Vegetabling

I've failed the moonwalking 30 day trial splendidly. I'm approximately 4 days into a 30 day trial of failing to moonwalk but I'm considering failing that too today.

On the bright side, I've started studying Chinese a bit again and I think I watched half the shows in the universe this afternoon alone, noodling around on guitar at the same time to trick myself into not feeling useless. Finally I felt so guilty for being unproductive that I did a set of push-ups. If I were half as Jewish as my grandma wants me to be, I'd probably feel guilty enough to punish myself, maybe by refusing myself that third cup of sugar also known as coffee. But perhaps I'm Jewish enough after all; I've decided to watch another episode of Dexter to make myself feel even more guilty.

Back to the not so bright side ("the dark side" sounds a bit too sinister and "the dull side" makes me think of bludgeons), I haven't studied French in three days or so, pretty much since I picked up Chinese. It's frustrating, not being able to keep up with everything I want to do...or rather everything that at the end of the day I wish I'd done. I wonder if anyone has managed to get those two to consistently coincide.

We went to 新街口 the other day and Yuan Yuan got me a new steel-string acoustic guitar. I've been ravaging it on my bed hourly since then (my bed doubles as an L-shaped set of chairs around the room). It sounds really nice to my unwashed ears but I always have my doubts when buying a new instrument. The guy in the store, that is, any guy that works in any guitar store, can make any old thing sound awesome. He can get a tasty blues solo out of a pick alone, and you should see him play the carpet. Meanwhile, I always forget every song I've ever learned the minute I walk into the store. The combination of those two makes choosing a new guitar a process full of eyebrow gymnastics, baa's and meh's. Either way, I'm now equipped with a sweet (if possibly fake) Great Divide that's going to appear in some YouTube videos as soon as I've finished reading and watching everything on the Internet.

Hmm...maybe if I get a job at a guitar store I won't have to practice anymore, I'll just automatically be awesome, or at least awesome to other people.