Written on
October 23, 2006.
Today I was working again on my Shamisen. The buzzing thing (Azuma Sawari) never sounded right so I replaced the metal with wood.
In anycase, that day, our “next-block” neighbor (who owns an antique store downtown) was having a street sale. My next door neighbor (who has the fabulous site, okinawa.com) told him that I played shamisen so he came by and gave it to me! Woot! (as they say) It sure looks antique. The snake skins are ruptured one both sides so I needed to find some new skin to restretch the shamisen with. Now, as you can well imagine, giant snakes are hard to find but through a secret special source (E*cough*bay*cough*), I managed to find a nice skin!
Now, you may be saying, “Enough describing, show me a picture!” Well, I accidentally drained the batteries on our good camera so we’ll all have to wait ’till tomorrow.
Written on
October 15, 2006.
Well, today was our gig. It wasn’t really a gig per se. We weren’t getting paid. The “festival” was a “back-to-the-19th/20th-century” day at the Johnson Farm. There was old engines, a history of the place, fire making, candle making (I think), etc. Andy came along and he really enjoys that kind of stuff. So we set up in a spot and played music (there were other people we know playing around the farm). It was a little tricky playing mandolin ’cause my index finger had a longer burn than the others (meaning the burn went farther down) so bending it hurt. I strummed and picked holding the pick with my thumb and middle finger. I couldn’t play very loud ‘n sharp but nobody was listening so it didn’t matter. After we did one of our sets, we packed up and looked at the food. There was drumsticks for a dollar, cornbread for 50 cents, pie for two dollars, etc. There was good corn soup so Luke and I both got bowls of that. We got the last of the pot and my order was the last one so instead of ladeling it out, she just took the pot and turned it upside-down so I got quite a big bowl of soup. To the brim! (where everybody else had it about halfway full.
So it was a good day . . . except a little freezing.
Written on
October 14, 2006.
Well, I made my recent experience into the Darwin Awards.
I was making a sandwich and we had corn crowing so I went out and picked a few ears. Ma had water heating up in a metal pot. She said there might be too much water in the pot and I could pour some out if I wanted to.
Well, I (all my fingers, both hands) lightly tapped/touched both handles a few times just to see if it was hot. After I tapped, it didn’t feel really any heat but it was a little to quick to feel anything. I felt again ’cause I was unsure and then came this *sssssssssss.* Wwooooooohhh! ! ! ! Fire over Jerusalem! That was hot!
If you get burned and immediately put ice or a cold pack on the burn for 15 minutes, that lessens the overall pain of the wound. A couple of times, I’ve got burned and ran some cold water over it for a few seconds but later on it really hurt. When I put ice on it for a while, I can still feel it but it doesn’t hurt as much later.
So, aaaannnnnyyywwaaayyy . . . I quickly opened up the freezer and put my fingers on the cold pack. Boy, it really stung to put ‘em on there but I left ‘em on. Fifteen minutes later, my left fingers were rather healed, they didn’t hurt any more. My right thumb and index still hurt the most. What was worse, we had a gig the next day!
Written on
October 11, 2006.
Aaaaahhhh!!!!! I missed the debate on Saturday! That morning I was walking to the bakery and I saw a newspaper that said, “Debate Tonight!” I thought that it said it was at 7:00PM but it was on at 6:00PM!
Fortunately, it was 6:45 and I decided to turn on the TV just in case I was wrong and sure enough, I was wrong but at least I got to see some of it. I took one look at Phil Agelides and just in a glance I noticed that he looked like a shrew (rat, mouse, etc.) . His ears and teeth really exemplify that. I also noticed that he kept looking at the wrong camera.
I normally don’t care about that sorta stuff but I like debates and I like Arny Shwartz (I like how he said girly-men [but lets keep politics out of this 'cause I can't vote yet]) so I was a little bummed to have missed it. Afterwards, I went online to see if anybody uploaded the debate but nobody did. (it was 5 minutes after the debate so I realized I should give people a bit of time)
Well, today, I decided to look at KGET TV 17 uploaded it! Yess!!!
Here it is.