Current Mood: drained & stressed & sore

… that Regina Spektor piano song I started teaching myself. I have been playing next to zilch for piano lately but figured I should tinkle a bit here and there. So I fired up that song today. It took a few minutes to figure it all out again. Its pretty cool how it all comes back to you like that :)

man the expression is a very fascinating thing with this song…

p.s. if i didn’t know any better, i’d say the powers-that-be don’t want me to do NaNo. they are denying me my muse, they’re throwing an unexpected dental appointment at me, a trip to eugene and now, of all things, my right thumb is killing me (from piano, it seems). so to you, powers-that-be, i give a big FUCK YOU!

Current Mood: cheers

Its such a lovely, powerful song. It only took me an hourish to get down the first bit pretty well, thanks to Whitepaws who played right hand for me while I tried to wrap my brain around the little skip thing.

It was just the right amount of challenge I needed and is really fun to play!

I’ve been wanting to learn it for awhile, but had problems with it before. Its cool how things just click when they click, eh?

So I’ve got a new laptop, and w hat a sexy beast it is. Oh? I haven’t been around much, says you? Well gee I dunno why…

MAYBE BECAUSE NOTHING FREAKING WORKS so I’ve been spending EVERY WAKING MOMENT trying to FIX things?

Yeah, that could be it ^-^

To be fair: I’m using a fresh Fedora Core 7 install. And the laptop is new, so you know… I just gotta give it time to settle in, I suppose.

But still >.<

I’ve been croching my 2nd amigurumi ever. I love those little guys, but my crochet skills are shaky, really. I bought a handful of patterns for things I really liked, to get me to better learn crochet, and it’s worked out quite a bit. Yay for affordable patterns :) There’s more I’d like to get, but the more I play with the crochet, the more I realise I can probably easily make my own amigurmi.

Oh yeah, amigurmi (for those not in the know) is Japanese for crocheted animals. Or something along those likes. They’re really neato. There’s also amigurumi objects, such as coffee cups and various foods ^-^

Script Frenzy? Yeah, I can’t get anywhere on it! I’m having one helluva time thinking in scrips. Rayna’s Story? Well, I started typing it up on the laptop so I can work on it, and I’ve found an area in the beginning that I need to add to to clarify what’s going on.

The Poetry Book? I’ve got the pages laid out with one poem per page (thanks Jayn and others for encouragement in that!). Its bothering me that I don’t have much control over the page numbers. I’d like to have the page count start whith the first poem, know what I mean? But with the way its acting, by the time the first poem hits, its going to be page 4 or 5 or so >.< so I gotta fiddle with OpenOffice.

As for my sad attempt at gardening, my alyssum seems to be done blooming. It has been for awhile. And I’m sad about that.

My strawberries are producing crap. Plant #1 has given me 2 berries (yum!) and plant #2 has given me 1 berry (it was slightly tart) and plant #3 has not given me one damn edible berrie. It keeps making these itty bitty deformed/retarded berries. I rip them off as soon as I see them. It doesn’t seem to be helping at all.

My landscape daiseys seem like they haven’t been too active lately either, but then again, I’m not outside much.

As for my piano development, I discovered arpeggios! (I’m self taught, can you tell?). And it was quite by accident. I started teaching myself the minor and major chords (A thru G) and went “Hey, what happens if I play one note at a time?” and before I knew it I was making funfun goof off music. It was like the heaven’s opened! I understood music on a whole new level!

And I can play Colorblind from Counting Crows in my sleep. No I won’t send you the sheet music, I learned it from YouTube ^-^

……

I think that’s about it. Oh, I did join up with this card selling place, check out my java card app to the right. buy my cards and I get .50! Ohhh :) (yeah I’ve only got one so far…)

Current Mood: ecstatic

Randomness

Yeah so the poetry book is ALMOST done. The guts would have been done by now if I hadn’t faced formatting problems. I solved that and its good to go. I just need polishing and a little bit of filling in to do. AND, DorkZombie is going to be doing my cover! I’ve know him for years and years. I’m glad I got him excited about doing it :) I was going to have a friend do a photo shoot of me for the cover but then I felt like it should be graphics instead. So yeah. I better go let my friend know. I will be using the pic he did of me for that newspaper article.

And no, I’m not releasing my poetry book title yet. Its mine, and only the privileged gets to hear it. So nyah ^-^

No, but really people, I do love you. It’s that I don’t want it floating around on the net. I’ve heard horror stories, mmkay?

PIANO!

I have a nice new shiny super fancy, full 88 keys piano weighted electronic piano! This thing is so fancy, it’ll make me coffee in the morning! Holy shit, yo. So yeah, I’ve got a friend who wants to hear what I’ve been learning, but I can’t figure out the software that came with it to record what I play. Grr.

But for the composing part… I’ve always always wanted to write my own music. I mean, I write poetry and stories and whatever else. Music has been the only thing that I haven’t written. I always thought it might be really hard, but I just now decided to Google “how to compose music for piano” and I got THIS GUY HERE! I haven’t even read it all, but it’s really got me going. W00t.

So yeah…

WRITING

I have been having a ball with Rayna’s Story (hey, its better than calling it Untitled). I had forgotten how well I can write when I’m not trying to get 50k words in 30 days ^-^ Starting from the beginning was the best thing I’ve done for my writing. Although I’d love to become a stronger writer. I have found some great writing tips in the past, but more would be grand. When Mollie and Jay are out of town, I think I’ll spend all day on their puter looking up more writing articles.

As for as the poetry book is going, I think I have enough selected now. I’ll be editing & polishing up the .doc file sometime this week. It’s got a rough organization to it, but it’ll prolly need some more.

GARDENING

(this was an e-mail to a friend, but I’m crunched on time)
Well I had just had fun with some gardening in that little area I’ve mentioned before. Today I went out for strawberries and fell in love with some other plants. Now I have some alyssm, sunscape daises, and two different kinds of strawberry to try out. My pot of violets that a friend gave me this winter is looking great (no blooms though). I didn’t think they would make it because they looked kinda sad whet I planted them. I yanked out one of its babies and did a poor ass job at planting it in some rather hard, clay-like soil nearby… I’m calling it a science experiment :)

We have, I think, daffodils scattered all across the property, and quite a bit in my little garden. They haven’t bloomed yet and I hear they’re hard to get rid of, so I’ll just leave them. I like the wild, overgrown look.

I’d love to grow some herbs and other flowers I really like, but I have limited space (or should I say - sunlight). At least I can grow stuff now… I was reluctant before because of the dog. He had free roam of the area and liked to trample and say on anything alive. Now he’s fenced off in the back of the house so he doesn’t run away and visit the neighbors or try to chase down cars. Damn dog…

PIANOING

Iiee! I’ve been learning a bit of White Houses from Vannesa somethingrother, thanks to searching “how to play” on YouTube! I started on Clocks by Coldplay today, but my monitor started in on its eardrum melting sound, so I had to stop away for a bit.

So yeah, I better turn this thing off before it starts again.