For those of you that may not know, I play guitar. Occasionally. OK, closer to "rarely" than "occasionally" these days. Mostly because the video game thing takes up most of my free time. But, I used to play a lot more and so I have a couple guitars, a Taylor 420PF (a limited run made in 1996) and a PRS McCarty Hollowbody II (made in 1999).

The other day, the girls were busy with an art project so I thought I'd work my way back into "Fingerstyle Guitar" by Ken Perlman. I ran into two problems with this plan.

First, I couldn't find my book. It's somewhere in the house, I think. The other problem was this



Yup, a nice crack running from the 18th fret almost to the end of the fretboard (21st fret). Gah! My baby! I bought this guitar for my birthday in 1996. It was my first "real" guitar (not a cheap-ass Korean knock-off). And, at the time, it cost me a serious chunk of change compared to what I was making. So, while it may not necessarily be worth as much as I paid for it new, it's also got a lot of sentimental value.

One thing to know about guitars is that they are, obviously, made of wood. And wood changes as the level of humidity in the air goes up and down. When you live in a part of the world where it gets really dry for long stretches and forced-air heat is required, you learn to keep your instruments in a sufficiently humid environment otherwise bad things happen to them, like the above. If I look down the body of my guitar, I can also see where it's slightly warped right behind the pinless bridge. Again, due to my admittedly poor care of the guitar during the winter months.

I'm going to be giving Taylor a call to see what I'm looking at for repair options. Then, I'll probably be sending my baby off to the factory for some work.

I guess this is additional impetus to get that whole-house humidifier installed before next winter. That and the fact that I'm getting tired of basically being electrocuted every time I touch anything metallic in our house during the winter (I can see the static electricity arc from my finger to the object).