MARTHA STEWART DAY

Update: I finally got this project done. Doesn't look the same once gravity took over. I may still make some effort to separate the pieces so they can be seen a little better -- but then again I may not.


For several years I've been collecting old green-handled kitchen utensils because they're a kind of nostalgic reminder of my grandmother's house. They're not all that useful for people like me, i.e. lazy cooks, and besides that, they mostly aren't all that sharp. And a couple of them are mysteries to me of what people even did with them. So it finally occurred to me that I could make a sort of a garlic string out of them. We have a string of ceramic vegetables that's getting old and boring, and I thought it would be cute to make one out of the utensils.
I have a lovely plan for this, and I laid out all the pieces to see how they would look.



The idea is that I'm going to have to get some kind of a hole into each of these utensils, so I think that what I'm going to do is put an eyescrew in the top of each one. My plan is to drill a little hole in the top of each one and then add glue when I put the eye screw into the hole. Then I can string them all together. I get started fairly easily because we were using the drill yesterday to fix the lock on the front screen door, so the bit is still in the drill and the drill is on top of the messy workbench. And then, as I'm ready to start drilling -- I have one kitchen tool that isn't as good as the rest of them because all the paint has come off the handle -- I get a look at the damn thing and see that there's a problem. It's a pretty obvious one -- check the picture with the drill and the eye screw.



So I drag my pneumonic lungs up two flights of stairs and go into my fine craft closet, which I have, of course trashed in the two years I've had it. I can't see the box with the Dremel tool in it, but I do see a couple of boxes on the top shelf that could possibly have the Dremel, so I go and get the stepstool and get the boxes off the top shelf, only to find they were full of fabric, and no Dremel tool.


After all that climbing around, I decided it must be in the basement. I went back to the basement, started looking around and honest to god, it's 18 inches away from the vise I had started out with. DUH. I suppose if we ever put anything away...
I spend about a half hour trying to sort through the stuff in the box, but there aren't many things I even recognize, and especially not a little tiny drill bit. And I can't figure out either how to assemble the thing, or even if I have all the parts. The instruction manual is little, if any help.


So, after about two hours, here's the result. Nothing is finished, nothing is started, the utensils are all over the house, I've probably lost the drill bits I did have for the Dremel. I finally went out and planted tomatoes.

SATURDAY CLUB CONCERT

I'm a board member of the Sacramento Saturday Club, which is a group devoted to giving scholarships to music students at CSUS Sacramento. We have a monthly concert at someone's house. This month's concert was at our house because it included Lorna playing harpsichord, and some people from Camerata Capistrano -- namely Chase, Hans, and George Hayes. I've heard them all before, of course, but it was really fun to have Lorna playing my harpsichord on French music, which this instrument, with its long decay, was totally made for. Hans and Chase were their usual fantastic selves and George Hayes, who is really, really wonderful. I only separate them because I've played with Chase and Hans, but not with George. He just got a new violin and it adds another wonderful dimension to his playing. I went to harp circle this morning, was supposed to meet a guy from Craigslist to buy a pasta machine, but I cooled my heels in a parking lot for a half hour and he never showed. So I didn't get the pasta machine, but we had a great time at harp circle, even though there were only five of us there, and then I went by and picked up the cupcakes for tonight's Saturday Club meeting. Got home, tried to finish cleaning house, but decided it was just as well to use low light, and moved furniture around so we could put a bunch of chairs in the living room. We had about 25 people, which is just about maximum. I'm sure some of the audience members could actually read the musicians' music.

John's Cataract Surgery

Last week John had cataract surgery on his right eye. It's been an interesting week. Post surgery, he has to put drops in his eye about every four hours, and I think there are three kinds -- put them in, hold your eye closed for several minutes, wait ten minutes, start the next set, go through the same process again. As of now, a week post surgery, it seems that he's going to be happy with it. He still can't see clearly, because he still needs glasses, but definitely not the coke bottles he'd been wearing, but he keeps looking at various paintings we have and saying how bright they are. Immediatly post surgery, he said he thought he'd like to have the other eye done right away, but apparently that was the drugs talking. The post surgical routine, and the fact that he can't see all that well for a month is taking a toll. He's being really upbeat about it, though.

