Goin' Home

No, I didn't forget about you guys. I've just been a little busy with classes, and then I came home for the weekend...relaxing got the better of me. But now here I am ready to regale you with TALES OF INTEREST!!

First off, my class schedule has changed. I'm back to an 8am start. Every day. Woof. Caffeine is my new best friend. And I thought I left those early starts behind me in my university days. Although, this is also the first time in my collegiate career where I has Fridays off (at least for these next 6 weeks).

I am also now getting into the good stuff with my classes. Giving more thought to the types of woods I want to use when I build my acoustic in the spring semester, re-setting guitar necks, and hand-shaping guitar nuts and saddles. (and I thought I got away from all of the nut jokes, too...).

These classes are quite a large trial of patience for a lot of us students who are used to being able to get things done right (and quickly) the first time we do something. Reality check. It doesn't work like that. Especially when it comes to lutherie. There are a couple of mantras that I am beginning to adopt in class, such as, "Measure 5 times, measure it again, cut less that what you measure." and "remove a millimeter, move an inch...and swear because it was too much."
These mostly apply to my neck reset class, where I need to shave paper thin amounts off of the dovetail joint on a guitar neck so that it fits just right without any sort of twist or skew or change in neck height or angle.

take your measurements, make a plan, get said plan approved, DON'T MESS UP.

Test Fit

shave a little bit off.

test fit again. REPEAT.

Making and shaping guitar nuts is just as time consuming and trying. Pretty much every part on a guitar that looks like it was sculpted was done by hand using sandpaper or scrapers or files. Power tools are a big no-no, unless you want to remove a whole mess of material really, REALLY quickly. A lot of the time, the good old plate glass gets used.

May I interest you in some fine, Minnesota Nose-Candy?

I know it looks like drugs, but that is dust from flattening and squaring our guitar nut blanks:

NOT PIECES OF CHALK

which we fit to these tiny guitar necks

which looks something like this once all is said and done

Its not quite right yet, in that final picture, but it is the best one I have done so far, and it looks a HELL of a lot better than the first one I did. I really messed that guy up. Luckily, I have a couple to do and only my best ones get graded.

Elsewhere in the world, I finally made a trip back home and had a good, home-cooked meal, caught a Brewers game, had some Kopps and Spotted Cow, and just relaxed in general. It is just what I needed. My trip in on the train was interesting...in a good way. I had never ridden an actual passenger train before, and except for the tendency for the train to run late (an hour and a half in my case) it isn't a bad way to travel. I was able to see a whole mess of fall colors, and I didn't have to drive the 4 hours alone in my car. It wasn't a bad situation, especially since there is practically no crazy uptight security like they have on airplanes. Now I need to find a way to take all of the stuff back with me on train while still keeping within my baggage limits. Lord knows a boy needs home-made (ok, mom-made) chili, spaghetti sauce, assorted soups, and "grandma hot dogs" (hot dogs from the small, family owned butcher shop by my grandmas house). I also had to pack more "autumnal clothing items." I don't think I'll be needing shorts anymore.

I wish guitar school was closer, I kinda don't want to leave...

Top Yourself

Man, what a super crazy couple of days. It was the epitome of crunch time this past Thursday and Friday. I knocked out my bench hook dovetails, my scrapers AND I spent around 9 hours on Thursday alone sanding and shaping and sanding some more to get my scarf joint from looking like this:

to this:

completed bench hook

I sweat through my work gloves, hence the finger tape.

finished product

golly, that sure is smooth

curved scrapers are a godsend.

Good enough for a 90%

I thought I was going to have Friday to be mostly a free work day; put a few finishing details on some already graded projects or do some non-essential projects that weren't going to be graded but would still be beneficial to have in the future; like the sanding stick or rounding off the sharp edges on my push-sticks (The Ripper and Pushy McPusherton)

But that is never how anything works around here. It turns out that there was to be one final project due on Friday that the instructors decided would be included in the grading of this class...shaping a guitar heel for a neck reset mock up:

My understanding of the purpose of this assignment was to be used to weed out those last few people in class based on time management and prioritizing their work. I was in a bit of a crunch on this project because I didn't realize it was going to be due at the end of the Friday workday when I started it late morning. I wanted to complete my sanding stick project first because my instructor said it would be really helpful to have when doing the shaping of that neck heel (he was absolutely correct). I put some undue stress on myself because I ended up finishing that neck heel with about an hour and a half left in class to spare. I used that extra time to do all of those finishing touches I mentioned earlier like making my push sticks ergonomic and sanding down my chisel ledge to the correct height.
Funny story when I was sanding down that chisel ledge. I accidentally sanded down too far on one end because pencil lines are really difficult to see on mahogany, and I needed to do a bit of chiseling to get it to the correct depth again...oh karma.
A minor annoyance, yes, but I don't worry about it because I'm finally done with the class and I'm 95% positive I will be continuing in the program, unlike some unfortunate members of my class whose fate still hangs in the balance...

