2024 Round Up

The last few months have been a lot. A LOT. That's probably true for most of us. And I have many things I want to write about, but I have a need to quickly document some events that finished out 2024 before I forget them all. Join me on this belated end of year round up!

Let's begin with fact that I made a goal this fall that every time I went into our (annoyingly cluttered) garage I had to remove something from it, or at least investigate one of the many mysteries that have accumulated there. I have given away ice fishing poles, consolidated camping supplies, recycled boxes, and uncovered things like this that I have no explanation for:

The garage is looking better, and my goal for it in the spring is to find a way to hang/display our various kites on the walls so they aren't in a jumble and they can be decorative when they are not being used.

Inktober this year was not possible. I really love how in the past few years Quinn and I would meet at the dining room table most evenings and work on the day's prompt. But Quinn is in her senior year with too much to do, and I spent what felt like every waking moment in my shop on a deadline. I decided at the end of the month to do all the prompts in one drawing since many of them seemed to work together anyway.

Quinn turned 18 this year. All my children are technically adults now. It's weird. Whatever ideas I had for their childhoods, the time limit is up. I hope I did okay as their mom for that phase of their lives. I hope I do okay as the mom of adults.

When I asked Quinn when she turned 17 if there was anything she hadn't done yet as a "child," the only things she could think of were getting Mold-A-Ramas from the Oklahoma City Zoo, and going to Taco Bell. I figure the Mold-A-Rama quest extends beyond childhood anyway, and I'm chalking up the lack of Taco Bell as a parenting win. But just to round out the list, we went to Taco Bell on the night before her 18th birthday (she said it tasted like school food), and in the morning before I left town for a convention, I made her a crepe cake for breakfast with cream cheese frosting between the layers and chocolate ganache on top. I usually make my kids crepes in the shape of the their birthday numbers for breakfast, and a cake in the evening, so this seemed a good way to cross the two ideas.

I have nothing to report about Halloween this year. Sad. I may have to start dressing up the dog or becoming one of those people who does fancy house decorations.

There was the election. 

Really neighbors?

I spent the first week after it trying to order my mind by taking cubes out of the mosaic display and solving them. It was a good way to kind of feel like I was doing something that was sort of nothing when I didn't want to do anything. Eventually my mom and Mona and I put up a new design.

 

 

Both Ian and the dog help when I'm down. Domino's so sweet and in the moment. She's funny to have at work when she's not barking at passing dogs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quinn and I stumbled upon an image of me walking Domino near the store on Google Maps!

I finally put a decorative thing at the end of our banister. The space looks wired for a light, but not in a way we've every figured out how to use, so I finally just found something I could switch on at the base, and is merely a shiny ball when it's off. I like it. Not an important house project, but one I'm glad I finally did.

 

November was a whirlwind of luthier adventures. I had been working on two violins and a viola with the intention of putting the viola in the Violin Society of America (VSA) competition. That instrument was a commission, and I asked the player if it was okay to enter it, with the understanding that that would mean making decisions dictated by a particular timeline. He encouraged me to go for it, but the homestretch was exhausting. Mostly because getting oil varnish done in time was cutting it close. 

The first of those instruments to get finished was the Guarneri model violin. I am very pleased with how it came out and it is happily being played by its new owner. I only use my personal bridge stamp on instruments I've made, and I enjoyed getting to use it again.

Varnish in evening light

On top of already feeling rushed with the viola, about a week before the convention I accidentally set the it down on a polishing rag while I was working on the pegs, and the alcohol in it dissolved through a section of varnish on the back. I spent about a day and a half indulging in the fantasy that I could simply retouch it, but finally admitted the right thing to do was strip the back and do it again. What a nail-biter. But the finished color I think is beautiful, and I got useful feedback from the judges, and the player is happy, so it's all fine.

Nooooooo!

Having to strip the whole back was painful, but necessary.

Finding morning light on the porch

Michelic viola!

 

 

All labels and stamps must be covered for the competition

 

On the competition table

Competition stuff is always odd to explain to people. They always ask how I did, and short of an award (which at this level is not really a possibility yet) I don't know what to say. I go to learn things. Some of it is very useful, and some of it is too subjective. A lot of the things that appeal to me aren't often things judges like. The best way I can describe it is like the Westminster Dog Show. The judges there aren't that interested in if you have a really nice dog, they want the dog to fit a set of standards.

