stringing you along: part 2

I can safely assert that I have taken excellent care of my cello(s), at least since age 12. ish.

Certainly, I have taken extra good care of my final-destination-adult-sized cello, which is still in my possession. You have been with me since I was 14. You have been my friend. You have been eerily in tune for most of the last thirteen years. (I am 27. 27-14=13. Ahem.) And your strings have NEVER broken. (Which is, for all you non string players out there, quite miraculous.)

Until last night. The unthinkable happened!! Poor ancient C string. Your days are over. Forever. There is nothing left for you now.

Luckily, I have this ancient stash of extra strings in my kitty music bag. (thanks mom, those cats will live forever). I know replacing a dead ancient string with a non-dead ancient string is asking for trouble, but we shall see. Maybe this next string will last another 13 years.

But the thing is, I had never changed a string. In all my 22 years of playing the cello, I never changed a string. NEVER! I was like a fake musician. A wolf in musicians clothing. I was false. But I knew this day would come. The day of exposure and then my true colors would shine forth.

And my true color did shine when, last night, with the help of YouTube, I changed my poor broken ancient C string and swapped it for a new (albeit ancient) one. And it worked! I so rock. And I did it with the clock ticking. (I might have perhaps procrastinated practicing something until 1 hour before the practice started, at which point I discovered the death of said C string. And I even had time left to practice. And write in fingerings.)

So thank you very much, the wolf has gone. Now I can say I am a true musician because:

1) I can string a cello

2) laura's cello and I are friends
3) I can play the cello in the dark

And, NO, you can't borrow my cello. Sorry. I do not feel bad about this.

For the sake of posterity, this post was written on 3/24/2011, and my string broke on 3/23.

stringing you along: part 1

Dear laura's cello,

You have been good to me.

But, historically speaking, have I been good to you? I might have mistreated several of your predecessors. When you start playing a musical instrument at the tender age of 5, you should expect havoc. Poor little baby cellos.

1) There was the bow-under-the-couch-cushion incident (resulting in a broken bow hanging by the hairs...), but that is behind us now. I think I was 5 or 6 years old at the time.

2) Then I might have accidentally stepped on a medium sized predecessor (which left a crack in the side of the lower body). But I was only 8 years old!

3) I might have doodled on you with the metal end of the bow a few times (in my former years as a callous youth. Yes, it was an evil horrific action on my part.) I want to say that I doodled on the same cello I had already stepped on, so it was a lost cause anyway:)

4) I have tripped over you and knocked you over numerous times. Too many to count! Cellos are tricky things. Beware of the end pin. Beware of the bridge. Beware of the scroll. They all protrude from the cello. Luckily, my mother believed in carpet.

5) Then came the day that I got the hard cello case. I still have you, laura's hard cello case. Of the original 5 shiny buckle clasps, only 3 are still in working order (and one was torn off at some point). When did Leslie marry Russ? That is the year I got you, dear cello case. Before that, I had only the flimsy cloth case, hence the occurrence of #2. I want to say I was 12 years old. Maybe mid 1990s. I have abused you too, poor case. I have kicked you, scratched you, stepped on you, and even sat on you. Intentionally. Yes, you did make a nice seat on occasion. But, you are awkward to carry and were always bruising my leg. So maybe we're even.

Thanks for everything. (more like, sorry for everything.)

Sincerely,

laura's cello's owner, A.K.A., LRH

emergency book tracking

I have long been a fan of Fantasticfiction.com. This is nothing new. They introduced author RSS feeds a couple years ago which was also fantastic, but now that has been discontinued. I used to be subscribed to the RSS feeds for my favorite authors so I could know about upcoming releases with minimal effort. Since they have discontinued the RSS feed service, I suddenly I find myself without any way to keep track of favorite author new releases. (A very serious problem!) My research on this issue has come up with several things:

1) I am not alone. Many people want this sort of tool.

