catsittingstill

It's FAWM

2024-02-02T22:10:13Z

It is FAWM (February Album Writing Month) and I have uploaded my first FAWM song!

https://write.fawm.org/songs/281879

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Summer plans...

2023-06-01T20:11:25Z

Dad and Jake are coming to visit in about a month.

What with Dad getting deafer and deafer, and also slower and less steady on his feet, I'm having to think hard about things to do that everyone will enjoy. We used to go to movies, but Dad can't hear them, and most of the places that used to have captions have decided they will just use earphones that bellow, but those don't work for Dad anymore. We used to go hiking a lot, but while Dad is still game, he obviously feels self conscious about slowing down so much on hills. Most museums are art, and Dad is pretty bored by art (and I don't think Jake really cares for it either.)

I did get us some tickets for a steam locomotive ride about 2 hours away by car, so that will be fun.

And there is a tour of Oak Ridge's historical bits (the WWII bits) that might be interesting.

There's the aquarium in Gatlinburg, and the Knoxville zoo, but we've been to both several times.

There's also a national park near us, Congaree National Park, that includes a canoe trail and some level hiking trails that aren't too demanding so Kip and I are going to go check that out tomorrow.

Which means I'd better get cracking about packing.

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Kefir

2023-04-03T14:08:53Z

I have had kefir grains (symbiotic colonies of bacteria and yeast adapted to the fermentation of milk to produce kefir, which is a bit like a thin, drinkable yogurt; the grains look a bit like cauliflower florets) for about a week now, and they have about tripled in volume. I'm trying to get the fermentation time and temperature right to produce the result I want (a sour but not curd-y kefir with a prickle of CO2) but my results, while not ideal so far, are perfectly drinkable. It is looking like the reason my previous efforts were curd-y is that I overfermented, so I tried shorter fermenting times yesterday and got something more like what I wanted. Yay!

However the kefir grains need to be in milk pretty much all the time, and shorter fermenting times means more messing with them during the day and also more kefir than I can drink, so I'm moving them out of the oven, where I was keeping them with the light on to get to the ideal fermenting temp of 75 degrees F, onto the counter which is more like 68 degrees F, to see if I can push the fermenting time back up to 24 hours.

Messing with the kefir is basically a few minutes to strain the grains out of the old kefir and put them in new milk, but it does involve running the dishwasher more often, as the mason jars I ferment in, and their lids, and the sieve, and the bowl into which I pour the kefir all have to be cleaned. In some ways this is good as I have less leeway to let the dirty dishes build up to intimidating heights, but still, I expect there will be times I don't feel like it, and then I can put the kefir grains in less milk and put them in the fridge for a while. They can last up to two weeks that way, so vacations are not a big deal.

This will be cheaper than store bought kefir. Also, if someone in the neighborhood wants kefir grains I will have some to give away in about a week.

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Difficult Choices

2023-04-01T20:11:07Z

I live in rural Tennessee. It's very pretty and green, and there are lakes nearby, and some very nice people, but we are mostly here because my husband's job is here and jobs like it are not thick on the ground.
One of the problems is the Christianity of the area.
They just assume everyone is Christian, and they just walk in and take things over. Any potluck becomes an opportunity to parade their piety in front of each other by praying. And every time it happens I have two seconds to make up my mind. Am I going be true to myself, and supportive of any other closet non Christian who may be attending, by refusing to participate and then live with whatever fallout comes my way for having been revealed as an unbeliever? (And for "making unpleasantness" because you know perfectly well people are going to blame me for objecting rather than Christians for dragging their religion into a secular event in order to be admired for their piety.) Or am I going to knuckle under and stay in the closet, because it's not like I can move away any time soon?
I find that I resent being forced to make this choice over and over and over. So far I have always knuckled under and then felt bad about it. But I hate it. To the point where I'm thinking about just not attending potlucks any more.

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Up at this hour because

2023-03-29T10:03:13Z

I took Kip to the airport for an Alpha Chi convention. The next few days will be all about foods Kip doesn't like (not that there are a lot of those.)

Siderea has a very depressing but timely post up about when it might be time to consider moving to a free state if you are LGBT or capable of getting pregnant (tl; dr: now. Now is the time. Yes, moving sucks, and yes, lots of people will have a very hard time making it happen, but the longer you wait the harder it is likely to get. Take your creativity and your earning power and your human potential and move it to a free state, because you can't help others if you are in prison or dead.) Kip and I are in that class of people who are safe-for-now: white, cis, straight, and not capable of getting pregnant (thank you menopause) but it may be time for me to check with folks who aren't and see if they need help escaping.

In happier news, I had a very good FKnO (the online version of FilkOntario) not least because I was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame on Sunday, an honor to which I had hoped to someday aspire for about twenty five years. I also had a concert with Lauren that evening, and Kip got a cake for me to celebrate, which we all shared over dinner after the concert. The folks at the bakery had never heard of filk, so they did the best they could with Kip's handwriting and their understanding of common English words, and the cake said "Film Fame" on it, which made us laugh.

With regard to nalbinding, I have made two hats, a top-down one for me that I ended up taking apart and redoing three times to get it the way I wanted it, and a bottom-up one for Kip that was much easier to do, and now I am working on a pair of mittens. I noticed that nalbinding in Oslo stitch results in a fabric that stretches much more across the rows than along the rows, and since I wanted a cuff on the mittens, because I don't like the cold air getting at my wrists, I came up with the idea of nalbinding a long flat flap and joining it top-to-bottom to make a short fat cylinder--the cuff for the wrist, and then picking up stitches along the edge of the cuff to bind the rest of the mitten in the round. It has worked pretty well, though just like knitting, it's hard to get the edges of the cuff even. I did a better job on the second than the first. I had to re-do the thumb opening a couple of times, but I'm now about 2/3 done on each mitten. I work on one for a while then work on the second while I can still remember what I did on that stage of the first. By the time I have the mittens done it will be too warm to wear them, but I can try them out come winter. I'm using the leftover lovely pink yarn I used for Tim Griffin's hats. The cuffs are lighter than the rest of the mittens because I nalbound the yarn and picked it out again three times trying to work out how I was going to accomplish the cuffs, so the yarn took a lot more wear. But the yarn is varied pinks rather than one solid pink, so it's not very noticeable, though the various mistakes and wear-and-tear does give the mittens an endearing "new crafter's first mitten" air. Which to be fair, they are the first mittens I have ever made.