So, for instance, the judges didn't like this dark streak where the maple on my viola sucked in a lot of color. One referred to it as "burned." Some of that has to do with the fact that I had to strip the back and go faster to color than I would have normally. But honestly, that streak is one of my favorite parts of that back. I like it.

 

The convention overall was one of the best ever. I love getting to meet so many people in my field in person that I already feel I know. I love getting to room with my friend Robyn at these events. I love learning things, and laughing at luthier jokes, and generally feeling like I'm with my people. 

There were some great lectures and demonstrations.

 

There was trivia night, good stuff in the vendor room, and a tin-can-violin making competition which included googly eyes and a lunch box.

 

A highlight was playing on instruments in the New Instrument Exhibit as an orchestra. I got to sit with my friend Marilyn, Darol Anger was in the violin section and treated us to some amazing improv

Emanuel Hill, our fine conductor!

We were early. The full viola section was mighty!

There was even a red carpet glam night for the awards ceremony, and Robyn looked even fancier than usual.

Although, speaking of looking good, Robyn and I were both amused by the fact that in our bathroom there were two mirrors, and in one we always looked nice, and then if you turned and looked in the other one it was.... not good. It was disconcerting! Because I would get ready to go, feel confident looking in the mirror above the sink, and then have to not glance to my left because then I felt frumpy and bad. This was my view in the good mirror. (Not showing you the bad because the internet is forever.)

The convention was in Indianapolis this year, which is where one of my childhood friends lives who I haven't seen in way too long. I missed the whole first day of lectures because hanging out with Jennifer was more important. She's still the best, and even provided me with lip balm when I needed it most.

The week following the convention was Thanksgiving! We had a full house this year with all our kids home, my mom, and my brother Barrett and his family. It was wonderful. We wound up with many many many pies, cheese appetizers that looked like pie, and the orange jello was weirdly in between. Not goo, but only short lived as a shape.

cheddar, crackers, cream cheese.... cute!

Aden, to my great delight, managed to repair our broken pachinko machine that weekend. We even replaced the battery in the back so it lights up when you hit the jackpot.

Mona's bird visited for the day. I miss that loud silly bird.

Barrett signed copies of his book with beautiful drawings for different family members.

He also brought me a mysterious book he found in Germany full of music I can't decipher. If anyone understands these clefs let me know!

Aden also became very good with plants over the summer, and took some time to tend all kind of things in pots over Thanksgiving break. My mom is an accomplished gardener, so it's interesting to see that skip me and land on Aden.

I played some fun concerts at the end of 2024. Playing with Festival City Symphony is always nice, but the most unusual venue was with Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra at our Waukesha concert, because we played on a stage set up for a performance of the musical Legally Blonde later that night. Unusually pink for a holiday concert!

 

 

Mona continues to make adorable things for her Etsy shop:

We managed to go through not one, but two cookie presses this year, and finally bought a third one that we're hoping will last through this year into next. We have so many little cookie press discs at this point I decided to get a little tree to hang all the spares on.

The kids this year mostly got cards from us that reminded them that we provide College! Housing! Healthcare! Hugs! Domino got a replacement purple monkey for the ravaged original purple monkey that came home with her from the shelter. She likes them both equally,

Old monkey

New monkey

On Christmas Day we drove to Detroit where my mom had an incredible dinner waiting for us. It was a chicken curry with a ton of different little condiments like plum chutney and avocado and bacon and nuts, etc. Each bite could be delicious in a different way. I can't imagine anyone ate better at Christmas than we did. I once asked my dad what his favorite food was, and he said, "Whatever your mother is making tonight." That's a good answer.

My mom also helped us make a zuccotto, which was a dessert recipe we pulled out of a Martha Stewart magazine more than a dozen years ago and never got up the nerve to try. We made it a whole day's project, with sponge cake pressed into a bowl and filled with whipped cream berries and a crushed Heath bar and the whole dome is covered with chocolate and there is a vanilla cream sauce on the side. That was really fun, and I actually think if I do it again I can do it much better. Maybe for my birthday.

New Year's was quiet enough that I don't remember what we did. Although I saw a video of a place not far from here that does an annual cheese drop at 10pm on New Year's Eve (why not midnight?) and I've decided next year we're doing that.

