Mandozoukulele

I made it to the Irish Session tonight for the first time since March. I almost didn't go because I was pretty tired this evening, but, as always, I was glad that I did. Sue was there too, and for the first time in something like a year of hand problems, she was playing a mandolin. This was no ordinary mandolin, though. She got it from The Thin Man String Co. in Alameda, and it's made from the body of a ukulele. It's strung with nylon guitar strings, but they're doubled and tuned like a mandolin, but then one of each pair is dropped an octave, like a bouzouki. I called it a mandozoukulele, though Patrick preferred "sue-zouki." (It looks sort of like these pictures, though Sue's is rather nicer.)

This seemed like a really weird instrument at first glance, but I was absolutely tickled when I tried playing it. It has a remarkably nice, full sound to it, and it actually seems louder than a regular mandolin. (Unfortunately, I was playing tenor banjo tonight, and didn't have my mandolin for comparison.) It's also easier on the hands than a mandolin, which is why Sue got it, though it's still a bit more work than tenor banjo. I really enjoyed playing it, and I could even see myself getting one.

Another interesting thing: the same place also sells these mandolins with extra little sound holes in the side. That way, more of the sound gets directed up towards the musician, so you can actually hear yourself play. Neat idea. Of course, once these entered the conversation, we got several offers of electric drills and on-the-spot mandolin customizations, but we passed on that. However, it occurred to us that you could probably get a similar effect without having to puncture anything. The experiment I want to try is to get a stethoscope and tape the sound piece to the back of the mandolin, then find out what it sounds like through the other end. Of course, you'd look pretty silly sitting in a session listening to your mandolin through a stethoscope, but it would be interesting to try, at least.

A New Spectrum of Dancing

I went to the Dance Spectrum in Campbell last night for a West Coast Swing lesson and dance. The lesson was taught by Richard Kear and actually seemed to be at an appropriate level for me. It wasn't really the sort of thing I wanted to learn, being more focused on using a particular fancy replacement step, rather than lead/follow type moves. But still, it was a good lesson for me, because I got some extra drilling on the basics steps that we were adding this fancy step to, and that helped.

There were a few "warm-up" dances played early on that seemed almost painfully slow to me. Swing is one of those things where too-slow is as difficult for me as too-fast, so at first I didn't like that. But it was really interesting to watch the people who could dance that slowly and deliberately and still make it look good. And trying it myself actually helped for when we got up to the normal, easier tempos. Being around a lot of good WCS dancers really helped me slow down and smooth out some of my remaining Lindy Hop bounces. It was actually kind of neat, and I think I was starting to get a better feel for the style. (I don't know if I look much better, but I at least have more of an idea how it should be.)

After the lesson was the dance, though I only stayed for about half of it. I watched most of the time, but I did do several dances. I'm still at a pretty shy level of WCS, so it's a bit hard for me to ask strangers to dance, but it wasn't too bad, and the dances I did were fairly encouraging. There are a lot of great dancers there, but I didn't find it nearly as intimidating as, say, the hustle club dances. I'd like to go back and try it again (this particular dance only happens once a month, though I'm sure the studio has lots of other classes if I want to do that). And I'm on the lookout for other convenient places to learn/practice west coast, so if anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

Last Coast Swing

We had the last West Coast class tonight. Five weeks was not nearly enough -- I've got a fair amount of stuff that I can do now, and I'm ready to start figuring out how to actually do it well (and learn more, of course). It was just fun, too. I'll have to look for other classes or something. In the meantime though, it will be a very waltzy weekend, with *two* extra Friday Night Waltzes (one is in disguise as a Saturday Night Waltz). So that will be fun. [Update: I seem to have been confused about that Saturday Night Waltz, which turns out to be the 8th, rather than the 1st. Still too many conflicting events for me to go to it, though.]

Oh, and since I can't get away without at least mentioning it: yes, it was a very exciting day at Google today. You can read the S-1 online (all 160-something pages of it) if you're really interested. SEC.gov should be working again I think, after the hammering it took this morning. :-)

Dinosaurs, Garbanzo Beans, and Button Hook Contras

The weekend Lacey-visit was much fun. This was the first time I'd been to the Skyline house, which I like very much, especially all the skylights and slanted ceilings on the top floor. Plus, Hugo has a really cool computer set up, involving his TV, a couch, wireless keyboard and gyration mouse. Very spiffy.

On Saturday Lacey and I went to The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. I loved the dinosaur exhibit, rubbery robotness and all, though the T-Rex was a bit dangerous. In addition to dinosaurs, we met a chameleon and a computer-generated, 50-year-old me.

Lunch was Lebanese food. I had no idea you could do such wonderful things with garbanzo beans. Wow.

We went to the Portland contra dance Saturday evening and found Kevin and Barbara playing the music, which was a very pleasant surprise. The whole dance was fun, but it would have been worth it just for the "button hook" move we learned in one contra, which went like this (indulge me for a minute here): The ones cross the set and head away from their partners to meet a trail buddy in a hands-across star with a couple of twos. Balance the star, go all the way around (passing your partner and then going away again), balance the star again (note how this makes some interesting phrasing -- in contra dance terms, at least) then the twos raise their hands in an arch and the ones pass through underneath to find their partners and swing. So it's mostly a move for the ones but Lacey and I actually had a lot of fun as twos. We weren't tall enough to hold the arch very well over all the couples, and usually just had to let go. So we decided to just go with it, and turned the last balance into a great big leap, throwing our hands up into the air, making a very amusing send-off for the ones passing underneath. Highly amusing, at least for us.

Today we just took it easy, eating strangled eggs, leftover Lebanese food, and homemade banana nut bread, plus futzing around with computers and music and just hanging out. Never quite got around to hiking through the beautiful woods up there, but that can happen on another trip sometime.

As I ended most stories in elementary school: "I had fun. I came home. The end."

It's Sister-Visiting Time!

I'm heading up to Portland to see Lacey. Yay! I'll be back Sunday evening.