly).  Mark is now my new hero, and I’m hoping within a couple of weeks to be completely free of the stuff.

People at work have noticed, and have commented that I look “healthier”.  Instead of the Starbuck’s mug, the first thing I reach for every morning is a big glass of water.  And that jolt of energy my body has been looking for during the past week has been replaced with a natural surge.  And I find myself more calm and easy-going in the afternoon and evenings.

In the last few years, I have given up a lot of things, and removed many sources of addiction out of my life.  Coffee was the last thing I had, and I held onto it with all my strength.  But, now that it’s not around anymore, I find that I don’t miss it that much.

It has been replaced with something much more fulfilling.

When my wife and I were looking for houses, one of our pre-requisites was: “Can we have Thanksgiving here?”.  My family is large, even by Utah Mormon standards, and so it was important to us that we could have enough room for everyone to enjoy an afternoon comfortably, without feeling squished.

We looked at a lot of houses, and many of them met some of our needs.  But most of them couldn’t meet that one requirement.  So, when we finally found the house we have now purchased, it immediately felt like we could fit the extended family here.  There are plenty of places for people to sit, relax, and talk.  The kitchen is large enough to accomodate a gathering, and plenty of counter space for food.

We’ve already put this to the test, especially with my family’s love of volleyball (or just the competition such a past-time provides).  The big back yard has enough room for babies to run around in, and eventually, the kids will be old enough to seek solace in the treehouse. It also gives the grown-ups just enough space to make fools of themselves on the grass.

Inside, there is just enough room to have an impromptu game of Pictionary when the weather does not cooperate for outside activities. The split-levels give opportunities for people to find their own niche to hang out, either downstairs in the theatre room (with the Xbox and the potential of some Rock Band good-ness), or up in the office to play on the Mac and update your Facebook status.

My mom is a self-confessed hater of large gatherings, although I believe she secretly enjoys them.  But, with the new place acting as the family hub, there is also enough for people to spread out.  So, when Thanksgiving comes, I don’t think she will have much objection to getting the whole clan in one place… even just for an afternoon.

If you had then told me, after that, that I would also be regularly attending church, you would have made me drop my joint.

If, after you had wiped Blue Moon off your chops and picked up the roach (good weed, after all, is expensive), you continued by telling me that I would have all but stopped doing stand-up, and bought a riding lawn-mower, I’m pretty sure I would have deleted you from my smart phone.

Oh how times have changed.

I’m not sure where life is going to take me from here, but all things considered, I’m pretty happy with the way things have gone.  Sure, I miss having that outlet of stand-up comedy, but after doing it pretty hard core for five years, I don’t mind staying at home most evenings.  And I’m not sure what could be more promising than the investment a parent makes into the lives of their children.  The problem with stand-up, to be any degree of successful beyond locally, involves travel and time away from family.  And that, right now is not an option for me.

I have a 2/3 of grass that needs to get cut on a weekly basis (or a little longer if the rain holds out).  I’ve got walls that need painting, pictures that need hanging, and trees that require trimming.  Hey, it may not be the glorious lifestyle that I had grown accustomed to in downtown Denver, but I’m not sure a life like this can be beat.

You grow, you change, you evolve.  My priorities are vastly different now than they were then.  My perspective on life, the universe, and the nature of things are different now.  And that’s a good thing (I think).  Although I may look the same (hopefully 10-20 pounds lighter: thank you Gold’s Gym), I feel like a different person.  Am I older?  Yup.  But I feel wiser, and happier.

So although I may always miss who I was back then, I think I like who I am now much better.  And in the long run, that’s really what matters.

I have to say that it’s been a bumpy 18 months since my wife and I decided to move to Utah, and in that time we have gone through many, many challenges.  We have moved once since then, and are planning to move again soon (knock on wood).  I have changed jobs three times, and we have added to our little family with another adorable son.

Sometimes I really miss Denver.  We had a large network of friends there, and I had a pretty active role in the stand-up comedy community there.  It has definitely been an adjustment, especially for my wife who left her family, her friends, and the place she had lived pretty much her whole life.  We have had challenges going through the transition to living in “Zion”, and she has been a Super Soldier through them all.

My family has been very, very helpful to us throughout the transition, and I’m so happy to once again be close to them all.  I couldn’t have asked for a better support network, and it seems like there is always someone there, whether it’s with the kids, a family function, or just to come and hang out.  They are all the lifeline we’ll ever need.

Now, my family has replaced friends, and Father has replaced Comedian in my life.  I don’t have the opportunity to get out and do stand-up here, and the comedy community and sense of camaraderie that I knew in Colorado doesn’t exist here.  But that’s OK.  There are other things in life that are more fulfilling than telling jokes.

