Saturday hobby stuff

[gurdonark]

Today I've been packaging the current spate of things sold on eBay: 2 Monogram Star Trek Maquis ship models (sold for 12 dollars each), an electric football field (sold for 5 dollars and 50 cents) and 14 issues of Blitz Chess Magazine (sold for 12 dollars). My in-laws' flight is delayed by our rainy weather, which gives me time to get things mailed today.

Meanwhile, the last purchase of my musical buying frenzy has arrived, and it is among the best. For roughly 60 dollars plus shipping I got a Suzuki Omnichord Two.
An Omnichord is like a cool electronic 36 chord autoharp. I had an earlier Omnichord years ago, but it got damaged by battery corrosion. This new one is really cool, and comes with an AC adapter and a hard plastic carrying case.
The 36 chords will give me the ability to play almost anything fun.

I've been reading up on home recording again. I feel so clueless when I read about such things. I could, of course, spend a great deal of money to get a proper
digital recording unit, but my hobby life tends to work in 100 or 200 dollar increments, not in 800 dollar increments. I also like to sell unused things to make room for new things. The on-line recording "should" work for me, but when I bought cakewalk, I loaded it and could not figure it out. Then I bought something simpler, and still could not figure it out. I need, in all likelihood, something written for children in the logo language--perhaps "Mr. Turtle Sings and Plays!".

I'm tempted to just record on my TEAC A 105 cassette recorder, and then
overdub in live 2 track recording using one of my various other cassette players.
The resulting hiss would then just be part of the product. I could do this without learning anything new, which is always a virtue.

Now I have all the musical instruments I could ever need, and each one of them is something I can either play or easily learn to play. Last night I was enjoying my electric kazoo, and wondering why I ever tried to play anything else.

My reading about church hymns makes me wonder if this folk album I keep burbling about should be a series of old public domain classic hymn and song tunes, with new, Gurdonarkian lyrics. That appeals to me. I've written some nice, almost "protest song" ish lyrics about local history. When I hear my voice on tape it sounds so histrionic,though. I think of myself as an unvarnished guy, but my voice suggests I am just as melodramatic as tne next off-key voice. But I do a mean karaoke "Little Red Corvette" and a perfectly credible "Burning Down the House". This dose of music fever, fortunately, is passing, and settling back in among my many hobbies. As I have so little talent for it, it's good to place it into proportion.

I've been clearing up my spare room a good bit. It looks awful even yet, but awful in a more manageable way. I've got this vision of making it really useful, and not merely a repository for my things and computer. It is time, after all, to set up that long-procratinated aquarium with new feeder guppies. It's too bad, by the way, that we sold off my La Z Boy years ago. I wonder if it is a general trend that bachelor naguahyde recliners end up on the yard sale block?

We're thinking of going to the coast for Labor Day. I must make the arrangements.
I have to check the storm situation, though. It always seemed to me in younger days that Labor Day weekend always brought rain to north Texas and south Arkansas, and a tropical storm or hurricane to the coast. Maybe this year, which has been different in every other way, will be different.