As a means of celebration, a couple of my classmates and I went out with the intention of seeing "Judge Dredd" at the local movie theater, except when we arrived, "Judge Dredd" wasn't showing...so we saw "House at the End of the Street" instead. Not a classic, or even a good movie, by any stretch, but it was an excuse to watch Jennifer Lawrence be hot for an hour and a half. I'm not going to complain.

yep.

When Doves Cry 2: REQUIEM

Sorry about not posting yesterday like I said I would, folks. Yesterday was one of those days where everything was fighting me and I was getting pretty upset with both myself and whatever happened to be around me, inanimate object or otherwise. Add to that the side effects of this Google+ commercial:

Yeah, I got a big ol' case of the home-sicks from this guy...

Clearly, I wasn't up to posting after all of that, but thanks to the wonders of Skype, I was able to turn the day around.

Enough with the mushy, emotional stuff. What else did I need to tell you from last time? Oh, I am again an uncle...to a dog. 

Prepare yourselves for the unrelenting onslaught of cute:

Yep, my sister got a french bulldog named "Gatsby". Gatsby and I had a Skype date. We're totally buds and that is awesome.
Unfortunately, Gatsby is going to be back home for a visit this weekend and I am not, because I still have class until late on Fridays, and it wouldn't necessarily be worth it to come home for that short of time because of travel.

Class today was really productive. Look at my giant pile of completed projects waiting to be graded:

Kind of a funny story about that guitar rest in the upper-right corner there:
I was getting that graded by my instructor and he wanted to take half of a point off because my curve was a little bit off.
I countered that with the argument that my instructions were to "use a roll of masking tape to lay out the shape of the curve". A roll of masking tape is an incredibly imprecise method of tracing out the required curve.
Is there one "Master" roll of tape that I should have used?
Does using a "used" roll of tape differ from a "new" roll (short answer is yes).
My instructor tried to counter by telling me that I could mash the roll of tape to fit the reference points on the curve; to which I argued that it would then pinch the curve and not match up without making the curve narrower at the bottom.
Fed up, my instructor gave me the full point.
At this point, I could have left it, but reeling in my little victory, I told the instructor that I debated in college and there was no way he was going to win that argument.
Luckily, he responded with a laugh.

Thank you speech communication degree...(never thought I'd say that).

Now I am working on getting my scarf joint all shaped out. Its fairly time consuming and requires a ton of elbow grease to hand-rasp the rough shape into place before you do all of your finer shaping and sanding. I'm in a bit of a crunch though because I only have the next two class days to finish both this and my bench hook dovetail project (which I am a bit further along on/nearly done with). I'm really hoping I can get everything done in time; even though with a partial credit grade I am certainly going to pass the class at this point. That thought alone is enough for me to feel better about finally making that $1400 tool purchase whose various online orders are starting to arrive. It's a bit like Christmas except you bought all of your own presents and you will continually use all of the things you get. I'd show you a photo of what I've gotten so far, but I don't think you'd be interested in 7 rolls of sandpaper.

Beard watch week 3.5

Out of Exile / When Doves Cry

For those of you that haven't caught on by now, I have been trying to use song titles for the titles of my posts, and, yes, I did just use an Audioslave song...shame on me, right?

Right, so...where did I leave off last time? Just let me reference the butt-ton of pictures I took over the weekend...oh yeah, the Scarf Joint Project:

 

As you can see, it looks more like a guitar neck and headstock. I still need to drill the tuner holes into the top portion and do a little bit of sanding and shaping before I get this step graded and I move on to actually shaping the neck from a square block of wood into something radius-ed. (apparently a past tense of radius doesn't technically exist...)

I am also working on a set of hand-carved dovetails:

 

These are a pain in the butt to do, especially trying to cut and clean out the section in between the two protruding sections with my various saws and chisels. I tried working on this at home, but what really complicates this project is trying to find an effective way to hold the workpiece upright without any sort of bench vise. I guess this one will have to be done mostly in the shop. 

