Jingle bells, jingle bells!

Yes, I know I'm early, but I'm excited! I just purchased some Christmas violin duet sheet music. I need to get it early so I can practice the songs up and then record a Christmas album. I still have mixed emotions about recording; sometimes it's wonderfully rewarding and sometimes it makes me want to put my violin down the garbage disposal. But overall, it's a good experience.

In other news, I'm going to L.A. tonight!!! Yay!! I'm going to have a marvelous girls' weekend with Karen. We're going to tour the WB studio and shop Rodeo and go to a fancy restaurant and see movie-magic in action and go the Comedy and Magic club and all sorts of cool stuff! I'm leaving right after work, so you can imagine how time is draggggggging....

You'd think three would be enough...

But no. I was restringing my violin and I had three spare A's. More than enough, right? So I open the first one and.... it's used. ?? Apparently I put a used string back in there, though I don't know why. So I open the second one. It's broken. ???? How did that happen? Odd... So I open the third one. Pristine. I start stringing it up, and even as I tightend it, it felt weird. Then... KAPOW!!! Broken.

ARGHHH!!!!!

I had already mixed up the original A and the used one I found with the rest of the strings, so I couldn't even put those on as a spare. Now my violin has only three strings on it! It looks like some poor, neglected violin that someone keeps in their attic because they don't know what to do with it! :( And the music store was closed so I couldn't buy anymore. It was a sad weekend.

I'm back!

Sorry for the long hiatus, but I am back. Much has happened, in vacations and haircuts and hair color changes and general life. (Here's the cut without the color)



But there's something else I want to talk about right now.

WASPS. I HATE WASPS. I have a crippling, paralyzing fear of them and an absolute, utter, festering hatred of them. WHY does the most hideous, despicable and thoroughly evil species in the world have to adore raspberries? My beautiful raspberry bushes in my back yard, which I have nursed from mere twigs to lush abundance, are held hostage by SWARMS of wasps!! It's Grand Freaking Central Station for the whole county's wasp population! They have little wasp jamborees all over the scarlet, jewel-bright clusters. The berries hang there, mocking me, so plump and ripe and sweet, and just handfuls to be plucked off. But I go into a literal cold sweat at the mere thougt of wasps touching me (ugghhh, see, I just got a shiver writing that sentence) so I haven't been able to harvest.

However, I recently had the brilliant notion to harvest in the middle of the night when the wasps are in their nests! Huzzah! On my first attempt, I went out armed with a bowl and a flashlight. Yet before I could pick a single berry, a night-owl wasp came flying out of the leaves and I went screaming into the house. On my second attempt, I chickened out again and had my mom harvest some for me. It was win-win; I got my berries and she got to lord her non-insect-phobic self over me.

And tonight, I just finished my third and most bountiful harvest. It was all going quite well until I ran across a wasp sleeping on a leaf near where I was harvesting. I shrieked, ran to the door, brushed myself off a hundred times in case a sneaky one had landed on me, and let the adrenaline wear off. Then, ladies and gentleman, not only did I go back for the bowl, I PICKED TWO MORE BERRIES!!! Aren't you proud of me? I sure am. I kept my flashlight trained on the sleeping beast while I plucked the last berries, and every instinct told me to run screaming down the street, but I did it! And I have a bowlful of fresh, ripe raspberries to show for it!

Now that might not seem like much to you, or you might think I'm silly and dumb to be so afraid of wasps, but I am. And they patrol my crops. And it sucks. But I persevered and I beat those bastards at their own game! Score one for the good guys.