Meet Paco.

He's my new guitar.

I have been saying for months (years?) that I was going to buy a guitar and teach myself to play. Finally, this weekend, I did. Its an Ibanez acoustic (hence the name Paco, it kinda fit), fairly simple, supposedly a good starter guitar, and I bought a beginner book and the learning has commenced. I figure it will keep me from spending too much money and going out drinking too much, and will give me something to do when its rainy and gross out here as it has been pretty much daily since I got here... Im excited about it though. What I really want is to be able to play at an open mic night by the end of the summer. Just one song, thats it, so I have lots to work on.

Speaking of music, got to go see my friend Jim's band, Plaid Daddy, in Portland this weekend. I hadnt seen Jim in over 2 years, and last time I saw him he had a totally different band than he has now, but they sounded awesome, and he still did basically the same set with some newer stuff thrown in. It was a blast, met some cool people, and the bar it was in was awesome- sort of an older version of Keagan's. The whole place is made out of remnants of three bars from Ireland, they shipped the peices over and reconstructed it. Its been there for a while, and has the whole range of beers on tap (Guinness, Murphy's, Smithwick's, NEWCASTLE!!!, Boddington's, Stella, you name it...). Too bad its 40 minutes away... The second best part of my evening was definitely the Newcastle- I hadnt had one since Keagans- but it was beat out by the fact that Jim told me that the last song he wrote for his new CD thats supposed to be out by the end of the summer is called Rebecca and the Thief, and that he doesnt know any other Rebeccas besides me so I must have inspired the name of the song. Not so sure about the whole thief thing, but its still pretty awesome :) I havent heard the song yet though, looking forward to it!

Now if it would just stop raining....