Over this last week, I've been playing around more with my 4 track recorder. I layed down a few drum tracks and played guitar and bass over one of them. It's a bit on the repetitive side, so I started kicking around some ideas for some sort of solos to go over it. I played around with a harmonica that I got in my christmas stocking last year but I'm not sure if it's quite the right key (though jamming along on the harp was a lot of fun). Then I dusted off my mandolin, put some new strings on it (learning in the process that stringing a mandolin is not as easy as stringing a guitar or a bass), got it in tune and tried to play a few things. I haven't picked up my mandolin in a long time and I never really learned to play it in the first place, so now I'm looking for a mandolin teacher in San Francisco who is willing to barter a few lessons for some of my graphic design services. Despite my bad playing, it has a great sound on the tape and I'd really like to pick up enough skills to record some simple tracks with it. If any of my dear readers in the Bay Area see this and know somebody, please contact me.