And I will leave you with this conundrum of signage that was recently added to my short commute.

This seems like a good metaphor for life right now, where we are supposed to somehow stop and never stop, step back but be involved, be appreciative and outraged and the same time, and somehow persist when so much feels hopeless. Welcome to 2025.

Beat Saber

Have you heard of Beat Saber? There's a lot of Beat Sabering going on in our house lately, so I thought I'd share.

For Quinn's fifteenth birthday a couple of months ago we reserved time for just our family (slightly reduced to four with Aden away at school) at a VR (Virtual Reality) place nearby. I wanted to do something different for his birthday, but it's hard coming up with anything in a pandemic. The VR time was perfect. It's like video games with a headset over your eyes, and a controller in each hand. I was surprised at how immersive it was. We each took turns trying different things: Mona wandered around in something called Half Life, Ian did some sort of space/shooting game, then moved on to mini golf. Quinn and I got introduced to Beat Saber, and were even able to compete against each other for a few rounds.

Beat Saber turned out to be insanely fun, and we ended up getting a VR system for home so we could do it whenever we like. 

The VR system was the family Christmas present this year, which made shopping pretty easy since we all agreed to share the one thing. (This does not mean there weren't "presents" to open. I've taken in recent years to wrapping up things we need anyway in order to make Christmas morning a fun event. There's a lot of cereal that gets wrapped in pretty paper. Mona got some pasta sauce and some spices we were out of. Everyone needed new blankets, so those went under the tree. Hair products, pens... Anything we're low on that needs to be replaced in December ends up with a bow on it and we call it Christmas!)

The VR system was a bit of an extravagant expense for us, but we could justify it on a few levels. Not the least of which is that the pandemic continues to drag on, and it's an activity we can enjoy in the house.

Also, exercise. I'm feeling the last game I played in my arms as I type this, and until I feel safe being in a gym again, I need something to do on the days I don't swim. 

And finally, my daughter is a video game design major, so it seemed like a good thing to have. It really made her laugh, though, because she said it was like we skipped several important gaming system steps. We have an Atari from the 80s (Frogger, Space Invaders, and Pitfall 2 are still fun), then a couple of years ago Mona asked if we could get a Switch, and now we have a VR system with its own dedicated gaming computer.

I have to be the only parent around who has been trying for years to convince her kids we should get something with which to play video games, who is then repeatedly turned down. My kids know money is often tight, so they seldom ask for anything. But I don't have a problem with video games. I spent a lot of time (and quarters) at Alligator Alley when I was in Jr. High getting good at Centipede and Ms Pac-Man and Tempest. Moon Patrol had the best music next to Mad Marbles, which was a game I only ever saw in an ice cream place in Binghamton NY. That was a fun game! (And when I told Aden it had my favorite video game music, she found a cover of it on YouTube somehow, and it's in her regular playlist.) I didn't want my kids to be unnecessarily out of step with their peers if there was something everyone was playing except them, but no. No gaming systems for us.

But the VR thing was something I wanted, damn it. So my husband found something on sale and set it up and I love it.

So, getting back to Beat Saber. It's a game where you feel like you're standing on a little platform, you have a light saber sword in each hand, cubes keep coming toward you from off in the distance, and you have to cut them in half before they shoot past you. The whole thing is set to music, so the rhythm of how you're slicing things matches up with the beat and the melody. That's the basics of it. There are additional things, such as the cubes are color coded so you have to hit them specifically with your right hand or your left, and there are arrows on the cubes to indicate from which direction you are supposed to strike them. 

Part of what makes it fun is the hand controllers can vibrate, so it feels like there is a bit of resistance every time you cut into a cube. They also zap a bit when you touch the swords to each other, or if you decide to jam one into a passing wall.

I'm sort of amazed at how fast we've improved at this game. There are Easy, Normal, Hard, Expert, and Expert+ levels. I'm currently working my way through all the available Expert Levels, although a few weeks ago I didn't think that would be possible already. Quinn is in Expert+ territory. Aden is our resident master at the single sword levels, which is much more exhausting. You can modify the parameters so there is nothing to duck if you don't feel like it, or you can speed things up or slow things down, or you can have things come at you from 360 degrees if you want to be spinning around in place that much.

