Twain's Twang

Today is National Country Music Day! Country Music seems to be one of those genres of music that everyone either loves or hates. A majority of music made in America has it's roots in country, though, so if you aren't careful you might find yourself liking it. Since it's also the fourth day into the month of July, country music is very likely to be played very loudly in big open fields. Or as open as a field can be with hundreds of people standing in a crowded area surrounded by grills, the sun, and later on large explosions in the sky. You might say "Won't that be hot an uncomfortable?". Yyyyep.

Today is also Tom Sawyer Fence-Painting Day! If you haven't read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or maybe it was just "Tom Sawyer" to you, then you probably won't get this holiday or a lot of references that people make to it on a monthly basis in the south. The brief explanation is that Tom Sawyer was painting his fence and tricked his friends into painting the fence that he had been tasked with. You can celebrate today in three easy steps.

1) Get work assigned to you.
2) Trick someone else into doing it with your wit and boyish charm
3) Take the day off.

Thanks for reading!
~Kyle

76 Trombones

Today is Buy A Musical Instrument Day! It should be really obvious what you need to do today, so I'm just going to skip ahead to what I wanted to do, why I couldn't, and what I did instead. I really desired to buy a ukulele, but those are slightly too expensive for a poor southern boy such as myself. I found out about the existence of mandolins again, and I actually COULD afford one, and also liked the sound better than ukulele. However by "could afford one" I mean that it would be about all I could afford. I wouldn't even be able to buy a pack of gum if I bought one right now. So I of course, settled for the next best thing! A Mandolin app on the iPhone. It wasn't free ($1.99), so it TOTALLY counts as buying an instrument... right? Anyway, I'll be playing with it until I can afford the real thing without plunging myself into the red.

Thanks for reading!
~Kyle