Temporary resolution

…with a temporary solution.

My new resolution is — for the months of January and February only — to try to curb my addiction to blogging, so I can get other stuff done between the hours of 5 and 6 a.m. every weekday. Weekends are open.

It’s a difficult thing for me, since writing is a pastime I enjoy almost more than any other hobby; so much so, in fact, that I wish it wasn’t a hobby, if you get my drift.

Anyway.

I wonder if I could take a quick poll of interest (and yes, this will require lurkers to come out of the shadows, temporarily!). If you would like to be notified by email when there’s a new post here at RtB so you won’t have to constantly check out the homepage, please indicate your interest via commenting below. Here’s the deal:

  1. For anyone who comments — or has ever commented in the past — here, I already have your email address, as long as your posting name is the same.
  2. For those who have never commented, posting a comment below will give me your email address (but it won’t be shown in public, so only I will have it).
  3. Once I have your email address, I can notify you when I post new content here.

Would you be interested in something like that? I know everyone’s busy. If you’d rather just take your chances and be surprised (or better yet, dig into the archives and leave some cool comments for me to find next time I log in), no problem. I just want to make things more convenient for my 100 worldwide readers. :-)

As anyone who’s ever commented here already knows, I will never send you any kind of marketing email. See all the ads on this site? Oh, wait…

So. Tell me your articulate and compendious thoughts. Would you like to be notified over the next couple of months when I publish new drivel?

Ready, steady, comment.

Much love from the soon-to-be hairless Fink

Vieil ami

Old friend indeed.

In 1970, my sister Mavis gave me an awesome gift — the Yamaha FG 180 “flat top” acoustic guitar that our parents bought and she no longer wanted. (I think her interests were redirecting to bigger and better areas, like, oh…boys :-D )

I immediately buried myself in my bedroom with it, along with a Mel Bay chord chart book and my record player. From that point until around high school graduation, those three items got an awful lot of use.

Over the last 42 years, it’s seen some interesting treatment: it was dropped on its head many times, spent a couple of years buried in a closet, survived several moves, played countless parties, school concerts, coffee house gigs and church services, and even went missing for a couple of months. We’ve seen some times together, this old thing and I.

Unbeknownst to my parents at the time, they purchased a fine instrument, which now, four decades later, is in considerably high demand. According to my research, the sound is likened to the Martin D18 — no slouch comparison. The FG 180 was Yamaha’s attempt in the late 60s to enter the “Western guitar” market in the US — a time when record numbers of young people were learning to play acoustic guitar, inspired by the many country-and-western artists making it big.

As you can see by the photos, it’s been through several mills over the years. And true to the conduct of a rebellious pre-teenager of the time, it even has my initials carved in it. Ha.

When Daddy visited in September, he did some work on the neck, which made a huge difference. Last night, son Lars came over and restrung it and polished it up for his mama. It’s still an old soul, just like me. I guess that’s why I’ll never give it up.

I’ll just pass it down.

Hope you’re relaxing this weekend, fiends. I think I’ll play me some git-tar.

When you die at the palace…

…you really die at the palace. ;-)

Yep, bigtime fail on my part. Remember last spring, when I embarked on the holistic journey to rid myself of contact lenses and glasses once and for all? As a result of reading Jacob Lieberman’s book, Take Off Your Glasses and See, I noticed an almost-immediate improvement in my eyesight. What’s not to love, right?

Well, there are daily exercises to do, and you really have to buy into the fight, lock and stock. Like brushing your teeth, or keeping lost pounds off, it’s a date with daily maintenance destiny, or the magic wears off, at least initially. And true to my undisciplined nature on most things requiring discipline, I fell off the wagon and went back to my evil ways. Gradually, the glasses and contacts returned, and before I knew it, I was wearing them full time again. Have I mentioned I’m undisciplined? Is it too late for a New Year’s resolution?

And what did I get for my non-efforts? A checkup at the doctor last month that revealed that both my farsightedness and astigmatism have worsened. Blah.

So…what now? I think there comes a time when one must select one’s battles, and for the time being, I am not going to stress over this. Rather, I’m going to enjoy life wearing my new contact lenses, and the new John Lennons that are due to arrive any day now. I tried, I failed, now I move on. It’s all right.

Now see? That wasn’t hard, was it?

GAH!!

Happy Finkday, y’all – ’bout time, too.

Image: “Comical Critter” by Maria Dryfhout

True Confessions II

Once in a while, we just need to come clean. Purge. Confess. I will do so this day, and I want you to join me, after which I will submit pithy and succinct remarks.

True Confessions I was pretty revealing to some, but I didn’t ask for you to bare your souls along with me. Why shouldn’t my fiends join in the fun, ja? :-D

Here are a few oddities off the top of my pointy head to get us started. Some of you will already know these things about me, and some will go, “Hmm. She is peculiar.” (Some will say that anyway.)

  1. hate to talk on the phone. There are exceptions, of course. If we have something to talk about specifically, no problem. It’s the talking on the phone to just talk…or talking on the phone when I am largely responsible for keeping the conversation going…NO. Email or text me instead.
  2. I am completely grossed out by lipstick. I don’t want to be, trust me. And strangely enough, I’m addicted to Chapstick. SOME lip glosses are OK, as long as they aren’t slimy. But even looking at an ad or a commercial featuring shiny, wet-looking glop just makes me urpy. I recently bought some Maybelline Baby Lips tinted lip balm, in cherry flavor (my favorite). And while it smells good and is not slimy, it’s RED. Like cherries. Duh. In the drawer it goes.
  3. I refuse to touch a door knob in a public place with my bare hands. And I’m no germophobe, trust me. Cripes, I’m a teacher and a grandmother. I get hugs and high fives. But there’s just something about touching a thing that all manner of unidentified germy fingers have caressed in the last 10 minutes…oy. My sleeves get a workout. And what happens when I’m not wearing long sleeves? I do a weird, convoluted grasp on the knob, involving as little of my finger surface as possible, then find somewhere to wash my hands. That works well in my high school’s main office, where the door knob is the typical spherical kind, as opposed to the rectangular handle you can push down with the back of your hand, and there’s a sink nearby in the teacher lounge. The fact that I put this much thought into door knobs is troubling, I know.

OK, there’s a few of mine (unfortunately, there are more). Now let’s see a few of yours. Got one you’re willing to share? And by “willing to share,” I mean “willing to admit to without incriminating yourself in a court of law.”

Ready, steady, go. Confess! It’s good for the soul.

Ninjamania

You don’t need the Kitchen Ninja to make this awesome power-smoothie. If you have a blender, you’re good.

Yesterday, I tried the Ninja for the first time, and what a home run, wow. It took, seriously, no longer than about 7 seconds to make a perfectly-blended smoothie — no stopping to stir, no scraping the sides down, no chipping with a knife at the bottom, nothin’.

The recipe was for a strawberry-banana drink, but I was out of strawberries. So I improvised, and this is what I came up with. It was dandy, I must say.

Black Raspberry-Banana Smoothie

1/2 cup each blackberries, raspberries, vanilla yogurt and Diet Sprite
1/2 banana
About a cup of smallish ice cubes (maybe 6 regular sized)
Handful of pecan halves

Schlep it all in there and zoom. It made two smoothies, so I froze one and slurped it this morning.

LEKKER!

LEKKER

Now I’m off to the school house…Yay! :-) Truthfully, it feels OK to be back at it. I need a routine.