John was scheduled to be at Kaiser in Rancho Cordova at 6:50. Before the surgery he had to put one set of drops in his eye three times and two other sets of drops in once. He said we had to leave at 6:15 to get there -- like there's a lot of traffic going out there in the middle of the damn night, but I went along since it was all so stressful for him anyway. You'll notice in the picture that when we arrived at Kaiser, it's still dark outside. Later I thought about the fact that as bad as I thought that was, there are people who have to be there at that hour every day because they work there. Yikes!!

Right after the surgery they send you out into the world with this giant eyepatch on, which you have to leave on for 24 hours, and then after it's off, you still have to wear it at night for a week. It's a big honking patch which totally precludes your putting your glasses on over it. So you're pretty much walking around blind in one eye and can't see out of the other. No wonder they tell you to take the elevator instead of the stairs. You're also not supposed to lift anything over 20 pounds for a week, though the doctor later told us not to lift anything that makes your face red, which in John's case would be significantly more than 20 pounds, I would guess. Of course one of the things they don't tell you, is that you can't get a new refraction until a month after your surgery. So you have to go around for a month with one lense knocked out of your glasses, so I think the world is pretty mixed up for awhile. It's better now that he doesn't have the patch, at least he can put his glasses on. But he didn't want to try to pop the lens out of his sunglasses, so he's looking through a 20/200 correction with about a 20/60 eye, which also has much less astigmatism than it used to.

HARP RETREAT

I think this is my favorite event of the year. I suspect if I went back to last year's retreat, I'd find I said the same thing.

It's always a little bit different from the time before, but always quite wonderful. This is a retreat that used to be sponsored by the Bay Area Folk Harp Society, which is now defunct, but the retreat goes on. Natalie Cox, Mitch Landry and Jacqueline Lynnaugh, (as far as I know) put the thing together and mainly attract people who used to come when there was a society. Even though they give classes, they pay to come as well. I hope they enjoy it as much as we do.

We come to Occidental, which is a town near the northern California coast and stay in a house at a campground (which is kind of a stretch to call it camping) owned by the Episcopal church called Dorothy's Rest. All our meals are provided, and this year we had a class taught by Mitch and one by Jacquelyn.
Both were interesting. I think I got more out of the chord progression class by Mitch Landry than any class I've ever taken at one of these events. At times it was a little difficult to understand, but I think that was just a matter of vocabulary. I think I might be able to move my arranging techniques to the next level after this class. Additionally, we got a couple of pieces to learn with "jazz" type chords, one of which is really gorgeous.

Jacquelyn gave a class this afternoon about developing stories to tell with harp accompaniment. That, too, was a lot of fun, especially because I wasn't really all that interested in doing it, but turned out to be a useful exercise in developing a story and putting music to it.


Last night we had a fun jam session, tonight we didn't jam, because most people were tired after the coeli and just wanted to go to bed. At 9:30!!! A few of us stayed up and talked and drank which was fun, but I would rather have played -- especially with Mitch because he can play anything and at anyone's level.

I have a roommate this year and she's a very nice and pleasant person -- Iyana. Tomorrow morning it's over, too soon as always.

I brought 9 pairs of harp earrings to sell and sold five of them. It was like a swarm when I put them out on the table. Sort of like when you throw food into a fish tank.

The last night we were there it was REALLY cold. I was chilled when I went to bed, and a bit nauseated -- couldn't be from all the food and drink, could it? -- and never could get warm all night, in spite of the fact that I wore my jacket to bed and also they gave us a waffle weave blanket and a big heavy wool army blanket, which was big enough to use folded up. And still I was cold. We had agreed not to turn on the heater in the room, but about 5 a.m. I turned it on anyway. It warmed it up somewhat, but it wasn't too warm by any means.

Sunday they gave us a lovely brunch which included some fabulous savory scones and plenty of bacon and a veggie frittata and fruit. We had a little bit of a jam before brunch and thought we would do some afterwards, but people started packing up, and we left.

On the way home, I stopped at one of many cute antique stores in the area and got the salt and pepper shakers of my dreams.