Key Episode

Let me tell you a story.  Today I picked up my hubby from the doctor's office around noon in South Miami. My sister-in-law, Nina, was in town for the week.  She was visiting South Beach close to our home.  We decided to meet up and do all-u-can eat dim sum for lunch.  By the time we drove home from South Miami and Nina drove from South Beach, it would be 12:30 pm. We could all go in one car.  We arrived a few minutes before Nina and I cleaned out the car.  Hubby drove to lunch.  A good time was had by all.  

Then the real fun began.  I'm ready to run off to my afternoon appointments.  Nina's ready to go finish her errands before her plane flight tomorrow.   I can't find my car keys.  Hubby doesn't have them.  Then Nina can't find her rental car keys either.

Huh?  Did both car keys run off together? Did they fall down the same hole in the time/space continuum?  We could understand one of us losing our keys, but both of us?

After lots of looking and retracing my steps, I finally found my keys. They were in the car's trash bag that I had tossed into the public container by the bay.  Happily, the City of Miami hadn't picked up the trash.  I was very lucky.  Nina never did find her rental car key and had to hire a locksmith to make a new one.

Another Sketch

Another quickie - 40 minutes with the #2 pencil.  It doesn't pass the mirror test but I figured what the heck, I was in a hurry :)

Signed up for this month's Drawspace ATC - the theme of music/musical instruments was too hard to pass up.  Besides if busy Maricello can find time to do it, I can jump off the cliff too.

Quick Sketch

I was confronted today by an acquaintance who is an artist.  He asked if I've drawn anything lately. "Umm, no".  It's been off my radar.  So made a visit to drawspace this evening to see what I could do as a quickie.

Dealing with Death

Got a phone call today from a friend about a mutual friend who died yesterday.  This lady was a mystery writer about Miami and we've known her for years before she was famous.  She chose to keep her illness secret so of course, no one gets to say goodbye.  Everyone deals with death differently.  I had a client who I could tell was dying and he also refused to admit it.   Maybe they just can't say goodbye either.  What would you do if you were diagnosed with terminal cancer? Would you tell your friends?

A Little Bit of Silliness

Thanks to Melissa for providing a little bit of light hearted silliness to my day.

Here's my hero.  She's a little young so can get away with the skivvies.

Tuttle - Learning Chinese Characters

A few folks have recommended Tuttle for learning 800 chinese characters. Thought I'd give it a try. I probably know about 150 characters but took the test at MDBG and found that I only scored 85% on 100 characters. Either I forgot the pinyin equivalent or I forgot the meaning. Tuttle supposedly brings it all together. The big thing for me is remembering the tones. Tuttle uses stories and visual hints to remember the characters. High first tone = giant, Rising second tone = fairy, Third up and down tone = teddy bear, Fourth falling abrupt tone = dwarf, Neutral tone = robot. For example, the character for Gate/Door is easy to remember because it sort of looks like a [ ]. However, remembering the tone is another story. Well, Tuttle writes it up with a story about a FAIRY collecting MONey at the GATE. The MONey tells the approximate pronounciation, the fairy the tone and the gate the meaning. 门

Another good example of the Tuttle system is the character for "cup".  It's a combination that uses the tree character and the "not" character.  This does not bring to mind a cup.  Tuttle's story is about a lumberman that's about to cut down a tree and someone shouts NOT that TREE with the CUP on it, it belongs to the GIANT who uses it to collect the syrup for his BAcon.   So TREE and KNOT tells me the characters, GIANT  tells me high 1st tone and BAY is the prounciation.    杯

There's a few more mnemonic tricks and some of the stories seem overly elaborate but that's because they are for future building blocks. I'm up Chapter 5. So far so good. Most of the characters I know already but now I'm finally remembering the tone.

First Cello Lesson

I was blessed today with a visit from Emily Wright. She graciously showed me a few things and suggested that I move away from the violinistic right hand position. She showed me an exercise to help with the switch.  R would disagree but I think I shall make the attempt. She thought my bow hand looked pretty good. We also covered thumb position and breathing. She suggested humming or speaking the notes to help with breathing out while playing.  Thus went my very first cello lesson. Who knows, maybe I'll see her again when she does her Northeastern tour.  

Emily's overview on thumb position. Note: Play close to the bridge. First finger can actually stop the string from the right side of the string rather than just pressing down.  She showed me all this is in slow motion.  This video was taken afterwards just as a memory aid.