Well, thankfully that first day she left was the worst. It's been a little easier since then. Still shitty that she's not here, but not as bad. Anna, Luis, Tim, and Lauren have helped, all 4 of them rock quite exquisitely. They all got me a big calling card to talk to Erica with, that was pretty awesome of them.

I'm *crazy* excited about my new place. I'm getting a new bed the day I move so my back won't hurt as much (stupid 9 year old mattress not working anymore...) I've already gone and starting picking out stuff for my new place. See, when I moved into where I am now, I didn't want to buy a bunch of stuff because I knew two other people would be living here and there wouldn't be much space for it. But now I can decorate the walls with whatever I want, get tables and lamps and whatnot of my choosing.. It's gonna be great.

And I had a very Wayne's World moment yesterday. I went to Guitar Center because I needed some picks for my acoustic, but since my electric is dead (and wasn't that great to start with) I wanted to try a few out and get an idea for what my next one will eventually be. The first one I tried was the one that the lead guitarist from AC/DC uses. It was pretty neat, decent enough; pretty basic. Then I tried the one that Slipknot, Slash (the lead guitarist from Guns N' Roses), and Coal Chamber use. It was pretty cool. Much more of a heavy, rumbling metal tone. But I don't want a one-trick pony; metal isn't *all* I play. I tried both of these through a basic, kind of "eh" Crate amp. Nothing special.

Then I went to the Gibson Les Paul section. This is what Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Godsmack, System of a Down, and countless other big name rock bands have used. But the thing is, other types of musicians use it too. It's very versatile. You can turn it up and it's got the most thick, wicked crunch you can imagine to play metal. You can turn it down a bit, and get some wailing for blues and stuff like that. Then you can turn the distortion off and just get a beautiful clean tone to play normal stuff like Collective Soul, that kind of thing. I'm not schooled enough in playing blues yet so I don't need that, but the thick metal and warm clean tones really appeal to me.

Most guitars are one-sided. The Fender (my first guitar) is more for clean tone like John Mayer and all that. The Ibanez (my current dead guitar) is for bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit. The BC Rich line is all about brutal heavy metal, like Slipknot and the like. The Gretsch is for jazzy, swingy Brian Setzer type stuff, but nothing else. None of these really sound great on more than one type of music, except the Les Paul.

It just sounded so amazing. I'm used to how my current guitar sounds, since I've had it for 5 or 6 years, and how certain songs sound on it. But when I played the songs on the Les Paul, it was just so *different*. That, and the fact that instead of the "eh" amp, I played this one on a Marshall amp (also very widely used with big name rock bands) so that may have biased me, but still. So anyways, I decided they were going to be my next set-up at home. That's a famous combination in the music world, a Gibson Les Paul through a Marshall amp. The price: $1799 for the guitar and $799 for the amp. Wow.

But like Wayne Campbell, despite the price... it will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.
- posted by Aaron @ 1:21 PM