Willa had a grumpy look because Walter was out of the nest tonight. I could not get a photo of him out of the nest because of branches and leaves blocking my focus. I walked down the bank through the leaves to see if I could get a clear shot of Walter out of the nest. I couldn’t, but all the noise I made scared him, and he belly-flopped back into the nest. The second and third photos show Walter peeking around the edge of the nest. Nora Owl was hooting a grocery list for Osric, but we did not hear any response from Osric. He was still out shopping.
Springing Forward is my 2024 Daylight Savings Time (DST) protest song (lyrics are below). The song is hyper, so don’t be surprised if you find it annoying, like changing to DST and losing an hour of sleep.
I’m particularly leery of losing an hour of sleep tonight since I’ve been having a lot of trouble with pain over the last several months and don’t always sleep very well. Side note: Laurie has more trouble sleeping than I do. Since last summer, I’ve been trying to get a handle on the pain. I started riding a mountain bike, changed to an anti-inflammatory diet, and lost over 35 pounds. You would think that would help a lot. But not really. I am still having a lot of joint and muscle pain, especially at night. If you noticed, I don’t write as much, don’t comment as much, and mostly write short comments; it’s because of the pain. I have enough trouble typing with numb fingertips, but with all the pain, my typing has gone to hell.
I reached out to my new GP last month and asked her what specialist I needed to see to try and get the pain under control. She had me go in and see her. She put me on Gabapentin at night and gave me some more dietary suggestions. I have a follow-up with her next week. My pain has been down to manageable background pain most of the time during the day for the past few weeks, but I still have issues with pain increasing at night, waking me up and keeping me awake. But it’s much better than it was a few weeks ago.
While it’s a real challenge to play guitar with numb fingertips, it is more of a challenge to play when my fingers are swollen, painful, and don’t want to move. But I play every day, whatever the condition of my hands are and how much I’m hurting elsewhere. My hands have not been as swollen over the past couple of weeks, so I was able to do halfway decent sloppy shredding on my guitar solos I recorded this morning for Springing Forward, above.
Red sky in the morning is an ominous warning about changing to DST and losing an hour of sleep!
Springing Forward, It’s So backward By Timothy Price
(4x) Springing forward It’s so backward
We lose an hour to save some time Springing forward It’s so backward
Body clocks are broken; we’re running behind Springing forward It’s so backward
Moving like zombies, we’re losing our minds Springing forward It’s so backward
We saved an hour by losing time Springing forward It’s so backward
It’s time for DST Lockstep to New Destiny If you thought you were free Don’t change your clock! You will see!
You Fools don’t complain But an hour is really insane The clocks are sacred, can’t you see? We’re not free to mess around
Springing forward. Leave time be It’s so backward. Can’t we see Springing forward. We’re not free To play like gods. You see?
(4x) Springing forward It’s so backward
It’s time again for DST Lockstep to New Destiny If you thought you were free Don’t change your clock! And you will see!
I made a timelapse video of the April Pink moon moving through the clouds on Monday when it was 96% full. The more classic rock-style music in the video is reminiscent of what a slow-fingered guitarist might play in a guitar battle. The epic battle between Ralph Macchio and Steve Vai in the movie Crossroads comes to mind. Vai smokes Macchio in the battle, in my personal opinion, but in typical Hollywood fashion, Macchio, the underdog, wins the battle after the wild and crazy-looking Vai lays down his guitar and walks off the stage. Vai probably played the parts Macchio was supposedly playing.
The full moon is tonight, but it will be close to 8:00 pm before the moon rises over the mountains. Therefore, I will not get detail in the mountains when it rises tonight.
Pink Moon last night as the Bazooka saw it.
The pink Moon last night. The southern sky in the middle, and the western sky in the right.
Starting Easter Sunday through Wednesday, April 12th, there will be a conjunction between Venus and the Pleiades. You can see the Pleiades above Venus on the right side of the middle photo and the left side of the photo on the right.
For the first evening that we are trying to save the daylight, which, by the way, is not endangered out here, the Painter went a little wild jamming with the clouds.
Venus and Mars showed up at 6:30 am, the time formerly known as 5:30 am.
