Everything Bianca

Yes. Easy Mode.

Let's begin from the beginning.

This week practice was rather... clunky. Take that along with my further listening to Judas Priest and picking out what I could and could not play with an acoustic. 

"Why don't you give up and play an electric guitar?" I asked myself.

Well? Why don't I? I promised myself that if I played guitar for 6 months and still enjoyed it, I could [get a guitar teacher, but I broke that rule so...] buy myself another / better guitar. Next month will be 6 months.

Ask your teacher, I chided. 

So I brought it up with him today. Should I just give it up and go with electric?
He stood up and handed me an electric guitar and plugged it in. "Play this for the session today," he told me.

I laughed the first few minutes. "Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to Easy Mode!" I thought to myself. My goodness, the thing is like butter under my fingers. Utterly effortless. No wonder I read all those recommendations to 'barely' press the strings. Well, you can't do that with Patience. Barely pressing her strings is what you do in order to make no sound at all.

That was strike one in Patience's imaginary coffin.

Strike two had to do with my ignorance. Yes. Ignorance. To yourself always be true and such.

"Why don't people play finger style on electric guitar?" I asked, seeing no significant difference as I played Blackbird. 

He began to explain and then I summed up his words.

"Prejudice? That's it? There's no real reason? You mean I can play fingerstyle with an electric just fine?!" <-- I'm typing that the way I felt it. I sounded more bewildered. Strike two, all the way. Nothing stopping me from fingerstyle, and if I want, bluegrass. Ignorance really, but since no one ever mentioned it, I thought there was some kind of actual impediment.

Live and Learn.

Strike three. Final blow.

We were discussing the Beatles and how Blackbird was the only song by the Beatles that I liked. I like plenty other Beatles songs, but I liked them as played by other people. The discussion moved to Yesterday, and he began to play the chords on my guitar. 

"Wow. Your guitar is hard to play."

Okay, I wouldn't say hard, but Patience certainly isn't easy mode. Without Patience, I wouldn't have these wicked callouses so quickly. I wouldn't have named her so aptly, and ... other stuff. Who knows. I don't regret having my guitar. Had to start somewhere.

It's just really time to move on. And why buy a nylon acoustic when an electric does the same thing, and plus some? Probably something to do with resonance and body and stuff, but um, yeah, not that important. 

I'll take easy mode now, and by now, I mean some time in June / July. I have to get back from Hawaii first.

I have been married 4 years today, happily so.

I'm thinking hard for something else add. Do I tell you my lackadaisical story of looking up marriage laws, going to the notary, and correcting him when he tried to tell me that he had to do anything other than sign my paper? Then we went across the street where I looked for the most simple silver bands available and bought two. May 15, 2004, 10am.

Do I think back to how the word 'husband' choked in my mouth? How I called him my "Beloved" my "spouse" my "room mate for life"?

I like my simple silver band. I'll probably upgrade to titanium one year, for kicks. I call him my husband freely, and without hesitation. 

Four years, and I remembered it was our anniversary when he said, "Happy Anniversary" a few hours ago as we stood outside cleaning up the aftermath of fixing his car.

"Oh, really? That's today?"

Yay us.  

I've added some new music to my collection. Sad Wings of Destiny by Judas Priest (album). A couple songs by Steve Vai. And Framing Armageddon (Something Wicked Pt 1) by Iced Earth (also the whole album).

I've owned one song by Iced Earth previously, Damien, and played it into the ground.

After listening to this new collection for a few times I found myself singing in my head

Please God give me, the strength to lead
It's my charge to keep
Make the sorrow the fuel I need
It's my charge to keep

So I woke up and put that on first thing.  

What's amusing is that the reviews of this album is that if you like Iced Earth, you'll be disappointed by it. I only ever found one song by Iced Earth palatable to me before, and I adore this one.

When I copy this over to my mp3 player in the car. I plan to put Charge to Keep and Damien side by side. They will fit together like Fire and Ice. 

As for the other new stuff, nothing has grabbed me yet, but I've only listened through it all 3 times maybe. Quick enough for me to get obsessed to a song, not long enough for me to get a taste for it all.

I've owned Samael's Solar Soul for a long time now, and I was listening to it in the car and really started to enjoy some of it.

Guitar Practice

I don't have a "measured and timed" progress report on my guitar playing, but I was playing the C major pentatonic scale to a jam along CD yesterday and having fun. My fingers could actually keep up with some of the stuff I tried.

There are also parts of Blackbird that I suddenly played much smoother.

Chords are still embarrassing, but I'm better than worse.

Nysidra Work

Nysidra, in case you missed the memo, is not also my "handle," but also a system I created.  This system has its own site, but my ideas for it exceed my desire to bring them into reality. *laughs* Either way, some of the images of the glyphs of the system are old and require much needed attention. I'd been balking against that, but this week started to work on vector images of the glyphs.