Trying to burnish my scrapers is also still giving me problems...I've had to restart from the second step in the process a couple of times now because I still can't quite get it right. I need to get this figured out quickly because these scrapers are going to be super important in shaping my scarf joint project.

Elsewhere in the world, this was mine and Zach's man-date weekend. There was a lot of adventuring to make up due to time lost. Obviously, I had to show him the giant Red Wing Boot, which I'm pretty sure he got a kick out of (pun totally intended). Then after a brief tour about town and a fill up at the kwik trip (which I found out stocks Faygo for all you juggalos in the area),

 

We went about our way on the most confusing and troublesome highway system to the Twin Cities. Seriously, they allow the least amount of time from telling you which exit is coming up to the actual exit, so if you are not in the right lane a mile or so before your exit, you will most certainly miss it. Work on that, Minnesota D.O.T.

Any way, our agenda for the day was to bum around the Mall of America for a bit (because I haven't been there since I was about 9 years old when my sister would travel for volleyball tournaments), before we would head a little bit further north to check out a boutique guitar shop and do a bit of vinyl shopping.

What we didn't anticipate at the MoA was a giant scrapbook convention. There were tons of "mom-types" going nuts for scrapbooking all over the first floor of the mall. It didn't necessarily detract from my mall-going experience, but it was still crazy to see how many people love gluing pictures to paper. I also was able to see some of my previous co-workers from the Brewers games that just so happened to be at the Mall that day, too. That was kinda neat. Almost made me miss that place. Oh well, Miller Park doesn't have a 35 foot tall Lego Robot:

 

 

 After that bit of fun, we went to The Podium to, I kid you not, work on an actual assigned homework assignment...play lots of expensive guitars to get ideas on wood combinations/body styles to use for when I build my own in Spring. I knew I liked this school for a reason. Not only was I able to see a Mcpherson Guitar (5 of them, actually) in person, I was allowed to play it. Ooh man, those things sound almost piano-like...its beautiful.

Yeah, I got to play those...NBD.

But just like any guitar shop, there is always one douche-y kid that can't play guitar well and possess any sort of etiquette for the other players much better than him trying to hear themselves play and get a feel for the nuances of each different instrument. Yes, we can hear you loudly strangle that poor $2500 Martin D-28 that your parents will buy for you because you think that the more expensive guitar you have the better the guitar player you are. UGH. Even the shop owners/workers who were trying to help him/give him an informative history lesson as to why each type of guitar sounds the way it does (which totally caused Zach and me to stop our playing and listen) were getting annoyed with him. It felt nice to receive appreciative glances and comments because we knew what we were talking about. It sucks that people like that can totally put a damper on an otherwise awesome experience.

My sister put it perfectly that those guys are like the meathead power lifters at every gym. You are just there doing your thing with the 25lb. weights, not dropping the weights or drawing attention to yourself and he's over there screaming/orgasming over his reflection while he's "totally shredding his bi's, BRO"

Vinyl shopping was neat, if not a little bit disappointing because the store was packed and incredibly picked over. My vinyl budget for the day was more or less untouched (I found 1 of the 4 I wanted/saved for). I guess that is what ebay is good for; finding the same stuff for cheaper prices (mostly).

After all of that excitement, by the time we got back to my place, Zach and I were more or less spent of energy. A bit of sushi, a few beers, and SNL, and we were practically falling asleep on the couch. The next morning, I took Zach up to Memorial Park for one last Red Wing send-off. A great view of the city and an impromptu album cover modelling session.

If that doesn't scream Christian-pop album, I don't know what does.

 

 

P.S. I'm going to have to 2 part this post because a lot happened this weekend and I've already been talking too long already. Prepare for part 2 tomorrow...

 

 

Quick and to the Pointless

So, those scarf joint pictures I forgot to post before with the added mahogany headstock veneer:

 

Things are starting to take shape. I took a thin piece of mahogany, planed it so that it would be on the same angle as the "fret board," and then glued and clamped it to sit overnight. I then took the excess mahogany off with the band saw, and then planed it flush. Next, I have to cut and shape the piece of wood into something closely resembling a stubby guitar neck/head stock. Then, after all of this, I get to give it to a second year guitar student who will then step on it, break it, and learn how to fix it. You're welcome.