Socratis at Oannes has been posting songs about cars. I keep commenting: “I had that car! Oh, I had that car, too. You are not going to believe this, but I had one of those cars, also!” From Oannes I was inspired to put together a spreadsheet of all the cars that have been in the family, and I had driven since I got my driver’s license at age 15. We still have some of the old cars that were bought new. The stats break down as follows: 33 cars over 48 years. 25 Model years from 1955 to 2017. 14 different carmakers. 26 different models in 10 different colors with green, yellow, brown, and red the predominant four colors. We’ve had more Mazdas than other cars with six. Volkswagon came in second with five. We still have two Mazdas, a Volkswagon, a Ford pickup, and a Datsun 280ZX on the property.
I was also inspired to write and record a Car Song about some of the cars that stood out over the years. I played the bass lines on my 5-string, multi-scale bass. I played my black Strat I built a few years ago for the rhythm guitar, and I played my 7-string, multi-scale guitar for the guitar solo (the song is above, lyrics at the end of the post).
Marble Sinking
Sunrise
Car Song By Timothy Price
This is a story about a few of the many cars that graced my life
My dad, he was a Rambler man 1964 classic I learned to drive Three on the tree with no air Bench seats without belts
The ’55 Cadillac was a tank with tits Big silver bumper boobs oh they couldn’t be missed Slushbox tranny liked to bump and grind Lumbered down the road in style
1960 Rambler in Pepto Bismol pink Nearly cost me my life and limbs A boy driving a pink car in 1975 Was worthy of a beating, so the other boys thought
[Chorus] Thirty-three cars have graced my life Over two score and 8 years From green to pink to yellow to blue Red sports cars are the final two
’66 American in canary yellow The cubic inches under the hood wouldn’t do I cut and bent to retrofit a power plant I lost traction, tickets, I paid for my sins
’65 Corvair. Yep that’s the one It was “Unsafe At Any Speed” That car was fun to drive I never rolled it though Not to say I didn’t try.
The Volkswagen Thing was a Thing of wonder As I wandered from here to yonder Weirdly shaped, like a Jerrycan on wheels It did nothing for my sex appeal
[Bridge] Cadillac, Chevrolet, Rambler, and Ford Volkswagens, Honda, Triumph, were never bored International, AMC, Renault, and a Datsun Dodge, Kia, and best of all is always Mazda
Eldorado, Americans, a Classic, and a Bus Travelalls, beetles, and a Triumph GT6 Plus A Sun Bug, Pickups, Hornet, and a Le Car Taurus, Rio Cinco, N600, and a Corvair Granada, Dart, ZX, Five, RX, and a Thing 323, Speed 3, my Miata is really mean
[Guitar Solo]
’79 Renault Le Car was one of my All-time favorite cars Smooth ride, canvas-covered sunroof That got Swiss-cheesed in a hailstorm
The RX-8 was as exotic as I got A Wankel whining under the hood Demanded high revs lots of speed Suicide door, it seated four
My MX-5 is beautiful to drive Small, responsive, quick, and sassy A hot profile and racing stripe It’s total fun and fantasy
I ordered an Ibanez multi-scale 5-string bass in the middle of August. I just got it last week. I was thinking the fanned frets on the fingerboard would help my poor arthritic fingers. Why not get a fretless bass, you might ask? I did consider that, but I like having frets. I’ve been practicing with it and I finally got time to record two new songs this weekend. The one I recorded today I’m calling “The Bass” and I put it together with video of Jake chasing a stick and rolling in the dirt. It’s a jazzy piece. The other song I named “Black Widow” is very hard and dark. I don’t have a video for it unless I do a visualization. I’ll post it at another time after I figure out if I’ll at video or go with the audio.
The multi-scale fingerboard is a lot easier for me to play and my fingers and hands are not hurting or swollen beyond normal after hours of playing and recording. I played the Ibanez multi-scale 7-string guitar on the recording.
Spunk relaxing in on the deck rail this afternoon.
Two-Stepping To Nowhere
Music: Ron Blood & Joel Lewis. Arrangement: Joel Lewis. Rhythm Guitar: Joel Lewis. 2nd Guitar: Timothy Price. Bass: Timothy Price. Drums: Mark Simma.
Spunk: “NOOooooo! Not that stupid country song!!!”
