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Sep. 30th, 2003 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillArrg. Back is hurting more this morning. On the other hand, it got better throughout the day yesterday; maybe it will be better later today too.
Had my mandolin lesson yesterday. It has been so long since I took guitar lessons (like twenty years) that I had forgotten what it's like to be struggling with a new piece under the benign eye of a teacher. It's kind of embarrassing because I'm used to catching on to music faster--but the tune we're working on, St. Anne's Reel, is anything but intuitive for me. I'm getting it now, but the first couple of times I heard it, it was like trying to understand someone with a strong regional or foreign accent; I kept thinking "what? what?" It's got two hammer-on/pull-off riffs in it and doublestops and chords. But at the same time, it's not impossibly difficult; I'm starting to get it. And it's very pretty.
Roy is also having me work on tremolo (sigh. I hate tremolo--it's everything about the mandolin that sounds obnoxious) and what's called the "chop" (okay, tremolo is only half of obnoxious). But on the other hand, it won't sound nearly as obnoxious when I play with other people and everybody else knows how to do it so I guess I'd better learn.
And we didn't do anything with the closed scale. Hmm. Roy said we'll get to that later. I'm going to keep practicing the closed scale anyway, since I really want to figure out how to play it cleanly--if I could only do that, every key would be open to me. :-)
We're working from a book called "30 Fiddle Tunes for the Mandolin" which isn't in stock in the store at the moment. Roy photocopied the pages for St. Anne's Reel and is going to burn me a copy of the CD that comes with the book that has St. Anne's Reel on it. He's also going to order the book so I can buy it, so I don't feel guilty about the copying thing--this is a stopgap to get me through till the book comes in. I think adding a CD is a very clever idea--it seems to be quite common among local musicians to have people who play very well, but don't read music. The CD is a very clever idea--it's much easier to hear the shape and rhythm of a piece from the CD than to reconstruct it from sheet music.
The hermit crabs stayed under the sand all day and the first part of the night, until I went to bed. But they were out and about this morning (still are).
They both apparently dug down right to the gravel layer, about 4 inches deep. I had thought the sand would fill in behind them / collapse on top of them, but they leave a distinct burrow behind that persists even now as they're basking on their log. (later note--Cassiodorus's burrow persists; Julian's has fallen in.) Cassiodorus dug down so that he finished up next to the side of the tank and I could dimly make out where he was, and see that occaisionally he would shift position down there. Julian just disappeared down a hole.
They were still in their burrows at 11 pm last night, when I went to bed, and I thought they might be recovering from having spent so much time in the pet store, where I expect there was no place to burrow. Catching up on their sleep as it were. This morning I woke up about 6:30 and Kip said they were running around their tank so I came out to see and sure enough, Cassiodorus was sitting on the log and Julian was climbing up the cuttlebone we planted in the sand, trying to reach the opening in the hood over the tank. Her sandy cuticle makes little screeking noises on the glass walls as she shifts her feet, trying to get a grip on the smooth glass; every now and then she slips down between the cuttlebone and the glass or the water dish and has to brace and wedge and lever her shell out again. Fortunately she can't reach the hole. Now they're just sitting on the log side by side, occasionally waggling their delicate antennae. I wonder when they'll retreat down their holes again.
I was worried they were getting too cool--the temperatures have dropped quite a bit the last few days, and their terrarium thermometer was registering 65 degrees--so I got light bulbs for the tank hood yesterday and that seems to have warmed them up nicely. Bill also showed me how to turn on the gas furnace this morning which also helps a lot.
I saw a hairy woodpecker yesterday--there was a blue-jay convention under the pecan tree that I was watching from the window while washing dishes, and a jay-sized bird with a red cap, a white belly, a black and white back and a fuzzy-textured appearance joined them briefly, took something from the ground and flew away. Later I heard it pecking in the trees.
Had my mandolin lesson yesterday. It has been so long since I took guitar lessons (like twenty years) that I had forgotten what it's like to be struggling with a new piece under the benign eye of a teacher. It's kind of embarrassing because I'm used to catching on to music faster--but the tune we're working on, St. Anne's Reel, is anything but intuitive for me. I'm getting it now, but the first couple of times I heard it, it was like trying to understand someone with a strong regional or foreign accent; I kept thinking "what? what?" It's got two hammer-on/pull-off riffs in it and doublestops and chords. But at the same time, it's not impossibly difficult; I'm starting to get it. And it's very pretty.
Roy is also having me work on tremolo (sigh. I hate tremolo--it's everything about the mandolin that sounds obnoxious) and what's called the "chop" (okay, tremolo is only half of obnoxious). But on the other hand, it won't sound nearly as obnoxious when I play with other people and everybody else knows how to do it so I guess I'd better learn.
And we didn't do anything with the closed scale. Hmm. Roy said we'll get to that later. I'm going to keep practicing the closed scale anyway, since I really want to figure out how to play it cleanly--if I could only do that, every key would be open to me. :-)
We're working from a book called "30 Fiddle Tunes for the Mandolin" which isn't in stock in the store at the moment. Roy photocopied the pages for St. Anne's Reel and is going to burn me a copy of the CD that comes with the book that has St. Anne's Reel on it. He's also going to order the book so I can buy it, so I don't feel guilty about the copying thing--this is a stopgap to get me through till the book comes in. I think adding a CD is a very clever idea--it seems to be quite common among local musicians to have people who play very well, but don't read music. The CD is a very clever idea--it's much easier to hear the shape and rhythm of a piece from the CD than to reconstruct it from sheet music.
The hermit crabs stayed under the sand all day and the first part of the night, until I went to bed. But they were out and about this morning (still are).
They both apparently dug down right to the gravel layer, about 4 inches deep. I had thought the sand would fill in behind them / collapse on top of them, but they leave a distinct burrow behind that persists even now as they're basking on their log. (later note--Cassiodorus's burrow persists; Julian's has fallen in.) Cassiodorus dug down so that he finished up next to the side of the tank and I could dimly make out where he was, and see that occaisionally he would shift position down there. Julian just disappeared down a hole.
They were still in their burrows at 11 pm last night, when I went to bed, and I thought they might be recovering from having spent so much time in the pet store, where I expect there was no place to burrow. Catching up on their sleep as it were. This morning I woke up about 6:30 and Kip said they were running around their tank so I came out to see and sure enough, Cassiodorus was sitting on the log and Julian was climbing up the cuttlebone we planted in the sand, trying to reach the opening in the hood over the tank. Her sandy cuticle makes little screeking noises on the glass walls as she shifts her feet, trying to get a grip on the smooth glass; every now and then she slips down between the cuttlebone and the glass or the water dish and has to brace and wedge and lever her shell out again. Fortunately she can't reach the hole. Now they're just sitting on the log side by side, occasionally waggling their delicate antennae. I wonder when they'll retreat down their holes again.
I was worried they were getting too cool--the temperatures have dropped quite a bit the last few days, and their terrarium thermometer was registering 65 degrees--so I got light bulbs for the tank hood yesterday and that seems to have warmed them up nicely. Bill also showed me how to turn on the gas furnace this morning which also helps a lot.
I saw a hairy woodpecker yesterday--there was a blue-jay convention under the pecan tree that I was watching from the window while washing dishes, and a jay-sized bird with a red cap, a white belly, a black and white back and a fuzzy-textured appearance joined them briefly, took something from the ground and flew away. Later I heard it pecking in the trees.
