I tried playing racquetball again. My elbow didn't like it much, so I realized that racquetball is probably out for the rest of my life--at least, right-handed racquetball
I slept in a burrito during another "Klondike Derby" with my younger son, then slept in a burrito yet again for my older son's "Denali Base Camp."
I performed in a benefit concert for the Syd Riggs Scholarship Foundation.
I earned my Wood Badge beads.
I left Symantec and started working for the LDS Church
My older son turned 16 and started driving, causing a spike in both blood pressure and insurance premium.
I spent a few days on the Green River, canoeing 68 miles.
I spent a week in San Diego with my family--a very fun family vacation.
I camped with my scouts at Camp Bartlett near Montpelier, Idaho
My younger son got a full set of braces
I was made a development lead at my new job and was given a new project to work on
I sold the last Saturn I will likely ever own and I purchased my third Subaru.
I took the scouts to a "Centennial Camporall" in commemoration of 100 years of Scouting in the United States. Early morning temperatures were lower than the winter campout in January.
I shunned NaBloPoMo
I cooked the perfect Thanksgiving turkey.
I took up smoking--I smoked a couple of chickens.
What am I planning on for 2011? A lot more of the same. Scouting will continue to take up a lot of time. I'm still enjoying it a lot. However, tomorrow is younger son's Birthday, and he won't be in my troop any more. I wonder if it will be the same without him. I'm planning on doing a lot more cycling this year. I need to get in shape or I'm going to end up on The Biggest Loser someday soon. So I have several long rides planned, starting in February. I'm also planning on playing my guitar more in 2011. I miss making music when I get away from it.
I'm also hoping to learn how to smoke lots of things this year. Before 2011 is over, I want to feel confident in smoking ribs, turkeys, brisket, and pork shoulder.
This June will be my 20th wedding anniversary. 20 years?? It's crazy. I was married shortly after my parents' 25th anniversary. There are a couple of family things that I need to focus on this year too. I only have a couple more years left and my older son will be heading out on his own. If I don't focus on the family things now, the opportunity will pass me by completely.
My life is good and I'm looking forward to the opportunities this year will bring.
Disclaimer – The views expressed here are the opinions of DeShawn Smith and do not necessarily reflect the views of Employer Solutions Group or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I'm quite proud of myself at the moment. I wanted to learn how to play Steve Martin's "Grandmother's Song" on the guitar. So I listened to it several times and figured out the chord changes.
I don't play it in the same key... He starts out in the key of C and my F chord isn't so great right now. So I play it in D. It's better for my voice range anyway.
But wow! It's fun to be able to figure it out all on my own. I think I'm still doing pretty well for someone that has only been playing for less than 4 months!
I'm almost done with guitar lessons for the semester. I'm still very very much enjoying myself.
As a matter of fact, I played the guitar so much last weekend that it STILL hurts a little to type the letters w, s, or x, or the number 2.
So what did I learn this semester?
Basic chord progressions in D, G, C, A, and E along with several strumming patterns
Some additional chord progressions in minor chords.
Several scales and alternate picking for scales.
A few different finger picking patterns including Travis picking.
Bar chords.
That's not half bad.
I'm getting quicker at chord changes for the most part. Some are still bugging me, put progress is progress, right?
I still suck at bar chords, but as of last night, I can actually play some of them some of the time.
I'm still enjoying myself immensely. I only have one more lesson this semester. It's my "final" for the class (since it's a guitar class at UVSC), so I probably won't learn anything new.
The good thing is that I have a lot I can still learn with the things listed above. I can still make a lot of progress without lessons, and when I hit a point where I'm "stuck" in my progression of guitar playing, it'll be time to take another round of guitar lessons.
I thought I'd really like playing the guitar. I really did. But I didn't know I was going to enjoy it THIS much!
I'm in the stage of learning where everything is still new, so I'm learning things very quickly. After only three lessons, I've learned four scales (well, three and a half), three chord progressions (well, almost. That C chord is a pain in the...hand), four strumming patterns, and even parts of a couple of songs.
I've also realized that since the lessons are one-on-one, I can learn as fast or as slow as I want to. IT basically means that the more I practice, the more I'm going to be able to learn this semester. That means that I can get a lot more out of the same amount of money spent if I keep practicing and improving.
On Sunday, I played for 45 minutes straight and later in the day, I played for another 25 minutes or so. AND MY FINGERS DIDN'T HURT!!! HOORAY! They were a liiiiiiittle bit sore, but it wasn't the same pain I was experiencing just a week earlier. I think I played through the pain.
So now when you come to my house, you might hear something a bit more musical...
Week two of guitar lessons was fun. I was given a new scale to practice and we started on chording.
I'm starting out in the key of D and learning the I, IV, and V chords in each key. My teacher taught me how to "grapple" with a chord until I can play it well with no muted strings or strange buzzing. He also taught me a couple of strumming patterns to use when practicing these chords, changing from chord to chord in time.
So now I'm playing D major, G major, and E7 chords over and over in progression until my fingers can take it no longer. I'm also practicing C and G major scales.
My fingers are still wimpy. I can't practice for very long before my fingers are killing me. At first, they felt like they've been burned on the tips. Now it feels like a burn on top of a bruise. It's even difficult to type at times.
But I can't let that stop me. My kids went through this for a little while with their violins, and over the period of a couple of weeks, the skin on their fingers toughened and thickened and now it's not a problem. Hopefully, the painful time will soon be behind me.
The nice thing is there are getting to be fewer and fewer pauses, oopses, darns, thuds, and twangs. I guess that's what practice is for. I haven't missed a day since my lessons began. I'm getting a little more bored each day with this same scale over and over and over, but I'm going to use stick-to-it-ive-ness to make sure I learn what I need to learn from this scale and then I'll be able to make more and more progress!
My first guitar lesson went quite well. I showed my instructor how little I actually know. Yes, I'm VERY much a beginner. But no problems there. I've already learned some things from him that I might not have learned had my instructor thought I was anything other than a beginner. For example, now I know, at least conceptually, how my hand is supposed to be placed on the neck of the guitar.
This week, I'm practicing the C major scale. Practice for me consists of practicing the C major scale a few dozen times a day. My fingers get tired. My hand gets tired. My family gets tired of hearing the same crappy scale over and over. Yet, it's getting less and less crappy!
The nice thing is that once I memorized the scale (didn't take too long, playing it a few dozen times a day), I was then free to focus on watching my hand position, and watching how my fingers moved, and watching how I'm picking the strings with the pick, etc.
It may be a little boring now, but the nice thing... the VERY nice thing... is that I'm learning techniques that will be very very useful not too far into the future.