New Hat for the Church

 

Yesterday I worked from home because I was sick all night again from this weight loss medication. I cannot prevail against the doctor who wants me on it, especially now that I have lost sixteen pounds, at least according to the scale. I don't look different to myself, nor do my clothes seem to notice any difference, and certainly nobody else has said, "You look fabulous! Have you lost weight?" But man, these side effects! My FitBit told me to take it easy, and I had already gotten my cardio load for the day by walking around the neighborhood with Travalon at lunch, but I was very short on steps. How to get more steps without increasing my cardio load? Why, by putting the FitBit on my right wrist and then fiddling all night with Moldy Jam!

A woman who plays the mandolin seemed almost personally offended that I came with a fiddle instead of my old tater bug mando, but she sat next to me and even told me about how she goes to a Django Reinhardt jam (wish I could remember when and where she said it was), and they play weird chords like a C diminished. I said, "What's that?" and she showed me. She showed me a whole chart of how to make chords on the mandolin, so I could see I was making them all wrong, even good old G major and C major. She said I should take lessons with her teacher, and part of me thinks maybe that would be a good idea (maybe I'd finally learn to do an E major chord that isn't physically painful), but another part of me thinks nah, I've been doing it this way for years - why change now? This woman is a much better mando player than I am, and she said she used to play violin in a symphony orchestra, so she is undoubtedly a better violin player too. That's okay - it's not a competition. She had an iPad and was looking at the music, which I thought was not allowed at these jams, and she tried to get me to look at it too. I resisted until the end of the evening, when I was really tired and they kept suggesting songs I'd never heard of, and then I did peek at the music. Might as well keep my sight-reading skills going along with learning by ear, right?

Today I worked on campus because I was at home yesterday, but it was a cold, wet, dreary day and I would have loved to work in my nightgown, snuggled under my mushroom blanket and not had to leave the house. At lunchtime I walked with Hardingfelde in her building, and we stopped to see her coworker who goes to the same church as Travalon and me. We are all three violin players, but those two are both in community orchestras playing symphonic music, whereas I am good with just sticking to fiddle tunes, or Baroque music if anyone is interested. (Anyone?) They both yakked about the difficult music they were working on, and I just thought, "No, thanks!" It's a whole different world than the musical one I live in. I may hate playing in any position above third, but I'm sure Hardingfele would hate being in the fast Irish session without notes on the page, just someone starting a tune and everyone else joining in when they recognize it, or trying to fake it if they don't.

After work I took the 28 bus to Adoration, and it was so crowded that I don't know why they don't run a big bendy bus on that route. There was a free 80 campus bus that came right before it, and it was a big bendy bus, and yet it was still packed. Our bus was so full that the bus driver wouldn't let anyone get on after me, which made me glad that I didn't allow a pushy undergrad to get ahead of me in line. She can wait for the next bus, but I had a timeline. The bus driver seemed pretty jaded, but when a toddler girl said, "Thank you!" as her dad carried her off the bus, he did crack a smile. Travalon picked me up from Adoration, and as we were heading home, a train stopped us on Sherman. We drove on Troy Drive to see it go over the bridge, and I hopped out of the car and ran through the tunnel beside the road that goes under the train tracks. I should have made a video - the sound of the train reverberated in there! It was so worth it, even if the train did beat us to the crossing on Highway M. We just saw the last of it go through the crossing. Travalon loved that I was so excited about going through the tunnel while the train was above me. It was on my bucket list.

Tiffy was sending me photos from Greece, like this lovely church.

She said this sign made her think of the person with the fictional autobiography, because he said you can find him where the pirates are.

(No idea if Tiffy took this "Privacy & Comfort Sail Trip," and I can't believe that blog post is three years old! I thought it just happened last November!) 

The big news is that they put the steeple back on our old church. It was in the newspaper!

Rich was there, and he took photos.

And here's a random photo I took yesterday on our lunchtime walk, of the last colorful tree in our neighborhood.

And check out all those squirrel nests in the tree behind it! There are still trees with colorful leaves on campus too, but they are few and far between. Almost everything is bare now. Sigh... winter is coming.

Famous Hat