Days 40 and 41: An Incurable Optimist.

I started yesterday with a four-mile run. I took the same route that I did earlier this week because it was such a fast run. Well, I went even faster yesterday! 35:08. My goal is to break 32 minutes. I think that riding the bike is helping me because I'm not really doing anything else different. I'm eating pretty well, but I'm still a chunky, squatty body, so nothing new there.

In fact, I posted this picture from when Val and me were married and one of my friends said that a dwarf and an elf can get along. So yeah. Short and squat--and not the elf!

Gretchen and I went to see a matinee yesterday, and I have to say that Guardians of the Galaxy was fun and entertaining. There were some holes that will be filled by the next four installments of the movie, but it was really worth the watch. There was so much going on, though, that I will need to watch it again (or four more times) to see everything.

Last night I had a feast while watching Orange is the New Black. Val and I really like the show, but I wonder how bothered I should be that I'm being entertained by a prison show. We have less than 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prison population--there are over 1.5 million persons in prison. There is something really wrong with any nation that incarcerates more of its population than any other nation on the planet. But hey, we're number one at this, for sure!

So I had two hard boiled eggs, two spicy pickles, some cheddar cheese (extra sharp), green and purple grapes, a garlic clove, some bread, and tea. What a feast! The pickles are the ones I got at the market, and there are jalapeños and other hot peppers in there--but at just the right amount of hot.

Today started off great, with a breakfast of grapes, a banana, an apple, a protein bar, and tea. Then second breakfast consisted of a bagel and cream cheese, a carrot, some peppers, and tea. That really kept me going until the mid-afternoon snack, which consisted of cheese, a banana, a peach, some extra-sharp cheddar cheese, a garlic clove, and some tea. Dinner turned out to be penang chicken. Yeah, chunky--not the chicken.

Dwain was off at a Dr.'s appointment, so I sat outside, where the table is the capital off some long-ago fallen column. The view there is really nice, and when I get there early I like to sit out and watch the garden grow, you know, just like Candid should do, so says Voltaire. It's okay to be an optimist, Candid. I can tend my garden and look forward to a great future, and so can you. Voltaire is just being a dick, which would be a great title for my book idea "Candide II."

I don't know if I introduced Sedona dog. She is some kind of Dingo, as in "...the Dingo ate my baby!" But Sedona is so sweet and shy. I wouldn't want to cross her because she is free with snapping those choppers when she is not comfortable with a thing, like strangers or me when I get there in the morning, rushing up the hill on the bike surprising everypuppy. Even so, she is such a sweetheart. I get to give her food--but none from the table! She is coming over to the "Mark is a great doggy friend" camp, which is good because she is a camp dog. Or, at least I understand that the breed was that, and wikipedia reinforces that; so I know it's real.

Where's the dulcimer building, you ask. Well today started with washing out the bottles that had the bones and gasoline. But there is only so much room in one kitchen, so I had to finish this up in the afternoon. I did, and I had the bonus of the labels coming off without a hassle because of the soaking. WooHoo!

We took the back and the sides out of the mold, and there was just a bit of extra glue. I had to scrape that off. There was some of this while the assembly was still in the mold. The machine is getting closer to being done so I was treating it as if it were precious. Dwain realized that I was taking a lot of time doing a seemingly simple thing. So he checked me and gave me some pointers, like work already! As in don't be too tentative. Or at least that is how I'm taking it. 

Then I had to make the linings for mine. While I was doing that Dwain said here do my two too. (Well, anyone who knows Dwain knows that there is a joke right there!) So I got to make his linings too. I said that when I "make it" in the world I'm going to have an intern. She's washing my car! At least Dwain is just making me practice what I have to do to build. My intern is going to garden for me!

So I got the linings done after getting a lesson and working on them. Dwain still tweaked his after I "did" them so they'd be Dwain Right.

We are using fish glue to put the instrument together, at least to this point. We had a nice talk today about some types of glues (And I did a bit of research at home, you know, homework.), and so far in practice I really like the longer working time of the fish glue. Maybe I'll work faster when I'm more comfortable with the craft, but I really don't like to be rushed, in life. I think about the times when I am the most productive and happy is when I have time to work. The big rug, "Homage to Grandma, The Hooker of East Peperrel," was made this way. But then again, some of my best assigned projects this past year were the ones where I improvised the most. I have a general or specific and a shadow of a path to get there. Then, once I hold the energy of the class for a few minutes during a discussion, I have a solid plan--but the kids helped a lot here. So maybe it is a comfortability thing.

There are a lot of supports for the instruments because there is a lot of tension. This is very important in the projection of the instrument. Of the three braces you see here, only the closest one is done. You can see that its edges are rounded and the brace is a parabola. The bottom of the brace has a very soft curve, too, so that the there is a tension on the back. And the sides are molded cold so that there is always that tension, too, because the wood hasn't been forced to relax into a different shape, like when heat is applied.

Then there are some heavy weights put on top of the braces, and the piece can live there until the morning. The glue dries in six hours, but Dwain said why rush when you have to wait anyway.

When I was at the Maryland Institute College of Art working on my undergraduate degree I went to a show of a graduate student, one who specialized in print making. The show was called something like 1000 prints in 12 hours, or some such. He made it, whatever that absurd goal was. I would rather have seen 12 prints from 1000 hours of work. I bet they'd be beautiful.

Dwain is making another instrument. Just like with the one just before this one, it is great to watch Dwain building his machines. He is using the same processes as I am, only at a really high level. And I'm sure with the practice of building I will grow in skill. It has to be that way, right?

I got to measure my fretboard again. The measurements are really small, as in one thousandth of inch. That is, I'm measuring a gap in the thousandths of an inch to see if there is a change. Nope. No change. At the 8th fret it remains .007 of an inch.

Then--hold on to your hat!--I made the last bookmatch set of black walnut. I really do have this process down!

The last thing that I did after this bookmatch set was to use the safety planer on some wood that needed milled down. We took a lot of time setting things up different ways so I was not on my game the day Dwain showed me how to do it. I thought I had it, but nope. There are a couple of steps I'm missing because I tore up one board thinking I had it. I didn't think to take a picture of what I did, but I'll do so in the morning so you can see my oops, of which there have been only a few. Dwain is a good teacher and I'm a good student. So Dwain has helped us recover most of my stuff, and maybe you'll see more of that tomorrow!