Hey there, long time no post
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SK, I've lived in several neighborhoods that were good for "going for a walk," including our Oklahoma neighborhood, but getting exercise and sunshine while going about my errands is new for me and I like it a lot. I find myself making a game of not cranking my car.
There are some things I've bought like a spool of thread and some nails that would have been cheaper at Target, but it was totally worth a few cents for the pleasure and convenience of walking to the quilt store and the hardware store. The bank, the dry cleaner, the yarn store...literally right around the corner. We're getting rid of one of our cars, and the one we're keeping is a hybrid, so our gas bill is incredibly low and our insurance costs will go way down. We'll be applying those savings to the startling increase in our property taxes, but the quality of life is a lot better here. As they say, you get what you pay for.
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Mary Anna: I didn't know you were retiring! Congrats on entering the next phase! I'll be there shortly. I have one more year at W&M. I will teach in the fall but not in the spring. In the spring, I will be advising and mentoring (I have an honors student next year), writing, and doing various service tasks for the university.
Then it's probably off to New Mexico as a new base of operations.
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SK, I've lived in several neighborhoods that were good for "going for a walk," including our Oklahoma neighborhood, but getting exercise and sunshine while going about my errands is new for me and I like it a lot. I find myself making a game of not cranking my car.
There are some things I've bought like a spool of thread and some nails that would have been cheaper at Target, but it was totally worth a few cents for the pleasure and convenience of walking to the quilt store and the hardware store. The bank, the dry cleaner, the yarn store...literally right around the corner. We're getting rid of one of our cars, and the one we're keeping is a hybrid, so our gas bill is incredibly low and our insurance costs will go way down. We'll be applying those savings to the startling increase in our property taxes, but the quality of life is a lot better here. As they say, you get what you pay for.
@Mary-Anna that all sounds wonderful! And I'm especially glad it's worked out for you, because I know it was a huge move!
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Thanks @Daniel. It's good to be home.
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Hi, rf, I've missed you! We too have a dog who's a lot.
I'm so glad to hear that the Fingers siblings are doing well. Monkeyfingers must not be too far from Muffin, as she is in the portion of Queens that's close to Brooklyn. Let me know if you get there to visit and I'll take the train down, now that Quirt and I are living in the NYC burbs. Or you can come up here and tell me what these unfamiliar northern birds are!
We are also in the retire-now?-or-maybe-in-five-years? phase of life. My retirement date from the university is in August, although I've taught my last class, but I'm still writing books. I've also started picking up some one-off workshop gigs that I want to do more of. Quirt's position on this issue is "I'll retire in five years, or maybe tomorrow if they p*ss me off."
I'm playing piano intermittently, but my piano is looking reproachfully at the moment. I've spent a lot of the last two years packing up our stuff and unpacking it in a new town, which has been overwhelming and all-consuming. That work isn't done, but the house is comfortable now, so now I'm beginning to enjoy exploring things to do in our new town. I've started taking a Tai Chi class that's offered right across the street. (I could also walk to the gym, if I ever went...) I can walk to the grocery store and the farmer's market, too. I've joined a writer's group. Our house is on a small city lot, so I've planted a few flowers in the yard, but my veggie gardening is confined to three tabletop hydroponic gardens. It's all good.
Sooner or later, we'll have a piano party!
@Mary-Anna my company is headquartered in Hoboken, so I make a few trips. Biz travel is on pause currently due to "economic uncertainty"-- meaning the scholarly publishing biz is likely to be heavily impacted by the administration's grant freezes and DEI "crackdown".
Monkeyfingers comes up here more often than I get to NYC. He does audio live sound for events in the area frequently and is production director at a university theatre camp here in the summers.
Would love to get together though. I can't remember if monkeyfingers and Muffin have met. Maybe at BeeLady's party?
I miss the walkability of our previous town. Your new environment sounds ideal . (Except the moving, which always stinks.)
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Hello, RF. It's good to catch up with you and your family.
I've had my portion of tribulation with the knee replacement failure I've recounted here. Nonetheless, my wife and I are still in our home and keeping on with various activities.
Your saga of instruments prompts me to relate mine. My Yamaha Clavinova began losing notes. A technician determined that the keyboard sensors were failing. No replacement parts were available and no used parts became available on eBay or wherever else the tech looked.
I'm now looking at a replacement. The leading contender is the Yamaha NU1XA hybrid piano. It has the action of a Yamaha upright piano but with sensors that activate the electronic portions of the instrument. I've been very impressed with the feel of the keyboard and the sound is also very impressive.
I'm probably going to proceed with my purchase this month.
Please keep us apprised of events in your household.
Big Al
Money seems to buy the most happiness when you give it away.
Why does everything have to be so complicated, all in the name of convenience. -ShiroKuro
A lifetime of experience will change a person. If it doesn't, then you're already dead inside. -MarkJ
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Sorry you've been having trouble with your knee. I had a bad fall a few years ago, broke my kneecap, bonked my head creating an eye injury, broke my arm, and couldn't get around for a few months. Completely recovered now, but made me feel vulnerable and old in a way I hadn't experienced before.
Sad to lose a piano, but exciting to be on the hunt for a replacement. I mean, that's how a lot of us came to know each other, wasn't it?
