The house is painted. Refreshed. We’re ready for another ten years. Maybe I should sell it. It looks good. But no. I’m going to paint walls on the inside. Do an accent wall, or two. Change things up. Move furniture. Give it a new look. It’s my Guadalupian Period, remember. Time for new. Adventures, too. Serendipitously, I got an email from an old friend from my book selling days. He lives in Canada. That’s a short hop, but it requires a passport and I’ve got one and I’ve never been to Vancouver. He's an expat. Immigrated from the UK. I thought that took an incredible nerve to leave his home country and set up shop in a completely different land. But he did it. Cheers to him.

On the home front, my eldest son came in last night. We cooked up some steaks for him and his brother then settled in to play our guitars and talk music. He’s becoming quite proficient and knows the whys and wherefores of what he’s doing. It’s fun listening to him play, and helpful to me as well. Both my boys have far surpassed their old man when it comes to knowing music theory and talking about modes and scales and flats and sharps. It’s good to have your knowledge stretched and I love having my kids add touches to the songs I’m writing. And you should hear his sister on bass.

Today we’ll play some more then go shopping. The new Strait Music store in south Austin is lovely and it’s fun looking at walls of guitars and maybe taking one or two down to play. I was there recently to buy strings. I know I could order them online, but I like going to the store for the same reason I visit bookstores. Partly nostalgia, but it’s hard to beat the real world, that slow walking, we can order it, maybe there’s a wait, let’s move slower than the speed of light world. The world of hand crafting, clerks, other customers. The world of breathing in, holding it, exhaling. The world of the millennia. The world I’ve lived in longer than I ever expected.