I get offers in the mail all the time. New credit cards, life insurance, you name it. But this one was different. Seems that now that I'm a pentagenarian (fifty-something) I'm officially eligible to join the AARP. Oh no! That's like for old people. How depressing. I guess it means that I'm not young anymore. If you're reading this at a much younger age, don't laugh. It's going to happen to you too.

Did you know that nowhere in the mailing or even on the AARP website does it say what AARP stands for? That's interesting. They just assume everybody knows. I was just checking for accuracy. Best as I can tell it's the 'American Association of Retired Persons'.

But it's interesting timing. This month marks the first time in about 6-7 years that I had more money at the end of the month than I had at the start of the month. So it's the first time in a long time that I haven't been 'living off retirement'.

Partially this is due to the fact that the advertising contract between Sonica Music Company and AT&T finally expired. That's $600 a month I don't have to waste anymore. (Sonica has been closed for almost a year now, so the Yellow Pages advertising isn't doing me much good). Next month the (postal) mail forwarding finally comes to an end; and also my last remaining account - Valley Yellow Pages; is due to expire. Thankfully it is nowhere near the AT&T monthly amount.

Then all that will remain of Sonica is a website or two. (OK 5, but who's counting?). I'll probably keep them running since they are reflections of and profiles of this site. I thought they would be useful community sites for Mountain View musicians, but there hasn't been much interest. Not like any of the other community sites are faring better - but we're finally up to 50 members. That's about two per website.

Oh, and I still have the signs. They're cool signs. Oh, and a bunch of cool guitars. And ... oh nevermind.