Rick's been a terrible influence on me-- for one thing, the honesty. Rick has a taste for it, in fact to the point of tasteless truth. The hell of it is, he keeps on loving ya while being truthful.... it's an awful model, and I fear to say I have picked up the habit from him.

But the worst thing his influence has caused is this ridiculaous and expensive idea that I can try to learn any instrument I fancy, and that no question (about music) is too small to answer clearly. On my every merest whim he has provided a concise and devilishly simple, brief (couple of paragraphs at most) method of starting out on every instrument I have mentioned to him. Not only is this playing hell with our budget, but I've seemed to pass this attitude along to others, until there are all kinds of things littering people's living rooms.

Because of Rick's influence-- and yes, I will blame him for it entirely-- there's now so much music in these wretched hills, you can hardly find a place to sit and have a moment's quiet, even at the dump.

Damn him!

~Susan

PS, did I mention his infectiously twisted sense of humor? Yeah, that's caused me a mite o' trouble, too.