Carleen and Mike

I was thinking about making a seperate blog so I could keep my violin progress seperate, but this is as good a place as any to keep this. I’m absolutely loving learning the violin. It’s forced me to finally learn to read music, which has been a great part of the journey, and I’m surprisingly doing quite well with that part of it. As far as my technique goes, I have a long way to go, obviously, but even though the progress is slow, I can see it and it’s going at the pace i expected. I’ll definetly need a teacher as soon as possible, before i let my bad habits set in. I’m trying to correct them, but I know there are some problems I don’t even know about.

So far I’ve learned 2 songs (sort of) “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “House of the Rising Sun” Plus I have three scales down, the C, D and G scales. I should know more by now, perhaps, but I’m taking it very slowly and letting each one sink in before I go on to the next.

I have taken our link to Poetry.com off our blog. Our friend, Jennifer has discovered that the whole thing is a scam. She has submitted two of her poems and won awards for both (she soon figured there was something fishy about this). My mom submitted one of my brother’s poems years ago. He won an award too and was supposedly published in an anthology which we could have for a price, of course. Not only that but when they published his poem it had numerous mistakes in it and that was after my mom had already corrected it once. This really ticks me off. It’s so cruel. Technically, they aren’t doing anything illegal but morally it is so wrong.

Here’s some links with information on the scam. Jennifer sent me several to my work email so when I get to work today I’ll add the rest. Until then, this is the only one I can remember.

Poetry not com

I enjoy being left handed. It makes me different. All my life I’ve done my best to find all the things in me that are different from everybody else; being left handed is one of my favorite. However, it does sometimes become a pain. For example, I recently bought a violin, to get one I had to auction for it on ebay. Buying it from a dealer would have cost me an extra $30 to get it modified. Most “lefties” are told just to learn to play “righty”. Also running my machine at work is not the easiest, without going into too much detail, most of the bolts, buttons, screws and adjustments are placed in “righty” spots, meaning I either have to use my “useless” right hand, or become a contortionist to use my left hand. Some famous “lefties”:
Matt Groening (creator of the “Simpson’s” incedentaly, Homer Simpson is left handed)
Julius Caesar
Jimmy Hendrix
David Letterman
Paul McCartney
Both Raphael & Michelangelo
Tom Cruise
Robert DeNiro
Mark Hamil
Jim Henson
and Alexander the Great.

View more “lefties” here

Another thing that sets me apart from other people is how ridiculously easy my family (on my father’s side) gets poison ivy. God forbid I even get in the vicinity of the stuff. Of course it’s gotten a bit weaker as it’s gotten down to me, my grandfather almost died once because he breathed some smoke from a fire that had poison ivy in it. This is the second time within a year I’ve gotten it, luckily i’ve finally found the stuff, and now I just have to figure out a way to get rid of it. Carleen suggested she take care of it since she doesn’t seem to be allergic to it, but she’s so busy as it is. I figure if I’m careful enough i should be able to take care of it without a problem. If anyone knows any products, techniques, etc. that can get rid of poison ivy, i’d be greatly indebted.

Well I was going to post a blog about life as a left handed person as well as my experiences with what is now being called “Memento” Syndrome however I just read an email that Carleen sent me with a link to a short story on the Tulsa SPCA webpage. I’m not afraid to admit I lost it and completly bawled. Any doubt about getting Turbo has been utterly obliterated from my mind. Before you read it, get a tissue.

I’ll get to my experiences with Memento Syndrome later, until then, read Mitch’s struggles with this debilitating mental disorder.

Turbo seems to be settling in nicely. Thankfully, Chani also seems to be getting a bit more used to him. Today she started sitting on the couch while Turbo is on it too. I cuddled up with them both tonight while I read my book. It was really cozy. I think they might end up being good buddies after all. There really is something wonderful about being able to save an animal from what could have been a very short life in a shelter. Sometimes I look at him and I think he understands that too. Maybe I’m nuts thinking I can read a dogs mind, or whatever, but sometimes I see this look in his eye as if he’s trying to show how grateful he is and it just makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside. Anyway, Easter weekend has been very eventful for us. Monday is on the horizon. Time to start a new week.

Lots of new and exciting things in our lives this week. As Carleen already mentioned, we have a fish named Herman. He seems content, though his bowl is about the size of a grapefruit. I’d get bored, but apparently beta fish like small bowls. Well hey, I’m here for Herman’s happiness, so whatever he wants–he can have.

