Bad news and good news:
(a) the guitar class I signed up for this summer got canceled due to low enrollment. I can't say I'm at all surprised at that.

(b) the instructor e-mailed Saturday morning to offer a free class if I could get over to Sacramento on a Saturday. Which uh, right now I actually can what with the loaner car and all.

Now, my plans for the day were to (a) go to the gym and (b) then drive out to Roseville to hit the cool bookstore and the Hobby Lobby (plus a hippie store I found). I figured this would take awhile, like most of the day. And Hobby Lobby is closed on Sundays because of God (literally). And I wanted to do this while I was in a situation to take as long as I wanted to in the stores. But...free guitar lesson cannot be passed up.

So I ran to the gym, ran to get the car filled up with gas, and happily managed to find the place. (Seriously, I don't know how City Folk do it, having to hop on the freeway to get to goddamned ANY location.) The lesson went well. I will try to take class again from this guy in the fall, assuming it gets enough people then. He told me that the music store in town usually has people charging $30 for a half hour lesson and his class is a deal compared to that (true enough). He's also the first person who told me what going rates are for these days, so good to know.

Anyhoo, guitar is gonna be complicated. I wondered how different it'd be compared to violin and the notes thing...and the different sections of notes...not to mention that it has two E strings, which is pretty odd for me...yeah, I'm glad I went to a dude first before trying to learn on my own. I'm still undecided if I want to do that vs. calling instructors...however, given how I hate calling people blind to ask about their schedules and how much they charge (it never goes well when you audibly gasp on a phone in shock about that), I suspect I may just work with the books he recommended me for the time being and see how that goes.

I drove the guitar back home (can't leave it in a hot car all day) and then decided since it was around 2:30, I could still try to hit all the stores in Roseville. So I did! Managed to find it and stay on the right freeway and everything! I bought rocks at the hippie store, I got four books at the insane bookstore. I also had a great time at the Hobby Lobby, as I found some resin materials I want to try, and a bunch of cute guitar charms (I'm collecting them). And I am attempting to design a sweater with a Fair Isle electric guitar on the front, so I found suitable GLITTER (hah) yarn to make that out of--couldn't find that at the usual chains I go to these days.

I loved that store's selection of stuff, though I will admit the Christian stuff scattered all over the place kind of gave me the creeps a little. I don't know if this is a business run by bigots or not (which uh...probably should have influenced my shopping there, but it didn't today), but it did kind of point out to me that I associate Christians, crosses, etc. with bigotry now. Which sucks. Because really, Jesus himself always sounded like a sensible, rational, fair dude...and what seems like the majority of his followers these days are totally against that. Ugh.

Anyway, I successfully made it home alone--my longest alone trip in a car ever so far! Huzzah! Then I went to L's and watched some random DVD of hers called "Honky Tonk Freeway," which is a strange movie and I gather was a complete financial bust. It features some small town in Florida named Ticlaw being really pissed when the freeway near them doesn't have an exit to their town (even after the mayor paid $10k in a bribe to get one). So they do crazy shit to get tourists, like paint the town pink and get a waterskiing elephant and some kind of crazy zoo. These methods don't apparently work, so they just BLOW UP THE FREEWAY and have people bypass their way into town. Then the government authorities think all the drivers are being taken hostage when really they are all just partying in the hotel.

Instead of focusing on the town the entire time (which would seem logical, eh?), the movie features like, tons of people who are driving on the freeway to Florida from various places. And they show a lot of shots of people just doing INSANE shit on the freeway, like riding in the back trunk area of a car WITH THE DOOR OPEN, waving their feet around, or doing chin-ups on the bar in the middle of a Jeep, or trolling for men. Uh, seriously, we talk about distracted driving these days, but...damn. And then the movie ends with a guy driving a rhino having a whopping accident and knocking out most of the cars on the road, with wild animals roaming free (Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy are upside down in their car being menaced by lions!), an RV being completely halved, and I'm surprised anyone lived through that shit. Crazy movie...and kind of a weird one to watch after having been on the freeway all day.

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