I am starting out making kefir (a fermented milk drink like a thin yogurt, but slightly fizzy) at home, because I like kefir and it's supposed to be good for you, but store bought kefir is expensive. Turns out you don't make kefir from kefir, the way you do yogurt or sourdough; you make kefir from "kefir grains" a sort of colony of mixed bacteria and yeast all gummed together in a polysaccharide that the bacteria secrete. Kefir grains look a lot like cauliflower florets, and you can mail order them, and soak them in a cup of milk for a few days at room temperature to bring them out of dormancy. So far so good, so I'm trying my first actual kefir ferment and we will see.

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A timely reminder

2023-01-15T23:09:41Z

Many thanks to Minoanmiss for giving me a heads-up to double check that my DW email is current and confirmed. It is now done.

I am trying out a new craft (new to me; a very old craft in historic terms) called naalbinding. It's sort of an ancestor of knitting and crochet, but is worked with a needle, and the thread is drawn through every stitch. The term that is generally used is Scandanavian but actually fragments of ancient textiles that appear to have been produced in this way have been found in areas ranging from Israel to China to Arizona to (pre-contact) Peru, so it's everybody's craft.

I have been making a hat, because that's something big enough to be more than just a test piece but small enough not to be intimidating. Also I need a hat that my braids fit under so. I'm making each loop around my left thumb, and since my thumb is quite a bit bigger than a knitting needle, I went to the yarn store for the first time in ages to get a thick enough yarn. I found something in a chunky orange that is almost exactly the color of strawberry blond hair and it makes me absurdly happy.

I have been in a very lackadaisical mood about practicing violin lately so I've done a few scales and trills but have mostly just been trying various folk and filk melodies on for size, seeing if I can play them and what keys they might work in. This is research for Chamberfilk, absolutely.

It's 2023 and I'm having a hard time getting used to that.

I hope you are all doing well.

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Trying new things

2022-11-10T20:18:01Z

The new owner of Twitter appears to be trying to burn it down; I almost wonder if someone has dared him to destroy it while not actually turning off the lights *himself*.
This is a bit of a shame, I feel like I have learned some new things (not all of which made me happier, but I'd rather know the truth) and gained access to some valuable perspectives on Twitter and I'm not sure how much longer it is going to last.
I have, however, asked for and received a spot on Mastodon at the Mended Drum server, which is a Pratchett fans instance; I'm catsittingstill@mendeddrum.org. Since it only had 30 people at the time, according to the page I was using, I was surprised but pleased to find that Piers Cawley, noted amateur folk singer and filk-adjacent person, was also there.
It is quite possible to friend and follow people on other Mastodon servers, so if you're on Mastodon and would like a follow, let me know in the comments, or follow me on the server!

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Getting ready for OVFF

2022-10-27T01:52:10Z

So the Ohio Valley Filk Festival is this weekend. For those who joined us recently, filk is mostly songs by and for science fiction fans, about science fiction subjects or other things that interest us like science and cats.

A friend of mine got nominated for a Pegasus award, and asked me to play along in the Pegasus concert, where all the nominated songs are performed, before the final voting by the OVFF attendees (and anyone else who cares to; there is also an online form for filk fans.) He is much more comfortable with dissonance than I am and takes pleasure in, (and is sometimes inspired by) weird chords and key changes, but he provided me with the chords well ahead of time, so I could work out melodies on the mandolin that fit with the chords.

Then he changed the ending, and got me the new chords, uh, Tuesday night I think? But I think I have something worked out for that and I've been practicing it up and will hopefully be ready to perform it onstage by Friday, though I will need my music.

And another friend asked me to perform a song with her in the filk circles, so I worked out a mandolin harmony for that also, and have been practicing it faithfully and it's ready to go, provided she hasn't changed the way she performs the song since she made the mp3 I practiced to.

I have a copy of Finale (sheet music program) and I so I ended up entering the music for last year's Chamberfilk rather at the last minute (Chamberfilk is OVFF event where we take all comers with orchestral instruments that don't often make an appearance in filk and practice together a couple of times and do a performance on Sunday.) So this year I asked several months in advance if I should do that, and the answer was yes, and it turns out if you're the one making the sheet music you get a lot of say over what the program will be. I proposed Wild Rose (by me), Banks of Sicily (folk song) Morning Has Broken (the words are under copyright but the tune is a much older folk song) and Ship of Stone by Don Simpson. When I asked who all was interested Chamberfilk, Robin Baylor, one of our Interfilk guests, piped up (among several others), and it turns out she is very accustomed to arranging things. So she wrote harmonies for three of the songs and sent them to me and I entered those and I wrote a harmony for Wild Rose, and I sent out those sheet musics to everyone who had spoken up, um, a couple of weeks ago I think. I have been practicing both melodies and harmonies for all of those fairly assiduously, especially after the Bean Supper when I no longer had to practice 45 minutes worth of old time tunes.

I waited until last week to run them past my violin teacher; if I'd been thinking ahead more thoroughly I would have done a lot of this earlier to run it past him several months in advance, because many of the things he suggested are just not things I can learn to do reliably in a week. But I am using more pinky notes, and I'm very proud of myself, because my pinky notes aren't everything I wish but they are so much better than they were last year! I flip back and forth between thinking my playing is terrible and admiring how much better I have gotten since the last time I tried to do this.

In other news, Summer's lute has had a bridge shave to fix the action and has had the little dots replaced on the fingerboard, and I squeaked some time in today to make a trip to the music store to outfit it with a tuner and a strap. A lute desperately needs a strap; it is so round it is basically impossible to pin it to your body with your picking/strumming arm the way you can with a guitar. So now it has one.

And I went to the KSO Q-series (alternating quartets and quintets) that my violin teacher plays in, and heard lots of fun chamber music; it was great.

