I know, I've been a mostly MIA the past two or three weeks. I'm really sorry about that. I know a lot of you enjoy my blogs (especially my Pink Magic blogs). I've been around, lurking more than writing and commenting, though I've commented on a few photosets, blog posts and group threads. It's just that I've been rather busy and, I guess, needed a bit of a break from social media, including SG. Here's what I've been up to during my absence...
Taking care of Mrs. DeadGuitarist... she broke one of her ribs a couple of weeks before Christmas. One break, below her right breast is a clean break all the way through. Fortunately, it didn't displace... that might have resulted in a punctured lung. There is another fracture on her right side with smaller fractures in between. How you ask? She was parked next to one of those islands in a parking lot that separates main traffic flow from the parking spots. The island was on the driver's side of her Mini Cooper. She stepped awkwardly on the curb and started to fall. She tucked her arm against her body (instead of falling on it outstretched like most people do, which could break the wrist or forearm, cause dislocation of the elbow or shoulder, and a myriad of other problems with the arm). She fell on her right knee, then her right side. Falling on her right side with her arm tucked, broke her rib. It's likely going to be another 5-7 months before she's completely healed. She had to quit bowling and can't do a lot of physical activity. So I've been doing her household chores as well as mine each week so that she can relax and heal, and making or going out and getting us meals. I want her to do as little as possible to help with the healing process, though she can get a bit stubborn at times. Not much anyone can do for a broken rib except give her pain killers for when she needs them.
Playing guitar and jamming with the guys (Cameron - guitar, Geoff - keyboards). Unfortunately, our jam sessions have been completely unstructured. We haven't tried to learn to cover any songs (though I keep playing bits and pieces of several every time we jam just to see if there's any interest) or work on any originals I've written, partially written or Cameron's partially written. I practice when I have a some time at home. We usually jam on Saturday afternoon's ever two or three weeks. Not often enough for me, but I also don't want to totally ignore Mrs. DeadGuitarist multiple weekends in a row, since I usually stay upstairs on Sundays to do laundry. Toxic is mostly written, though I want to rewrite the third verse. I have an idea for another song. The working title is "You Got Trumped."
Preparing for and traveling to Southern California for a meetup at the Salton Sea, Bombay Beach and Salvation Mountain that @nebula put together. It looked like there was going to be quite a large group, but only 6 showed up besides me: @nebula (of course), @bluering, @zelena, @kiley, @lyxzen and @philly2hb. I made a weekend out of it, exploring some of Joshua Tree National Park and Salton Sea North Beach the day before the meetup. I'll have a full blog post about my trip with photos soon. Since I've been back, I've been slowly processing the photos. Tweaking the exposure, contrast, clarity, vibrance, saturation, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, lens correction and ISO noise doesn't really take me that long. What takes most of my processing time is adding tags and keywords, GPS data, and filling out several other fields like extra location information, a title and caption/commentary for the photo, contact information and information 500PX needs for upload. All that takes a lot of time.
Catching up on TV shows and movies. Recently, Mrs. DeadGuitarist and I finished DareDevil season 1. We also DVR several shows during the week that we watch on some weeknights and on Saturdays: The Flash, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Colony, The Expanse (love this SyFy show), Designated Survivor. I also DVR and watch Lethal Weapon. Not nearly as good as the original movies, which I expected, but rather entertaining. And I have a huge Netflix list: DareDevil season 2, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and The Punisher (when they are released), Gotham (need to catch up... I'm quite behind), several anime series, Stranger Things, Breaking Bad (no, I never watched it when it was on AMC... I know, I'm lame), Orange is the New Black and much, much more.
Video games... Mass Effect, which I have played and finished before, but am no playing again with a different character type and Rocksmith 2014 to improve my guitar playing skills.
Also been thinking about building a website and creating a photography portfolio, which I hope to add to a lot this year.
But, despite all that I haven't disappeared. Like I said, I've popped into SG occasionally, stayed current on all the amazing photosets that have hit MR, commented on some group threads, blog posts and photosets, answered some PMs. I'll be back more frequently soon.
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Stay Tuned...
DeadGuitarist
Besides Suicide Girls, you can find me on various other social, photography and music sites, as well as career oriented sites:
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | REVERBNATION (ARTIST) | SOUNDCLOUD | FANDALISM | TUMBLR | FLICKR | 500PX | VIEWBUG | GURUSHOTS | WASTED YEARS (MY PERSONAL WEBSITE)| YOUTUBE | LINKEDIN | AMAZON WISHLIST
I'm also on SnapChat (Gri11Sgt), Periscope (GrillSgt) and Uenme (RhythmGuitarist). I usually have my status on Uenme set to unavailable because of work and I forget to change it when I'm available. I'll try to get better about that.
I'm not super active on all of them, but I add stuff to each of them occasionally that you won't necessarily find on my SG profile page.
