Tomato orange juice

I'm going to try to drink a homemade juice maybe twice a day.  I made this particular one from tomatoes, oranges, carrots, and lettuce.  I didn't add any salt or sugar.

I made a big batch and put them in small 2 oz containers to bring to work.  I think occasionally I'll add apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, or maybe some cayenne.  It's a good way to increase my daily vegetable and fruit consumption, and it tastes really good too!!

Charlie and the Chocolatae Factory - Roald Dahl

This was my favorite book as a child.  I read it multiple times, and whenever a school project required a theme, I would do things like build a diorama of the great glass elevator, or write a book report about it.

I was so excited to see that my digital hold of this book became available at the library.

I forgot a lot of details about this book, so it was nice to read it again.  I can't remember what I liked about this book when I was little, but I imagine it was the craziness of it.  It had a simple moral too - if you're not a jerk and greedy, you win in the end.

World Wide Funk - Bootsy Collins

Damn, this album is FUNKY.

When I need feel good music, this is perfect.  You can't help but smile listening to this stuff.

It has the classic funk feel of the 70s and 80s, but modernized with current rappers.

I'm listening to it streaming on NPR, but the release date is October 27.

Luxxtone Guitars

I'm currently in love with Luxxtone Guitars.

Weird playlist for today

I'm so stoked to be listening to the new Cavalera Conspiracy, but they only have one song released from the new album.  It's sick!!

I'm also listening to Van Halen I, because I've been so into my new MXR EVH 5150 distortion pedal.

I'm also checking out more Philip Sayce songs - perhaps my blues band can cover more of his stuff.  I wish I had discovered him earlier - he's so good!!

After listening to the Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack with my daughter all weekend, I'm still listening to "Waving Through A Window".  I love that song!!  Which is a weird thing for me to say, because though I played bass in "Bye Bye Birdie" in high school, I typically didn't like Musical Theater until my kids started doing it.  Now I have to admit, I kind of like those songs.

The last thing is a playlist I made for the All Time Low show.  Though I was listening to them before she was, she turned me onto a lot of their stuff that I had never heard.  They're a great pop band.

Walking

I've been able to maintain an average of 13,957 steps per day, for the past 3 months.  Hopefully I can keep this up for the rest of my life!!  Listening to audiobooks and learning Japanese make walking really easy.  Hopefully in a year I'll be able to converse in Japanese.

Found my tones

in these two pedals, with these settings.....

With just the SD-1 on, I can get some fat, round blues tones.  The drive is cranked for maximum sustain, but the tone is completely off - the lack of high end makes it appear that there is less gain, but you still get the sustain of the full on gain.

In my funky blues rock band, I'll use this tone for most of my rhythm guitar playing, and some leads.

(video to follow)

When I turn on the 5150 Overdrive, it gets a tone similar to Van Halen 1.  I have the bass and mids set lower than 5, and the treble is almost all the way off - it has just enough to give the tone some grit.  The gain is pretty low as well.  I love this tone, with some delay or reverb, I feel like it's very close to the brown sound.  In the same band, I'll use this just to kick it in for crazy fast lead guitar.

(video to follow)

Beyond Meat

 I heard about Beyond Meat about a year or so ago, and thought it was really interesting that they were producing a plant based burger with no soy, that was like a real hamburger.  I really like the idea of it, but because Hawaii is slow to get new products, this wasn't available here until recently.

Last week I saw an ad for Beyond Meat, so I checked out their website and found that they are selling it at our local Safeway.  I bought a couple to try.

They do look like real meat, but have a slightly odd smell.

I grilled them over kiawe charcoal.  I didn't realize that they would burn so quickly, but as there was not much fat dripping to the coals, there weren't really many flare ups.

I wish they were a little seasoned, but I had to add some salt at the end.  Next time I'll season them before I grill them.  They did take the charcoal flavor well though - they ended up nice and smokey.

With a bun and veggies and condiments, you could still tell that this was not a real hamburger.  It reminded me of Morningstar Farms products.  It was still good though.  I'm not sure if it was worth $3.50 for one burger though.

A Wild Sheep Chase - Hideki Murakami

I very rarely read fiction, so this is a bit different for me.  And I'm not sure I've ever listened to an fiction audiobook.  This one was weird in that the person reading the audiobook was voicing all of the characters, male and female.  It sounds weird when he does a female voice, and the male voices are all quite exaggerated.  I wish they had used different people to read each character.

It was a strange book, with a twist ending that I won't reveal.  It was entertaining, though I don't think things really came together completely for me in the end.

