Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I've been pondering folks' responses to Saturday's entry, and plan to reply to some of those comments soon. In the meantime, I did try to heed my body's signals yesterday and not go out despite feeling just barely well enough to do so ... I figured I'd accumulate more spoons, and try to do things today. Except that I wasn't doing as well today as I'd thought I was when I set out. Just getting out and driving used up most of my spoons, so much of the time that I'd intended to be helping my brother with math wound up being spent resting, waiting for drugs to take effect and the room to stop spinning, and being tired-annoyed. We did manage some study time, and I got home again without mishap, but I feel wretched.

I've decided what I want for the music room, and what I can reasonably settle for without feeling put out. What would be wonderful is one of those freestanding oval mirrors in a wooden frame, so I could position it anywhere in the room that was convenient. And it'd be pretty. What would be adequate is one of those really cheap rectangular mirrors designed to hang on a wall or the back of a door, which I could lean someplace or even put up properly. Either way, I'd be able to see what I'm doing with the bow without leaning way forward and looking down and getting my left hand out of position. Conversation with my brother revealed that the fancy mirror might not cost as much as I'd thought though.

This evening I saw a freaky sight: a large airliner appearing to hover or move at a snail's pace. Really, its groundspeed looked like less than 5 MPH, A startling effect. (And at least mostly an optical illusion, but possibly also a sign that my perception of time was wonky, a less than reassuring thought, since I was driving at the time. The plane was descending on a path that crossed the highway at an angle, and most of the time it was in sight it seemed to be mostly coming toward me. Add in the "it's larger than it looks, so it seems closer than it is" effect, and it becomes easy for the brain to misinterpret cues from change-of-position and change-of-image-size as indicating a slower relative velocity than was really there. In the time it took me to drive under its flight path, from where I could no longer see it without turning my head to where I could see that patch of sky in a mirror, it crossed from well off to port to clear over the trees and out of sight to starboard, so if I'd been able to watch it the whole time, I surmise that its apparent relative speed would have appeared to increase rapidly as I moved out of the prime optical-illusion viewing spot and/or as it passed overhead. The other possibility, that there was a headwind at that altitude close to the plane's stall speed which stopped blowing as I passed by, seems rather extremely unlikely. Anyhow, a startling effect.)

Also while I was driving, I was humming bits of something I've been composing in my head (really need to start writing it down soon), and at one point I wandered into a train of thought that went:

Wait, what were those notes I just hummed? Hmm...

Oh. I really did that, didn't I?

Okay, how on Earth would I notate that? I think that the notation for electric guitar would involve small English text over the staff; what about for violin?

Can I make MIDI do microtones? I'm pretty sure I can't generate them with 'abc2midi'.

Oh man, when I ask folks to play this they're going to kill me.

(Actually, it shouldn't be hard to play, once they get past the "You want me to what? You're odd, you know that?" reactions. Playing it will certainly be an order of magnitude or so easier than writing it down.)

I'm going to close my eyes and try not to feel so dizzy now.

"In August, there should be a 'walk on eggshells' day, where you go out of your way to avoid offending people. In September, there should be a 'say what you feel' day, where it's universally accepted that no one take any of it personally. Then afterward, there would be a poll about which day felt better." -- Linda Holthaus, 2003-07-22 (2nd comment)