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Democrats Bean Supper

2022-10-22T01:53:14Z

So a couple of months ago we were having a Democratic Executive Council meeting and someone brought up the Bean Supper, which is a fundraising event we've done in the past in the fall, and they needed someone to be in charge of it, and my recollection is that R offered to be in charge of it and I offered to help. So a couple of weeks later I started trying to get in touch with R to find out what he wanted me to do, and he kind of ignored me for a week and then said that he hadn't offered to be in charge at all he just offered to help, and for lack of anyone else who had spoken up at all, I was left holding the bag.

And that will be the last time I offer to help R with something unless the limits of my help are stated quite clearly from the get-go, and a bunch of other people are also offering to help.

However I forcibly refrained from panicking and made a rough list of the kind of volunteer help I thought putting on the event would entail and started contacting people, and it turned out that lots of people were willing to help, and in some cases quite extensively. Laura took over finding speakers and did such a great job we had two candidates, a guy from the paper, and a union leader, and I also recruited her as chief troubleshooter while the event was taking place since I was putting up the sound system and playing music. Marge handled the on-site cooking and made enough beans (from scratch! they were good beans too!) to feed an army. I helped her with setup in the morning, before I had to race home and make pumpkin pies, because we thought until Monday that it was going to be dinner for 60 people but discovered when the reservations were counted it was actually dinner for 80 people. Other people who made desserts (or picked them up at the store) were Delenn, Lisa, Denis, Laura, Jan and Barb. Jill and Jim located the food and figured out how much it was going to cost, and Jill also bought all the paper plates and bowls and cups and plastic cutlery. R got the ribs and, with the considerable help of his partner, cooked them. Lisa took money at the door for those people who hadn't prepaid, and Betty and Barb and Bob served the food and J Chris and Dennis and Jim and John helped with setup and teardown and Barb was a trouper who stayed till we'd cleaned everything up and turned out the lights.

I made cornbread muffins the day before, but Barb and Laura also did that, and I made five gallons of tea the night before (sweet tea has a jaw-dropping amount of sugar in it; I had to buy a whole new bag of sugar to have enough.) I made a list of everything I thought we might need at the venue (which historically has not had anything much in the way of pots or pans or cooking implements or garbage bags or paper towels or cleaning spray or anything) and stuffed my car full of things, most of which came in handy. Note to self; next time bring a whisk broom and dustpan and also tinfoil and single-use tupperware.

We had a few empty seats so I guess some of the folks who made reservations didn't come, but on the whole people seemed to have fun, and the few people who commented on my playing said it sounded good. I just played old time tunes; I have a whole list of thirty or so that I printed out and taped to my mandolin so I would remember what I was playing.

I didn't get home till about 11pm.

Next up is OVFF and Chamberfilk; I've got the songs entered, and Robin Baylor wrote out arrangements for three of them, which I have also entered, and I arranged the fourth, but I need to check with Philip and see how he wants them printed out (what cleffs etc.) But I talked to my violin teacher for pointers on how to play them better, and while I'm not where I want to be on violin I do feel like I'm noticeably better than I was last year.

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Fall Foliage Trip and Shower adust.

2022-10-16T00:33:06Z

So the trees are turning colors locally, not all of them yet, but the early harbingers. Kip had a day off work on Tuesday for Fall Break (technically it was Monday and Tuesday both but of course he had so much prep work to do for his courses that he ended up working Monday.) I combined these two things and decided we should drive out to Cherohala Skyway to look at the fall foliage in the hills of Cherokee National Forest and Nantahala National Forest, and that's what we did.

Just getting there was scenic, because we ended up driving out a road the locals call the dragon's tail for the number of times it turns, which is a favorite of the local motorcyclists. They were driving up and down the road in packs, and I don't mind because they have as much right to the road as anyone else, and there were photographers at half the pull-outs, taking pictures of motorcyclists in dynamic poses as they were canted over for the turns, with the autumn leaves flying about them. I suspect there are photographers that make half their year's income this way.

The road was very windy, but many of the trees that bordered it were changing, so it was pretty and autumnal all the way. The lower reaches of the Cherohala Skyway were dotted with red and orange and gold trees; in the higher elevations they had mostly turned brown. Different rich colors of brown, but brown, perhaps because it had frozen up that high a few times? I don't know.

Anyway, it was a pretty drive and it took us five or six hours, but was worth it.

In other news the shower the contractors put in when they re-did the bathroom was too cool. In summer this was not a big problem, but it is not summer anymore, and Kip in particular was finding it a problem since he has to get up and shower in the black dark and cold. It seemed likely to me that this was a fault of some kind of valve that was mixing the hot and cold water (it's one of those one-tap showers) and I suspected there was probably a doohickey inside that needed to be adjusted, but the contractors ghosted me on that, and I couldn't find a plumber who would return my calls, so I finally went online and googled the innards of Delta showers and sure enough I was right (it's called a limiter, and it is adjustable), and there was a little set screw I could take out to take the tap off. So I did that, and reached in there and adjusted the limiter up just about as high as it would go, since our hot water heater isn't set very high. And put the tap back on, and warned Kip twice that I had done that and to be careful with the shower this morning. This afternoon when he came home he gave me a big hug and said the shower was now magnificent so I think he has approved the change.

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Knoxville Botanical Gardens and the KSO

2022-09-30T15:05:02Z

I went to Mozart in the Park yesterday—it’s put on by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, aka the KSO, in the Knoxville Botanical Gardens and Arboretum.

I was getting a new bow (thanks for the Christmas present, Dad!) from Knoxville Fine Violins, and I wanted to combine two trips in one because gas is cheaper than it was but still. So I took Beatrice along in her case, which has space to keep several bows safe and protected, and which is light and has backpack straps suitable for carrying around in the park, and set out about 3 pm.

Wesley was happy to sell the bow, and I *very carefully* stowed it away in the case, and set out to find the Botanical Gardens, which were only about fifteen minutes drive away.

