Thursday, August 19, 2010

My New Didge

And now I have my own polyvinyl resin digeridoo (complete with a carrying case and instructional video) to play on while waiting for the rest of my home to come together. It's nearly as tall as I am, and nearly indestructible, which I really like - I felt very intimidated by the agave didge I was renting from the teacher. I kept waiting for some horrible accident to happen while it was in my possession.

My new instrument is black, with blue and white aboriginal art that I find appealing. Sure hope it sounds good.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

My Library's Coming!

For many, many years, I have had a dream of a home library - wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases with a library ladder on a rail so I could reach the books on the upper shelves. Ever since I decided to move downstairs, I've been planning how to accomplish this.

Bids to build the library from scratch made my jaw drop, and so did bids from carpenters who would take my existing set of teak veneer bookcases and build more shelves up to the ceiling. Finally, I asked my friend Jack to come up with a version I could both afford and live with, possibly involving IKEA products. He came and measured, and studied the Billy bookcase units on the IKEA website, and came up with a plan that will use two Billy bookcases, plus extension shelves, alongside my bookcases. We went to IKEA and picked up the cases, for a song. And then we went to the ladder store, and got a bid on a library ladder that cost half what I was quoted by one of the first carpenters. Adding the very reasonable sum he estimates for his labor on the project, I'm going to wind up with a wall of books and a real library ladder for a nice price.

And once the bookshelves are joined by the pricy zero gravity recliner that I've bought - instead of a visually attractive but uncomfortable window seat that was my first idea - I'm going to have a wonderful place to read, and nap, and read, and nap ...

Monday, August 2, 2010

Back at Work

The actual moving came off without incident, except that Comcast jumped the gun and cut off my service at 4028 a day early. And I was quite correct - my first looks at the empty flat were very sad indeed, and trying to navigate in the new flat between walls of boxes and without curtains on most of the windows was really awful.

That said, I've made - with the help of Jan and my organizer - great progress over the weekend: the heat is now working, I have privacy in my bedroom and bathroom, and about half of the boxes are unpacked and taken away. The kitchen is completely unpacked, the living room and bedroom are mostly unpacked, much of what I need in the bathroom is unpacked, and I've made a start on unpacking my books and the other contents of my library/study/music room. The least unpleasant bit of unpacking was while I was listening to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," my favorite radio program, on my ipod. I wish it had new episodes daily instead of weekly.

By way of addressing the massive stress of dislocation, I pampered myself on Saturday with a pedicure and foot massage. On Sunday, Jan and I took a digeridoo-playing class. I gotta say that being part of a group of adults sitting in a circle and practicing making raspberries (Bronx cheers) was really funny. Each dig is tuned to a particular note, and I astounded the teacher by finding much lower notes in the instrument that I'm renting for two weeks. I've done some raspberries in various recorder workshops for relaxation of the mouth; that may have given me a slight head start on dig technique.

Getting back to my familiar office is a bit of a relief and a bit disorienting. It may take my wits some time to recover; yesterday I left my purse in a restaurant.