Hard Work and Music

Though it doesn't look like I did much, I actually spent a lot of time on my studio today, trying to make more room to work. In the foreground of the picture is the beginning of the new portrait I've started of Joanne and her two dogs (the orange sliver), and Lois is still residing with me on the easel in the back. Lytton and Patrick are checking it out. I had to take a lot of stuff upstairs, like the ironing board, the sewing machine, Diana's keyboard, etc. Now I will need to find places for them. You would think that a house this big would be plenty big enough for one person, but I am always having trouble.

What actually took up a tremendous amount of time today was moving the printer from the right side of my desk to the left. It's the time of year when I want to make things look neat, possibly because I anticipate all the time I will be spending in the house during the winter ahead. I realized that if I moved the printer, it would be out of sight and give the dining room an emptier look. (To this end I have been clustering knick-knacks together lately on table tops.) Like many jobs, it should have taken about ten minutes, but it stretched into well over an hour, or perhaps more. I lost track. The tangle of wires under my desk are responsible for the problem. Everything had to be unplugged and plugged in again. In the process I found out I had two excess cords in my power strip that went to nothing and a cable left over from when I was hooked up to Pine Tree. The sound system to the computer, whose only job right now is to announce when the computer turns on or off and thump when I make a mistake playing Free Cell, is complicated enough to serve Carnegie Hall, provided the most challenge. Eventually I got everything separated and back in place, and I'm happy with my new arrangement. I probably could have achieved the same look simply by dusting off the top of the desk, which, truth be told, made the biggest difference of anything I did.

Toni came over this morning and we spent some time playing our recorders. Later, I played the keyboard that she loaned me again. I had returned it when we had our parting of the ways and asked for it back last Saturday. She had given it to somebody else temporarily, but he was finished with it, so we went to pick it up and now it is back with me. It's as if the rift between us had never happened.