Following the GPS directions I started seeing pink patches in the road—a pink dotted line, on car scale, in fact. Every time I had to make a turn, so did the dotted line. After a while I was intrigued enough to say “I’m nearly three hours early; I have time to follow this dotted line and see where it goes.” Sure enough it went to the park, turning onto a gravel drive. The gravel drive was a longer-than-I-expected gravel road, threatening to turn a bit rough in some places. I said to myself “What does Maggie even HAVE all wheel drive for if not to explore this gravel road in the middle of Knoxville that I found by following a pink dotted line?”

The gravel drive was bordered by low stone walls, very picturesque, and passed a tiny stone house and a few turnoffs onto ”roads” that were entirely grass, bordered by those low stone walls. I followed the gravel drive to a large gravel parking lot and parked in the shade there. My GPS was saying I was within walking distance of the Gardens. I got out and had a quick look around and verified that I was in fact IN the gardens; the point the GPS had selected was the office of the place, but it’s half gardens, half forest, 47 acres, with lots of stonework. Apparently the place was a plant nursery for a long time, owned at least part of that time by two brothers, one of whom was a stone mason. He must have been patient, busy, and long-lived, because there was stonework everywhere.

I explored a little, figured out where the event was going to be (thank you for your help, Phillia(?)—I’m terrible with names so I’m not sure I have that right—and Jessica) and made a quick side trip to grab take-out from the Wok and Roll. I went back to my shady parking spot (there are advantages to arriving 3 hours early and one of them is your pick of parking spots) and opened the windows and ate an early supper.

Then I shouldered Beatrice’s case again (no way was I leaving her or the new bow in a closed car; that’s a classic way of destroying instruments) and began more serious exploration. This would be a GREAT place for the SCA to have a demo tourney—or for that matter an actual event, though I suspect overnight camping is forbidden. The park is full of paths, some made of concrete and many lightly graveled and some (the older ones I expect) made of stone. In various spots nearer the buildings there are obvious millstones set into the path. There are several low round towers, and that tiny stone house I mentioned (there was some trash in that and I came back with my trash bag from the car and picked a lot of it up.). I was not positive where visitors were permitted so I did not open any doors, but the stone house had no door, so I figured that was fair game.

I found a stone seat (they’re all over) and sat down a while and played Beatrice with the new bow, just to get a little violin practice (honestly mostly just playing) in; it was a wonderful place and time to play, in the shade, with the weather cooled down, and the leaves rustling overhead. I need to make time to go back there in a couple of weeks and see leaf-turn.

There was a bamboo grove into which several paths had been cut; it was dim in there because the bamboo grows so closely together, so it had sort of a spooky maze effect. There were also garden areas, some with flowers (there was a sort of purple daisy that was blooming quite enthusiastically but most of the flowering plants were not; no fault of the gardens—it’s just fall) and signs identifying trees. There were some sprouts I’m fairly sure were poison ivy but I hopefully managed to avoid blundering into any.

Eventually I went back to Maggie, got my cardigan and my camp chair out of the back, and went off, still carrying the violin case, to set up at the first music spot.

Basically the plan was to start with 3 string quartets in 3 spots in the gardens, performing short Mozart pieces 3 times each so that people could move from place to place and see and hear all three. The spot I had chosen for set up was fairly popular, with several dozen people on the stone terraces. The stone walls provided a convenient place to sit, but the terraces were wide enough I could set up my camp chair behind the wall-sitters so everyone could see. They played a couple of movements of some late Mozart piece in E flat; I didn’t get the exact name. There was something very tender about the way the musicians were all so focused on each other, passing the lead back and forth, swaying in time. I have discovered that I love quartets. Also a clear autumn evening in the gardens is an utterly enchanting setting for a string quartet. 10/10 will go again!

The second spot I went to was in the Martha Ashe Garden section of the park, and I tried to set up behind the people who were sitting on the ground, with limited success because people were leaving and arriving in kind of a haphazard way. This Mozart piece was my favorite of what I heard, his Divertimento in D. The deep instrument in this was a double bass rather than a cello, with a strange silver extension on its head that was very clear in the fading light. The first movement had some lovely chirpy bits with everyone playing these very staccato dancing notes and everyone nodding and swaying and at one point the double bass player started playing pizzicato (plucking the strings with his finger rather than playing them with his bow) and it was just so funny I laughed and someone else in the audience laughed also and the bass player grinned this big grin. And in the second movement there was a bit that just made the feelings well up in me in a big confused mass and I wept, which is not something instrumental music usually does to me. Fortunately not very much, since there were so many people I was wearing a mask even though we were outside.

I stopped to talk to the musicians this time, and told the viola player how much I loved the moments when the viola took the lead to dance them all into the next phrase and asked the double bass player about the silver extension on his instrument—it is actually a string extender to make the lowest string EVEN LOWER and there are keys on it to let him finger the lower notes, like the keys on a flute; how cool is THAT! He can go all the way down to an octave below the C on the cello I think.

I’m not quite sure if they had trouble getting the timing to work or if I’d shot their plans in the foot by staying to talk but I got to the Greenhouse quartet kind of in the middle of their performance so I crept in the back and just stood rather than messing about with the chair. It was fun, but I was further away and I missed the start and it didn’t grab me the way the first two had. I am still glad I heard it though.

The evening finished up with the entire orchestra playing in the biggest building on the site, which had a big glass wall and multiple glass doors opening onto a stone courtyard on that side, and then a low stone wall (natch) and a grassy lawn stretching back. Every door was flung wide, and the whole thing miked so that you could sit outside and listen. By then it was pretty dark, but I found a place next to the sound person where I could set up my chair. The sound person was using an iPad to run the big soundboard that was off to the side, and every now and then I could glance over and see what he was doing, but the orchestra had most of my attention.

My violin teacher is the lead second violin in the KSO. He wasn’t in any of the quartets because he’d had a quartet performance earlier in the week and thus had that part of the evening off, but was going to be part of the 8pm performance of the full orchestra. However, from where I was sitting he was hidden by the post between a couple of the glass doors. I spent a certain amount of time craning my neck trying to figure out where he was, before the orchestra started swaying enough to reveal him. The full orchestra had woodwinds and reeds and drums and I think brass, but the strings were still playing a very large role in the music. They played several pieces, and finished with Eine Kleine Nachtmusiek which, as promised, was something I’d heard so many times I could have hummed along with the first part.

