"Naw, I cannae work that, no way, naw..."

Life has been busy, getting everything ready for all of the celebrations surrounding my college graduation. We got a fancy new camera, which I am still learning to use, though most of its controls are fairly intuitive. I think I have a good enough understanding of the controls, and that it is a good enough camera, that I can run my mother through some of its cool features and she'll be taking good pictures. I messed around and took several hasty panoramas of the loft; these are the best:

I also got some good shots of the chickens. Here is Mother Helen (her namesake is the Reverend Mother Helen Gauis Mohiam from Dune), cleaning up with a nice cool dirt bath:

I am off to continue cleaning, rearranging, and preparing for this weekend. I have an aunt flying in this afternoon to pick up from the airport, also. I might even take some more pictures along the way - they can use their "1,000 words" to do the talking, and I can be lazy!

"...Until the birds return for Spring Cleaning"

Quite the busy holiday at our house. Over the course of about the past three years, Frog built a very sturdy workshop shed (I helped), and we are now completing the final finish work. Yesterday, with Mom having Memorial Day off from work and being home to help, we painted the shed:

 

 We also finished painting the back of the main house, and below, we painted the workshop's smaller cousin, the double-tall-deluxe chicken condo:

In the preceding days, we did a lot of spring cleaning, getting the space around the buildings clear and generally whipping the property into shape. Saturday we cleaned off our far back patio, by the chicken coop, and uncovered the brick path back to it. Our potato trench is right next to the path, and when planting the potatoes, I dumped a bit too much of the trench dirt right on top of our main brick walkway. The potatoes are all doing great, though, and the dirt we scraped off of the path filled the trench nicely. But potatoes are a post for the future...

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Last Sunday, as you may know, was the annular eclipse of the sun. Check out more awesome images here. I was able to see it by briefly glancing at it through sunglasses - not the best, but I wasn't going to let it pass without at least glancing.



2. It is Memorial Day weekend. You know that this holiday is to honor fallen members of the armed services, right? I would respectfully petition you to think on that, however briefly, in between your picnics, barbecues, camping trips, and drinking binges. Just a few thoughts as to why you've got the long weekend.

3. Yesterday I mentioned reading Anne Rice's "Queen of the Damned"; well, I finished it. I had actually started reading another book when it arrived per my special request at the local library, so I have now returned to reading "Outlander" by Diana Gabaldon. It is about a World War II nurse who is transported, magically, to 18th century Scotland. I am at a place in the novel where she has been recently displaced in time, and fallen in with a band of Scottish rebels during the Jacobite uprising. It is a good read; not as immediately gripping for me as the tales of vampires spun by Rice, but it has a very nice feel to its words. It is one of the few books I've read that is convincingly told from a female point of view. Most fiction I've read is by male authors, focused on male characters, and anything to do with females is told through the male lens. Even Anne Rice's vampires are mostly male, and strangely they tend to fall in love with other males. The most major female characters in her stories so far have been Claudia, the vampire child, and the titular Queen of the Damned - not really stellar examples of the fairer sex. However, Gabaldon's nurse, Claire, is delightfully feminine; why her descriptions of the shape, print, and feel of her thin cotton dress remind me perfectly of Better Living's self-made clothes and talent as both a seamstress and writer. I like that the character Claire is both firmly female and determinedly firm, setting aside the confusion and fear of being lost in time to sternly admonish her highlander captors on the proper care of their wounded comrade.

"...Need Distraction, Need Romance and Candlelight..."

Yesterday morning I received a rather distasteful phone call, and rather than dwell on the circumstances surrounding that needlessly adversarial and rancorous situation, I have been trying to get outside myself. Here are some some of the works of art, or depending on you outlook, the pieces of entertainment I've been occupying my mind with:

* The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. I am currently finishing up the third book, "Queen of the Damned". This series is, I believe, the absolute best modern depiction of vampires. As portrayed by Rice, the creatures of the night are sensuous and erotic, but in a way that transcends the simple carnal pleasures of humans. For Rice's vampires, the sum of all ecstasy is the taking of blood from their victims, or the giving of their own blood to create new blood-suckers. Also intriguing to me is the way the characters are not merely monstrous fiends, but deep-feeling lost souls, forever searching for companionship and meaning in their night-bound immortal lives.

