scifiknitter

Having a Wii suddenly appear in our house when our daughter returned home from school has opened my eyes to the video gaming phenomenon. Ana bought herself a Wii and a used television at the end of the semester to give herself a reward for surviving a very challenging year at McGill. It turns out she is a gamer, and had long desired to have a gaming system. This is not something that we provided over the years, although some computer games have drifted through the household. She decided to fulfill her desires herself. Since then, I have begun to learn about the mysteries of Metroid and Zelda. All I have done is watch, however - until she brought home Guitar Hero, on loan from our son's household. I had to try this one. I suck, of course, but it is early in the learning curve. I have created my own band, The Debits, and passed one song, Slow Ride by Foghat. I even got into the groove for a few minutes. To succeed, you have to go into a meditational state where you respond to the no...

Last night was the first performance of the 2008 Stringfolks' concert series. We performed at the DeKalb Meetinghouse Museum. This building was formerly a Methodist meetinghouse, and is perfectly designed for shape note singing, with wonderful acoustics and a square shape. It's hard to sound bad in a such a space. I am playing flute on two dance reels and one Civil War song. I am also singing lead on three songs - quite a change for me. I think my voice is getting stronger, and that I am singing in head voice more and more. The concert is a combination of songs covering settlement times through the current day, laid out chronologically and interspersed with historical tidbits tied to the town where the performance is. We are using several medleys to cram more material into the limit of the period of time people are willing to sit for a concert. We are a little long and need to do some pruning - a few folks left before we were finished. I was in good voice and played the flute w...