New Life To An Old Blog

I started this blog a semester ago as a part of a class project. My intent was to keep this blog going as I went through my studies as an online Masters student at the University of Wisconsin – Stout. Well, while I had good intentions - life had other ideas.


After the semester ended in December of 2010 and the new semester started in January of 2011 I thought it would be a hoot to have major surgery on my cervical spine. So, I went under the knife to have the disc between C5 and C6 removed and then have a spinal fusion done.

The surgery went great as you can see from the photos.

I was off work for six weeks and you would think I could have found time to write in my blog wouldn’t you? Well, you would be surprised as to how crappy a writer you become when under the influence of Oxycodone, Vicodin(sp) and Cyclobenzaprine. It was not pretty – so for six weeks I watched I Dream of Jeannie reruns on Hulu, a lot of movies on Netflix and whatever was on the History channel or Discovery channel.

After medical leave school was really rolling especially one class, Writing Technical Manuals, which I hated and struggled with for the entire semester. If I ever see Adobe Framemaker again in my life it will be too soon. Somehow, and I do not know how, I got out of that class with a B. I would have been happy with a D – as long as I passed I would not have cared.

Which brings me to today – I am going to write at least weekly in this blog about what it is like to be a Grad student at the age of 44 as well as what it is like to take guitar lessons at this age and have an 11 year old son who has been taking guitar lessons for almost a year and is really good.


Guitar Lesson One

My first lesson was last Thursday with Lee Payne who teaches out of the Madison Music Foundry. Lee is a really good instructor who has been teaching my son for the last year.
I walked into my first lesson knowing how to play a couple riffs but not knowing how to really play the guitar. As I said to Lee during the lesson, “I have been trying to learn to play guitar in an hour for five years.”

What I learned during my lesson. Other than learning some scales I learned that I have difficulty counting to four. Yes, I have difficulties counting to four. Lee had me play through one of the exercises in my book – which I did, I just ripped right through it. I was pretty proud of myself because it sounded awesome. Lee promptly burst my bubble by telling me I played it too fast and did not pause where I was supposed to pause. So my lesson for this week was counting to four…Lesson two is on Thursday, hopefully I have this counting thing mastered by then…otherwise, it is going to be a long summer.