Guitar Hero II

This Thanksgiving, my wife and I went to our daughter's house for Thanksgiving. It was fun not having to cook much more than pies. After eating, a friend of my daughter brought over a game called Guitar Hero II. If you've never played this game, it's a blast!

Not that I won, of course. I lost almost every game. But I had a blast playing it. Almost everyone in the house enjoyed it as well, whether they were playing, waiting to play, or making fun of the people who were playing. I play guitar myself, along with a couple of other instruments, and was hoping it would give me an advantage. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't.

It motivated me to start playing again, so the next day I bought some new guitar strings. My axe has been sitting in my garage for five years without being played, so I figured I should get it in working order first.

But I found that my axe had disappeared sometime in the past couple of years. So I went back to the guitar store and returned the strings. While I was there, I bought a brand-new, wood-grain, hollow electric guitar and a distortion pedal. I'm also going to get an amp soon, so I don't have to play on this crappy practice amp any longer.

After playing a couple of hours a day over the weekend, I found I'm actually better at playing than I ever have been. I'm not saying that I'm a guitar hero. Just that I'm improving already.

I'm going to try to practice for one hour a day and see how things go. Maybe I'll start up a band called Mild Violence.