(no subject)

The new kitty, Steve, is aggressively affectionate. I was trying to read the paper and he kept jumping onto the paper, purring loudly, and headbutting me. I took my allegra this morning but it hadn't kicked in yet, so for a while there my face was all itchy.

Went to Noir last night. I'd forgotten to take my anti-depressants for two days, so I was able to put away more alcohol than I have been as of late. The DJ played that Satisfaction song, I have no idea who does it, koschei23, do you know? The one with the robotic voice? I love that song.

Don't you hate it when you have dreams that were so strange and so feelings-based that you can't even start to actually describe them?

Pissed at Costco. Haven't had my Adderall for over a week now. *cries* I want my brain back!!

In other news, I think I'm broke until my payday on the second. Ooops.

I might make coffeecake. Hmm.

OMG!! Harp!!!

I finally hit a certain level of frustration, and went into the garage and dug around until I found the right kind of AC adapter for the keyboard. I put it on the floor and tuned my harp with it. Which is a huge pain in the ass. What I used to do, is use an electronic tuner. I'd play a note, and it would say, "hey, that's an E flat, and here's how far off and in what direction you are." I'd use the tuner to get me in the general direction, and then use my ear to fine tune it to the other notes (i.e., are all my C strings in tune with each other?). You can't depend on it too much, because especially with anything below middle C, strings tend to vibrate unevenly or something and the little arm goes all over the place, and half the time the tuner can't hear the really high notes.

But I'd never just used my ear before. I can tell that a note is off, but I can't tell in what direction. So I have to make it really obnoxiously flat (like a good half note off), and then tune up slowly until I hit it just right. When it's off, there's this weird wavy buzz (if I'm playing the same note on another octave or on the keyboard), and the closer you get, the longer the "waves" get. Realizing that I could hear those, early on in my harp lessons, made me all kinds of happy. :-)

It was tricky to use the keyboard. I ended up kneeling on the floor on one knee, and using the other foot, either the toe (for naturals) or heel (when tuning flats) to hold down the note on the keyboard while I used my left hand to play the notes on the harp and my right to turn the tuning wrench. It was like harp yoga or something.

This was all complicated by the fact that I'm taking advantage of the full set of levers, and tuning the E and B to flats--that way, when I flip the sharping lever on those, they're E and B natural. Having those flats at my disposal means I can play a lot more music. *does the happy dance* But some of the levers need to be oiled or something, and a few others are too loose. Hmmm.

I'm in awe of how much a harp puts up with. They're held together entirely by glue and pressure. On a full-sized harp, there's a full ton's worth of pressure from those strings. Yowza.

I remembered two songs, "All Through the Night" and of course, "Scarborough Fair." Those were the first two songs I learned to play, can we say muscle memory? I'll have to rearrange "All Through the Night," because the arrangement I learned was for a harp that went to the C below middle C, and this only goes down to G. But I'll take a small harp over no harp. :-)

Wooo!!!

I couldn't find my camera just now. Grr. Or I would have set it up somewhere and recorded a video of me playing the harp.