It's been really nice after being hunched over at my bench for long stretches to walk into the living room, put on the headset, and do a few rounds of something physical in what feels like a different space entirely. Especially when it's too dark or cold to go for a walk, I like swinging around imaginary swords as a way to get moving more.

The latest fun thing is that Aden figured out how to download new songs. Apparently people can design their own Beat Saber levels and offer them for free to the public, which means some are great and some are bad. But the interesting thing for me is standing in front of the search bar trying to think of a song to type in. It has to be something someone else who plays Beat Saber would have wanted to design a game around, which means people younger than I am. So "Take On Me" by A-Ha remains something people still know, but "Burning Down the House" by the Talking Heads is apparently too obscure. I found "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel, but no "Shock the Monkey." Aden can find many an anime song that I've never heard of, but most of the things I've typed in result in the computer equivalent of a blank stare.

We have the system set up with a monitor so other people can see what you're seeing while you're in the headset. I'm finding it really interesting how differently we each use it.

Mona hasn't bothered with any of it, because she says it's only fun if you are doing it with someone, and we only have one headset. (Although, technically, if someone wanted to reserve time at the VR place again, we could play each other remotely.) Ian has no interest in Beat Saber, but has explored the Google Earth function, and even found our cottage there.

But watching Aden and Quinn play Beat Saber is fascinating. Aden gets bored with anything that isn't fast and challenging and skips all lower levels. She wants interesting patterns to good songs, and as she plays looks like she's dancing. She doesn't care in any way about her score or technique. Quinn works through things methodically, and with efficiency of movement. He wants to be able to get through all of the highest levels in order. I'm actually really interested in technique. The more perfectly you cut a block, the higher your score. The most you can get for cutting a single block is 115 points, and my goal is to score at least 100 on every block I hit. I'm happy to go back to lower levels and make them as perfect as possible, and then try to apply those skills to the faster, more complicated levels.

The saddest thing about Beat Saber is there are few things where the disconnection between how you feel while doing it versus how you actually look is as silly. Swinging virtual light sabers around is fun and feels cool, but they are the combat equivalent of singing into a hairbrush in your bathroom. Very few people can pull that off in a way that anyone would want to watch.

But I don't care! Nobody's really watching.

Beat Saber is fun, I'm getting better at it, and it gets my heart rate up. It's a good addition to my routine. And if I know anyone with their own VR system who wants to meet up for game, let me know! It would be interesting to give that kind of remote play a try.

The Moments Where Everything Gels

Whatever you celebrate during these shortened days of December, I hope it brought you peace this year.

Our family, with its secular Christmas, had a truly lovely day yesterday. (And you can't exactly see it in this photo, but our tree was twisted in such a way that we couldn't make it not lean. We decided it was a very 2020 tree.)

Christmas Eve was a little harder, where I put in very long hours at work trying to get instruments off my bench in time for people to use them over the holiday weekend, and the brakes on one of our cars died. I was exhausted and worn out when I got home, and found myself curled up alone in the back room of the house watching the beginning of It's A Wonderful Life.

I got overwhelmed by thoughts of how unfair it was this year that when I already miss people who have died, that I now have to miss the ones who are still here. In 2020 I've seen my mom, and one brother. Both masked. Both socially distanced so hugs were not possible. Everyone else I haven't seen in a year or more.

Plus, when you're upset, you tend to pile on and focus on the negative in general. Our old dog has gone blind and bumbles into everything, and gets caught in odd corners in the house where he either whimpers for help or gives up and just stands. Our house is giant mess. I'm tired of my back hurting. I'm behind on everything.

On top of it all, it didn't feel like Christmas. No snow. Most of our lights were dead when we pulled them out of the basement and it didn't seem worth the effort or money to replace them. I was feeling bad about presents since most of the boxes under the tree were cereal, and literally wads of bubble wrap with nothing in them but more bubble wrap. Normally I hand make my kids little mini versions of their Halloween costumes to add to a box, and it's something personal, but no costumes this year, so no minis to sew.

But then I got my best present of the year. One of my teens, who has tended toward the aloof and surly in recent months, discovered me crying alone in the back room. They asked if I was okay. I said I would be, but this Christmas was hard. They asked if I wanted them to sit with me. I said, "Do whatever you want," which is normally the response I get when I make any suggestions to them lately.