Elsewhere in the world of tools class, I'm working on creating my cabinet scrapers. This has become my new "mahogany block" in terms of frustration. I've spent close to six hours lapping the sides of the scraper flat (more or less destroying my whetstone in the process), filing the edges square, and trying to burnish a slight hook on the edge so that I can scrape super-fine wood shavings...yeah, that burnishing step is what is killing me. I just can't quite get it right. It's sort of like honing the edge on a kitchen knife with that rod...come to think of it, I was never really able to get that right, either. That could be a sign. Anyway...I finished grinding my chisels, so when I get frustrated with this scraper project, I've been working on a holder for all of my feeler gauges:

   It has tape holding the smaller ones in place because they are thinner than my actual saw cuts. Speaking of saw cuts, I finally was able to use my Sun-child Japanese saw on a project! It's so awesome...cuts with the littlest effort. How did I survive without one? I also realized that I will be using the Sun-child to cut some dovetails for the next project that I need to work on...I know, they just keep coming. Somehow, I never feel overwhelmed. I think it is because they are all very different projects; it stays fresh and interesting.

So now, I am just sitting in my room, typing this out/working on projects and watching a stream of the Packer game because for whatever reason, the game is only being shown on the NFL network and not on any other station:

 

Beard watch: week 2

 

Stacks O' Money

Oof.

I can tell it is going to be one of those weeks, and it's only Tuesday (nearly Wednesday). Sunday was a bummer because of the whole Packers losing thing, but other than that very minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things, I spent another hour or so at the laundromat because I had to go ahead and spill olive oil on my favorite jeans making dinner the previous night. 
If any of you have been following my facebook statuses, you probably saw my gem of an update about the mentally unstable racist with whooping cough. 
Yep, the guy would just wander around and talk to no one in particular about the "f***ing minorities" until he had another coughing fit ending with a very pronounced WHOOOOOOP. Once he regained his breath, he would then go outside and smoke a cigarette. All kinds of interesting going on at the local Maytag...

My Mondays in school remind me of why I am glad I graduated college. I have to sit through 3 hours of lecture, granted it is about guitars, but still, 3 hours of just sitting there and listening and taking notes and NOT being able to play with tools...it's rough. Makes me pine for the days of Gemin classes. This lecture is making me seriously reconsider the idea of a guitar that I wanted to build in my head. I'm learning about which woods would be best suited for "more aggressive players" as opposed to "lighter players" and various other things like that. My instructor told me to go to a guitar shop and play around with different models/wood combinations so that I can get a better idea of what I am looking for. The coolest homework ever.
Probably the greatest benefit of these morning lectures is that I am done with classes at Noon. Oh wait, I still have my absolute joke of a First Aid class for two hours at 5:30pm. For real, why do we need to stretch this out for 8 weeks when you could easily cover all of the information in a couple of hours? 

Today (when I actually get to work on stuff), I removed my scarf joint from my bench. It looks pretty good, but I forgot to snap a picture, so I will be sure to grab one tomorrow. It was also the moment of truth for my mahogany block that I was so worried about over the weekend. To no surprise, I was told that it was wrong, but it was fairly correctable. I had to do a bit more leveling on the part that tore out (close to 2 hours, actually...I kept chasing a high spot around), but on the part where I went too deep, I was told that I could belt sand it down to the correct depth, so long as I didn't mess up the "perfectly" flattened chiseled part...all was not totally lost! 
In power tools, I worked on sanding down a piece of wood to make into a nut/saddle holder. Nothing much more to say on that except for it takes a lot of time and creates a lot of dust...

I also received my next tool list for the rest of the year...it's a horror show of super-specialized items.

$1400...Ouch. There goes all of my Financial Aid (and then some).

That was a fun phone call to the parents.
"Are you positive this is what you want to do?"
"Will you be able to make a living doing this?"
"YOU NEED TO GET A JOB (starting yesterday)!"

Thanks, I know. 

If anyone wants to donate to the "Help Steve Reach His Dream Foundation" please do not hesitate to contact me...

At least I have my weekend in the Cities with Zach to look forward to...MAN-DATE!  

Practice is perfect

Man oh man...

