Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

So my Saturday didn't go quite like I'd planned or expected, and that's both good and bad.

I've been trying for about a week and a half to muster the spoons to drive out to Bowie, do laundry (my dryer died a while back), visit Mom and my youngest brother, and mooch some money from Mom for the electric bill and groceries. I finally managed to do so, getting a later start on the day, but considering that the day itself was several days late, what the heck, eh? I took along the Vaio that Does Not Talk To WiFi There (*sigh*) and my mandolin, figuring that I'd have some time to myself as well, and could work on some of my transcribing/arranging backlog.

When I got there, I found my sisters kids. And learned that my other brother and his wife and son were expected soon for a big sleep-over, and my sister was out fetching pizza. So I got to try to catch a few photos, with partial success (the problem with shooting small children is the same as the problem with shooting kittens. If they're healthy and awake, they move too quickly and too often to compose carefully.

Anyhow, sitting on a chair in the kitchen was a wee guitar. Really wee. As in: well it was bigger than a ukelele at least, but could've been mistaken for one in the fog. (I'm thinkin' maaybe 1/8 size ...?) I picked it up to see how it played, and started tuning it. One of my nephews came in and said, "Uh oh. That's Nicole's." I asked whether my niece was going to object to my playing it, and he said she probably would. Sure enough, she came in, saw me with the guitar, and held out her hands for it. So I had the (*cough*) bright idea of showing her my mandolin.

After that, she was happy to let me (and my brother) play her guitar as much as we wanted, but it wasn't clear that I was ever going to get my mandolin back. She went all over the house with it, not bumping it into too many walls, dancing like someone from The Wiggles with it. She wanted it next to her when she ate, but I took it into another room then ... and as soon as she was done eating pizza, she ran into that room and grabbed the mandolin again. I think someone retrieved it for me when she went to sleep. When I got it back it was impressively out of tune.

I have cute kin.

Anyhow, I got my laundry done, got money to pay BGE, talked politics with my youngest brother much more calmly and agreeably than before the election (though we still don't quite see eye to eye), and talked religion with my other (middle) brother, who usually keeps his beliefs close to his chest (apparently fatherhood is prompting him to verbalize more on the subject). And stayed a lot longer than I'd planned, and found the constant noise (and high voices) draining despite how cheerful and adorable and "yay family" it all was, so I'm hurtin' now (I also had to buy gas and groceries on the way home). Fortunately my Sunday appointment is here at home (I think) so I just have to be awake and dressed and somewhat competent (and dig the drum kit out from behind the stuff stacked in front of it) ... and with any luck I'll manage to recharge enough spoons in the evening to be able to do something fun planned for Monday morning.

I also came away with some homework. Mom asked me to transfer some photos of Cyprus (and relatives there) from her camera to her computer, and said some seemed to be missing. Seeing movies sprinkled among the stills, my guess is that she accidentally shot movies when trying to shoot photos again, just like she did on her previous trip. So I got my brother to copy the camera's contents to a CD, and I'm going to re-learn how to split the movies into individual frames and try to guess which scenes were what she meant to shoot (last time I also got some cool shadows she didn't mean to shoot, because the camera was running while dangling from her wrist as she walked) and extract those. I did it before, but then didn't do it again for so long that I've forgotten how I did it.

Later, if I have any spoons left after the rehearsal in the afternoon, I'll try to get around to writing up some recent thoughts about politics and philosophy. But I wanted to babble about my niece and the mandolin first.

Now to try to figure out how Perrine managed to change the colours on this SSH window just by sitting on the mouse, and how to change it back. Hmph.

( Niece and mandolin, family and cuteness )

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From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2007-01-22:

"The purpose of a young writer is to write, and he shouldn't drink too much." -- William Styron, novelist, giving advice to young writers, from an interview in The Paris Review.

(submitted to the mailing list by Mike Krawchuk)

( William Styron, on being a writer )

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Oh crap. A small leak that I'd been dealing with by shutting off the upstream valve except while taking a shower, until I could muster enough spoons to deal with attempting to repair it, today turned into a gusher of the spray water on the walls and ceiling variety.

Argh.

I'll think about it tomorrow. No time today. At least I can still cut it off immediately upstream.

( A gusher. (*sigh*) )

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