A Short Update Before The End of the Day

I now have 40 minutes until I can leave the madhouse. And I do mean madhouse. Today has been weird in many, many ways, though I am trying not to dwell on them. Most of the weirdness centers around Annoying Coworker, who seems to suffer from an Axis II Narcissistic Personality Disorder (wow, it sounds so much better to say, "He's a complete jerk!" like that!) and Bored Clerk, who told me that no one around here cares whether someone is married or not before hitting on him/her. She's probably right, but it still made me shudder.

Anyway, moving away from office drama, here's your afternoon report:

Good news: I stand a good chance at getting the full time addiction therapist position. Bad news: I will be immediately transferred to Nashville when that happens. Apparently the only reason is that I live where I do, and not because of any skills or capabilities (or lack thereof).

Guitar lessons are going very well, and I'm acting like a kid in a candy shop finding songs to try and learn. I've been having fun with a couple of Pink Floyd songs ("Breathe" and "Shine on You Crazy Diamond") and am working towards Sarah McLachlan's "Building a Mystery." Tom Petty's "Don't Come Around Here No More," is going MUCH better since I had my guitar set up / repaired, and I recently added Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" to my list of SONGS I MUST LEARN (yes, they're that important!).

In other music news, I found a cool pedal that, among other things, simulates the sound of a sitar. Why is this important? Well, several of the songs I would like to learn - including the Petty piece I'm already working on - have sitars in them. "Paint it Black," "All Along the Watchtower" (the version played in recent episodes of Battlestar Galactica), "Norwegian Wood" and a few others all have sitars or sitar-like instruments in them.

Is it vital to have this pedal? No, of course not. I can try to simulate it using the pedal I already have. Is it easier to do if I have the pedal in question? Sure. Is One Ring agreeable to it? No, since I've already spent a small fortune on guitar lessons, one pedal, getting the guitar set up, and so forth. So I'll just save my pennies and see what happens.

I'm going back to Virginia on Friday, so I probably won't post much between Thursday and Tuesday.

Oh, one more thing. Author and Zen monk Brad Warner is coming to Nashville on April 13th. Trouble is, it's a Monday, so I need to move my guitar lesson. But since I love the guy's writing - anyone who goes from being a bassist in a punk band to a Zen Buddhist while maintaining the same attitude towards BS is awesome in my book, and this guy's stuff absolutely rocks!

Okay, Annoying Coworker just came in an robbed me of 15 minutes that I could have been blogging. So now it's 4:03 and time to go home. More tomorrow (maybe).