Public Library Used Book Sale

For a year (or more) now, Andrew and I have been saying that we can’t buy any more books. He has three large bookshelves full, each 6 feet tall, and totaling at least ten feet across. Though most of the books on his shelves have already been read. I have three and a half smaller bookshelves full, but most of mine have not been read. (I read much, much more slowly than he does.)

But, who can resist a used book sale at the local public library? Not only that, but we went the first night…within the first 20 minutes of the sale. We certainly couldn’t have waited until Saturday when the stock would have been picked over. No sir-ie-bob.

I walked out with a dozen books, including a American Museum of Natural History book on “man’s” exploration of the Universe from the 1960s. Also a smattering of sci-fi and a couple plain fiction books. Oh, and I got John Gribbin’s In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat — it might be a bit dated (1984), but I like Gribbin’s style, and maybe, just maybe I’ll start to understand quantum physics…. (after two undergrad and a graduate class in quantum physics, I realize that this is unlikely…)

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

by Ann Brashares

What can I say? I’m a sucker for stories about girl friends. They remind me of the wonderful friendships I have formed over the years, and long to have my “girls” closer.

Carmen, Tibby, Bridget, and Lena have been friends practically since before they were born. Their mothers had met in an exercise class for pregnant women — they were the Septembers, those due in September. While the Septembers grew apart through the years, the girls have not. Now, for the first time in their 15 years, the girls will be spending the summer apart — Carmen will be with her Dad out of state, Lena will be in Greece with her grandparents, Bridget will be in Mexico at soccer camp, and Tibby will be staying home, working at a discount department store.

Shortly before their good-byes, the girls discover that a pair of jeans Carmen bought on a whim at a thrift shop (without even trying them on) are magic. Not only do the pants fit all of the girls with their different figures, but the pants make them all look great.

The girls make a pact to share the pants over the summer — they will spend 1-2 weeks with each girl and then be sent on. At the end of the summer they will get together and record their experiences in the pants.

This book is sort of a Ya-Ya Sisterhood for a younger crowd. It’s touching and funny. I’m looking forward to reading the second book, The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (though I will wait for paperback).

Lesson 4/23/03

Pretty good lesson tonight. I asked Fred about the difference in playing staccato, legato and accented notes. While I probably don’t need to worry about this much, since I’m really only playing for myself, the book I started two weeks ago has the notation defined on the first lesson. Staccato is basically what I thought — there’s a distinct pause heard between notes (though when Fred played staccato, I could still hear air coming through). When playing legato, the goal is to tongue between notes without actually making it sound like you’re tonguing. And accented notes have a definite “boom” at the beginning of the played note.

We talked more about breathing, too. I think my problem seems to be that I just don’t take enough time when I breathe. I know that it needs to be done fairly quickly so as not to interfere with the rhythm of the piece. But that means that I just don’t get a good breath. And maybe down the road I can get the same amount of breath in a shorter amount of time, but for now I just need to concentrate on getting enough air. (Yes, I know about breathing from the diaphragm from theater classes and choir, I’m just not good at it anymore.)

I played The Emperor’s Waltz Theme, that I’ve been working on, and did just fine with the breathing (though Fred kind of breathed with me, to give me a clue how to get it right). I didn’t end up playing Morning Has Broken, but that’s just as well. It’s a fairly easy song, but I need to work on getting my low C to come out consistently.

Jump Start

At the end of a long, productive day, the first thing I wanted to do was get on the road home. So, I hopped in my car (his name is Arthur Dent), stuck my key in the ignition, and <dramatic pause> nothing. The ‘check engine’ light didn’t even come on. That can mean only one thing. Yup. I left my lights on all day. 8.5 hours. That does bad things to a car’s battery.

I wish I had one of those cars that beeped at me when I left my lights on. I do this at least once a year, and sometimes much more frequently. The main problem is that I leave the house at 6:40 AM, when it’s still dark enough to require my lights. However, by the time I get to work at 7:20 AM, the sun is pretty high, and I don’t notice that I have my lights on. Couple that with no “hey dumbass, your lights are all” alert from my car, and I’m just asking for trouble.

Fortunately, jumper cables aren’t a problem. I grew up in Minnesota, and any respectable (and not-respectable) car has a set of jumper cables. Of course, I didn’t have them to combat the frigid cold. No, I had them because even then I had a tendency to leave my lights on.

The worst part about a jump, though, is finding someone who will let you use their car battery. I was at work, so I just went back in and asked JD. Though this has the consequence that a work-friend knows what a idiot I am. On the other hand, it still beats hanging out in a parking lot asking complete strangers if you can jump off of them.

I try to pay back jump-start-karma whenever I can; though, I’ve really only had the opportunity twice. Once it was after Andrew and I had flown into BWI after a trip to visit my family in Minnesota. It was late, 10 PM or so, and we were in the ultra-economy lot. We were also the only other people in the lot, besides the poor smuck who needed the jump. Also, it was a good thing I had cables, cuz he didn’t. The other time was while I was driving home through New Mexico on my way back from Minnesota (I lived in NM at the time). I stopped to get gas just inside the state line, and a trucker needed cables to try to get his refrigeration system started. Unfortunately, the problem was more than a good pair of jumper cables could handle.

(Are you thinking to replace the existing car which troubles you often? wowloans are ready to chat with you here).

New Camera (Whoo-Hoo!)

