(no subject)
As I have not posted in Ever, I suppose I should tell you folks what I'm up to these days.
Got a job at a commercial insurance company. Better pay than I've ever had. My cube is on the 14th floor of an office building downtown - nice view! Nice commute, too: 3 miles more or less, none of it Interstate, and for the first time ever, work is accessible by bus.
The hard part is dealing with some bad work habits I've picked up thanks to the stuff I went through the last few years. *sigh*
I'm learning to tune/fix pianos. I've got an old Whitney upright in my storage room right now, half-gutted. Got it for free and am learning how to make it work better. It may not be worth fixing up, in the end, but the point is to learn. That's been going on since last December. I've spent several hundred on tools & materials already and have learned about strange things like hide glue.
I've also earned some money tuning people's pianos. I am very grateful to them, because tuning is harder than I thought it'd be and I need all the practice I can get. And I get a real kick out of hearing a piano go from "argh, what is that?" to "oh, hey, nice!" The best part is when I get to the tenor/bass strings and the whole soundboard sings when I hit the notes. On a good piano it sounds like a choir in the distance.
Except spinets. Spinets suck. And I own one.
And for some reason I'm currently on a fountain pen kick. Which could be bad because fountain pens can get expensive. So far I've got five, none of which cost more than $50, and one being only $5. I mean, you can drop thousands of dollars on a single fountain pen, should the madness take you.
One nice thing: I have this old built-from-a-kit pen that turned out to be decent quality. Once I cleaned it up, it wrote as well as it did when I got it 15-20 years ago.
I try not to buy expensive ink, either. Though I did buy one that was $27 for 3 ounces because we're making this plaque thing for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary, and the ink in question is just the right color, plus gold sparkles. I mean, come on. Gold sparkles!
The sad thing is, the office supplies at work aren't really fountain pen friendly. The paper just bleeds.
Got a job at a commercial insurance company. Better pay than I've ever had. My cube is on the 14th floor of an office building downtown - nice view! Nice commute, too: 3 miles more or less, none of it Interstate, and for the first time ever, work is accessible by bus.
The hard part is dealing with some bad work habits I've picked up thanks to the stuff I went through the last few years. *sigh*
I'm learning to tune/fix pianos. I've got an old Whitney upright in my storage room right now, half-gutted. Got it for free and am learning how to make it work better. It may not be worth fixing up, in the end, but the point is to learn. That's been going on since last December. I've spent several hundred on tools & materials already and have learned about strange things like hide glue.
I've also earned some money tuning people's pianos. I am very grateful to them, because tuning is harder than I thought it'd be and I need all the practice I can get. And I get a real kick out of hearing a piano go from "argh, what is that?" to "oh, hey, nice!" The best part is when I get to the tenor/bass strings and the whole soundboard sings when I hit the notes. On a good piano it sounds like a choir in the distance.
Except spinets. Spinets suck. And I own one.
And for some reason I'm currently on a fountain pen kick. Which could be bad because fountain pens can get expensive. So far I've got five, none of which cost more than $50, and one being only $5. I mean, you can drop thousands of dollars on a single fountain pen, should the madness take you.
One nice thing: I have this old built-from-a-kit pen that turned out to be decent quality. Once I cleaned it up, it wrote as well as it did when I got it 15-20 years ago.
I try not to buy expensive ink, either. Though I did buy one that was $27 for 3 ounces because we're making this plaque thing for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary, and the ink in question is just the right color, plus gold sparkles. I mean, come on. Gold sparkles!
The sad thing is, the office supplies at work aren't really fountain pen friendly. The paper just bleeds.