I’m now very blessed to have found a great company where my skills and experience are of value, and the people I work with are pretty cool.  After having worked for a couple of companies led by self-proclaimed “visionaries” who seemed very proficient at preventing their own success, it is refreshing to be with a company that works.

What does the future hold?  I’m not sure… all I know is that whatever life throws at us, we’re going to be ready… or as ready as we possibly can.

When we moved to Utah from Colorado 18 months ago, we had to sell out house.  Because of the economy and the slump, we were able to find someone to buy the house while we financed it, so while we technically still have a house… we really don’t.  So, we have been renting for the last year-and-a-half.

My brother was kind enough to let us rent from him for the first 6 months we lived here, but his house was too far South in the county for our liking.  So in the summer of last year, we moved up to a house closer to Salt Lake, and up on the Eastern hills, by Timpanogos.  We like it up here for the most part, but we are homeowners at heart.

When we moved into the house, the previous tenants had a dog that peed all over the carpets.  Dealing with a landlord has never been my favorite past-time, and trying to get anything done in the house has been a challenge, even when that something involves either the heat in the winter, or the air conditioning in the summer.

I was in the Army Reserve way back in the day (when I was more impressionable and MUCH skinnier), and therefore I qualify for a VA loan.  This is something I had never used, because the house my first wife and I bought was a partial gift from her parents.  And then when my wife and I were dating, she already owned the house we sold in Colorado.

So, now we are starting the process of looking for houses.  In this unfortunate economy situation, right now is just about the perfect time to buy a house.  I feel kind of bad for all those people who have lost homes, but I look at it as I am helping some unfortunate family get out of a debt they can no longer afford.  Heavily discounted, of course, but nonetheless… hey, I have to sleep at night!

So, while this means that we have to, yet again, pack up our shtuff and move it (third time inside of two years), this will hopefully be the last move we make for a very, very long time.

Let’s just hope I don’t take a face to the couch that requires nine stitches on the tip of my nose this time.

OK… it was more like five stitches.  But it hurt like hell!

But to me, that computer was the BOMB.  I still have it down in my basement somewhere.

Throughout college I used that mac to write my papers, and it still worked pretty good (back when you could still get printer catridges for pinfeed printers).  When I started my IT career, I moved over to Windows and never really looked back.  I became that PC purist type that thought there was no way anyone could ever top the sweetness of Windows and the versatility of the PC.

So, when my wife suggested we get a Mac, I was skeptical.  I knew that the Apple computers were known for their image and media capabilities (features I was coming to realize my Dell couldn’t do very well… at all).  So I gave in when she insisted, and pretty soon we had a brand new aluminum iMac sitting on the desk right next to my big black Dell.

It didn’t take me long to gravitate back to the computer that started it all for me.  The thing ran like greased poop down a slide, (which means fast), and it did just about anything I asked it to.  My wife started noticing me jumping on it to pull up a web page instead of waiting the requisite four minutes for my PC to come out of hibernate.

The thing I liked about it most was that, when I wanted to pull video off my digital camcorder, all I had to do was plug in the firewire cable and turn the camera on in VCR mode.  The mac would immediately pull up iMovie, rewind the tape in the camera, and start burning.  No drivers to load, no configuration to set up, and no real intervention on my part necessary.

I started envying her screen size when we would play World of Warcraft (so much so that I was compelled to buy a 24″ monitor just to keep up with her).

Eventually I used my Dell less and less, and when I discovered the beauty of PC virtualization on the Mac, I took the plunge and moved all my applications off the old Dell and put everything on the Mac.  I packed up the big box PC and hooked it up to the flatscreen TV (where it is used infrequently when we want to see something on the internet incredibly large).  Now the Mac has two 24″ displays (the monitor I originally bought for the PC hooked up beautifully with a little Mini-DV dongle) and we use it to do our photos, budget, internet, and just about anything else.

It was the perfect computer… key word:  was.

Then we installed Leopard.

Now I can’t get my firewire to work.  It won’t recognize the camera, even though I hooked it up to the old PC and everything worked fine (so I know it’s not the camera or the cable).  I called Apple support and spent over an hour trying to fix it, with no success.  Now I am faced with having to take it into a Mac service place and get it fixed.  This, to IT professionals and computer enthusiasts like myself, is like accepting defeat.  But I don’t know what else to do… I want my stupid camera to work!

So, yes, I love the Mac.  It is very powerful, the applications are easy to use and the whole thing is very quick.  But I was not thrilled at all with the upgrade from Tiger to Leopard.  It didn’t make the computer worse, it just made stuff… stop working.  And for a computer system that preaches how much better it is than a PC… well, that’s a very Windows move.