The Art of Happiness - His Holiness The Dalai Lama

This is my first time listening to an audiobook.  Listening to it in the car in 30 minute segments during my commute, I've been able to listen to it twice so far, and I'm pretty sure I'll listen to it several more times, revisiting it occasionally when I need to hear the messages of how to achieve happiness and eliminate suffering.

I love this book.  Though the Dalai Lama is Buddhist, his messages of suffering and happiness cross the boundaries of religion and spirituality into universal concepts that anyone can apply to their lives. I'm not sure if I'd say this book is necessarily life changing for me, but it reinforces some of the ways in which I've been trying to improve and enhance my thinking over the past year.  Clarity, being centered, and freeing oneself of anger, frustration, ignorance, fear, and craving are key elements that I've tried to incorporate into my life, in order to appreciate and fully experience the present.

This is quite possibly my favorite book ever, along with Sapiens.

The Black Parade

This album came out in 2006.  I really liked their previous album, but had never heard much from this album other than Welcome to the Black Parade back when this album came out.

Fast forward to 2016.  My daughter was only 2 when this album first came out, but she recently discovered MCR and loves this album.  She turned me onto it, and now I'm hooked, 10 years later.

It has the characteristic pop punk sound of the stuff that was coming out at the time (Yellowcard, Story of the Year, etc.), but with more glam rock influence via the singer's love of Bowie, etc., and the guitar player's love of hair metal guitar like Randy Rhoads.  The result of all these influences gives this concept album a very classic sound, with a song like "House of Wolves" sounding like KISS's "Detroit Rock City" meets anything from Green Day's "Dookie".  "Cancer" sounds like a Motley Crue or GnR ballad meets Jimmy Eat World.

But they never sound like they're purposely trying to incorporate disparate influences......  the songs are effortlessly very MCR.  It's a great album, quite possibly one of the best albums of the 2000s (to me, anyway.....  "best" is such a stupid term when taste is so personal.)

Hakata chicken hot pot

Thank goodness for my parents!!  My dad gave me a book called "Japanese Hot Pots".  My kids absolutely love hot pot cooking.

My son's birthday is coming up soon, and he wanted to invite his friends over for hot pot.  With 9 people at the party, one pot won't be enough, so I called my mom and asked her to borrow some portable butane burners, and a few donabe (the cooking pots).

She lent me this beautiful cast iron donabe, so I took it for a test run last night, using the Hakata chicken hot pot recipe from the book my dad gave me.  It was yummy and the donabe worked fairly well, though the shallow depth makes it more conducive to chicken that's pre-cooked.  The rest of the ingredients cooked nicely though.

A year ago, I replaced the bridge on my friend's made in Japan Stratocaster.  He wanted to replace the locking bridge with a non-locking bridge.  The fact that the locking device at the top wasn't on the nut itself made that part easier.

However, the neck angle was difficult to negotiate.  On a locking trem, since the strings sit higher, the neck has to have a steeper angle.  With the new trem, that angle had to be decreased, so I had to add a "reverse shim", where the shim was in the neck pocket closer to the nut.

This solved the problem, and the action was very good after this, so I did a short clip to show that the guitar plays really well.

I have to admit that through I grew up playing a Strat, I haven't owned one for a really long time.  I couldn't resist doing an Yngwie lick on it!!

Missing tuner collar

I sometimes build guitars.  I don't do it regularly, because it's hard to sell guitars that nobody has ever heard of.

I've been working on a guitar, and while installing the tuners, I took off the tuner collar and washer, and lost it.  I can't find it anywhere!!  Fortunately, the manufacturer is a small builder and easy to get in touch with, so $5 later (shipping was more than the parts), I will have the proper collar.

I should know this by now, but the lesson learned is that I really should have a bin that I put parts in while I disassemble guitars.

Tongbaechu-kimchi 통배추김치

I have a few friends that have mothers from Korea.  It seems like all old Korean moms make kimchi!!

I wanted to try to make kimchi, so I went out and bought all the ingredients this weekend.  I followed Maangchi's recipe, but quickly realized that I like it sweeter, so I added a little more brown sugar.  My initial omission of saeujeot (salted shrimp) was a big mistake because it imparts such a strong signature flavor, so I added some.

The Ultimate Illustrated History of the Beast

I used to be a huge Maiden fan, and still enjoy their music.  I found this in the "What's New" section of the library, and finished reading it in a day (lots of pictures!).

It was moderately interesting but definitely not on the order of VH-1's Behind the Music.  I learned that Maiden is very much Steve Harris's "beast", and it was interesting to see how much Bruce Dickenson impacted the popularity of the band.

I went through their catalog through every chapter, and listened to some Blaze Bayley stuff, which I didn't like.