Musical instruments I do not play

 So, here's the thing:

Some years back - more than I care to calculate at this point - I bought the ukulele pictured above in a mad flight of island fancy during a trip to Maui. As time passed, I practiced irregularly, took a few lessons from time to time, and even recorded a video or two of my playing during one more active period, but really, the uke spent a lot of time idle. I am not sure if I don't have a musical soul at all, or if I just never had a long enough stretch of consistent practice to reach critical mass, or what, but I can't say with any honesty, even after all this time, that I play the ukulele.

Of course, since owning a ukulele worked out so well, I went ahead and got a mandolin, which you can also see above.

This decision was made in the service of charitable giving at an online gala supporting the Whatcom County Humane Society, and was encouraged by the enthusiasm of friends (if not spouse), spurred on by a little auction rivalry with one "Amanda", and perhaps abetted by some consumption of peanut butter whiskey. But paying entirely too much for an instrument that I cannot play was all for a good cause, so there we are. I hope the kitties and puppies are happy.

Oh, did I mention it's an electric mandolin? It came with this sweet amp and bunch of other stuff.

So, what have I learned about mandolins since making this commitment? Well, first, that they are tuned completely differently from a ukulele; that they have metal strings instead of nylon; that they are strummed or plucked with picks; and that the likelihood of my actually learning to play one is certainly no worse than my learning to play ukulele, but hardly any better.

In any case, I can't play either one right now, over even tune them, since my thumb is broken. At least that's a legit excuse, eh?

Jig-word Cross-saw

So, you may know that Coco and I enjoy from time to time what we call Puzzle Time, that interval when we put on some music or an old black and white movie, and she sits at her puzzle station and works on a 1,000-piece eBoo jigsaw puzzle, and I sit nearby on the couch and do a NY Times crossword puzzle. It's a practice that arose during lockdown days, but one that we find peaceful and comfortable and plan to continue.

The puzzle station behind the couch

Well, today the two worlds collided. I was doing my lunchtime crossword and its title was JIGSAW PUZZLE.

The theme answers were descriptions of things you do with a jigsaw puzzle phrased in common expressions, such as PICK UP THE PIECES and GET IT TOGETHER. But the real cleverness of the puzzle lay in its incorporation of an actual jigsaw puzzle into the grid!

Look where I have outline the circled letters in some of the words - here's a closeup:

See how the F M E N forms a kind of upside-down T-shape? And how the R E T T S makes a backwards C? All those little arrangements of letters formed the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, like so:

And that cordoned off little section in the bottom of the puzzle is where the pieces fit together like a jigsaw puzzle to form the final answer!

I love puzzles that are challenging but interesting and have a nice payoff, rather than just being slogs through trivia or attempts at interpreting clues that are not just obscure but dubious.

Hats off to Christina Iverson and Jeff Chen - this puzzle was a winner!

Automobilia

So, today I went down to retrieve my Smart Car from Seattle, where he has been living in the care of a pal for majority of the pandemic, since we were all in lockdown and whatnot and he could be of more use down there than in my driveway. Driving the car again and seeing all the cars on the freeway got me thinking about cars in general, and I recalled that Jay Leno has or has had a show about the huge car collection that he has amassed over the years. I gather the collection comprises many rare and unusual vehicles, most of which I am given to understand are either very fancy or go very fast or both. I don't know why I started thinking about this, but it made me put together a list of cars that I would own, if I ever was in a position to have a huge garage and to obtain perfectly restored collector vehicles.

It's probably overlaps Jay's collection not at all...

Volkswagen 410

The first car I ever owned and I loved it. 

Datsun B0210 Honey Bee

I learned to drive stick on one of these. Very peppy.

Subaru Brat

Never had one, always wanted one... it has plastic seats in the pickup bed, for cryin' out loud!

Geo Metro Convertible

I have had two Geos, but never a droptop, even though I came close to buying one twice.

They are suh-weet.

Any Isetta

Three wheels and on a door that is the entire front of the car.

Originally made by a firm that used to make refrigerators.

How could you not fall in love with this?

Fiat 500

I have wanted one ever since J-Lo drove hers through the Bronx.

Test drove it a few years back - it was nice.

1960 NSU Prinz

Why this? Because of this:

(click to read story)

I guess I won't be going to any auto shows anytime soon, but it'll be nice to take the Smartie to work again.

Give the boi a hand

 So, yeah.

