“Fade to Black” – Amy Winehouse

A beautiful ballad about drug addiction, using a love story as a metaphor.

He left no time to regret
Kept his dick wet
With his same old safe bet
Me and my head high
And my tears dry
Get on without my guy
You went back to what you knew
So far removed from all that we went through
And I tread a troubled track
My odds are stacked
I’ll go back to black

We only said good-bye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to…..

I go back to us

I love you much
It’s not enough
You love blow, and I love puff
And life is like a pipe
And I’m a tiny penny rolling up the walls inside

We only said goodbye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to

Black, black, black, black, black, black, black,
I go back to
I go back to

We only said good-bye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to

We only said good-bye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to black

See more progress on: post 43 of my favorite lyrics

Finally chose a style…

After MUCH research, study and thought, I have finally come to a decision about which martial art I think would be most appropriate for me. I have decided to learn… (drum roll, please!)… Aikido!

I’m going in Monday to talk to a local instructor to see if s/he agrees with my decision as Aikido being a good fit for me.

See more progress on: Learn a martial art

Books I Haven’t Read Since I Was In School

I decided to switch this up a bit and go back and re-read some of the books from my school-age years. At the end of the list I have included a few that I would like to read the authors’ entire works, and that will fill in the rest of the 100. With winter coming in soon, this should help to fend off the cabin fever for a bit. Some of these are for very young readers, but I’m sure they will still make for entertaining reading:

1. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ✔
2. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator ✔
3. James and the Giant Peach
4. Charlotte’s Web
5. Stuart Little
6. The Pushcart War
7. The Finches Fabulous Furnace
8. The World According to Garp ✔
9. Go Ask Alice
10. Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah ✔
11. To Kill a Mockingbird
12. The Magus
13. Stranger in a Strange Land
14. Treasure Island
15. Winnie-the-Pooh
16. The Man in the Iron Mask
17. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
18. A Clockwork Orange ✔
19. Deliverance
20. Black Like Me
21. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
22. Lord of the Flies
23. Call of the Wild
24. Swiss Family Robinson
25. Something Wicked This Way Comes
26. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
27. Runaway Ralph
28. The Wind in the Willows
29. Around the World in 80 Days
30. The House at Pooh Corner
31. Robinson Crusoe
32. Gulliver’s Travels
33. Frankenstein
34. The Deerslayer
35. The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde
36. The Scarlet Letter
37. Walden
38. Dracula
39. The Invisible Man
40. The Chronicles of Narnia
41. East of Eden
42. Flowers for Algernon ✔
43. I, Robot
44. Of Mice and Men
45. Oliver Twist
46. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ✔
47. The Outsiders
48. That Was Then, This Is Now
49. Rumble Fish ✔
50. The Phantom of the Opera
51. The Red Badge of Courage
52. The Time Machine
53. Where the Red Fern Grows
54. The War of the Worlds
55. A Separate Peace
56. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
57. Dante’s Inferno
58. Crime and Punishment
59. Madame Bovary
60. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
61. Their Eyes Were Watching God
62. The Metamorphosis
63. Doctor Zhivago
64. The Bell Jar
65. The Collector
66. Cyrano de Bergerac
67. Pygmalion
68. War and Peace
69. The Glass Menagerie
70. Native Son
71. The Three Musketeers
72. Twenty Years After
73. Think and Grow Rich ✔
74. All of the fondly-remembered “Mushroom Planet/Mr. Bass” books by Eleanor Cameron
75. All of Kurt Vonnegut’s works
76. The Lord of the Rings trilogy
77. As many of the Sherlock Holmes books as I can find.
78. The Wizard of Oz and its thirteen sequels
79. Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings
79. Nights with Uncle Remus
80. The complete works of my all-time favorite author, Herman Hesse
81. Kindred by Ocatavia Butler
82. The Witches by Roald Dahl
83. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
84. The Illustrated Man ✔
85. The Picture of Dorian Gray ✔
86. The complete works of H.P. Lovecraft ✔
87. The complete works of Edgar Allen Poe
88. The complete James Bond series (but only those written by Ian Fleming, himself)
89. Journey to the Center of the Earth
90. The Jungle Book

See more progress on: Read 100 classic novels

“To regret deeply is to live afresh.” – Henry David Thoreau

This is ‘My Favorite Mistake’ by Sheryl Crow w/ special guest Eric Clapton.

See more progress on my goal: nurture my mind: be deliberate about what I take in: art, music, words

“Character is the result of two things: Mental attitude and the way we spend our time.” – Elbert Hubbard

Time misspent is never retrieved, that’s for sure. 😦 This is ‘Time in a Bottle’ by Jim Croce:

See more progress on my goal: nurture my mind: be deliberate about what I take in: art, music, words

Just bought it, and I found it just up the street! I’m stoked! It’s a PRS (Paul Reed Smith) 25th Anniversary SE Custom 24, baby, in the scarlet red finish, as can be seen in this pic:

It’s exactly the one I wanted, too. I got it for $300 less than everyone else had it even online, and it was an out-the-door price (meaning no sales tax). I aso got the hardshell case and a Fender Mustang 1 amp with it. The amp has built-in effects so I won’t have to get a bunch of pedals to get different sounds and tones. Since I bought and paid for everything at once, the salesman even gave me the amp at half price and the hardshell case free. 🙂

Buddy Rogers Music was the last place I thought about looking, but it turned out they were exactly what I needed, after all. 🙂 I was in and out the door in less than 30 minutes, and he even took the time to tune the guitar properly and wax it.

After playing this cheap Washburn for so long, this should be a welcome change. I’m sure it will play completely different. This should be much closer in playability to my old BC Rich Mockingbird (see photo below), but hopefully not as heavy. The tone is suuuuuuper sweet! 😀

Winter will be coming up soon, so I’ve made it a goal to start learning and playing again throughout the entire cold season and see how I do. I also bought the really nice Gibson course that should do very nicely in lieu of paying a private tutor. I hope it all comes back as quickly as riding that proverbial bicycle. 😀

See more progress on: Learn to play the guitar

Paul Reed Smith playing one of his guitars at the annual Guitar Festival, Dallas, Texas. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NAMM 2007 – B.C. Rich Mockingbird (Photo credit: Eleventh Earl of Mar)

“The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are, for what we could become.” – Charles DuBois

The last couple of years have brought a lot of changes for me, thanks especially to the support and organization of 43Things. But it’s also opened my eyes to the fact that the I can reach as high I want.

A perfect song whose lyrics express this is Whitney Houston’s “One Moment In Time”. RIP Whitney.

See more progress on: nurture my mind: be deliberate about what I take in: art, music, words