It was a wonderful evening. The KSO is worth hearing, even without the park, and the Knoxville Botanical Garden and Arboretum is worth visiting even without the music, and the combination is magical. I will definitely be checking the KSO’s schedule for future performances!

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Organization and its Fruits.

2022-09-14T02:08:30Z

So we had the League of Women Voters fall potluck picnic this evening and I reaped the fruits of being vastly more organized this year, and everything went off without a hitch. This bullet journal stuff is working well for me so far. I got the League Booklet wrangled, finished and in to the printers in good time to pick it up yesterday afternoon and had a list printed out (and on a clipboard! With a pen!) so that I could keep track of who got theirs. This year I am damned well going to get everyone a booklet if I have to mail half of them! And knowing who already has one is half the battle.

Past Cat made a lot of gifts of time and thought to present Cat so that this could all work smoothly and I am grateful to her; thank you past Cat!

In the meantime I got saddled with the Bean Supper for the Democrats so my new organizational skills are definitely being put to the test.

In other news I have been entering music for Chamber Filk, the chamber orchestra for the Ohio Valley Filk Festival. Before you get any grandiose ideas, this is simply a place for anyone who played an orchestral or band instrument in High School or anywhere else to show up and do filk music, since we don't always fit in with the guitars and vocalists. I started participating last year since I play the violin now, if not very well (but better this year than last by jing!) and pestered the organizer for the sheet music early so I could practice it and hopefully be less than completely terrible. Then his computer died and he was doing all the sheet music transpositions by hand and I said "oh I have Finale; give it here; I can have it all entered in an afternoon and then the transpositions will be literally three mouse clicks." So he did, and I offered to do the same this year so I am, and this means I have a voice in picking the tunes, so we're doing one of mine (Wild Rose), as well as Ship of Stone and 2 folk tunes, Banks of Sicily and Morning Has Broken.

Call it the Finale Tax.

And it occurred to me this evening that one of the instrumentals (Marsh Haven Morning) I wrote for a podcast a couple of years ago is a very classical-sounding piece and is not that much harder than the Sitt Etude I have been working on so I took it out this evening and I can more or less play it, and I think this is totally do-able. And I got out Finding The Apothecary and I'm doing much better on that in spite of not having practiced it for ages, and I think I'm definitely better on the violin. I might not be the worst musician at Chamberfilk this year! Or if I am that's okay because it means we all got better!

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Omicron Booster Report

2022-09-12T12:06:53Z

I got the omicron booster (which honestly sounds pretty badass, like I should now be able to reach low earth orbit in a single stage or something) six days ago, and I would just like to note that this time I felt fine. Just had a sore arm. The other boosters all made me feel like a one-day-flu but this one did not. 10/10 would boost again, would recommend to a friend.

In fact, I am recommending it to you!

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Violin musings

2022-09-06T01:37:04Z

So my teacher wants me to do another Sitt Etude and it has been long enough since the last one that I was willing to give it a go. This one is #5 which is a big improvement over #1. Sitt only wanders off into two wrong keys instead of three this time, so progress on that front, and also all the bowings are the same length which I personally deeply appreciate when I’m trying to get all those pitches right. This should probably have been Etude 1 frankly, but here we are and I’m enjoying it while I can.

The point of this Etude is apparently leaving fingers down. Eventually the point will apparently be slurring all different ways, but right now we are not slurring at all because the point is left hand efficiency and framing which means leaving fingers down, both because you 1 don’t need that finger elsewhere and 2 don’t need any notes on that string that are lower than that finger for a while.

This lets you find the correct pitch once and re-use it, which is efficient, and also move your hand less which is efficient, and also have that finger as sort of an anchor point while you find other notes with other fingers, which improves pitch accuracy which is job 1 on the violin so very much a win-win-win situation.

The down side is you kind of need to know what comes next for the next couple of measures to know what fingers you can leave down so it’s for pieces of music you have time to learn very well. Or maybe for people who just read music that well that they can be reading two measures ahead while playing the correct measure and if you can do this, my hat is off to you.

Also he wants bridge notes for some of the anchor notes, which those readers who have been following along at home will know is when you use the pad of one finger to hold down two strings and get both in tune, which I’m better at than I used to be but this is still pretty challenging. (Note that Sitt does use plenty of pinky notes here, including ones which he DOES NOT MARK drat him you’re just supposed to know to use the pinky note when you hatch from your egg I guess. Sitt is improving but has a ways to go yet.). If you can manage this bridge note as anchor note, however, you get 2 found notes for the price of 1, which is also efficient.

Even on the first play-through I could tell I’d improved hugely from when I started lessons, which makes me feel both very happy and accomplished and much more generous toward Sitt. I pretty much learned the entire thing the first week, even if it took me till Sunday to notice I was playing a wrong note in the first figure, and I’m rather proud of that. Now I’m going back over it a few measures at a time to write out (on a photo of the music) which fingers I can leave down, and there’s a rather astonishing number of places that is possible.

The other thing I am working on is hemiolas which are hopeless. I mean I’ll keep trying but. Surely we didn’t need to wait until the A scale to concentrate on this. Also why is my Etude always in a different key from my scale?

But it’s more fun, and much more interesting, when you can actually do it, more or less.

Also in other news I finally got around to scrubbing the mailbox and vacuuming the fans and it was all because I was sitting around going “it’s Labor Day, it’s going to rain all day so I don’t want to go hiking or anything; I don’t want to go shopping because I don’t want to be the reason people have to work on Labor Day; what can I do” and I looked at my bullet journal and thought; those things are easy and not intimidating.

I also discovered that those shelves that are held up by pins sticking out of holes in the sides of cabinets to be all adjustable and stuff—it turns out those pins come in standard sizes and you can order more, which means my CD cabinet will be getting its last 2 shelves in as soon as I order the pins tomorrow and they arrive in a few days. More room to store CDs will be very helpful.

