Day 69-72: A Weekend Included

What a great weekend this has been. There was so much going on in Rochester that I got to walk around so much in the beautiful weather. It has been in the 70s, but some of the trees are putting on their autumn attire.

It is really nice because I've not seen this since 1998 when I was living in Baltimore. But the winters there sucked butter beans. The wind blowing off of the Chesapeak was miserable. Of course, there is a lake up here, too. And I've heard the winters here are pretty crappy. So I'm really happy that I'll be done in late November!

 There really was a lot to do this weekend, and even though I neglected my homework I don't regret one minute that I spent outside. Even cleaning the gutters wasn't bad. Dragging a heavy ladder around the house was no fun, and one time the ladder fell--I felt it going and jumped. There were a lot of soft plants to cushion the fall, but I'm really surprised that Gretchen hasn't seen the man shaped hole in her garden. Maybe the plants have recovered.

I went to the market on Saturday, and there really weren't many people about. There were no bananas in the market either, so maybe all of the missing people were getting bananas somewhere. Maybe. Or maybe it was just so beautiful out that they were having fun in other places.

It must be the end of the flower season up here--did you know that Rochester's nickname is the Flower City. It is really green and flowery and pretty up here, but that ain't all year. I'm betting that they just want to remind themselves of how beautiful it is here when they are suffering the winters.

I went a little crazy and got a variety of peppers, some sweet and some hot. It is really interesting that the hotter peppers are the smaller they are. Weird.

So I got some really sweet ones and some hot ones, and Jim the neighbor grows jalapeños, and he gave me some. So what do you do with so many peppers? You make an omelet, of course.

Now I'm not one in the kitchen. Although I do like good food, I'm more of an "eat it out of the can" kind of guy. There are just so many other things that I'd rather be doing than cooking and cleaning up the mess cooking causes. But I can make an omelet. I learned how to do this in the army. Every morning I get in line in the chow hall and watch the cooks cook eggs a bunch of different ways. But they loved to make omelets, and they were always good. So I do what they did, except I add a little milk to make the eggs fluffy.

I went to an outdoor play, where 300 actors were stationed around a block of courtyards. They were dead, playing dead. So the viewers moved around in shared space and listened to whomever they wanted--there really were a bunch of interesting stories. But if you got bored or didn't like the actor you just move on. It was a great way to spend some time, and then there was a concert afterwards. And all of this for free. It seems to me that no matter where I'm at I can find free stuff to do that is stimulating and fun.

I'm working on a double bouted machine, as you know--maybe you know. The bout is a broad area of a dulcimer. So a teardrop, like the first instrument I made, has only one bout. The hour glass that I'm working on now has a major and minor bout, the major being the biggest.

The instrument I'm building is really pretty, and not just because of the hourglass shape that reminds me of beautiful figure, but the other touches are really important, too. Like the fiddle edges. I love a dulcimer with fiddle edges. If someone asked me to not put fiddle edges on a machine I'd have to tell them to beat it, unless they had some compelling reason for not wanting them, like there dog choked on a fiddle edge and died or something. I put a picture of the instrument on FB, and a woman who plays the dulcimer said how elegant it is. And it is, only I didn't mean that--the design just makes them so. Which is why I am so happy to be with Dwain learning his craft and how to build his way.

The scroll-carved peghead is another fine feature that I love. I know I've talked about this before, but I think that the carving that is done on the front and back ends is beautiful. I watch Dwain as he explains a step in the carving and he is just whipping the tools to and fro with such precision that it is tough for me to imagine myself being that good. But I'm practicing, and my first endeavor is turning out quite well.

An instrument has to be more than pretty and elegant, though, and there is a lot of time put into the mechanics of the instrument so that it will have a great voice with good projection. So there is a lot of measuring in the thousandths (.001) of an inch. I've become very familiar with the workings of  measuring devices that go that small.

There really is so much more that happened this weekend, but it is 11pm and I'm done. Tired. I've been toying with the idea of a book on how to build dulcimers from an apprentice's perspective. There is an editor that may be willing to help. I need a heavy-handed and involved editor. So if you know such a person who may be interested pass on my site. I'm interesting. Really.