And, Suddenly . . .

Gentle Readers, one of my friends from the RenFest, Dave, a lovely person, used to have this as his email signature line: "Living with God's timing -- 'and, suddenly . . . ' and that's really how I feel right now.

24 hours ago life was good. Boring, predictable, but good. Nobody was hurt. Nobody was getting stoned. I wasn't required to spend emergency money.

That has all changed. Friend got hit by a car (but luckily, since the idiot car driver wasn't going fast, only bruises) as he was on his bicycle coming home from work, another friend is deliberately getting very drunk because she has tried her best for 2 years to help an anorexic and bulimic manic depressive teenager with cerebral palsy (yes, really) and was making no progress, now, finally, the teenager is in "professional hands", whatever that means, and my friend is getting drunk on the strength of it . . . I have no idea if this is a celebratory drunk or a trying-to-forget drunk, and I get to spend a lot of money tomorrow, but not really in a good way.

Remember my post about the hard drive and the laptop? Yeah, I get to do that tomorrow. I am letting the professionals deal with it. I only hope they don't take one look at me and try to gouge me to death.

Then I get to go to Target and spend lots of money on the meds that are keeping me alive, namely, my asthma meds and birth control. The BCP I take continuously due to the need for emotional regulation of my hormones, and the asthma meds, well . . . I like to breathe. Breathing is good, even if it is almost $100 a month in co-pays alone.

And finally, I get to spend hours at the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles, for you non Minnesotans) to get a duplicate driver's license, because as we all remember mine got snatched -- on a weekend -- 24 hours before I was billed to leave on an Amtrak for Michigan. Why am I just getting to it now? 'Cause I have been too sick to leave the house since the Great Big Sea concerts and the Shantyman's germs.

This is not how I wanted to spend the first day out of the house in almost 3 weeks. It's going to be a very long day, made longer by the fact that the people in my re-enactment group are now looking at me expectantly at every dance practice. I am not good enough yet. And yet, their expectations are insanely high. This is not Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. This is dance music from the 1600's, with wierd time signatures and odd keys and chords that switch every second, literally ('cause it's bouncy, fast paced dance music, not slow courtly pavanes), and it's just plain difficult. I have only been playing the guitar since mid August and people are starting to look at me like 'Oh, come ON, don't you know it YET?" NO, I haven't got it yet, it's only been 12 weeks, give me a break! If I'd been taking lessons we *might* have been up to Jingle Bells by now! Not fiendishly difficult dance music that I have never seen before, even if I have heard it for years. I don't even know what some of the chords are yet, much less am able to play them.

Sheesh. And dance practice is the end cap to my delightful sleep deprived, standing-in-line, fighting rush hour traffic day. Did I mention I have to go grocery shopping too? Yeah. And all of this has dropped in my lap in the last 12 hours. I can feel a headache starting above my bad eye. :(

Technology is Making Me Stupid

Yes, Gentle Readers, it's so. When it comes to technology, I am functionally illiterate. And this was illustrated to me as recently as this evening when my husband, Fish, and I tried to put the new hard drive (that I bought from Ebay, which I am still SURE is the right sort) into the new-to-me laptop.


It didn't work. I am still laptop-less. There is a picture on the top of the drive that suggests that this particular drive needs connection cables. Information recived via the 'Net says that we were trying to put it in the wrong space, as there ought to be a little metal sort of exoskeleton that the drive fits into, and that I haven't got. And didn't see.

*sigh*

Am I missing parts? Did we really try to put the hard drive somewhere where it doesn't belong? Do I really need connector cables? I don't have the answers to any of these questions.

This is why I am going to the Computer God store tomorrow (NOT Best Buy, for those of you who are wondering, there's a lovely independent computer parts and repair shop nearby that will help) and will willingly pay somebody else to get this blasted hard drive installed properly in the laptop.

Because I am a technological idiot.

F is Dead

Well, Gentle Readers, I have just confirmed it. Despite what I wrote on Sean McCann's blog, where I am known as Whitewater, about the power of Yes and moving from can't to can, I am afraid I have found something I cannot do. And not for lack of trying, by the way!

But it is impossible, at least, I'm pretty sure it is. I have tried a number of different methods and I run into the same problem.

I cannot play an open F major chord on my acoustic dreadnought guitar. Please note how specific I am, when I say this. For all I know, maybe a 3/4 classical guitar or an electric guitar would work just fine. I am hoping that a mandolin's chords will be different enough for me to do it on that.


But on Babe? Forget it.

The trouble I'm having is that my hand and fingers simply aren't big/long enough to barre the 1st fret, as required, while *also* pressing the individual strings. I can barre the frets. I can do the individual strings. But I can't do that all at the same time. My right hand just isn't big enough.

Every time I barre *and* go for the other strings, I lose the barre. The more strings I try to get to, the more I have to stretch. And the more I stretch, the more my first finger slips. It's an ergonomic thing, based on the way fingers just naturally work.

If anybody out there has had this problem and knows how to solve it, feel free to comment. There's a lot of music that I won't be able to play on the guitar if I can't get this straightened out.