On Thursday my violin came in. Very exciting. I’m still in the process of learning music and learning where all the notes are on the fingerboard, but that’s coming along pretty well. It’s a beaut, and I have named it Fenrir. In Norse legend, Fenrir was a great and terrible wolf spawned by Loki, the thief and trickster. He caused much destruction in Asgard (the home of the Gods) and only Tyr would feed him. Thus I have named my bow Tyr. In the legend Tyr was the God who finally bound Fenrir. So if you look into it a little bit, you can see a bit of an analogy. Tyr (the bow), binds Fenrir (the violin). I don’t know, I felt pretty clever anyway.

And finally the most recent addition, Turbo, our new beagle. We were looking for a playmate for Chani and we wanted to rescue one from the SPCA, so we went there today and took a look at Turbo. He’s very gentle and friendly, quite calm. Much to our disappointment, Chani is a bit freaked by this new addition. Not to say we aren’t disappointed in either of the dogs, simply disappointed with the reaction. Turbo ignores Chani, and Chani is either in Turbo’s face or won’t go near him. We are going to give them plenty of time though. Turbo seems very happy here, and I think Chani will come around to the situation. It’s quite possible that Turbo very quickly established his dominance over Chani, since she won’t stay on the couch when he’s on it. The only really annoying thing is that we spent most of the day plucking ticks from Turbo–it looks like he’s been through a lot. But we plucked and we bathed and we gave him his Frontline, so hopefully the tick problem will be solved shortly.

In other news…. I have a pretty bad case of poison ivy. Blah! Luckily I got it pretty bad last year too, so my reaction this time hasn’t been so bad. It’s just that instead of being 4 large patches, I have dozens of small patches all over everywhere. I wish I could find the stuff in our backyard, but we have at least 4 different kinds of ivy back there and spotting which one it is is tough work.

Jennifer and her mom gave me a fish! A beta fish! I think I’ll name him Herman. I’m just going to pretend it’s a boy

I felt rather ashamed of myself yesterday. I told off some teenagers who were acting up while playing games on the computer. They were running back and forth hitting eachother on the back of the head. I know it’s not appropriate behavior and I know somebody has to do something and I’m not going to complain about how library staff members always end up babysitting because it doesn’t happen all that often, at least not over in Reference. It’s just the way I told them off. I sounded like a pitty old lady. “This is a library, you guys have to behave yourselves.” “I don’t care who started it, look at me when I talk to you” yada, yada, yada. They were truly troublesome kids. One of them I ended up having to ban because he was using someone elses card to get extra time on the computer and of course, lied about it when I asked him. But, they’re teenagers and that’s what teenagers do. I kept remembering the workshop I went to last fall with Patrick Jones, the guru of all Young Adult librarians. The way I behaved yesterday was exactly what he was trying to get us not to do. He made the point that getting teens into the library is hard enough without us telling them off they way they’re teachers and parents do all day long. I’m starting to question whether I have the right tempermant for being a Young Adult Librarian.

I’ve sort of been out of commission for the past week with persistant headache problems so I’ve been trying to limit my computer time. I’ve fallen behind on email (a shocking 54 emails when I checked yesterday, thanks to OU listserve), so if you’re waiting for a reply from me, leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can
Sunday and today were good though. I got a lot done yesterday, cleaned the house, did some gardening, went running (still only 2 miles) and took Chani on a long walk with mom and dad. It was a beautiful happy spring day.

News Flash: Bartlesville has been rated No. 7 among America’s Top 100 places to live (see Relocate-American.com). According to our local newspaper, we were apparently described as having “Great schools, beautiful architecture, thriving business and industry, peaceful, low crime rate and many, many, many, many diverse activities”. I question a lot of that comment, especially the very last part.

Finally paid off the last bit of our income taxes this week. Whew! that feels better. if it weren’t for that, I’d have had a good portion of the gardening done by now. I’ve been drawing up plans in the mean time, and I think I have some pretty good ideas, though, since I have no real formal training in landscape design, I can’t really visualize the end product very well. But oh well, I’ll learn. And I really do feel like landscaping could be a very viable future career for me, after, as carleen puts it, “raising our children”.

My newest interest is the fiddle. It’s something I’ve wanted to learn for quite a long time, but only recently have decided to pursue it. I’ve been listening to a lot of Celtic Soul lately, so that got me thinking about it. However, I’m the type of person who starts hobbies, gets into them for about two weeks and then tires of them (guitar, harmonica, D&D, sword-fighting, etc….) . I sincerly hope this isn’t one of those, but if it is, I would like my initial investment to be as low as possible. So I’m looking for some cheap/used violins. If anyone knows where I can get one, please leave a comment or let me know. An interesting fact: many people believe that the violin and fiddle are two different instruments–they’re not. The difference is in the style of playing. Violin is more strict i.e. classical, orchestra, pop, while fiddle is more loose i.e. celtic, bluegrass, and country. I’m really interesting in learning Irish jigs and whatnot.