Tune Anticipation

Let the music begin!

Tomorrow morning at 10am the piano I inherited will finally be tuned. It had lived for several years at my parents' house (I don't know why they didn't want to ship it to me in Phoenix...) and they delivered it to our new house here in Bozeman over Reformation Sunday weekend in October.

Since its arrival we've been letting it acclimate to its new home, and every once in a while I'll sit down and struggle to play something from memory. Badly. Its out-of-tune-ness doesn't exactly help my mediocre ivory tickling skills.

However, there's a box in the garage labeled "Sheet Music" that I can hear calling my name. Sometime in the next couple of weeks I hope to drag it inside and sort through it, and begin to get the music back into my fingers. There was a time when I could lose whole afternoons at the piano, practicing the same hard measures until I could get them without looking, playing old favorites out of the hymnal.

I'm not sure how the man of the house will react to a functioning piano at our house. The piano room is dangerously close to the kitchen and family room where TV watching and napping happen. I hope he'll love it as much as I do. Maybe the Easter Bunny will end up bringing him some lessons.

Only One Thing

I've got only one thing to say tonight: Amen, come Lord Jesus.

Old Fashioned Warmth

It's cold in Bozeman. Really cold. I'm not sure our high made it above zero today. I know when I finally rolled out of bed this morning the news-folk said the windchill was lower than 40 degrees below zero. It's definitely cold enough to get one's attention. And it can get cold enough in our house to get my attention, too.

We bought our house in late winter earlier this year, and moved in March. For reasons that still escape me, we have two furnaces - one for upstairs and one for downstairs. While the control that offers is nice - we can heat just the space we're in a little more simply, especially with the gas fireplace in our family room/kitchen great room - it means that the bedrooms, all upstairs, stay a little chilly. We've got flannel sheets, a quilt and a big fluffy down comforter on the bed. But when the temp is barely 60 degrees in the room (58 if the man of the house gets sneaky), it's still a little chilly at first.

Enter one of the all time greatest inventions of all time: the hot water bottle (why do they still call them bottles? they're not, really). I had never seen one used for warmth in bed until I lived in Northern Ireland for a year. And then I wasn't just introduced to the concept with the standard red bottle (like the one in my lap right now), but red rubber bottles inside stuffed animal covers! Talk about snuggly! I've still got mine (Shaun the sheep from Wallace and Grommit), though it's a little bulky for keeping my feet warm under all the covers... Fill it up with water heated in the electric kettle (the small kitchen appliance I have refused to live without since my Irish sojourn) and winter nights aren't so bad.

I wonder how much energy Montanans would save if we all kept our tootsies toasty with a few cups of hot water?

Snacks vs. Ingredients

Grant and I ran a few errands today - a "quick" trip to Costco and Target, for things like salad greens and dog food. We did a turn through the Christmas tree ornaments at Target - I'm on the prowl for inexpensive star ornaments for use at church during the time after Epiphany. I found what I was looking for, and then we strolled down the aisles of Christmas candy, showing remarkable restraint. When we passed by the York Peppermint Patties I told Grant, "Those always taste like Christmas to me. Pepperminty, and so cool." "You should try the new mint chips I got at Trader Joe's," he said. I knew nothing of said mint chips. "Where are they?" I asked, knowing they weren't living among the snacks in the pantry. "With the other chocolate chips," he answered. And then I remembered. We have a fundamental difference between us. Grant thinks of chocolate chips as a snack. I think of chocolate chips as an ingredient. After a couple of disappointing beginnings to chocolate chip cookie dough over a span of a few months a few months ago (I KNEW I bought chips, where had they gone??) we now have TWO containers of chocolate chips. His and Hers. Snack and Ingredient. Now, perhaps to make cookies...

True Confessions: Sarah Palin makes me crazy

We're having a fairly lazy Sunday afternoon and evening at our house. After worship, Sunday School (I co-teach the high school class) and worship again, Grant and I took a handful of college students out to lunch. There were a bunch more students in worship, I'd expected more to stick around for free pizza at Old Chicago, since we were buying. But whatever. This afternoon I napped for close to two hours - I hadn't realized how tired I was, but a belly of greasy goodness probably helped. Now we are watching the Vikings play the Arizona Cardinals, and I'm catching up on the stack of newspapers that we've accumulated over the last week +. Grant is a die-hard newspaper reader. He reads two every day: the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal. When we were in Redmond, WA for Thanksgiving, he bought a New York Times every couple of days. Including last Sunday, November 29th. I'm working my way through the New York Times Magazine from that paper, and this article about Sarah Palin, and why so few women like her, caught my attention: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/magazine/29FOB-wwln-t.html The Way We Live Now Why Women Can’t Let Sarah Palin Go By LISA BELKIN Published: November 29, 2009 If life is like high school, then today’s educated, ambitious women are the student-council presidents and Sarah Palin is the head cheerleader. Please let me know what you think...

Choreography of Sheep

I laughed right out loud. Thanks for sending it, Amy!

The Swell Season

Grant and I saw the movie Once in Minneapolis almost two years ago, and we both loved it. The music (Oscar winning) was great, of course, but I loved more that it was set on the street in Dublin. It's funny how different sounds - and more so smells - take me back to the year I lived in Northern Ireland. This past summer I was walking on Main Street in downtown Bozeman, and it started to rain. As I rounded a corner and passed a local burger joint I could have sworn I was in Strabane, I could even picture the chippy in my head. Crazy. Anyway - here's a new video by The Swell Season. I'm thankful to have come across it on Chris Scharen's blog. (And I'm hoping Santa will bring me The Swell Season's newest cd). Hope you like the video!