Mortaine’s Blog

Last night, after getting home from the STC meeting, I practiced dulcimer (Blind Mary, Sheebeg Sheemore, and Yesterday), and tried tackling Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer.” Uh, no– that was painful. Let me get Yesterday up to snuff first, thanks.

The STC meeting was. . . entertaining, but talking to and hanging out with was the high point of the evening. Also, he was very nice and returned my short story “City Water” with many many comments, which I was very happy to receive. I only read through half of them last night, though, stopping at the edit from “heels” to “pumps” (talking about a woman’s shoes). Which is humorous because I don’t think he knows that there’s a difference between heels and pumps, and yet he picked a better word anyway (pumps going along with the theme of this being a plumber’s nightmarish story, after all).

OK, then I decluttered the office a bit more– yes, I was essentially moving a pile of books from the floor to the bookcase, but I consider that to be progress. I also made a stack of books for the giveaway pile, which is also progress. I also threw some things away, but not nearly as much as I need to do to really get it liveable again.

There’s a growing photography problem in my house– a bunch of photos and negatives in search of a home, basically.

I’m thinking of getting a scanner and scanning all my documents into CD-ROMs and saving them that way. Then, I won’t need to be hassling with all this goddamned paper! Argh!

Tidied up my car this morning. Also bought car wipes at Walgreens this morning– must give her a quick wipe down today, too. Also must call and get her on the insurance today. We shall see how that goes (our insurance agent has not impressed us lately).

Forgot that I’d committed John and me to going to dinner with friends tonight. Sigh. No drive-in movie for us. Ah, well. I was kind of looking forward to it; maybe we can go Sunday night or something, and be bad and come home super-late so we’re all tired on Monday morning (there’s a double feature of Pirates and Terminator 3).

I can’t think of the answers to these, so you all fill them in for me, okay?

This is just the first of what will probably be many car pictures in the future….

I practiced last night. Jesu Joy, Minuet, Blind Mary, and Sheebeg Sheemore (yes, thank you I can get the name right this time), each of them twice. It was kind of cool, practicing while cooking dinner, though the various interruptions (pot boiling over, phone calls, smoke detectors– just kidding) made it a little frustrating. Enough so that I didn’t bother finishing Sheebeg Sheemore when I got interrupted by a phone call from the Special Olympics– this is why the nationwide opt-out list is becoming the largest single database of phone numbers, by the way.

Sigh.

Anyway, I made my own dinner last night, since John was out at a Jeep night meeting. Tonight is STC for me– so I won’t be home for dinner. Tomorrow night is Date Night: I really want to do something special and fun, since we’ve both been missing each other all week!

Cramps suck.

Oh, yeah– and I practiced last night.

I started in on Pachelbel’s Canon.

It might be a life goal, actually, to be able to play it. I don’t think I can play anything with long runs of sixteenth notes on the dulcimer.

Today marks 33 days since I started practicing, in my challenge. 1/3 of the way there!