Some days

New strings for my guitar. It had been at least a year. Sad, I know. There were spots on the wound strings warn down flat, the top of the strings had a bump at each fret. I've never had this before, never let strings stay on this long. But these Elixir strings still sounded pretty good. Anyhow, it seemed like it was time to spend the 15 bucks and slap a new set on there. That's the backdrop. Out of love for playing and guitar, I treated it and myself to an upgrade. Mistake.

Some days I pick up my guitar and it sounds good. Some days I pick up my guitar and it sounds bad. Some days I can sit and strum and sing, merrily. Some days I can play a bunch of fingerstyle instrumentals and it sounds pretty good. Tonight was a bad night. Ready to play... plug it in and flaaaarp. Nothing sounded good. Too shrill and tinny, adjust tone... too dark and muted. Unplug it. Still ---- bad. In tune? No. Impossible. There's always some give and take on tuning where if you get 75% of your chords to sound perfect you take your lumps on the other 25%. Tonight was more like a 25-75 split. I've had this Guild Acoustic for about 14 years... it has served me well. It's not the most playable, never has been, but it has songs in it. Good ones. I like to believe it has already pushed out the bad ones and only the most choice selections of musical genius, man/instrument synergy remain. But nights like tonight make me want to put it out to pasture in the gently falling spring rain. Make it a big dog chew toy.

I'll let it sit for 24 hours and see what tomorrow brings.

I think it may be me more than the guitar. I'm unsatisfied by a pretty good Seinfeld episode right now. I should be laughing, but I'm not. Just checked out Andy Griffith, a color episode. Pretty much pissed me off... way too much Howard. The guitar can sense my negative vibrations and is reverberating back that same energy, and same goes for the TV.

Jackpot... Walker Texas Ranger with the little dude who played Spiderman as a young loner. They're eating chicken in a cave. My luck is changing. Urge to kill fading. fading. fading. gone. Walker just said, "so you see kid, you're not alone." now he's kicking ass. now he just got shot. now I'm changing the channel.

I hope Walker will be ok.