My new love...
...is a Lanikai LU-21 soprano ukulele.
I played guitar and bass (badly) in high school and college, in a couple of garage bands. But I stopped for several years. Lately I'd been thinking about picking it up again, especially since Riley arrived and started enjoying music. But even an entry-level guitar is a few hundred bucks, and it's a big piece of furniture to have in the house with a toddler around, and it was kinda one of those things I was never really gonna do.
So one night I have this dream I'm singing in a nerd rock-cover band. My buddy Eli is playing guitar, and a bunch of (vague, unspecified) friends are behind me, and I'm playing ukulele and having a fantastic time. When I woke up, I said, "Yeah, that's it."
So I picked up this little sweetheart, and I've been taking lessons from local musician Alison Losik (who also teaches piano, voice, and music theory), and I'm having a great time.