Way back when on August 25, I had a little mishap on the electrical bicycle.  Heading down the Bay Trail on the way to work, I was charged by a dog who had gotten loose from its human and decided to play. In an attempt to avoid running over the dog and going ass over teakettle, I swerved, bit the soft shoulder, and went ass over teakettle onto the embankment. Luckily a blackberry bush broke my fall and I didn't roll down onto the Burlington Northern tracks.

There was no harm done to the bike, the human was helpful and considerate, and the dog was suitably abashed, so I went on my way, little the worse for wear, although my left hand, upon which I think I landed with my full weight, was throbbing like heck, making a typically painful early morning meeting literally so. I wound up taking ibuprofen for some days, and iced my hand, and even put it in a brace to keep from overusing it, thinking I had a bad sprain.

I continued with the casual care until I noticed that a quite a bit of time had passed and that things had not completely recovered - the hand was still less than 100% functional and there was some lingering pain. I called the doctor and went in after about another week; she ordered an X-ray, which took me another few days to get. Lo and behold, it turned out it wasn't a bad sprain, it was an intra-articular avulsion fracture at the base of the proximal phalanx of the thumb likely underlying the ulnar collateral ligament insertion. Yep, a broken thumb.

I made it almost 64 years without a broken bone... doggo blew my record.

Anyway, doc wanted me to get it into a spica splint and immobilize the thumb so it could heal; the alternative was a cast, and nobody wants that. It took some doing - a decent splint is apparently not easy to come by, and the one I got at the pharmacy might have been good for tendonitis but wasn't doing the trick for an avulsion fracture. I finally got one today, from my doctor's own clinic no less.

So, if I am good boy, and the next set of X-rays in three weeks shows improvement, I may get out of this without plaster. Having been using the thumb broken for six weeks (it made a very interesting crunching noise from time to time), I am not confident of the prognosis.

In the meantime, I am doing my very best to keep it as immobile as possible (luckily I only hunt-and-peck type) and reflecting on how lucky I am in a circumstance like this:

• I have a job that allows me to work with a busted wing
• I have the flexibility to take the time to go to doctors and to get X-rays and to visit pharmacies
• I have health insurance that pays for a lot of this and resources to cover the rest
• I have a comfortable home and a supportive spouse to help me out

For me, this broken bone is a minor inconvenience and funny story. For some people, it would have a profound impact and possibly be a life-changing event. I try to never forget that, to never take my situation for granted, and to always remember my less fortunate sisters and brothers. 

I can always give them a hand.

The river flows

 

So, this birthday is a big milestone, one would suppose, based on the Beatles song that identifies this age as a turning point, the beginning of some sort of uncertain phase of life. Of course, it actually has no operational significance; tomorrow will be much the same as yesterday in any practical sense.

As I was looking back through old posts for insight into how to characterize this moment, if was first led to Heraclitus, who is famously to have said that you can't step into the same river twice - that change is constant. Less famously, Heraclitus can said to have been topped (in the tradition of old stand-up comedians) by Cratylus, who added to that observation the idea that you cannot even step into the same river once. Here's how the Oxford Reference puts it:

[T]he river is changing and gone even as a single event of stepping occurs. The point is that reality is utterly particular (one individual event, one moment of time, one individual thing after another). Any adequate thought would have to match the flux with change of its own, so any attempt to categorize reality is like trying to cage the winds

Now, I am certainly not going to say that Cratylus is spot on, but it sure does feel that way these days. Between COVID and about a jillion unknowns at work, it certainly seems that every particular moment is its own universe, one which bears only coincidental resemblance to the instant that precedes or follows it. It is not without consequence that "pivot" has been the word of the year - whether it is a profound philosophical truth or not, it has been a workaday reality that change has been our only constant. Which just makes it harder to pick any one of these moments as a milestone or watershed.

But contra Hearaclitus and Cratylus, my rifling through old blogs demonstrated that there has been constancy of a sort over the years. My reliance on Epicurean philosophy, Stoicism, and Absurdism is a thread; so is my series of summer self-improvement programs (at least when I had summers). I was having a conversation with someone the other day that brought home to me how much lore and understanding of the field my 24 years in the community and technical college system have given me. And of course, my family unit of me, Coco, and Selkie is still going strong. Maybe Jean-Baptiste Karr had it right when he said plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

In any case, the river flows on. Last night in our hot tub soak, Coco suggested we visualize a lazy river float as part of our reflection/mediation time. The river of life hasn't been so lazy lately, but that doesn't mean the river of the soul can't be. 

I'll think I'll just float past this "utterly particular" not-milestone with that in mind.