We Will Rock You

Sarah and I have been practicing guitar for a few weeks. I'd been looking for something cheap we could play around with, ideally something like the used student guitar we got in Ipswich.

A few weeks ago we were coming back from the park and decided on a whim to visit a garage sale going on in our neighbourhood. Sure enough, they did have a guitar - a toy electric still in its box. It's a plastic body, plastic neck, nearly plastic everything, though the strings are metal, and it does actually play like a guitar. So we've been noodling around on it for a while. Sarah is learning basic chords, which is good because her earlier habit of playing all-open strings was getting annoying.

Last week I bought a real electric from a workmate who had upgraded his. I also got his 30 watt practice amp, with lots of digital effects, and all for about half the price of an iPod, and I didn't have to do a lot of searching for it. It's a Les Paul model from Epiphone, but it's their entry-level model, which is a good fit for newbies like me but most real guitarists would probably sneer at it. It has the shape and neck of a classic Les Paul, but the pickup switch is in the wrong place, and it's only got two knobs for pickup volume, missing the other two tone knobs that a standard one has.

Then again, a Les Paul is a Les Paul, so I get to play the same axe that gods like Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Pete Townsend, Slash and Randy Rhoads are often seen playing. It is one of the few iconic rock guitars.

My previous guitar experience was mostly with an acoustic I got in Olympia years and years ago. It was alright for its cheap price, but I couldn't play barre chords without buzzing, and its string height made for less than easy playing. Playing this is much easier, and when I use the amp, it sustains a note in a way I'd never experienced before - it's a whole different way of playing. Now I can play along to favourite songs and sound much closer to them.

Sarah and I have lots of practice ahead of us but today we had some fun with perhaps the most important part of guitar playing - which is of course getting our rock poses down.

Boredom [poem]

Some days are boring as they go past
It does not help me at all
But boredom is not fast
I feel like sitting against the wall
And I'm dying as every day goes past




by Sarah Nelson

Margo's Big Project

Since we moved into this house in late November, I have been eying the small patio outside our door and making plans to put in a small garden and sitting/dining area. Last week, as the weather turned springlike and my thoughts turned to barbecue recipes and the idea of cold drinks on hot days, I finally got the chance to work on the patio.

Because the space is surrounded on all four sides with walls, it gets a lot of shade. There was only a small patch of ground where I could plant and it was pretty waterlogged and anaerobic. I decided to put in mostly containers with shade tolerant plants, to amend the soil in the ground and try to improve its drainage, and to plant vines that would cover the concrete wall.

On Wednesday morning, this space was completely empty, with the exception of the garbage and recycling bins, and the rattan shelves against the wall.

By Saturday afternoon, following a few trips to the Garden Center, Home Depot and IKEA, plus the delivery of a barbecue from Sears, it looked like this:












The table has removable leaves that expand on either end to seat up to 10 and we have stashed extra folding chairs in the shed.

Mike and I enjoyed a Pimm's Cup in the afternoon sunshine and we inaugurated the barbecue with a dinner of baby back ribs, homemade potato salad and baked beans. Very tasty! Later, our neighbors/landlords came downstairs to share a bottle of wine and Sarah cut up a punnet of strawberries for dessert.

I am looking forward to seeing all of the plants grow to full size. Although really small, it is kind of nice to have a manageable sized garden - where, now that it is planted, the bulk of work is restricted to deadheading the annual flowers, training the Virginia Creeper up the wall, and watering all of the pots - relatively pleasant tasks!

Several of the plants (the Virginia Creeper, the dogwood, the dwarf maple and others) have red foliage in the autumn, so if all goes well, they will be attractive at least three seasons/year.

Cheers,
Margo

New Vegetable

...at least for us. I have read several times about fiddlehead ferns - a springtime vegetable - but had never encountered them in the store. This week I saw some at the farm stand market and thought we'd give them a try.





Eh, they were ok - just sort of green vegetable tasting. slightly asparagus like, but not as strongly flavored. Sarah was completed appalled at them, Mike and I liked them, but didn't find them to be anything special.

ILDB

Sarah received an important document, with attached membership card, in the mail on Saturday:

(click on image to read text)

SkyTrain is Brilliant

There are some things about living in Vancouver that I'll probably never get tired of. Like seeing the lights in the sky on a winter's night from the three ski areas. Seeing the curtain of mountains to the north. Seeing the clusters of glass towers everywhere - some people don't like it, but I can't get enough of it. And riding SkyTrain.

So I hereby declare that SkyTrain is brilliant for the following reasons.

There's nothing next to you. You can look out your window and look straight out, up, or down, and there's no track or railing or anything to block your view.

It's fast. Not push-you-back-in-your-seat fast. But if you have a decent distance to travel, there's no faster way to get around the Lower Mainland without flying.

It's above the street (except the tunnels of course). You're at tree level and it's a neat place to be. It feels like low-altitude flying. And it's impossible for street traffic to slow you down - you can't get stuck behind a clueless SUV driver like you could in a street trolley.

Nobody is driving. For some reason, this seems to make station stops happen faster to me. We pull up, the doors open, they close, and we pull out. I wonder if a driver might keep the doors open longer or otherwise delay things.

It's pretty quiet. Being electric, there's no engine noise, and no nasty smells.

It's super-convenient. I ride some commute hours and some weekends, and I never have to wait more than a few minutes. During rush hour on the main line, when one leaves, you usually just look down the track to see the next one coming.

And, partly for the reasons above, and partly just our gorgeous surroundings, the view out the windows is un-ignorable. I sometimes read on the bus, but I never read on the SkyTrain for more than a few minutes at a time because I'm always distracted by the view and end up just looking out the windows.

Street Life

Did you play in the street when you were a kid? Sarah's getting the chance to.

Now that Spring is here and it's nice to be outside, the local kid street culture has become evident. I didn't realize how many of Sarah's classmates live on our street or near it. There are two boys across the street, whose parents we know well, then another boy next door. There's another boy and another girl up the street one way, and another girl the other way. And those are only the kids I know about so far.

Vancouver has alleys. Not all cities do. The alley behind the houses across our street is the local kid hangout. Kids run back and forth. They ride bikes, scooters, and skateboards. They do what kids do. And the parents know each other and know where their kids are, and often have to do little more than call into the alley to get them back.

I've never experienced this kind of thing before, and it's a little weird just letting Sarah run off where we can't always see her, but it's working out well so far.