health update

The cheap guitar I just bought actually helped me improve my health, if you can believe it. It's kind of a funny story. Well, not really. Maybe. You be the judge.

Okay, so I start playing-playing-playing the Stagemaster and I notice that the strings were getting really difficult to drag fingers across after a little while. Figuring it was a bad set of strings (which does happen from time to time), I changed the set. Worked for a small while, then the strings started getting difficult to play again. Changed the set again, but this time did a thorough cleaning of the fretboard even though I didn't have to, figuring there might have been a film of grime on it I couldn't see. Well, there was a tiny amount of grime from sitting in the store for the time it did, but nothing major. I string up the guitar, and just like before, they played fine for a little while then the dragging problem started.

I research-research-research to see if it's a dried out fretboard issue, and it wasn't - it was the tips of my fingers that were drying out. What was the cause of this? The soap I was using. I wash my hands several times a day, and always used Irish Spring for that. It's a good soap, but dries out my fingertips just enough to notice a difference when playing guitar. I switched over to Purell hand sanitizer, and ta-da, now the guitar plays perfect because my fingertips are properly moisturized.

Then I had a thought. I wonder what this is doing to my face? I had noticed recently that even though my vitamin regimen has been working very well (and it really has), my face was still oiling up every few hours. Not nearly as much as it did before I started the vitamin regimen, but still noticeable.

I research-research-research again and come to find out plain bar soap in some cases will dry out your face so much that it will "over-oil" to compensate. I tested this to see if it was true and washed my face a few times with just hot water and no soap, and it was true, my face was over-oiling because of being dried out so much from the bar soap.

The recommended alternative to plain bar soap is oil-free facial cleanser; namely this brand. I tried to find this at my local Walgreen's but couldn't find it there so I bought a close-match J&J brand. Works okay but makes my face feel kinda weird. Later on today I'm going to try and specifically find the "PURPOSE" J&J brand. Shouldn't be more than 6 bucks at most.