band practice: today was the first day. laugh if you want. ok, it wasn't really practice. it was more like me giving lessons. i'm not a musician but i understand the very basics, especially the basics of rock music. on thursday i showed twiddle thumbs rudimentary drumming. from taking hand drumming classes together and such i know she is a natural at creating interesting rhythms and solos but she has no discipline. she doesn't know the fundamentals required for rock music and that's what we need to work on. today i taught nopalita the basics of guitar playing. she bought one recently--it was from the same company that my bass is so she also has the same basic beginner's. the dvd goes over some of the basics but there's nothing like the hands-on approach. i went over how to hold the guitar and get comfortable with it, basic chords, and to practice fingering the fretboard. i printed out some things that were on the dvd's web site and gave them to her. i also quickly skimmed my itunes and made a playlist of songs i think we could practice once each of us gets down the basics. yeah, i came prepared as a teacher. as i was teaching nopalita the basics, i made remarks to both she and twiddle thumbs as to how the instruments and musicians rely on and play off each other. in explaining chords and such i had to give a quick lesson on music theory and i'm pretty much the worst at that. each of us are to practice on our own, that is our homework. weekends are for getting together to learn to play along with others--that is a big part of learning music and being a musician. there's nothing as rewarding as playing with several others and nailing a song from start to finish. a high like no other. the whole reason we're doing this is because everytime we see a crap band at a concert, we say "we have to start our own band" and "that's it, i'm starting a band" but we never do and so we're finally doing something about it!

old friends: some people we know back from our santa cruz days are visiting LA so we saw them for a bit and though it's nice to catch up, it's weird at the same time since those are the old days and they really are far away from who i am now. but i'd never turn down a visit especially if it means an opportunity to eat at any of the places i miss.

vegan paradise: after meeting with the friends we went across the street to whole foods in pasadena. it's a supermarket with health in mind like the one we usually shop at, wild oats, but whole foods are not on my side of LA so i never really shop there. walking around the one in pasadena, wow, it's vegan paradise. at first we didn't really put much in our basket but soon we had to get a cart. just amazing stuff there. they had in stock many products i had read about but never saw at wild oats. rice dream horchata, vegan frozen taquitos and chicken patties, vegan donuts, etc. i think i'm moving to pasadena. but there are 2 whole foods in sherman oaks. my friend lives there and took us to a restaurant that caters to both omnivores and veggieheads and also has an impressive tea list. sherman oaks is looking better all the time. ^_^