Two-Stepping To Nowhere is a collaboration between Ron Blood, Joel Lewis, Mark Simma, and I. Ron sent Joel tracks with a bass line and Mark Simma’s drum track. Joel wanted to make a country song, so he slowed it down, which messed up the bass line, so he took out the bass. He recorded the rhythm tracks with the drum tracks playing a semi-hollow body Tele, if I remember correctly, and sent the song to Ron and me. I listened to the song, lyrics popped into my head, I wrote them down, went into the studio, added a vocal track, and sent the song with vocals back to Joel and Ron a couple of hours after Joel had sent the rhythm guitar and drum tracks. Later I added the twangy 2nd guitar playing my Black Tele, and a new bass line. It’s a really silly song, as you can see by Spunk’s reaction above. But it’s fun and funny. The lyrics are at the bottom of the post if you want to follow along.
Spunk taking over my lunch back before I got it packed this morning.
Spunk: “And YOU thing cat herding is really tough!”
Spunk: “Oh Gwedolyn! Did you really need to break wind?”
Silver planning his attack for after I turn out the lights.
A little before sunset tonight.
Two-Stepping To Nowhere Music: Ron Blood & Joel Lewis Arrangement: Joel Lewis Rhythm Guitar: Joel Lewis 2nd Guitar: Timothy Price Bass: Timothy Price Drums: Mark Simma
I barfed on my cat today He was pissed. It’s always the other way I dragged myself out of bed Stepped on cats trying to get them all fed The life of a cat herder is really tough No one ever seems to get enough
Chorus It’s like trying to glide Across the dance floor When all you do is a slide Two-Steppin’ to nowhere
I got myself made up and dandy Going to go dancing and find some candy A lovely chica got me out on the floor She looked real nice she knew the score But it was just my dumb luck I drove my car, I had left my viagra in the pickup truck
Chorus It’s like trying to glide Across the dance floor When all you do is a slide Two-Steppin’ to nowhere
Out in the truck to do some shoppin’ The County station was down, I had to listen to a dude named Chopin It’s hard on a fella and his imaging When the country chicas could hear The wussy music he was listening to
Chorus It’s like trying to glide Across the dance floor When all you do is a slide Two-Steppin’ to nowhere
I barfed on my cat today He was pissed. It’s always the other way I dragged myself out of bed Stepped on cats trying to get them all fed The life of a cat herder is really tough No one ever seems No one ever seems No one ever seems to get enough
While I was standing on the sidewalk in front of the office talking to Jim, he noticed a moth on the front door. I picked it up and it sat on my arm fluttering its wings really fast. I did photos of the moth. In “Live View”, the wings fluttered in slow motion. I converted the “Live View” photos to gifs and then to video and put the above video together with guitar accompaniment. After the moth futtered on my arm for about a minute, it flew over to the wall by the door.
Resa, who has the Art Gowns blog, and Spunk have had a thing going for a while now. When I posted The Persistence of Spunkery a couple of weeks ago, Holly and Marina got confused and thought that Resa’s cat Jeep* and Spunk had a thing going. With inspiration from Holly and Marina and collaboration with Resa, I wrote a song about our feline matchmaking and creating a modern, virtual, long-distance romance during these times of Covid cooties between Jeep and Spunk.
Feline Matchmaking Music & Lyrics by Timothy Price Inspired by Holly and Marina Collaboration between Resa and Timothy
Intro Can we have long-distance love For kitties locked down, locked in, Zoomed?
Verse Jeep’s up north to the east Spunk’s down south to the west
Jeep says meuw, not meow Spunk says mew followed by a growl
Jeep is four dimensions in three Spunk’s dimensions? Egyptian eyes Jeep is a sweet girly whirly Spunk has his destructive manly ways
Bridge Girly/Manly ways attract Equals Virtual romance for a matter-of-fact
Chorus Feline matchmaking during Covid cooties Long-distance love-making, feline beauties Purring, growling, rubbing screens Jeep and Spunk have hit the scene
Bridge Virtual love and Covid Cooties Modern romance oh so beauti… Full of screen-time Zoom Zoom Zoomed
Chorus Feline matchmaking, Covid cooties Long-distance love-making, feline beauties Purring, growling, rubbing screens Jeep and Spunk have hit the scene
*Jeep is named after Eugene the Jeep in the Popeye comic strip[1]. The vehicle we know of as a Jeep was also named after Eugene the Jeep by soldiers during WWII who thought the Willys MB light utility vehicle was “small, able to move between dimensions and could solve seemingly impossible problems”[2].
Off Center & Not Even 