Since I’ve started putting more and more pictures on my web pages, it seemed silly to continue scanning all of them by hand, especially since I can still get nice 4×6 inch prints of digital pictures through iPhoto or Shutterfly. So, when I saw that my federal tax return had appeared in my checking account, I decided to go get one. We tried this weekend, but after much frustration at the local Microcenter, I ended up at home, ordering through MacMall .

It arrived today! I love FedEx package tracking, cuz I knew it was going to arrive today. At 6:30 AM it arrived at the Dulles airport, and by 7:40 AM it was on a truck that I knew would be stopping by my house before close of business.

Anyway, here’s my first pictures:

A not-too-great zoom-in of Ares.

A much better picture of Artemis (with Ares in the background)

And Duncan cleaning himself. Awww.

Yard Work

I want to make our back and front “yards” look more like yards, so we went to Home Depot yesterday to get some top soil and grass seed/fertilizer/mulch mix. Currently the back yard is dirt. There were wood chips at some point, but they’re pretty sad looking. There are also wood dividers, giving five different sections — one “big” one that’s about 9.5’x7.5′, another that’s 9.5’x5′, and the other three are each about 3.5’x5′. The back yard has a very slight decline, which I assume is why the wood dividers were added. I was hoping to get rid of them, since the grass would serve to keep the dirt from sliding downhill. After digging for a while, I was only able to get rid of one divider, combining two of the 3.5’x5′ sections. Well, at least that was something.

I broke up the existing dirt, spread out the new top soil and put down seed on the new 7’x5′ section and the 3.5’x5′ section. I ran out of seed/mulch after that. I’m hoping to finish the rest of the back yard later this week. We wanted to start back there, so that if it’s a dismal failure, at least its not as public as the front yard. If grass starts taking root in the back yard in the next month or so, I’ll probably start in the front yard.

Bad Night with Allergies

I woke up at 2 AM in a bad coughing fit. I tried for half an hour to get back to sleep, but I kept coughing — the deep throat coughing that makes it sound like you’re losing a lung. The worst part was that the coughing was part of a dream as well. I was trying to deliver something, and every time I started coughing, I had to start over. So at about 2:30 AM, I got up and watched The Princess Diaries. It was a cheesy, but fun distraction.

Finally I went back to bed, and was able to sleep until about 9 AM. I’ve been in a tired and headachy daze all day.

Oh, I tried to get a digital camera today, since my federal tax return showed up in my bank account. First I went to the Mac store at Tyson’s Corner Mall, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted any of the ones they had there. So then, later, Andrew and I went to Microcenter. I found the camera I think I want, a Nikon Coolpix 3100, but after searching the store for half an hour and finally finding someone to help us, they said it was out of stock. I guess I’ll get it online, then. At least I was able to see it at their display, so I know what I’m buying.

Princess Diaries

3/5 stars

I picked this one just for a fun little distraction. And that’s exactly what I got.

Spellbound

3/5 stars

Another of Hitchcock’s movies. Andrew and I are going through them all (unless we get bored). The last couple that we’ve watched, Notorious and Saboteur, were kind of dull. I enjoyed this one more than Andrew did. I think it was partly because of Ingrid Bergman’s character. She is a psychiatrist helping a man suffering from amnesia and a guilt complex who posed as the new head of the institution (played by Gregory Peck). In some ways her character is a fairly strong female role model, especially for the time the movie was made. However, her lapse into puppy-dog-in-love woman got a bit annoying (and unbelievable).

Also, the closing scene was very familiar. I can’t think of where I’d seen it before, since I’ve never seen this film before. It’s the scene where a man’s hand holding a gun are seen in the foreground as the gun follows Ingrid Bergman’s character out of the gun-holder’s office. Then the hand turns the gun around so that it is facing the camera, and pulls the trigger. A flash of red, and the screen goes blank. This is going to bug me.

Migraine

My saxophone teacher had left a message asking if I could come in for my lesson at 7:30 PM (instead of my regular 8:30 PM). I called at about 6 PM and left a message that I would be there. No more than 20 minutes later, I started getting signs of a migraine, so Andrew called back and cancelled my lesson.

As if it isn’t enough that I’ve had a headache for the past four and a half months. (Not a headache every day for the past several months, but the same headache. I wake up with it. I fall asleep with it. Yes, I’ve been seeing a doctor. Yes, we think we know what it is. No, we haven’t quite gotten rid of it, but it is far more manageable that it was for much of February and March.) I suppose I was due — I haven’t had a migraine since September. I just hope that this isn’t the beginning of two or three in a row (which happens about half the time).

I feel somewhat fortunate that my migraines come with an aura. Before I get the full-blown headache, my vision fuzzes out in patches for 20 minutes to an hour. I know that once my vision starts to return, I’m going to be one hurting woman. Unless I do something during the aura. That’s why I feel fortunate — I have some time during which I can usually prevent the full-blown, let-me-die-now-or-at-least-chop-off-my-head, headache.

If I pop some ibuprofen or Excedrin and get into a dark room (or cover my eyes with something) and stay still until the fuzziness stops, I usually only have a splitting headache (a great improvement from the holy-crap-what-horrible-thing-did-I-do-in-my-past-life-to-deserve-this headache).

Of course, for the rest of the day, I feel a bit out of it. My aunt and I call this “the stupids”. It’s a little like watching your life from a dream for the rest of the day. I also get a bit dizzy, and I have a hard time doing anything that requires any brainpower (thus, I usually spend the day in front of the TV).