2) Many publishers let you do author tracking via their website, but you have to go to a bunch of different websites for various publishers (not all of which will offer the service) and that takes too much effort. I want something centralized.

3) LibraryThing does not offer it. From what I have read, any author feeds they might automatically produce would be 99% alternate editions of old works, and not new stuff.

4) Goodreads has a new releases monthly email where they will email out the new releases for the upcoming month from authors that you already have on your goodreads shelf. The problem with that is it only draws from a public shelf AND from every author on the shelf. You can't select specific authors regardless of whether they are on your shelf or not.

5) Fictfact is a website that lets you track series. This could be helpful if you only read series that already have at least one book published. This will not track authors alone and doesn't have standalone works on the site at all. It does have RSS feeds though. Fictfact as it is does not meet my needs.

6) AuthorAlerts is likely the best option so far (for me) for a centralized author tracking system. I am trying it out. It looks like a relatively new site and imposes limits on the number of authors you can track. You start with 10 but can increase that to 100 if you "like" them on facebook, tweet about them, or blog about them (and then tell them you did it). I asked the site owner if the limit will ever be higher than 100, and they wrote back saying that the limit is really more like 3000, so basically unlimited. This site has RSS feeds for both upcoming books and recently released books for the authors you select, which is great. I'm hoping this website works out.

suggestions are welcome.

last stretch

So I'm into my last semester of my library and information science degree. I cannot tell you how glad I am to Git-R-Done. I was so enthusiastic at the beginning (3 years ago), but that is long past. Now my enthusiasm is for finishing. My mother is astonished that I don't care about attending my graduation. But, I'm just done. Don't make me go to campus one more time. Don't make me wear that hat and wait for hours while the trillion other people graduating in my program receive their diploma. This will be my 3rd university degree, after all. I think I'll go the beach instead.

(yes I know I'm so conceited now aren't I)

By the way this is my new fav song. It has an awesome cello part!

kitchen staples

There are staples that belong in the kitchen, and then there are staples that do not! I have just made possibly the most frightfully stupid and brainless mistake known to my short career as a slovenly housewife.

It went like this. I was making dinner all normal-like.

(all normal-like, for those of you who may be wondering, is the same as saying in-a-normal-fashion.)

(in-a-normal-fashion means not being crazy)

(and crazy means crazy)

So I went to open a newly purchased packet of dried sage. It was in a plastic bag with the paper label stapled over the opening. I pulled out the two staples and left them on the counter while I measured out the sage for the soup. Then I used an elastic to wrap up the label and the bag and put it away. And then, naturally, I threw the staples away.

OR SO I THOUGHT!!!

Toward the end of the meal, DH found a staple in his soup. No--not even that! He found a staple in his mouth of food! ACK! I nearly expired on the spot. I tried to remember what I did with the staples. I threw them away, didn't I? But it was undeniably, a staple. There are no other staples in my kitchen. I must have put them in the soup! Which means there is one more staple hiding in the soup. What if he'd choked on it and died? It is a horrible thought. What if I swallowed a staple and didn't realize it? Is that possible?

Lesson #1. NEVER PUT STAPLES IN SOUP

Lesson #2. ALWAYS THROW THEM IN THE TRASH

Lesson #3. DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

While transferring the leftover soup to a storage container, I was extremely pleased to discover the second staple. PHEW! Now we will still eat the rest of the soup (which was quite tasty otherwise) very very carefully, but without quite as much worry! Feel free to laugh. I give you leave. I have proven my slovenly housewifeness beyond the shadow of any doubt, if there ever was one.

2 haiku

So I like to write silly poetry. It is a silly thing. I mostly like to write them to other people. I was often tempted to write little poems on my homework during grad school to provide entertainment for the T.A.s, or maybe to apologize for the agony of looking at my work. I feel confidence that there was agony. On both sides.