* Drive, a film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan (who is entirely too cute). This is my kind of movie! Characters that manage to have a lot of depth, without cumbersome expository dialogue; scenes that don't beat you over the head with emotion and energy, yet still convey it; and lots of long, well-composed shots that are beautiful and speak volumes, even in their silence. Also, it is interesting to see Bryan Cranston in yet another varied and well-acted role. His acting career, fueled by his excellent performance in "Breaking Bad", just keeps getting better. Seriously, go check out "Drive" if you haven't seen it; it's available to watch instantly on NetFlix.

* I'm the Ocean, by Neil Young, from his album 'Mirrorball'. The title of this post comes from the lyrics of this song, which are meandering and a little disjointed...not really about anything specific or readily apparent. Still, there is something in this song, with its single repetitive chord progression and vocal melody, that speaks to the deep part of me.

War Story Wednesday: Sand Storms

Today in SLC it is overcast, with a weather report threatening light rain over the next several days. While technically the Salt Lake Valley is a desert, it is a paradise teeming with life compared to western Anbar Province in Iraq. An early summer storm there would look like the one above. Called a "Habob", these fully formed sand or dust storms were always a spectacle. When blowing in to our camp, it looked like an approaching wall of animated dirt:

I remember this particular storm well, as several of us had gathered around a laptop to watch a bootleg of Star Wars Episode III, when our Corporal burst excitedly into our 'hooch', exclaiming that we simply must come outside at that instant. I was a little bothered to be interrupted during Star Wars, but it was worth the interruption. We sat outside for maybe five minutes or so, watching the storm roll in. Here we are, as the dusty clouds began to roll over and enfold our base:

Finally, as the heart of the Habob engulfed us, it was as if we had been transplanted suddenly to Mars or some other alien locale:

"Stop Counting on that Camera that Hangs 'Round Your Neck..."

I had planned to do another semi-instructional post for today, covering the replacing of guitar strings and the general care and feeding of stringed instruments. However, my camera is on the fritz again. It has been doing this almost from the day we bought it - it will turn off instead of taking a picture, and then it won't come back on for a while. Finally, it ran out of batteries, but it doesn't like to come on at all if you open the battery compartment and replace them...

So here is a site with multiple step-by-step guides to doing just that. Reading through the guide on replacing acoustic guitar strings, it is better than my post probably would have been. I like that he mentions the importance of not just removing all of your strings at once (and especially don't just snip your strings off while they are still under full tension!); the sudden change in tension can cause your instrument's neck to bend. Or worse, if you've removed all of the strings so that there is no tension on the neck, then place a new low-E string and tighten it all the way, your neck might warp. This is almost impossible to fix, whereas a bent but not warped neck can usually be straightened by adjusting the truss rod in the neck (best done by a professional, especially if you are inexperienced).

 However, I disagree on the way that he attaches the string to the tuning peg - he feeds the string through the hole in the peg first, and then using a string winder swiftly rotates the tuning peg to wrap the string.

I prefer to wrap the string around the peg first, then tuck the loose end of the string through the hole in the peg. My rationale behind this is that then the greatest tension will be on the string as it smoothly curves around the peg; the end of the string going through the hole in the peg is just to keep it in place. When you feed the string through the hole first and then tighten it, the tension is at its greatest along the edge of the hole. Especially on cheaper guitars this edge can be sharp - much sharper than the smooth round curve of the peg itself. Think about it - which rope would fray more quickly: one that wraps around a round pole, or one dragged across an edge? Guitar strings are essentially tiny metal cables (or tiny plastic ropes if you have a nylon-string guitar), and I've seen them begin to fray and often break at that critical friction point of the tuning pegs.

Since I started using my method of wrapping the string first, I've not had a single string break up by the tuning pegs. I play very aggressively, and break a lot of strings, but mine tend to break where the strings have become worn by the frets and started to come unwound anyway. Now if only this troublesome camera would cooperate...

Playing for our Supper