Bruised fingers AND bloody knees.

I have discovered that my running stats just aren't that interesting to anyone but myself and other runners, so I won't be posting them here unless for some reason they are extraordinary - if you are that curious, may I refer you to my nikeplus "mini" over there in the side bar? Alright
now.

Lately I have been messaging back and forth on Facebook with one of the Turkish musicians I met through my Bass Player friend a few weeks ago and somehow ended up volunteering to learn a song on my guitar by the time he returns from Istanbul. At the same time that I am kicking myself for suggesting such an idea, I find myself fired up by the challenge and motivation it presents. Not to mention I love my guitar and it's about damn time.

See her over there? I call her Madeleine. She's kind of sexy but in a classy sort of way, and for those of you who like details - she's an acoustic-electric Yamaha Compass Series XP in the violin sunburst finish. When I bought her I needed a smaller sized guitar to fit my frame, and I wanted something that was of decent quality, but knew I shouldn't bother with buying something super expensive as a beginner. Now I feel like she and I could be together forever, you know? Okay, this is just getting weirder by the moment.

What I was getting at is that I started practicing after work the other night, checking out tabs and trying to find a song that I like to sing along with but isn't too old or booooring. It took me a little while to refresh my memory as to "top" and "bottom" strings and then I started working out the notes with my little, so non-nimble fingers. I'm sure there's a proper way to place your fingers for the specific notes, but right now I have to do it any way I can make it work. I started around 5 PM and by the time I knew it 8 PM had rolled around and I had a few of the notes worked out and was trying to get better with the transitions through first four/five notes of the verse. My fingertips were bruised and sore when I finally called it quits for a run.

I actually took a week or so off from running while I was sick with THE FREAKIN' PLAGUE that is sweeping through Seattle, so it felt awesome to finally get out on the pavement again until about 2 minutes into my run when I caught my toe on the sidewalk and biffed it. I fell onto my "bad" knee and knew I had scraped it up but decided it wasn't bad enough to stop the session. Even more awesome - there were people walking towards me on the sidewalk, so despite the minor embarrassment I quickly got back on my feet and got back into my pace. When I got home I found this:
Which two days later looks like this:



I had to cover up the scrape with a band aid yesterday, since it kept rubbing on my pants and stinging like all-get-out, but the whole kneecap is bruised and there's no getting around that. Oddly enough, my normal knee pain doesn't seem as bad, so maybe I broke up some of the tissue that was causing the problem in the first place...Who knows?

I do know that no bruised fingers or bloody knees are going to keep this girl down, so tonight I'm back at it. No rest for the wicked, right?