You can pick your friends...

You can pick your nose.  But, you can't wipe your friends on the couch.  Or, something like that.

But, I digress.  We haven't done much shopping (other than groceries) for the past 6 months.  Now that we are here with our daughter and son-in-law, we have the opportunity to shop.  It's a big city; plenty of stores.  Not much we need, but we took the kids shopping.  Well, we went shopping with them.  I got to drive a car... haven't done that in months.

Steph and Dan have been eating better and are both down in weight and size(s).  They could use some new clothes.  Joan helped Steph pick out things, Dan and I did our best to stay out of the way.  I wanted to check out some guitar stores, but the one we went to didn't have what I wanted to see.  On the way back to the house, we stopped at the Post Office.  I had done my "shopping" on-line and there was a package waiting for me ... a Pick Punch.

Essentially, it is a die cutter to make your own guitar picks.  Now, before you say, "Aren't guitar picks really cheap?  Do you need to make your own?"  The answers to those questions are: some, and no.  This year, I discovered custom guitar picks.  Much nicer than the old standard plastic picks... and, yes, the sound is different, too.  Not cheap, they run $5 and up.

I heard about this Pick Punch on a guitar podcast, and checked it out on-line.  Inexpensive enough, and you can make your own picks out of almost any any reasonably thin material.  I thought this might be interesting.  I punched out a few things, my favorite being a clear plastic material that I ordered with the punch.  Gift cards (used up) work good, too.

Joan, Steph and Dan wanted to know if I was going into the custom pick business?  Um... no.  They were already working on business names.  Dan offered to do a business logo (he does great looking graphics for many businesses).  I just had my all-time favorite tortoiseshell pick that you can no longer buy develop a crack in it.  I just wanted to try some different materials... I'm not looking for a new hobby, and certainly not a new line of work.  Just doing my part to "reuse and repurpose." ;-)

Back to dirt dwelling... little Izzy has been spending a lot of her time under the bed.  Can't do that in the boat.  We are keeping her in our room, separate from Steph and Dan's cats.  She "made her break" when I came back in the room this morning... "Did you know there's a whole house outside that door??"  I'm getting much better at understanding her, after a communication break-through last month.

It is a treat to see Joan and Steph together.  Cooking... shopping... laughing.  We enjoy traveling, but having time with family is the best.   You can pick your friends... sometimes it is best to "raise" the family you want. :-)

We are back to the warmth... should get to 90º here today.