One last thing. Visited the violinmaker from whom I rent my cello. On Saturday. He wasn’t at his shop, having forgotten our appointment, but he came when we called him. He had sold the one cello he wanted to show me, but had a second one. I would really have liked to hear the other one, which he said had a “dominant” sound. I wouldn’t have bought it, probably, not only because I don’t have the money, but also because it had been repaired and was now an old cello with a new neck, which for some reason reduces the value, here at least. But the other cello he showed me had a much nicer sound than my old cello (it is a cheapish German cello, instead of a cheap Chinese-made cello…). And when he put a different set of strings on it, it sounded even better, so now I’m renting that. It makes a big difference.

Pick out a new bow, he said. He gave me four to compare. I sawed away. “What, exactly, are the criteria by which I should be picking out a bow,” I asked him.
He said Springiness. And some bows had a dead spot in the middle someplace when you played a long note. So I played this song I’m supposed to play later this month at the class recital, which has a few long notes, and listened. One bow finally seemed somehow better than the others, although what do I know? He chuckled when I told him which one I’d picked out; it was the most expensive one.

“Mig is in another wood phase.”
-Alpha, to her mother, yesterday

Gamma and I built a feeding box/and/or living quarters for the hedgehog that’s been lurking about, and we built a birdhouse.

“It’s okay to cuss in dad’s workshop.”
-Gamma, to her sister

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That Waris Dirie is one fine-looking person, wow. I mean it. Wonder if she can mix a mojito.

Gah, I’m out of gum…

I’ve been thinking about that race my wife and daughter ran in. There is a long post I could put here, but I think I’ll keep it to myself, to the extent that I am able to do that. I will list a few of the highlights, though, for me, in no particular order:

• Gamma got to do somersaults in the inflatable castle.

• Watching a chubby young Moslem woman in a headscarf start, and finish the race (with a decent time). I was rooting for her.
• You know that cartoon character Tintin (has different names in different languages, I believe)? There were two young women running who had that exact same haircut – short with that cowlick sticking up in front, in bright orange. One finished way before the other, then came back through the crowd, climbed back through the fence onto the course and finished with her friend, holding hands. The race, in general, was a big mix of people from every political etc quarter. These two women were wearing shirts with a team name on the back with Dyke-something in the name. There was also a group named Run Against Racism, and some lefties, and the Social Democrats had a tent, and the conservative party did, and the rightist party also had a tent.
• After the race, we walked around eating food. At one tent they were giving away Kaiserschmarren which was this desserty thing that looks like badly-made crepes and was pretty good. Some guy took our picture, but I wandered out of the frame, a habit of mine. My daughter was a bit put off by all the women milling about wearing t-shirts embossed with some slogans of the rightist party here. Later, we went back for more and noticed that it was the tent of the rightist party. So we figure my wife and daughter will eventually turn up on some FPOe campaign poster… Not crazy about their politics, but they can sure make Kaiserschmarren.

Gamma wants to enter the kids’ race next year.
There, I got all the way through the post without writing anything embarassing about how it felt to see your kid finish a race like that, after watching her struggle for life as a little preemie. In fact, I didn’t actually see her cross the finish line, as it was so crowded all I saw was my wife race past with a big grin on her face. But you know what I mean.

Some people I’m related to ran in a 5k race in Vienna today together with 9000 other women and Gamma and I watched and cheered them on. Weather was perfect, overcast and cool and windless and Gamma got to jump around in an inflated castle with other little kids and I saw this beautiful woman sitting in the VIP area who I thought looked a lot like Waris Dirie, only better looking and when we got home someone told me that Waris Dirie had been at the race, and I was all like, Well, I saw someone even better-looking.

Also, Ronald Reagan was still alive?

Otherwise known (starting now) as “solar rectum syndrome”. I was reading this article somewhere, see, about some woman with a little kid, otherwise known as a “baby” and she mentioned that she tried to… not to make it behave, as you can’t make a baby behave, but tried to time said baby’s feeding times and sleep patterns to her restaurant visits, such that said “baby” would not disrupt the dining experience of other diners. And she mentioned that other mothers — especially, in her view, mothers having their first kids over forty (mothers’ age, not kids’ — my mother has her first kid over forty right now, as I was her first kid and am now over forty; what I mean is that these mothers this woman was referring to are over forty when they have their first kid) (this woman felt okay in saying this as she herself was over forty, with a little “baby” but had other kids much earlier) and she said these other women seemed to believe that the sun shone out their children’s asses and they as a result found it cute when these little kids ran around stealing other people’s forks etc. And she tried to avoid being irritating in that way.

It made me wonder whether the sun really shone out my own kids’ asses, as I had always believed, or whether I suffered from SRS and just thought it did.

I suppose both are possible – ones kids can be genuinely exceptional and the parent can still be less than objective.

This occurred to me just now because I caught myself about to type something describing Gamma banging on the piano as sort of Johnny B. Goode decomposed in an elevator by John Cale.

On the other hand, she stood me in front of the piano yesterday and told me which note each key was, and she’s never had a lesson.

A Volkswagen Touran was in front of me in traffic this morning. It is a sort of van. If there were a compact version of that, wouldn’t “Tourette” be a great name for it?