Someone gave me an idea of how to develop the site. I've had a few visions of how I could implement that, but without the better glyphs, I'm not going to like anything I do. So, that first. 

For CJ and Misty, I keep dry food out constantly and feed them wet food once a day. This system has worked wonderfully for them up until now.

For a while, we've had an issue with CJ sporadically regurgitating his food. Additionally, CJ has gained weight disproportionate to his sister. 

Well, we've discovered the final clue to all this. CJ is either 1) mean 2) bulimic. I say the 2nd one as a joke. 

My husband witnessed CJ forcing himself to eat this morning. He was pushing his sister out of the way and eating every last bit of food in the bowl. Our hypothesis is, when CJ sees that the bowl is getting low, he will gorge himself until he's eaten it all, thereby making himself sick. 

This would also answer a lot of questions about CJ's puking habits - in the morning, and usually undigested food. (Yeah, you probably didn't want to know that.)

We haven't come a decision on how to handle this yet. I'm probably going to consult the breeder and my vet before I go with feeding them only on a schedule. Another thought is that I could buy a 2nd bowl and put food in both of them and keep them both rediculously full at all times.

Another guitar update.

I asked about the action on my guitar. My teacher handed me a guitar from his wall with lower action and told me to play it. It was like butter in my hands really, silly putty compared to the steel guitar I had. 

I want to stick with the guitar I have at its current action. I have done nothing but constantly improve in playing it. I'm building my strength. It's not "easy", but that's not a requirement. If I lowered the action on my current guitar, I'd probably get a lot more buzzing out of it anyway. Once I've built my strength, I'll make that decision with more experienced hands.

Speaking of constant improvement. My teacher wanted to impress upon me how quickly he thought I was learning. He even mentioned how it was a trend among the growing amount of female students he has. They actually do the work, he told me. They pay attention, play with more finesse, and learn far faster than males. He noted that most males have a hubris about playing the guitar, they attack songs with brute force, don't practice and claim they already know the material. Gender differences aside, I'm happy there are more female guitar students in the world (or at least Pensacola). \m/ (^_^) \m/ I am 100% sure there are female slackers and studious males with grace. My teacher just hasn't met any lately.

The only thing I personally think is not coming along as smoothly as everything else - chords. And, I am very sure that's because of my guitar. Now that I know that, I'm cool with it. With time, comes improvement. With practice, will come the strength.

Oh, the tips of my fingers have reached a 3rd stage - crustiness. *laughs* Slightly dry looking, looking like they want to peel. I'll buff those little bits down though.

As for the other hand, I have no fingernails on them anymore. *grins* Tore the natural ones off. I'm going to roll with playing with my flesh, see how that progresses.  

Oh! There was one other bit about my session I wanted to mention. He showed me how the scales I have been practicing playing into playing blues and other licks. I asked him how that related to jazz. He played it. (Jazz is the geek of guitar playing, from what I understand now.) I asked how that related to bluegrass. He moved to a closed G form to show me, but as I watched him play I was grinning from ear to ear. I'm still smitten by the style. Somewhere between Bluegrass and Contemporary Jazz (for it's embelishment minus the complex chord formations) is where I'm going to land. I love the play style, the frolicking all over the fret board.

A bit of a guitar update.

I'm working on learning Blackbird by The Beatles, per my teacher's instructions.
I'm working on learning Crosses by Jose Gonzalez, per my own asperations.  

I've got three C major scale forms down. I can play them at 100 bpm as of this afternoon actually. It was fairly amazed by that.

I have some barre chord changes I'm sounding horrible with. *smiles*

I have a few picking patterns, learned and created, I like to close out my practice with.

Someone kindly mentioned to me that I should get someone to lower the action on my guitar. I thought about that, I did, but I'd like to build up the strength in my hands as well. Low action nylon strings would be an effortless breeze. I do want to play fingerstyle, and the type of 'rambunctious' music I'd like to play would require the action I have now so that the strings are constantly buzzing. At least, that's what I think.

Thank you for the suggestion, Corgi. I'll definitely ask around for more advice on what I should do about my strings.

One of the "joys" of independent living is feeding yourself. Easy? Right?

Not for me. I can follow a recipe, I've proven this to myself over and over. I can 'throw something together' in a delicious and edible manner. I've done this too. 

I do not enjoy being in the kitchen. I remember fondly the days when "dinner's ready" was the only catalyst for me eating at night. I lived that way for 22 years. 

I'll go through a month of cooking delicious, wonderful meals and get fatigued. I'll stop. So what do I do? Vacillate between eating out of boxes and cans to eating food to delivered to my door to eating food cooked from fresh ingredients.