Friday was a bit of a trying day. I spent most of my hand tool time grinding down the rest of my chisels. I thought it was going to be quick and relatively simple, but since these are the smallest chisels in my set, they don't have as much surface area to dissipate heat, and they have a tendency to scorch really easily. I scorched 2 out of four chisels. Major Bummer. My instructor gave me a bit of a break though, and partially ground my chisel bevel closer to the final angle, instead of just knocking the burnt part off and making me start basically from scratch. Anyway, I now have my chisels all ground and honed (thanks to a bit of home-honing...transporting the whetstone container home was a bit tricky, but I did it).

Speaking of the home set-up,

I basically took over the kitchen table for an hour or two.

My goal this weekend was to use my nicely sharpened chisels to carve out a small ledge in my block of mahogany so that it will later be used as a rest to sand down bridge saddle blanks. 

 It was an incredibly trying procedure, as I found that with my kind of poor chisel technique, I have a tendency to create chips and tear out the wood grain (neither of which are good). I should have been making nice, clean shavings, but the first cuts are always the deepest (and the worst). I tore out the grain next to my designated "stop line" and in trying to correct my ragged chisel line, I cut about 1/32 too deep in some areas. Clearly angry with myself, I decided I needed to walk away from this project for a bit (thoughts of what my instructor would say about how I would need to fix it, losing much needed points to advance on to the rest of the class, etc.). I found myself at the Red Wing Boots store.

Yep, its official. I now am a citizen of Red Wing. I have Red Wing Boots. While still wearing my work gloves. I also now own a pair of argyle socks specifically made to wear under my Red Wing Boots. It helped me get over my chiseling errors. Especially after I also got these in the mail: 

That's Finn and Jake from Adventure Time hanging out with Gobo Fraggle and my new Doctor Who metal lunch box (to go along with my now super-awesome sticker of a lumberjack-punching-a-bear that I put on my water bottle). I needed a little retail-therapy.

Going back to my power tools class, I have made my second vaguely guitar-shaped thing in class: a scarf joint. It is the type of gluing joint that allows you to make a guitar neck and headstock out of one flat piece of wood stock.

  Here it is all clamped up. Essentially, all that I did was cut a 15 degree angle into the piece of flat stock, plane both sides smooth, flip the smaller piece around and glue it onto the underside of the longer piece. I'll take a better picture once I get back to school and remove it from my work bench. For whatever reason, this came super easy to me. I needed it after that doozy of a morning.

The Council of Beards has also now taken shape. Only trims and neck shaves are allowed. What did I get myself into? I really hope I can pull off "the Lemmy".

Honestly, I just wanted another excuse to post pictures of Lemmy.

Old Before My Time...

Well, here I am, entering my 24th year on this earth...seriously, where did all of the time go? The depressing part is that this is the first time I am spending my birthday completely alone (no family or really close friends around to celebrate with me), and it is too soon in the school year to expect my classmates to really care or whatnot. So my birthday celebrations this year consisted of a nap, a trip to target, and Arby's/DQ for dinner/dessert.
All is not lost, necessarily, because next weekend I have plans to meet up with one of my best friends (and former best roommate ever) Zach. Zach is currently living about an hour's drive away from me and we intend to have a Mall of America man-date. We're awesome like that...

Enough about my birthday and more about my school learnings.

Things have been coming along really well. We have enough projects now as a class that we don't really have to fight each other for the same tools as much. I have my 2 graded chisels done. That was a trip; especially my first chisel. If you grind the tip of the chisel a certain way, you run a much higher risk of scorching the metal, and the only way to fix this is to grind the bevel flat until you get past the charred part and then re-grind your bevel to the proper angle. That takes a LOOOONG time. Guess what I did on my second to last grinding pass? Yep, I scorched my chisel and had to start all over again. Bummer.
Besides working on grinding my chisels, I was working on getting that block of Mahogany flat and square on all four sides. Here is a in-progress shot from before I finished that today:
  
That block was a pain in the ass. You think its flat, but its not square; you finally get it so that you think its right, the instructor says it isn't quite there yet. You take a few light shavings off, still not there yet. You take a few more light shavings off, still not there. You take more light shavings off, Too much...throw block against the wall in frustration. (that's when you go grind a chisel)

In power tools, I'm preparing stock for the various projects I will be doing later in the year. At this point, it is primarily just getting boards square and familiarizing yourself with the tools (which aren't so scary anymore). Since I am not allowed to take pictures in the power tool room, I can only show you the finished boards at my workbench.

 

Super-exciting, right?

The awesome part is that when I am being graded on the requirements for these assignments, I am getting close to, if not full points (4.5 out of 5).