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Catching up

2022-08-31T20:12:18Z

The Last FKO (which, it turns out, may not be the last; there is a new con chair and some new concom members) worked out fairly well. I did a lot of the pre-trip organization, and we ended up driving up with four in my Forester, Alice and Lauren as usual and Gabrielle because she was looking for a ride. It required some world-class Tetrising but I was up to the job, and the Forester is very nice to travel in. The con itself was much fun, and the way the hotel was arranged meant I could always eat outside or in our room so I could keep my mask on pretty much everywhere else.

I have two major projects coming due. I am putting together the booklet for the local League of Women Voters and I am recording a mandolin and an octave mandolin track for a song on Lauren’s album.

Fortunately the bullet journal app I have been using has meant that I have stayed on top of getting things from people to put in the booklet, and it went out for proofreading yesterday and all I have to do is enter the suggested alterations, have my husband proofread it again and enter his suggested alterations, and I have the rest of the week to do that. Early next week I take it to the printers to have 25 or 30 copies made.

I ran the rough draft of the mando and octave mando lines past Lauren and she generally liked it but wants one change so I need to try re-recording the octave mando line strumming with my thumb instead of a pick. But there’s no point sending in the final files until early next week, so I also have a little breathing room on that.

In other news I have entered almost all the Chamberfilk tunes into Finale. One of the benefits of being the one to enter them is that nobody complains when I pick them also, so we’ll be doing one of my tunes (Wild Rose, which I think is reasonably simple but also melodic), as well as Banks of Sicily, Ship of Stone, and Morning Has Broken. I have entered all the melodies; I just need to enter the chords now. I am wondering if it would be nice to have, like, harmonies and stuff, but I have no idea who will show up to play or how capable of players they will be.

I have a guitar-lute which I am going to give to a friend, but I think it needs a little work to be in tip-top shape for her so I’m going to look into having that done. Local luthiers seem to be fairly busy and not as interested in the job as I would have expected but I have a place I can take it to so they can look it over, so I guess that is the next step.

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Practicing Violin

2022-08-08T02:45:13Z

I put off practicing till really late today because first I was prepping to run a game and then I was running a game and then I was doing the dishes and then I was practicing the mandolin and working on memorizing my concert set for FKO… and now it is nearly 11 pm and I am terrible on the violin and how can I possibly be this terrible which means it is time to stop practicing violin and go to sleep.

But I remember only yesterday I was feeling very pleased with the progress I was making so probably this feeling that I am terrible is not reliable.

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catsittingstill @ 2022-08-02T16:56:00

2022-08-02T21:02:30Z

I have spent way too much of the day poking the internet, and specifically getting involved in twitter and FB fights.

Republicans are being awful to one of my friends who is running for County Commission and it makes me mad. Neo-Nazis are orchestrating a pile-on on one of the folks I followed on Twitter and that makes me mad.

I am beginning to wonder if social media was, on balance, a colossal mistake, both for society at large and for me personally. But is it possible to undo or even meaningfully resist the harm social media does by coordinating and extreme-izing Republicans without using social media myself?

If it weren’t for social media I’d never have learned about trans people. I’d never have heard of the Women’s March, and the Women’s March probably wouldn’t have happened. I likely would not have assisted in GOTV efforts in nearby cities and states. I’d have very little contact with fellow filkers.

I dunno

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Covid Kicks Everything Into Confusion.

2022-08-01T22:17:24Z

My cousin Alies said to me a few weeks ago “Covid schopt alles in de waar.” This is Dutch, and while it probably translates better as “Covid messes everything up” I like the literalness of “Covid kicks everything into confusion.”

First Kip and I caught Covid while preparing for Dad and Jake to come visit, getting well (or rather, testing negative) just barely in time for the visit itself to go somewhat haltingly forward, then just as we were looking toward FKO (me) and the upcoming scholastic year (Kip) Kip’s sister caught Covid. The kicker here is that Kip’s mother is elderly, widowed, and too frail to be on her own full time, but capable enough to live in her own apartment. Kip’s sister and her husband have been handling things like driving her to her medical appointments (of which she has a lot right now because reasons) and helping her in and out of the bathtub every day or two for her bath.

So Kip and I put our lives on hold as quickly as we could manage and drove out to be caregivers for a week, just in time for Kip’s sister’s husband to (predictably) catch Covid too. We have done the caregiving stint before to give Keely and Randy a break in summer, and it’s a good chance for Kip to see his mom, and she’s a pleasant person and I don’t mind a week’s change of responsibility and scenery but it was still pretty weird.

While we were there we went to see the Philbrook museum, twice, because there is just so much to see there you can’t take it all in in one day. I love the gardens intensely. We also went to see Marcel the Shell with Shoes on, because I’d adored the trailer and I heard it was out. I liked it very much.

But it was very difficult to practice since we were in a hotel room and I was very self conscious about how loud a violin is. And I have now had One Violin Lesson in a whole month and that’s not what I would have preferred.

We are now back home and trying to get back into normal life.

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Weird ghost journals

2022-07-18T13:38:05Z

I keep getting notices from Dreamwidth that someone has subscribed to my account, and going to their journal and finding nothing. No entries at all. Just a picture of a pretty woman. Once or twice might be actual people who just want to read and comment, but this has happened like six or eight times. People who just want to read and comment wouldn't all be pretty young women.

I assume these are some kind of scam? Does anyone know more about what is going on?

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Attempting to return to normal

2022-07-17T19:11:31Z

Well, Dad and Jake went home on Friday. It was a good visit and we all had more fun than I expected given the whole being still tired from Covid thing.

Now I’m trying to get back into my routine. I’m not really up to speed yet but I’m doing better, I think. I have been using a journal to try to keep track of projects I want to do around the house and upcoming trips and commitments for my various volunteer hats and such, and I think it was quite helpful in the weeks before I caught Covid so I’m getting back to that. The journal is also helpful for writing down various things I want to do next time Dad and Jake come so I can get reservations for the bus tour of Oak Ridge or Steam Train tickets before they are all sold out. I also want to check out some semi-local attractions to see if Dad might like them. One of the minor disappointments of our visit was the Asheville Museum of Science which claimed to have a model of the French Broad (that’s a river) water table, that turned out to be a very generic model that could have been any river, suitable for small children to play with rubber duckies in. We drove an hour and a half to get there. Now there was the Coburn Hall of Minerals, which was fairly cool, so it wasn’t a dead loss, but I would prefer to avoid future surprises of that sort. So I guess I’m going to do the advance scout thing, which will probably be fun and interesting, and lower pressure when it’s just me, or just me and Kip.

