Friday, February 28, 2003

Gas war

This week I reached a milestone of sorts. I paid $1.99 per gallon for gasoline. This is exactly 10 times the least I ever paid for gasoline. One day some time in the mid 60s, I heard on the radio about a gas station in Topeka that was in a "gas war" (hmm... it seems that term could also be used for the impending conflict in Iraq) with the station across the street, and had lowered its price to 19.9 cents a gallon. At that time, gas was normally in the 24-25 cent range, so it seemed worth it to drive an hour to Topeka to fill up the tank of my 1956 Chevy, which got about 8 miles to the gallon.

I'm not really all that upset about the prices we pay today, actually. If you look at the price of gas over time vs. inflation, I think it's remained pretty steady, with some temporary jumps up and down over the years. Of course, the price of petroleum-derived energy is probably one of the component that drive inflation so I may just be ignoring the obvious.

Sunday, February 23, 2003

Uwajimaya

I wrote a couple of new tunes over the last week, just bass and drum-machine so far. The title of the first one was suggested by June: Uwajimaya. We had spent an afternoon shopping at the wonderful pan-Asian market in Beaverton by the same name, so I guess the mood stuck with me. It's amazing to see people from many cultures shopping there, and to see so many foods that I have no clue what they are. I can usually recognize chocolate, especially if there is a picture of it on the label, so I bought a Crunky bar, just because the name sounded cool. The second tune I wrote is called Galanga, a bit of produce June bought there.

Friday, February 14, 2003

Birthday presents!

It's my birthday today, so I'm taking a day off from work, just goofing off.

June gave me terrific birthday presents: Three bass-themed T-shirts, a CD of "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" (she gave me the book as a gift several years ago, too), two bass-related books -- The Fender Bass, an Illustrated History and How the Fender Bass Changed the World. Yes, I'm a die-hard Gibson player, but these books are very interesting to any bass player.

Another gift is one I bought for myself with June's encouragement a few weeks ago: a brand-new SWR Workingman's 15 bass amp. It sounds great, and has inspired me start practicing again regularly. My next step is to find a music group to play with and get those creative juices moving again.

As of February 1st, MP3.com is allowing only three songs per user for free. I went ahead and signed up for the premium service on my MP3 page so that I could post more songs, but I allowed Paul Bass's page to default to the 3-song maximum. I'll rotate some of his songs through there from time to time, and if there is enough interest, I'll go ahead and expand it to the premium service later.