Probably the most tense part of the day today was working on the band saw. I figured it wouldn't be too bad because I've spent a whole mess of time with band saws during my stint as a butcher, but the stakes (no pun intended) are certainly higher when woodworking. You are working with a much thinner blade (so that you can make the tight curves) and your mistakes cutting out a shape are much more detrimental.

 It still needs some work and I came really close to messing up my lines, but I'm determined to have it come out right.

Other than that, the Kids in the entire guitar building program are developing a plan to not shave their facial hair for the entirety of the school year. I called dibs on "the Lemmy" 

Labour Day Weekend.

Well friends, I have survived my first week of school (with all of my appendages too, might I add).

Friday was a godsend. The violin kids have the day off, so we guitar kids don't need to fight with them for grinders. I may have also skipped a few kids in my own class to use the grinder, but I was damn determined to get my block plane blade ground before this long weekend. 
Grinding a blade is a frustratingly imprecise procedure. You need to grind the bevel on your blade to a 25 degree angle while maintaining the straightness of the edge, which takes a LONG time to get just right. It is especially difficult to measure the straightness/squareness because the grinder creates a burr on the edge that you are trying to measure, and it can play tricks on your eyes. Then, once that meets the standards of the instructor, you need to lightly hone the edge of the blade on your whetstones, but be careful, because one pass too many, and you have to re-grind the bevel. UBER STRESSFUL.

So, after I got all of that fun stuff with the block plane taken care of, I was given an 8" piece of mahogany that I was supposed to plane all 4 faces flat and square to each other. Of course, by the time I finished all of my grinding, there were only really gnarly pieces of wood to work with, but I got my first face flat and level and checked off by the instructor. I would work on my second face over the weekend.

In power tools class, I was finally able to joint my first face and edge on the jointer. I totally got the adrenaline shakes using that machine, because for some reason, the jointer scares me more than any of the other machines. One of the benefits to being in the last group to use a particular machine is, that by the time you are done working on your current machine, chances are you got go right ahead and use the next machine right away. I was able to use the jointer, planer, and table saw all in one class period. I went from being behind the rest of my classmates to level footing in one class period. Awesome.

One of the downsides to living in this town is that everyone is either a) really old or b) still in high school. My social life is more or less nonexistent in this town. So, my Friday night consisted of a bottle of Jameson, a snickers blizzard from DQ, and bad movies on Netflix. I did get a call from my friends back home and I briefly was able to interrupt their fantasy football draft, so I guess it wasn't all bad.

On Saturday, I decided to ride my bike about town to one of the really nice bike trails that circles the city. After about an hour trying to fix a leak in my tire pump, so that I could inflate my tires to go riding...I was on my way. For about a block. because the chain fell off my sprocket. UGH. 
I was able to fix it and finally able to go on my ride. It is about a mile from where I am staying to the trail head. I then proceeded to ride until I came across this spot called Belle Creek:

   That's when I decided to turn around and make my way back. My round trip was about 22 miles. I haven't ridden that long since New Zealand, and boy, did my legs tell me. I slept really well that night.

Sunday, I wanted to continue to familiarize myself with the town by going to the laundromat to do a load of darks (my bike stuff was REALLY stinky). It was pretty painless, that is until a local asked me if he could use some of my laundry detergent. 
"Sure, how much do you need?"
"Enough for 2 loads." 
not seeing the harm in sacrificing 2 cap-fulls, I lent him my bottle. Jerk took half of my bottle, poured it into his bottle and promptly bolted. I've been had!
I spent the rest of the day going from store to store looking for another bottle of ultra Tide laundry detergent (which they don't carry here AT ALL). I did, however, pick up a few more school supplies that I neglected to think to pack before I moved...I found a really good fresh sushi place practically across the street from my place, I worked on my mahogany block, I was able to watch the Brewers game, AND played guitar for like the first time in a month...the day wasn't a total loss.

Finally, today.
I spent the morning wandering about Memorial Park, which is a really neat park set on top of the bluffs overlooking the city.

After that sweat-fest (seriously 90 degrees with close to 100% humidity), I took a little stroll around the rest of downtown and found my way to the Red Wing Boot store. Needless to say, I picked out the boots I wanted, but I didn't buy them yet, because SOMEONE has his birthday this week. I did, however finally buy that lunchbox I needed for school: 

Here's to week 2....