The journal also contains numerous minor (and major) house chores and repairs I want to do over the next year. There are things about this house that we’ve been living with for years (the shelf with screws sticking up through it, for example) that would be fairly easy to fix, and when I run across one I open my journal and write it down. So far I have a full page of them. The bigger projects—e.g. installing ceiling fans in the rooms that don’t have them—will have to wait a month or two, but some of them are simple things like “scrub mailbox” or “vacuum fans” that could happen now.

Speaking of which, I got leaf guards to install on my patio roof; they actually arrived a few days before I caught Covid, but I hadn’t gotten around to installing them. It looks like that will be fairly straightforward thing that I can do by myself, except that I will need the right size and thread and type etc of screw to do that, so I’m in the process of gathering that information. I only need 40 screws but I need them to be the right kind.

Kip’s car needed new tires and I got two last month and am getting two this week.

My old swim suit was too small, so I ordered a new one yesterday, since Lands End emailed me about this big swimsuit sale they were having. It’s a combination of a tankini top and a pair of swim shorts so it looks like it will be pretty comfortable and it also has pockets. I had to take my purse when we went swimming at Cherokee dam last week, because otherwise I had nothing to put my car keys in. Now obviously I won’t go into the water with my car keys, because I have one of those transponder fobs now and I’m pretty sure they aren’t waterproof. But I can put the car keys on my towel while I’m swimming as long as I don’t have to carry them in my hands all the time I’m out of the water.

Tomorrow will be a less packed Monday than usual, since the morning music get together is cancelled, but that is probably all to the good, since I am still trying to build up my endurance.

Kip and I are planning to eat less meat in the upcoming month, and also to eat more meals like beans and carrot burgers and omelettes, because we naturally kind of toss dietary restraint out the window while we have company over. I have plotted out dinner menus for the next couple of weeks that I think will work. I do have a waffle maker now so probably at least one of those meals will be waffles.

We are catching up on laundry—mostly washing those clothes that Dad and Jake leave here between visits, so they can take smaller carry-ons.

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Swimming

2022-07-14T22:31:02Z

Yesterday was a gaming day, and we had adventures clearing out a haunted city that my dragon-kobold character wants to take for their stronghold. Quite a bit of fishing-for-ghosts and a very dramatic battle with a very powerful giant maggot undead thing that was pretty scary. Also I discovered where my landlord funds were coming from; the city vault turned out to contain nothing but record books—records of investments made by the city that were payable to its ruler, records of debts people owed “the bearer of this note” and records of contracts various other cities had made with the city before it was overrun by ghosts that included failure-to-deliver clauses that meant the city was owed quite a bit of money. Jake’s character suggested my character had better hire bodyguards before trying to collect those, however.

All in all a very fun game.

Today we were going to take things easy in the morning. To get some exercise, Jake and Kip and I walked down to Bird Springs which is about 5 blocks from my house, and then took the long way back to the house; I used to walk 19 minute miles but since Covid it is more like 22 minute miles. On the other hand, back on the 5th of July I wouldn’t have been willing to try this walk at all so it is progress.

This afternoon we went for a planned swim with Dad at the Cherokee Dam swimming area. We all had swim suits and swimming shoes (you don’t go into Cherokee lake barefoot unless you are much braver than I am) though my swim suit was noticeably tighter than it used to be before Covid. One of these days I will buy a new one I think. We had to send Kip to the store for sunscreen, because while I know I have a new bottle somewhere, I could not find it in a a reasonable amount of time. This meant we arrived at the park with no sunscreen but there was a handy unoccupied picnic table where we could sit in the shade and watch the parking lot for Kip’s arrival. The picnic table was one of those horrible ones made out of mesh, but everybody had a towel for when we were coming back wet in the car, so we could sit on those and be comfortable.

When Kip showed up we sunscreened up and ambled down to the water. I had to put the car keys somewhere, so I had brought my purse, but we ended up taking turns in the water with someone always by our towels and (drinking) water, and my purse.

The swimming area had looked quite small when we inspected it the last time we walked at the dam; it seemed much larger today—perhaps because swimming is so slow compared to walking, or perhaps they had moved the boom out, so that it really comprised more of the lake. Jake and I swam out to the boom and hung off it for a bit—my shoulders were reminding me that we had not done anything like this for literally two or three years, but the up side to my swim suit being tight was that I had no particular tendency to sink, so I didn’t have to swim hard. The water was kind of murky, warm on top and cool underneath, with the two mixing in trails where we had swum a while.

Dad seemed to have fun; it was a bit hard to communicate with him since he had to take his hearing aid out to swim, and he left it in the car, but it wasn’t as hard to get him to understand as I’d feared it might be. Kip and Jake and I all swam for a bit—Jake and I did 2 sessions, with a while sitting in the shade watching stuff in between—and after about 40 minutes we decided we’d done enough and went home. People were grilling in the park and Kip decided he had a hankering to grill stuff for dinner, so we’re doing that.

We did fairly small birthday presents this year, since Jake and Dad had to shell out for plane tickets, but I got several Kindle books I wanted from Jake and Dad gave me a wok I’d asked for. Kip got lots and lots of D&D minis (and gave me some minis of characters in wheelchairs which I’d wanted—one of my NPCs in the Strixhaven game is a wheelchair jockey.). Dad got books, four of which we had to ship to his house in a box, since he is really only comfortable with paper. Jake got Kindle books from me and Kip. Jake has a slight preference for paper, but when he is traveling by plane it is so much easier to have books that weigh nothing and take no space that he went for that option.

