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Found a ukulele at the thrift store today for only $7.

The nut is missing but it sounds nice and plays surprisingly in tune, considering. (The way it is now, the first fret is acting like the nut, so I have to play everything a half step up.) And replacement nuts are cheap, so I think I got a pretty darn good deal. It's got a pretty emerald green color, too. I've taken chances on broken instruments before, and it's always been rewarding, so... I couldn't take a good picture of the label inside with my phone, so it's hard to read, but it's just some generic quality assurance about the craftsmanship and the wood. It says it's made in China, and I couldn't find much info about the brand, although apparently "nene" means "goose" in Hawaiian, which explains the logo.

I've never actually owned a ukulele that stays in tune before. The only one I've ever had before was given to me for my birthday (pretty sure anyway)- when I fourteen or something, possibly earlier, but definitely after I got my first guitar- but it didn't have good intonation, especially when the neck started warping. So basically I haven't had a functioning ukulele for twenty years, despite how much I like ukulele. That's what happens when you're poor.

The new nut is here and it's ready to go! It's still adjusting a bit, and the bottom two strings are a little hard to finger on the first two frets, but it works fine. There was no glue residue to remove, so I wonder if it didn't have a nut in the first place, and came out of the factory that way accidentally. That would explain why it was in the thrift store, but not how it's worn around the edges, so I dunno. It has a surprisingly warm tone for a soprano. I haven't heard what my old one sounds like in a long time (I'm not even sure where it is right now, somewhere in my bedroom), but if I recall correctly, it was a little thin sounding. It's an ox bone nut that was on sale. Probably fancier than anything the brand ever used, I imagine. I was actually a little anxious about the nut somehow ruining it, even though that doesn't make much sense.

Drive-in movie theater ads from the creator of Gumby. You can watch them here.

You can find many more drive-in theater ads here.

Picture some rooks hanging out indoors, playing a relaxing card game, and it's about to rain outside. This EP's kinda hard to describe. It blurs the lines between, surf, lofi study beats, garage rock, shoegaze, and emo, if you care to try and categorize it.

I'm happy to say that one of my vintage guitars is working again! It was making a buzzing sound, and I couldn't use it for several years, but for reasons unknown the problem cleared up by itself. Can't say I'm not a little perplexed and disappointed I didn't test it earlier, but I'm grateful to have it back again.

You may notice that the tone knobs are missing. For whatever reason they don't quite fit standard pots, which were replaced shortly after I got it. (At the time I was being taught guitar repair but that didn't really go anywhere, though I do have some basic maintenance skills.) All I can assume is that '60s Japanese knobs have some non-standard size. So the knobs fell off years ago, and they're still lost in my mess of a bedroom. The tailpiece is also off-center, so the strings don't quite line up straight with the neck, so keeping it tune is a bit of an issue. Still, it has a great tone for surf, rockabilly, and garage rock. (Also, the neck have five screws for some reason.)

This one doesn't have a special name, sadly. Since I have no idea what the brand is, I just call it "the pointy hollow body".

Turns out it's a Teisco-built Apollo (though some say Kawai). So now I get to call it "the Apollo". I never was completely happy with just calling it "the pointy hollow body". (Of course, now I want the 12-string version...)

She was always kind of distant, and very fussy, so we never really felt any sort of real attachment to her.

What I feel most sad about is that she was really the only thing that held together Dad's side of the family, and I'm not sure if they're ever going to really get along again. Dad was always a bit of a black sheep, and his sister was the favorite, while his brother had a successful career.

In the late 2010s it seemed like they were always getting on each other's nerves, and I suspect they stopped liking me and my brother for reasons I can't imagine, though I never knew for sure... but they always were eager to please and accommodate our grandma.

Things changed when the Covid-19 pandemic came along in 2020, and the usual Thanksgiving get-together was canceled. Christmas and birthdays didn't happen either, and that continued into the next year as the pandemic dragged on. Then grandma broke her hip and had to be hospitalized, and eventually sent to an old folks home. Family get-togethers were basically impossible even as the pandemic faded.

So now that she's gone I'm not sure if my dad and my aunts, uncle, and younger cousins have any reason to ever visit each other at all, much less invite us. Hanging out with my aunts and my uncle at grandma's house are some of my happiest memories, but grandma was merely the person who owned the house and not a close friend, and the visits and get-togethers were slowly degrading and diminishing over the past fifteen years.

It sort of felt unreal. I started crying almost as soon as it started, and I'm not entirely sure why considering my brother didn't cry. I suppose it was the anxiety anticipating the event, the emotional baggage, and the pretty music being played by a guy with a nice voice and playing a nice acoustic guitar had something to do with it.

I was asked to be a pallbearer, which I thought was only something that would happen at the burial I couldn't attend, so I was thrown for a loop. The casket was heavier than I expected and the handle pinched my fingers, and I was having flashbacks to the opening scene in Mouse Hunt where Nathan Lane accidentally loses his grip on his father's casket and it falls down, making the body fall into the sewer. Thankfully nothing went awry irl.

The service and the reception afterward mentioned things about her life I had never heard of and displayed photos of her I had never seen, and it just emphasized how little I knew about her, and how disconnected I feel to that side of the family.