I'm ready to swing back to fresh now. It's slightly depressing I can't maintain it. When I do go through this phase I end up wasting so much food. For one, I am the only person in the house that eats vegetables. Second, I don't eat much. So, I buy broccoli, onions, tomatoes, greens... eat some, throw out the rest after it has spoiled a few days later. Eating fresh is a boon for families. You can actually eat it all. A single solitary person? You have to pretty much eat the same thing for a week to make it work, or have some elaborate leftover recycling scheme. 

Oh, that and the time it requires. Eating just isn't high up on my priority list where I get enthused about taking anything longer than an hour to nourish myself. And screw the "30 minute recipes." Those liars NEVER include prep & clean up time. Not to mention shopping for 1 chicken breast and a "side" of vegetables. Guess what happens to the rest? Garbage can.

I resort to cans of soup or a baked potato with a can of stewed tomatoes thrown on top.

I feel like, wanting to eat 'fresher' stuff only leads to a waste of money, food, and time... or forced monotony.

Now that I have a teacher, when I practice on my guitar, I follow this procedure:

I perform the lesson given to me. Presently, this amounts to reviewing chords and scales. I play them, go over them, and what not.

Then I do my other stuff. I'll go over a song I've learned. Review chords that I've taught myself. Look up some of the exercises I've found on the internet. 

Here are some others things I've found myself doing lately. 

I *think about* what I'm doing. Sometimes, the guitar doesn't even have to be in hand. I had been given the A and E form barre chords of the C major scale to practice. I took a look at them and realized something my teacher did not point out. All the A form barre chords have their root note on the A string, are strummed from that string only, and the form corresponds to C scale. (D minor barre uses an A minor form, G major barre uses A major form.) The only thing I really need to know is where the notes are on the A string. After that, I can deduce the rest. Same for the E barres on the low E string, all strummed from the 6th string.

There's a reason my teacher would not have said any of this, and a reason why reading it isn't that much better. You have to see the pattern, figure it out. Don't just "Play Exercise #1 for 10 minutes." That's boring. That's not practicing. That's being a machine. Yes, get in the physical workout, but think about what you're doing for a second. Figure out how it relates.

The other thing - I play on my guitar. Play. Have fun. P L A Y. That's why I'm teaching myself to do this, right?

So, with something like a scale. Playing it up and down, up and down, up and down, back and forth. *yawn* Yes, you're supposed to do that, but that's not it. You don't stop there. So you've got it memorized, or nearly. I start making up rhythms using those notes. I try to make up a little song using the chords I've learned or the scales I'm working on. 

It's actually pretty funny, especially when my aspiration outreaches my skill. 

I am fairly sure that's exactly what you want to do. Try to do something you can't do. Why? Because you've created a goal. You may even create the beginnings of a cute song. 

Anyway, I've heard that people hate practicing. 

Try playing with the practice. It might help.

10-April-2008
"Everquest II - I stopped playing this game last year. I'm putting it on the list because there's the chance I may start playing again. Not on my old character, Korina, on my old server, Najena. I'd start on the same server as my neighbor."

Friday evening, I renewed my subscription and began reinstalling the game. Somehow (as if I'm really surprised), I went from just checking out the site and forums to waiting for the updates to finish.

Saturday morning I iniated the transfer that turned Lady Korina Noctiferre of Najena into Lady Korixa of Antonia Bayle. That's the server my husband put his character on while I was in "quit mode."

I haven't played since September of last year, and prior to then, I'd been playing for three years. There have been several updates I know nothing about. I don't know anyone on AB (other than my husband). I always played Korina in a 'near' roleplay manner, but now that I'm on an official RP server, I can do that even more. 

The sad part, is that I can't think of her as Korina anymore. She isn't the #1 Woodworker. She doesn't have the market firmly in her grasp. She doesn't log in with several requests from people to craft things. She isn't going to be called to raid at all hours of the day. There won't be any familiar faces. 

So, I'm not going to put up my 3 years worth of screen shots of a character I no longer play. Korixa is a transfer student. Whatever happened in her past is over. No one cares. She's an unknown. 

This can work too. 

I spent that first day in game spending nearly all of Korixa's money. There was so much furniture she didn't have! Flowers, plants... oh, and a piano. 18p? No problem. Oh, and new lighting fixtures, and more pets. I spent about 70p on furniture and about 50p on collection items.

Korixa is walking around with 30p on her now, but her house is up to date. Although, I will admit, it's starting to look a bit... full. *laughs*

Sunday I attended a couple of the server's roleplay events. I went to the Wishing Well and to a guild's bar. It was weird. I didn't know anyone. I'm used to knowing almost everyone. Agony. 

This makes the game worth playing now though. Having everything (short of a few 'uber' raid items), made the game boring. Now I'm low on funds, no longer top level, out of the loop, friendless, guildless, and there are lands as yet explored by me.

Awesome.