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.