Happy New Year!

Last blog entry of 2007! Happy New Year everybody! 2008 will be filled with new adventures!! Go get yourself some punk!

New Pots

During my visit home to LA I decided to repot my mother's plants. Those are hardy beings--those plants. They managed to survive a couple of years without any TLC. It's either natural selection or stubbornness that kept them around so long. I'm sure they haven't been watered regularly--they've just been sitting out there waiting for the next rain. Anyhow. She kept wonderful cymbidiums, orchid flowers that blossom spectacularly in the spring time. That first year they bloomed with a vengeance, but I don't know if they did so well last year. I repotted what was left of her collection, and hope for the best:

But there are spikes of hope. That baby right there is going to be a string of blossoms:

She also had shelves of what I think are called "Christmas Cactus." These are orchids that bloom in furious and bright shades of fuchsia and violet during the holidays. There was no sight of blossom when I was there, but perhaps with new soil and a generous watering, they'll come back. They have mean, nasty thorns that break off into very fine tendrils that just grab onto your skin with the slightest touch and hold on like false eyelashes wherever you brush by them. The thorns are almost invisible, and they sting. I actually dug into an old, spidery pile of work gloves and chased out any inhabitants of the fingers in order to get some sort of protection against the thorns. At one point, as I was tweezing out the thorns, I asked myself, is this worth it? But it was. Here are her shelves, renewed:

And I also took home a few cuttings I hope to grow into all their former glory. That one on the bottom is the tiniest nubbin of Christmas cactus that was poking up from the soil in an overflowing pot. It has great potential and promise. If I can get a blossom out of that someday then all this will be totally worth it.

That circle of ceramic men are my Dad's. They get to stay home with him in their strange, naked football huddle of a dance. Or whatever it is they're doing.

Happy Merry Christmas!!

Have Elmo or Cookie Monster ever made for a Merrier Christmas than this one?

Happy Holidays everyone!! Lotsa updates to come!

Rope Splicing--ARGh!!

I've never been so frustrated with two pieces of rope in my life! I'm trying to join two pieces of rope togther, but ARGH! The picture above makes it look so easy, but gaddangit, I can't get those two pieces of rope to come together like that for the life of me. And I think part of the reason is because it is for the life of me. Or maybe a finger or an eye. I read that knots decrease the strength of rope significantly, but splices are way stronger. So I want to be able to splice the ropes instead of using all the wonderful bends I've learned to join two ropes together. I went to Home Despot tonight and tried to find a 100' length of rope but they only had 50' lengths, so I was like, well I'll just get two and then splice them together. I mean, in theory and in pictures it looks so easy, but it's not. SHeesh! There's something wrong with my brain that prevents me from following one strand of rope through those twists and turns. I'd like to say I have ADD but it's been confirmed time and time again that I have OCD.

How could it be so hard to keep 100' lengths of 3/8" manila rope in stock?!!

Stretch

Got the hide onto Janet's drum today. Things went really smoothly. It was good that I totally documented everything last time with pics. The only du-oh moment I had was when I realized I had brought the wrong rope with me. I can't, for the life of me, figure out what I did with the right rope. Had to use the old rope from last time, but need to get a new one since I have doubts about its strength when I start applying the real force with the hydralic jacks and then when I'm standing on top of this whole contraption. Having the rope snap when I'm up there is a scary thought.

Oh, and did I ever say that Janet has so graciously leant me a corner in her new space at RCW? It's all mine to stretch drums and pound nails and saw things without the fear of bothering the neighbors. It's such a sheer joy to have that. She also brought in a workbench for me to use (you have no idea how hard it is to saw things in between the arms of a chair). This is great.

Tonight we diddled and played a pattern that we call "Ju Ju Bees" (for the pnenomic we use to remember the pattern). Playing Ju Ju Bees is hard work, but my tai chi training helped and added a power to it that I hadn't used before. It's all about using your body efficiently and utilizing your core. Anyhow, it gave new life to the diddles I had been working on, so we'll see. The holiday season is kicking my butt, and I will be glad when it's over. The one thing I'm looking forward to is spending time with my family and seeing my one-year-old niece and maybe making cookies. Oh, and cleaning the house--but I'm not looking forward to that.

Re-heading

I volunteered to re-head Janet's drums. This suits my OCD personality, as well as gives me somthing to do during these long, long, cold winter evenings. Plus, it's the least I can do to repay the gift of my own drum. Anyhoo.

Re-heading consists of taking an old, worn-out taiko head off a drum, and putting a new one on. You go to the internet or the (remember these?) telephone and ask people to send you new hides and tacks to secure the hides to the drum. You also shove toothpicks into the holes left behind by the tacks you pulled out to get the old head off. That's a pain. Because I wanted to do things correctly, I sawed the toothpicks down, and then sanded them flush, and left myself with the dilemma of fixing the sanded parts of the drum with new coats of sealer and tung. Luckily, I have exhaustive (boy, do I mean, exhaustive) experience with sealer and tung. It looks something like this before the tung oil:

Oh sheesh, zoom out, it'll look more like this when I'm done:

Anyhow. That's what I'm up to. I have a hide that I will start marinating in my bathtub tomorrow (in between showering, of course), then on Sunday I get to do the first stretch. You've seen all these chronicles documented in depth already on this blog. But I like this. I wish I could quit my job and re-head drums for a living. Oh, and play taiko. And maybe make bachi.

College students are all starting to apply to college, so that leaves little free time in my life. Or rather, it leaves me with little free energy beyond processing college applications, reheading drums, and maybe stealing in a moment here and there to do stuff like brush my teeth, blog, and watch Ugly Betty. Oh, and sleep. But it's all good. The holidays are coming up, and I look forward to the free time. Gotta get there first.