I don't feel much the wiser for reading this book, which is why I don't read fiction often, but it was entertaining.

MXR 5150 Katakana

I've been working on building my guitar pedalboard, and I've also been learning to speak and write Japanese.  So when this limited edition MXR EVH 5150 overdrive pedal came out with all of the words written in Katakana, I had to get one of these.

Out of the box, I wasn't that impressed with this pedal.  There was too much sizzle, and it was missing this midrange punch that comes alive with pinch harmonics that I love about my ENGL Savage amp, any Peavey 5150s I've played, my Fractal Audio AxeFX Ultra, or the new EVH amps.


But when I put a Boss overdrive pedal in front of it.....  voila, there was that midrange punch.  It is exactly the sound I hear in my head.  Together, this is the combination of pedals that I can take to the rehearsal studio and sound the way I want to.

One Day We'll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter - Scaachi Koul

This is a collection of essays by Scaachi Koul, a second generation Indian-Canadian who talks about her family, travel fears, shopping mishaps, her online meltdowns, etc.  It's a lighthearted book and funny, though some of the content can be a little more difficult for me to relate to.  At the same time, some things are translatable, like her Indian heritage and the cultural expectations that remain.

I did identify with two quotes, below.

"I was doing great.  But when you start to feel morally superior, it's natural to start thinking about people who don't have your perseverance.  People who don't try as hard as you.  People who are not as capable.  People you are still mad at for fucking up so royally.  I quietly dedicated my first sober week of the year to thinking about how much better I was than Jeff.  I'm doing it, why couldn't you?  As if getting sober was merely a case of mind over matter.  And the matter wasn't an addictive and readily available substance.  Or wasn't masking some deeper hurt he felt that he never let me see.  Intellectually I knew it wasn't the same thing.  Self servingly comparing my four weeks of abstinence to the trials of a struggling, possible alcoholic.  But try telling me that as I gleefully bought fresh organic vegetables and let them rot in the fridge while I licked cherry fun dip off my sticky fingers."


"But the only way to do better, to have better, is to lose pieces of what was.  It's inevitable that you can't bring everything with you, like carrying water in your cupped hands from one river to another.  There are too many cracks, and if you are so eager to move, you just have to get used to new water."

These were pretty profound musings on change.

It was a pretty good book.

My pedalboard

Here's my guitar effects pedalboard for my blues rock band.  I put it together using the effects that I have, but I think I'll slowly replace each piece, except for the wah on the right and the looper on the top, which might come off completely.

From right to left:

Fulltone Clyde Wah - This is a wah wah pedal made by Mike Fuller in California.  It's a great wah, and versatile due to the three position switch that allows you to adjust the sweep of the tone.  The three positions are:  Wacked (a reproduction of the Colorsound wah of the 60s that gives you a strong bass response), Jimi (reminiscent of Hendrix's Vox Clyde McCoy wah), and Shaft (the 70s styled wah sound).  I'm still figuring out which sound works best for the blues band.

Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive - This is the pedal I'm using to get my basic low to medium gain.  With my guitar's volume on full, I get a nice drive for Strat neck sounds ala Philip Sayce or Chris Duarte.  When I back off the volume, I get a nice low gain sound for stuff like Little Wing.  I'll play with this pedal on about 80% of the time.  This pedal sounds really good - if I do replace it, the replacement will need to be really good.

Danelectro Fabtone - This is for higher gain distortion.  This is a sleeper pedal, it's really good, though the treble sweep is funny - at 0, it's perfect, but anything above 2, it's really buzzy.  I'll use this pedal in conjunction with the SD-1 for Gary Moore style high gain.  I want to replace this pedal with a really good overdrive like the MXR 5150, and maybe add a fuzz pedal like the Mojo Hand Colossus.

Ibanez CS-9 Stereo Chorus - I'm using this guitar to get uni-vibe sounds for that SRV vibrato tone.  I'm going to replace this with something that gets more authentic vibe tones.

Boss RC-1 Loop Station - this works really nicely when I'm playing by myself and I can loop my rhythm guitar to play lead over, but we'll see if my drummer can handle this.  This might come off of my pedalboard completely.

Things I want to add:

A delay pedal for short quick tails.  I used to own an Ibanez AD-9 delay pedal but sold it.  I'm going to buy the new mini delay pedal for my board.

An envelope filter like the one Eric Gales has on his board.

I will probably also put my Boss tuner back on this board, but I'll need more power supply to do this.