I finished putting new strings on my guitar yesterday. I continue to practice some on it each day. I’m playing music that otherwise wouldn’t interest me much if it weren’t on the guitar (Diabelli and others).

This must be what other musicians feel for instruments like the organ, a sheer passion for the sounds no matter what the music is.

I can remember my teacher, Ray Ferguson, telling me that he tried to learn guitar in his middle age but couldn’t quite get his fingers to work that way. This is amazing since he was a virtuoso organist.

But now I have a glimmer of what he might have been up against since my arthritic old hands do not move quite as easily as they used to and this is not just lack of practice.

Speaking of practicing I learned something about the Mozart piece I am preparing. I experimented with playing it a bit faster and  learned that staccato in the pedals played quickly presents a technical problem for me. The easy solution is simply to play them legato. I’m glad to have learned this before performing the piece.

I did check out the wedding collection from Hope College’s library and breathed  a sigh of relief at having the music for this Saturday in my hands. It’s not particularly hard but I like to be prepared.

I did notice that my guitar practice seems to be taking time away from my piano playing time. Interesting. It’s kind of funny since the music I usually play on the piano is itself much better composed than the little guitar ditties I am spending my guitar time on. But I am content with the lesser music. I do like the sound of guitar.

We have been attempting to give our cat, Edison, two daily doses of antibiotics. The first time, he was quite a handful and scratched me up. Then we tried the seduction method, dousing tuna fish with the medicine. We had limited success at that. This is complicated by the fact that his appetite is a bit diminished. I think the meds are hitting him hard.

So yesterday afternoon we returned to trying to give it to him directly, but first at the advice of my daughter wrapping him in a towel. He was okay with this until Eileen began to attempt to put the meds in his mouth with the eyedropper. He went pretty crazy. And then shunned us for the rest of the day and night.

He is reconciled this morning but of course we will have to keep doing this until the antibiotics run out. Fun stuff.

I came up with a solution to watching family members posting ill informed stuff on Facebooger (mostly from the right wingers). I am distressed because of the sources they are quoting are so inferior and biased and full of hate and distortion (like right wing news and Rush Limbaugh).

If I try to engage them, they seem to just get more angry and hysterical. So I have found it satisfying to “share” (pass along) some of my biased sources (which I never think of as primary news outlets) to sort of balance the picture in my Facebooger feed.

Silly I know.

Goose Exterminator of the Netherlands Enrages Animal Rights Activists 

Wow. This is quite a story. Weirdly it tangles up animal rights, dangerous proliferation of geese to the point planes crash and Nazi gas chambers.