Another Sunday on the Wane............

There is a leg of lamb roasting in the oven.........slowly basting its succulent self to an internal temperature of 140 degrees.
It will be consumed in part with a combination of green beans and diced tomatoes seasoned with oregano, olive oil and cinnamon...........(yes, I said cinnamon. Try it! The addition of cinnamon to tomato products produces a wonderful aroma and flavor.)

In easy reach are a 12 string and a 6 string guitar and a violin................I pick up the violin 4 or 5 times a day and play a song by ear. As anxious as I am to make some real progress with it, I don't want to irretrievably imprint bad habits. I need some sort of basic dvd based intructional material and a couple of electronic devices to give myself the sort of feedback that would otherwise be provided by an instructor. I've been refreshing my knowledge of music reading and using internet tools to familiarise myself with the finger positions and hand positions.
The guitar is a little easier to work with....for ther first time I am memorizing the notes on the fretboard and matching them with notes on a staff, reading about chord theory and using the "wax on, wax off" principle of training my right hand to employ new pick styles etc.
In the course of a day I generally play one or the other of the guitars as much as 2 to 3 hours.....running through old songs, remembering and relearning chords and building the stamina in my wrists and the speed, strength and precision of my left hand fingers.
Over the course of the past two weeks I've broken off all the fingernails on my right hand.........(I'm basicly a finger-picker) , the fingertips of my left hand are sore and grooved but callous is starting to develope, and there is a small blister forming at the corner of the nail on my right thumb. On the plus side, I finally found two of the roughly 150 picks that are around here somewhere.
Each time I come back to my guitars, I have to relearn barre chords all over again.............as though I had never seen one before. This time nothing will be allowed to distract me from that progress.
I have a half read book on the night stand.........................the subject is interesting to me but the book is so poorly written that I can only tackle a few pages at a time.
Over the course of the past three years I have collected over 250 books...........most of the sleep issues that prevented me from reading are laid to rest (an unwittingly appropriate phrasing).
I have a new direction of interest involving woodworking that I will be exploring in the next few months...................the plans I prepared for this spring ran afoul of inescapable realities of time and circumstance. They will be postponed only................not abandoned. Some of you know what I am referring to. To those who do not...................sorry about that, this ain't true confessions.
I need more books in about 4 different areas of interest...further deponent sayeth not.
No more talking about what I'm going to do.

I'll wait and tell you what I did.

Thus endeth the entry............