Old Grey Frog Has Moved...to her bedroom office

Word of the Day

Pediddel - A car with a burned out headlight.

I got a call yesterday from a fellow clarinet player who is going to be playing a duet with me next month at church. A clarinet duet. He wanted to schedule a time to get together to pick out what music we'd be playing and practice. We chose today. 1 PM. He's bringing over several duet books. I hope they're not to difficult. I'm getting the feeling that this guy REALLY knows how to play the clarinet. Actually, it'll be nice to have a chance to see and practice a piece of music before getting up in front of the church. The music director usually picks out the music and hands it to me about an hour before I end up practicing my sight-reading skills. We'll also have a chance to get to know each other before getting up in front of the church to play a duet. Still...I hope he brings along music that isn't too difficult. I play the clarinet. I'm definitely not a pro at it. I went through my clarinet music yesterday after he called to see if I had any duet books. I found a couple of them but they're pretty elementary. Most of my clarinet books are pretty elementary and they come with CD accompaniment.

Because I have someone coming over at 1 PM...someone that I've never met...I decided it was time to clean up the house a bit. Besides, my amaryllis plant got a bit top heavy (it's blooming) and fell over onto the floor of the living room, scattering potting soil everywhere...as well as breaking the long flower stem. *sigh* I put the flower into a vase, scooped up as much soil as I could, but, vacuuming couldn't be postponed for another day...not that I planned to postpone it. Dusting, vacuuming, cleaning the guest bathroom were all on my To Do List for the day. I also made some iced tea. Then, as I was dusting and clearing off the coffee table, I decided it was time to relocate my laptop. I've been using the living room coffee table as a kind of office desk since Christmas. Every time we have company coming over, I've had to button everything up and move it temporarily until company leaves. I've got a perfectly nice office desk in the bedroom. It's huge! I haven't used it since Christmas. I kept thinking that I really should pack up my desk top and store it away. Since I got the laptop, the desktop computer hasn't seen much use....no use since January.

You can imagine the thick layer of dust I found under and behind the monitor when I moved it off my desk. Yuck! Dusting under and behind a computer monitor hasn't been top on my cleaning priority list. Untethering the monitor from the CPU wasn't an easy task (wires everywhere). Almost as difficult was finding a place to store said monitor. I moved a few things to make a nook and cranny in the guest room closet. For the time being I've decided to leave the CPU sitting under my desk. It's not in my way and I have no idea what to do with the tangled spaghetti of wires. Lots of wires! I know that I could set up a separate keyboard for my laptop but I really don't need any more wires. The way I've got it set up right now, it won't take more than a minute to untether and move into the kitchen, the living room, or even out onto the patio with the laptop.

My house is clean (reasonably clean...good enough...). I've got my laptop all set up on my desk in the bedroom. I've got all my blog materials within easy reach on my desk. I'm sitting with perfect posture while blogging (no more back pain caused by scrunching up with the laptop on my lap in the living room...but...I can if I want to).

Update - My duet partner is/was a music major. I'm betting that he's a former band director for a school. Needless to say, he's LOTS better than me but I don't think I embarrassed myself too much. We picked out a couple of easy Celtic duets from one of my books which he's going to transition to fit them together as a single piece and a classical duet (Adagio) from one of his books. On a scale, easy to hard, it's about a medium when it comes to the level of difficulty. I can handle it.

Murphyism of the Day

The Eighteenth Recommended Practice of the Committee of the International Society of Philosophical Engineers' Universal Laws for Naive Engineers

Identical units that test in an identical fashion will not behave in an identical fashion in the field.

Noteworthy Quote of the Day

Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. I am not saying you can't change the world, right wrongs, or replace evil with good. Acceptance is, in fact, the first step to successful action. If you don't fully accept a situation precisely the way it is, you will have difficulty changing it. Moreover, if you don't fully accept the situation, you will never really know if the situation should be changed.

- Peter McWilliams