General Update

Hi everyone! Time for another post. This one promises to be general in nature, and on varied and sundry subjects. Just thought I'd catch you up with what's happenin' now. The holidays are behind us, but they're in front of us too you know! Christmas 2008 was a good one I'd have to say. Busy as always, but this year I didn't mind so much. There's a radio station here that begins playing 24 hour Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving. I discovered this, and listened to it for most of December. Normally I listen to a couple of Christmas CDs and that's it. Those namely, When My Heart Finds Christmas by Harry Connick Jr. and Behold the Lamb of God by Andrew Peterson. Both are great albums! Buy them both. Not next Christmas, but now! Follow the links to Amazon and get them. Or iTunes...whatever your personal venue for musical acquisition may be. Anyway, I digress, as I often do. The radio station really had me in a Christmas mood this year. By that I mean, willing to nudge my way through a crowd, able to smile when I was stuck in traffic, and the like. It was nice for a change. New years was over in a blink. Doesn't really feel like 2009 to me. Not yet. Maybe I just haven't had to write it much or something. Fast as it was I've had my cabbage and black eyed peas, along with dad's fried hogs jowls, so I'm pretty much set in the good fortune department. (If you have to ask, just think of it as bacon. Very similar.)

In other news, I bought myself a bass guitar. I had been using the church's bass to play on Sunday mornings, but I wanted one of my own for a few reasons.

1. I wanted one I could keep at home, practice regularly and call my own.
2. If someone else wants to learn from church, now there is a bass available for them.
3. The church's bass is nice, but I wanted something that felt more like me. (The bond between a boy and his musical instrument is a whole other blog, which I intend to do before long. I have given a lot of thought to the subject, and it's an interesting thing to think about. If you have never played an instrument, perhaps you have owned that one car. You know the one I'm talking about. You miss it don't you? Or perhaps it's not a car...but it's something. More to come on this one.)

Here is a picture of my bass. It's not actually mine, but this is the style and color...an Ibanez Roadstar II. Ain't she a beaut'?

Ok, so holidays, bass...Paintball!

So check this out. I finally got to go out and play a little paintball after a long hiatus. Last year, as some of you may know, I bought a paintball gun and played a couple of times with some friends from church. Well, after that things got a little quiet and we didn't play anymore. I was understandably sad. Bought the gun after all. So we're starting up again and playing. Thing is, I've been having a lot of trouble with my gun, which by the way is a Spyder Sonix, chopping a lot of paintballs. That's where the ball sort of half loads and the gun's bolt literally chops the paintball in half inside the gun. Gets very messy. So I did two things. I bought a fancy force feeding hopper (that's what holds the balls and feeds them into the gun) and also a cheap used gun. A Tippmann 98 Custom. One of two things is going to happen. The hopper is going to fix my chopping problem, or my new(used) gun is. The Tippmann is widely regarded one of the most durable, unrelenting, workhorse guns in the entry level paintball arsenal. It just works. It doesn't break, and it's as upgradable as anything out there. Tonight I did something very manly. I disassembled my new(used) Tippmann and cleaned it inside and out. It was quite a mess. But the process of breaking down a gun (Even a paint gun), cleaning it, and reassembling is about as awesome as it gets. :) Ranks up there with cooking a meal over a campfire, changing spark plugs and opening pickle jars for the missus! I'll let you all know if anything interesting happens in the paintball world. It's fun if you have the opportunity to try it. It doesn't hurt...long.

I'll close for now. I'm going to think about this musical instrument blog. I need to start writing topics down. I've forgotten as many blog topics as I've actually posted. Talk to you all soon! Thanks again so much for reading!

-J