Tomorrow afternoon Jake and Dad head home on a commercial flight. I’m glad we could have this visit, and that Covid did not spoil it. It is always good to spend time with them.

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Norris Dam State Park

2022-07-11T21:46:55Z

I am getting gradually stronger after Covid. Dad didn’t feel like walking this morning so Jake and Kip and I went to Panther Creek and did the Old Wagon road, and also Panther Path (a short trail to the visitor center) and a bit of another side path, —Deer Run? I forget—and walked faster than we would have with Dad, so that was upping my exercise a bit. We went past Ingles on the way back since we were so close, and got all kinds of goodies, including an Ice Cream Cake because see below, and then stopped by WalMart to top up Jake’s supply of Diet Mountain Dew (I swear he drinks about 2 liters a day) and grab some ice cream cones; I’m going to have one for dessert. My violin lesson was cancelled on a few hours notice today (not a problem, considering that, between Covid and family visit, I haven’t been practicing properly anyway) so Jake and Dad and I went to Norris Dam State Park in the afternoon.

We drove over the dam and looked at it from the downstream side, and went to the threshing barn and grist mill that are nearby (which were unfortunately closed Monday through Wednesday but I supposed park rangers have to wash their socks and do their shopping sometime) and saw the weir downstream of the dam and heard the sirens go off for the opening of another sluice gate, though the water was already high enough that it didn’t rise much. It’s a very pretty drive to and from, and we got home at 5:20pm, in good time to pick where we were going to get dinner from.

We’re getting takeout because today is the day we have chosen to honor Summer Birthdays day this year, and then we will give each other our birthday presents, and have Ice Cream Cake made with chocolate ice cream.

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Covid update

2022-07-06T13:21:56Z

Kip and I tested negative a third time yesterday morning so we decided to proceed with Dad and Jake’s visit as normal—or as normal as possible given that I am still feeling pretty flattened.

However I am still feeling pretty flattened, and have a bit of a cough and a bit of a stuffy nose, so I tested AGAIN this morning. (Many thanks to the Biden administration for all the free Covid tests they sent our household simply for the asking—it is looking like we may go through them all before I feel confident this is over.) Still negative. I feel better about having Dad, who is in pretty good health for someone who is in his eighties but is still vulnerable, simply because he is in his eighties, in my airspace knowing I am not contagious for Covid.

I alternate between feeling well enough to load the dishwasher, if slowly, and feeling so tired that I think twice about prying myself out of my chair to walk into the kitchen for a glass of water. Fortunately Kip is both healthy and willing to be at my beck and call, so I’m as comfortable as can be expected. I wish I had more energy to find and do fun things with Dad and Jake though. Kip kept Jake entertained yesterday by showing him how to play Stellaris, so there’s that, and I probably have the energy to play at least brief games of D&D. My voice tires easily, not having really recovered from all the coughing, and it’s hard for me to speak loudly enough so that Dad, who is quite deaf even with his hearing aid, can hear me.

Covid sucks. Even when it’s not life threatening, it really sucks. I am glad I have only gotten it once, and intend to keep trying to get it as few times as possible. And I’m damned glad I took standard precautions that nearly everybody is discarding now, like wearing a KF94 mask when I was around people I didn’t live with. At least I can feel like I did my best not to pass this shit on.

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2nd negative test, so far so good

2022-07-04T19:54:25Z

Kip and I both tested negative again this morning.

We have aired out the house with open windows and fans for 3 hours. Since it is 90 outside, that was a bit of an ordeal. Now we have closed it up and restarted the AC Kip masked up and took some books to McKays, thus clearing them out of the house. I minded the house, changed the air filter, did a few dishes, folded some laundry, and took delivery of the instrument table, which I will show you when it’s all put together. It is very cool and does all I hoped for and more. Looking forward to getting the top snugged on and loading it up.

I still tire very easily. Five minutes’ walk on level ground seemed like enough of a workout to try this morning. I keep sitting down to rest between house chores.

Dad and Jake head out today, and will spend tonight in a local hotel. Kip and I will test again tomorrow and talk over with Dad and Jake how we want to handle getting together/unmasking.

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Covid news

2022-07-03T18:07:10Z

I am getting gradually better, I think. Kip is feeling basically normal, and mowed the lawn yesterday with no problems. It is always like this; Kip picks something up at work, brings it back to me, is better in a few days and I drag around sick forever it is not fair.

Dad reminded me that only a very tiny dose of opiates will suppress coughing, and I have some pills left over from an old prescription, so I cut one in quarters and took one quarter, and sure enough that didn’t stop the coughing entirely but it stopped it enough that I could sleep for 4 hours, take another quarter and sleep another 4 hours which was so welcome I can’t tell you.

Last night I took one quarter and slept for 8 hours. I needed that so much.

At this point the covid is 1/3 cough and 2/3 exhaustion. I’m physically tired all the time. I am very carefully not pushing through it because what I’ve heard on the grapevine is that trying to push through it is a good way to take much longer to recover. This is annoying, because my dad and my brother were coming to visit on the 4th of July, and even once we test negative and are safe to be around* the house is definitely not going to be as clean as usual, and I don’t know that I will be up for much of anything in the way of trips.

* Guidance is scanty on on “safe to have a vulnerable person in your air space”, but as a first step, Kip and I are trying to meet “safe to go out again while masked” which is 2 negative tests in a row, and Kip was negative day before yesterday, positive yesterday and negative again today, whereas I had my first negative test this morning. I think I’m going to suggest Dad and Jake stay at a hotel for at least the first couple of nights, while Kip and I continue to test. We could in theory wear masks in the house, and only eat on the back porch, but wearing a mask while sleeping is heavy going.

I’m a bit worried about persuading Dad to take this seriously. He is in his eighties, and fairly deaf and was always headstrong, and while he is fully vaxxed and boosted, his 2nd booster isn’t due till the end of July, and I think he is leaning too hard on the assumption that as long as he doesn’t wind up in the hospital it is fine but I’m here to say it’s not fine; having Covid sucks.

But at least the era of Covid means the local Walmart has a way to order food online and then come in and pick it up at the curb, which has been a huge help.

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