Some news updates:

I finally finished furnishing one room. It’s not the living room (from which I still haven’t started emptying furniture, alas) but rather my office/library/music-room/spare-room. It was the room that wasn’t unpacked for months after I moved in, and it’s now all nice and pretty. It still needs a rug. But it did provide evidence that I’m capable of getting rid of furniture and buying new stuff, so that’s a good start.

This is the neatest it will ever be, of course. The Mac, which I really only use for photoshop and audio, is on a little cart on wheels, which I can drag over to my big desk when necessary; if I have guests that need to get online, they can use it where it is. Behind it is a big white closet door; behind that is my machine room.

You will observe that I am nearly out of bookshelf space already. I’m not sure where the next shelf is going to go.

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Next news:

I bought a harmonica! (Harmonica geeks: a Hohner Pro Harp MS in C. Supposedly a decent harp. I liked it because it had a plastic body and was black instead of silver.) I’m not sure what got me thinking about harmonicas the other day, but I figured they were cheap enough to pick one up and see if I like it, so I did.

I’m still getting used to it, but I can play single-note melodies pretty consistently now, so it’s coming along. Does it ever feel weird, after playing flute for so long, to breathe *in* to get a note — and as it turns out most blues playing is done in “second position” (i.e. dominant key, i.e. sucking most of the time). Much adapting to go.

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Last news:

My $relative Lindsay and her friend are coming down to visit on the first weekend of Winterlude. Lindsay rocks, so I’m looking forward to spending some time with her outside the context of a “family” gathering at which I hardly know anyone, but I’ve been scratching my head trying to figure out how to entertain a couple of 18-year-olds for a weekend. This makes me feel old.

$relative = Family->parse(“My stepmother’s stepfather’s daughter from his first marriage”); # if only I knew Prolog!