But the latest poem I wrote was while I was tutoring a friend (in math). She wrinkled her nose at the first one, but liked the second one. I think the first one is pretty awesome though. For sure. So here they are. My two haiku. For you all.

1)

my calculator

makes my heart beat super fast

when I press the keys

2)

flower in my heart

guarded tightly in my soul

blooms when I'm with you

PS. I looked up haiku just now and it is just like celery. Singular and plural forms are the same! Also, I must give credit where credit is due. DH wrote the second line of the second haiku.

The Anthropologie Super-Villains

I, like many Palo Alto girls, adore Anthropologie. There is one located within the city. It has a sales rack. Once I went in and there was a super-sale rack! For 4 months I lived not 4 blocks away from the store. Anthropologie is on the corner of Addison and Alma streets. So poetic.

And I, also like many Palo Alto girls, can't afford to shop there. Alas. I do own 3 articles of clothing that came from that store. Also, a few kitchen items and some place mats. Some were wedding gifts, some sale items, some super-sale items.

I also receive the catalog. It is very entertaining. So much so, that I was stuck with the desire to tell a story using the pages of the catalog. This would not be possible with just any clothing catalog. All catalogs have pictures of models wearing the clothing. Anthropologie goes beyond that and sets up a background for the models as well. Each picture could be a story...

The images here were taken from the online March 2011 catalog.

Preface:

Here begins the serial story of the Anthropologie Super-Villains. These stories are written at lightening speed with zero forethought, preparation, research or skill. As such, they will likely be ridiculous, confusing, inconsistent, and possibly irritating. BUT, the idea of annotating the Anthropologie catalog seems vastly entertaining and so I will do it anyway.

The Anthropologie Super-Villains

by lrh

It all started one bright summer morning when Sasha the head sorceress walked into her tower-cottage with antique furnishings. She was returning early from her daily walk in the woods because she'd forgotten to feed her favorite pet mouse, Saruman the White.

Saruman the White was nowhere to be found because somehow the front doors to her cottage had been thrown open in the short time she had been gone. Sasha was surprised but by no means daunted. She was wearing her special necklace that day, and the white beads gave her special psionic powers that allowed her to communicate with animals.

Sasha closed her eyes and was preparing

to channel the energy of the beads when she heard someone turn on the faucet in the kitchen. She rushed in to see her twin sister Trista holding a cup of spiced tea. The aroma was strong enough she could recognize it from across

the room.

Sasha spoke hurriedly, "Were you successful? Did you find the cave where we stayed last Autumn?"

"I thought I could see it from afar off but as I got closer I grew distracted and somehow wandered into a yarrow patch shaped like a designer hand bag."

"Yarrow? Did you not wear the protection head dress I fashioned for you?"

Trista looked embarrassed but confessed, "It didn't match the rest of my ensemble. I truly thought it would be alright since I'd seen it from a distance."

Sasha looked irritated. "Well, the cave must be concealed by a spell of some sort. Is there any tea left?"

Trista looked into the earthenware pot shaped like an elephant and discovered she had used the last of the tea leaves. "Well, no there isn't."

"Nevermind, I need to go back outside and look for Saruman. We can gather herbs as we look." Sasha turned and walked back to the door. Trista had just caught up when Sasha turned to her and asked, "Did you see him at all when you came in? He must have gone out when you left the door open."

Trista looked up quickly and replied, "No, the door was wide open when I arrived. I thought you'd left it that way."

Sasha looked thoughtful for a moment and shook her head. "I always close it when I leave. What if Saruman was kidnapped! I could never live with myself if he ended up in the wrong hands. He is a special mouse, after all."

Walking out of the tower-cottage, Sasha felt her skin grow cool, as thought she'd walked into a shadow. She looked up to see the sun was blocked by a giant bird descending rapidly toward the landing strip in her front garden.

Looking over at Trista, she said, "Don't worry, it's only Socrates with my new organic place mat."

-----

To Be Continued...