On the way to work

On the way to work today, I saw an add to the PA Ren Faire that said in big letters:

Free Child with Adult

Now I know what they mean, but my strange sense of humor went straight to the obvious, at least for me:

Scene, At the Ticket Window of the PA Ren Faire: Think of the Capital One Commercials:

(In a loud boisterous voice) Barbarian: I am here for my Free Child

Box office Person: I think you mis-understood, you don't get a free child! The child gets in free when accompanied by an adult.

Barbarian: Well then that is what you should say on your signs. No Matter, I have brought my own

This is why you should never venture into my twisted mind

Been a while

I just downloaded a app for my iPhone to post blog posts I hope this will mean more posts in the future.

In the mean time this is a test off the new app.

Christmas Was Good!

So we had a good Christmas, spent time at the 'rents place in the morning with my brothers and nieces and nephew. My dad who is 73, is becoming a causality of the economy, has been working for the last 8 years since he retired as contractor is being laid off on December 31st. So he is going to have some free time on his hand, so I got him the boxed set of Band Of Brothers, the excellent HBO mini-series about the 101st airborne during WWII. My brother is also a victim of the economy being laid off from EDS as a result of working as a Computer Operator at a GM plant which is cutting back. I worry from time to time about my job as well, since a lot of Navteq's business comes from the Auto Industry, so I keep my fingers crossed.



I got my daughter the Boxed Set of the Twilight Vampire Series of Books, She is finishing up the 2nd book in paperback and now has numbers 3 and 4 to read.

I also got my wife a Mountain Dulcimer, I had never really seen a Mountain Dulcimer before, I had seen hammer dulcimers but never the mountain dulcimer.



It is an interesting and somewhat primitive instrument.

Basically there is a pair of Melody Strings which fret with a wooden stick called a noter. Also you tune your Dulcimer in different modes. The basic one is DAA, so the First two strings are tuned to A, then the third string is tuned to A and finally the fourth string is tuned to D.

You can learn more about the Dulcimer here

You can here a Dulcimer here

So last night my wife was working on playing a song on the Dulcimer and I had finally set up the amp to check out the pickup on my Pono Tenor, and I was playing the traditional mandolin back beat and it sounded pretty good. So I think we will have to put together some songs in the future. It should be fun.

It definitely has been a musical Christmas, now by next decision is to use the money my folks gave me toward a new Ukulele or a new amp for the Pono. Not sure what I want to do, I would like a Fluke Concert, and would like to get one with a rosewood fingerboard, but not sure what is next on the Ukulele front.

I also had to by this:

I should get it next week or so. I don't expect it to sound good, just to be a conversation piece in my collection. Besides I needed a soprano to play as well.

So all in all a good Christmas, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas as well and have a Happy New Year too.

O Little Town Of Bethlehem

This is nothing more than me singing and attempting to play O Little Town Of Bethlehem.


Have a Merry Christmas everyone.

O Little Town Of Bethlehem

He Is Born

I seem to be on a creative streak. I wrote a song for my Praise Team on Thursday night and recorded it for YouTube and here tonight, it took me 21 takes to get it right, which is pretty bad, considering I should be able to sing and play it since I wrote it.

I originally wrote it in the key of F which is not the easiest key for the Guitar, or in my case the Ukulele, to play in certain chords. I have a Bb2 chord in the piece and to play that on a C tuned Ukulele you would do it would be 3123. Anyway, my hands just did not want to go there, so I transposed it up to G but it was a little hard for me to sing, so I moved it down to D. Which is what I recorded it in. Anyway, I am putting all three pdfs on line, F, G and D. Just click the links above.

Let me know what you think.

Also if you want the song in another key let me know. I will be writing a piano accompaniment so if you are interested in that let me know as well.

A Song for Christmas

I wrote a song the other day called One Star, I have posted a video of me performing it, and I have a pdf of the file which you can download from here.

I am playing my new Pono Tenor, I had to replace the strings that came with it, the A string broke, so I put a set of Aquilla's with a High G String, I think this uke sounds better with the Low G, and I have a Low G Set, but I am going to keep it this way for now.

Anyway, let me know what you think about the song, it is a simple thing, not supposed to be difficult I have a pretty bad 4 part arrangement of it if anyone is interested. I have to work on it some more, I really don't like the arrangement yet, hopefully I can improve it in the near future.

ScribeFire and other things

Getting started with ScribeFire - ScribeFire: Fire up your blogging

So I just added ScribeFire to my Firefox browser, and I am trying it out for the first time. This is pretty cool. Maybe it will encourage me to do more blogging during the day and the evening as I sit in front of the computer, practicing my Ukulele.

This has been a busy week and I have a concert tomorrow during the day at the West Chester Rotary Club, which will be at the West Chester Country Club. It will be short program that the 49ers are doing.

It has been a week and a half since we last performed these songs, so hopefully it will go smoothly.