Enemy of Entropy
Relearning How to Play the Piano
I can’t remember whether or not I burbled about this already, but if this is a repeat you can get extra hugs the next time I see you or something. We have a working, marvelous, beautiful piano! It’s the freecycled Korg 88-key digital that I mentioned way back in November, all clean and functional thanks to my sweet Sam. It sounds so good! It even feels right, unlike any electronic keyboard I’ve ever tried to play. I learned to play on an acoustic piano, and the feel is just different. This piano has nicely weighted keys to help oldsters like me, and they’re even touch-sensitive, like a “real” (acoustic) piano. And it has two pedals! (There’s a picture of a similar model down there under the “read more” link.)
It won’t go out of tune. We can record anything that’s played on it. There are not one, but two headjack ports, so that, say, a teacher and student could hear the student’s attempts without bothering anyone else in the household.
Yes, I like!
Read on…
Further Prof of Insanity: Blog365
I got through NaBloPoMo, as ridiculous as it was to commit to posting at least once a day for a month. So of course that small success has led me, in a moment of more-than-usual-lunacy, to sign up for Blog365 (otherwise known as “Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire”).
The purpose is fairly clear: to post at least once every day of 2008. February 29 is a “rest day.” Posts may be written on any site, rather than sticking to just one blog, so I’ll try to spread them around on mine/ours. If I can’t get something on the actual site on a particular day due to net connection issues or whatever, I have to write (yes, write! like, cuneiform or something!) a journal entry and transfer it to a blog as that day’s entry.
It would be far simpler to have a system of some sort. Maybe I’ll create a rotation:
- Fibrant Living — health, living with a disability, podcasts
- Academy Caritas — homeschooling, education, college
- House Fireheart — polyamory, particularly my and Sam’s approach to it
- Heartsong Handicrafts — home of my original needlework patterns, and soon to be home for the rest of my stitching information
- Cyberstalked! — internet safety and privacy issues
- Cynthia Armistead — my professional portfolio, where I put the geeky stuff
- Enemy of Entropy — here, of course, where I put general stuff, book reviews, and the like.
Hopefully there will be new podcasts up soon. There will definitely be more music, as we have that lovely concert piano we received via freecycle all repaired and put together. It’s beautiful and sounds great! Not at all bad for one drive to pick it up and less than $200 in repair fees! (Sam wanted to just take it to the nearest authorized repair center rather than doing it ourselves.)
2007 wasn’t a stellar year, but neither was it terrible. Sam has a steady, secure job that he enjoys, in an organization that’s allowing him to advance. , Katie had a lot of health problems, but I’m hoping that we’re on the right path to resolving them. Shelley passed away a little shy of her 18th birthday, but since we’d been told in 1999 that she only had a year (at most) left, we felt that we’d gotten an “extra” 8 years with her anyway. Kioshi has grown into a nice companion, too.
We really kept to ourselves a lot through the past two years. When you’ve been betrayed and hurt as deeply as we were by our former housemate’s sudden craziness in 2006, there’s a lot of healing to be done. I don’t know if I’ll ever approach Thanksgiving without trepidation again, but we had a good one anyway. The stress did contribute to the deterioration of my health, and that does make it harder to get out. We’re working on it, though. We certainly learned who our true friends were, and we’ll never forget that.
So on to 2008, which we hope to be full of more time with friends, better health, much more music, Katie spent last night and almost all day today with friends from the school she was attending as well as her new beau. Sam and I spent the day gaming, upgrading some web sites, eating good food and watching movies. If it’s true that whatever you do on January 1 indicates how your year will go, we should be just fine.
KT Tunstall’s “Big Black Horse & the Cherry Tree”
Sam just sent me a link to this video. Incredible! I’ll definitely be looking for more of her music.
Is There A NaNoReMo?
I think I want a National Novel Reading Month. I could do a novel a day (as long as I chose the right novels, of course). I’m behind on writing reviews, but I’m wallowing unabashedly in the number of good reads available to me right now. I’ve tweaked the Now Reading widget to show up to ten current books instead of just five.
I totally flubbed NaNoWriMo. No, I don’t wanna talk word count. Ugh. I have, however, managed to keep up with NaBloPoMo. so far, and there’s only one day to go! Database problems have given me some trouble with getting the posts to the public at some points, but I’ve written an entry every single day, and I think all of them are even showing up now. (The autoposted Tweets for the day don’t count, of course.)
TodayOn Thursday, Katie and I drove all over the place, as she had an orthdontic appointment and I foolishly chose to combine that with other errands. Driving = can’t take usual pain meds. I came home and collapsed with a fever. Now it’s the normal time to sleep, and I’m in too much pain to go lay down. (Actually, I was so foggy that I forgot to hit the “Publish” button last night!)
But, thanks to a freecycler, we now own a Korg 88-key electric piano. The catch: It’s taken apart. Completely. I’ve never seen the innards of such a thing before!
Why did the previous owners take it apart, then give it away? Their toddler spilled paint on the keys. The donor couldn’t remember if it was fabric paint or acrylic paint, but it isn’t water-soluble, in any case. Fortunately, the paint did not get into the electronics! Unfortunately, it did stick a few keys together. So the man of the house took it apart, intending to clean it up — then stuck it in the garage, where it has languished for two years. In a cleaning fit this week, he decided to toss it out and just get a new one. Happily for me, his wife persuaded him to give her a week to offer it on freecycle instead, and now it’s ours!
I’m encouraged by the fact that everything worked before it was taken apart (other than the stuck keys). I’m excited about having a piano. Now I have to figure out what to use to gently clean said keys, then figure out how to reassemble the whole thing. I considered just taking it to the nearest authorized repair center, but I want to see if we can do it first, as their quoted labor rate of $70/hour would add up very quickly. This is a $1,000 instrument, so it’s worth putting some money into making it work. Having the money, as usual, is the problem.
It came with its nice stand, which is integral to the piano, as it has the pedals on it. I’ll still need a bench, but I’ll deal with that after I have it working.
A repair manual would be very useful. The instrument manual can be downloaded from the Korg web site, but since these things aren’t considered user serviceable, it doesn’t show how to take the piano apart and put it back together. If I can get it cleaned up, though, I can probably ask Daddy for assembly help. My Daddy can fix anything.1 He’s much better with things than with people.
I’m totally open to suggestions for gentle solvents.2 I’m figuring non-acetone nail polish remover might do it, but will it damage the keys?
Of course, if any of you fine folks happen to have experience with taking electric pianos apart and reassembling them, by all means, please speak up! (Hey, a girl can hope, can’t she?)
1 Yes, I am 41 years old, and he’ll always be Daddy, and I’ll always believe in his miraculous fix-it-ability
2 Yes, that’s something of an oxymoron.
Ooo, I Want! New Putumayo CD
I love Putumayo’s CDs, and we have at least ten or so. I’ve yet to hear one of their compilations that I didn’t enjoy.
But I really, really adore their Celtic collections, and I’m a big goofy nut about lullabies. I don’t know why — maybe it’s because nobody sang them to me — but I can’t get enough of them as an adult.1
With that in mind, you can better understand why I just went nuts over the ecard with snippets of three songs from Celtic Dreamland that just arrived in my email. And ooo! There are more samples over here!
And hey, I like you people, so I’m sharing the joy with you.
1 Be warned: I do sing to babies. Anybody’s babies. I can’t resist snuggling a sleepy baby and lullabying away.