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Sorry you've been having trouble with your knee. I had a bad fall a few years ago, broke my kneecap, bonked my head creating an eye injury, broke my arm, and couldn't get around for a few months. Completely recovered now, but made me feel vulnerable and old in a way I hadn't experienced before.
Sad to lose a piano, but exciting to be on the hunt for a replacement. I mean, that's how a lot of us came to know each other, wasn't it?
@rustyfingers said in Hey there, long time no post:
Completely recovered now, but made me feel vulnerable and old in a way I hadn't experienced before.
Tell me about it. I tripped on the front porch and banged up my knee in a big way several years ago. I narrowly missed doing a face plant into the granite door sill. I had to go up and down the stairs on my butt because I couldn't bend the knee or put any weight on it.
It was the second time I took a fall on that porch; I fell flat on my chest and had the wind knocked out of me. Bruised my ribs.
Both falls were the result of shoes that didn't fit quite right and that had caused me to trip, but not fall, on previous occasions. Lesson learned. Ditch shoes that make you trip. Birkenstocks and Crocs aren't in my wardrobe anymore.
@rustyfingers said in Hey there, long time no post:
Sorry youv'e been having trouble with your knee.
@Big_Al 's knee replacement saga.
https://well-temperedforum.groupee.net/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9130004433/m/3053902797/p/1
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
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Hello, RF. It's good to catch up with you and your family.
I've had my portion of tribulation with the knee replacement failure I've recounted here. Nonetheless, my wife and I are still in our home and keeping on with various activities.
Your saga of instruments prompts me to relate mine. My Yamaha Clavinova began losing notes. A technician determined that the keyboard sensors were failing. No replacement parts were available and no used parts became available on eBay or wherever else the tech looked.
I'm now looking at a replacement. The leading contender is the Yamaha NU1XA hybrid piano. It has the action of a Yamaha upright piano but with sensors that activate the electronic portions of the instrument. I've been very impressed with the feel of the keyboard and the sound is also very impressive.
I'm probably going to proceed with my purchase this month.
Please keep us apprised of events in your household.
Big Al
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@rustyfingers said in Hey there, long time no post:
Completely recovered now, but made me feel vulnerable and old in a way I hadn't experienced before.
Tell me about it. I tripped on the front porch and banged up my knee in a big way several years ago. I narrowly missed doing a face plant into the granite door sill. I had to go up and down the stairs on my butt because I couldn't bend the knee or put any weight on it.
It was the second time I took a fall on that porch; I fell flat on my chest and had the wind knocked out of me. Bruised my ribs.
Both falls were the result of shoes that didn't fit quite right and that had caused me to trip, but not fall, on previous occasions. Lesson learned. Ditch shoes that make you trip. Birkenstocks and Crocs aren't in my wardrobe anymore.
@rustyfingers said in Hey there, long time no post:
Sorry youv'e been having trouble with your knee.
@Big_Al 's knee replacement saga.
https://well-temperedforum.groupee.net/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9130004433/m/3053902797/p/1
@wtg my new mantra is "don't fall". (My old saying was "life is too short to wear uncomfortable shoes".). The fall I took was on New Years Day. I was hanging a picture and missed the last step of the stepstool on the dismount and fell backwards hitting my head on the first step of our central staircase.
This past August I fell again hanging pictures. I was standing on my bed and walked into a running ceiling fan, which knocked me down onto the bed. Ended up with a laceration on my head, but no other damage.
I'm not allowed to hang pictures anymore.
Thanks for the link to @Big_Al 's knee saga. BA, what a nightmare, and did you really say they used leeches? I thought that went out in pioneer days. So glad you were able to stay with your daughter during your long rehabilitation.
In my rehab my physical therapist and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to get me into my house, which has 8 stairs. We ended up using a shower chair to manage the stairs. Something like this:
Link to video. (She makes it look a lot easier than it was). Once in, I lived in the living room on the first floor for a few months.We also spent a long time practicing getting into a car. To this day I say to myself "don't hold the door" every time I get into or out of a car.
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@rustyfingers, I don't think Amanda has met either of your kids, but I'll ask when they visit this weekend. Maybe at BeeLady's party, but I'm not sure they were there. I've met them, but I think it was another time.
I've thought of you as academic funding has been thrown into chaos. I've got a proposal for a monograph out at an academic publisher at the moment, and I'm working on a proposal for an edited collection with a colleague who has a publisher in mind. Both of them are British publishers. (And one of them owns the other one, but the contraction in the number of both academic and commercial publishing houses is a whole nother conversation.) Both projects probably belong with British publishers anyway, since there's a lot more interest in our research focus, Agatha Christie's work, in the UK than there is here, but American academia is a scary place right now.
Yes, let's find a time to get together!
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@rustyfingers, I don't think Amanda has met either of your kids, but I'll ask when they visit this weekend. Maybe at BeeLady's party, but I'm not sure they were there. I've met them, but I think it was another time.
I've thought of you as academic funding has been thrown into chaos. I've got a proposal for a monograph out at an academic publisher at the moment, and I'm working on a proposal for an edited collection with a colleague who has a publisher in mind. Both of them are British publishers. (And one of them owns the other one, but the contraction in the number of both academic and commercial publishing houses is a whole nother conversation.) Both projects probably belong with British publishers anyway, since there's a lot more interest in our research focus, Agatha Christie's work, in the UK than there is here, but American academia is a scary place right now.
Yes, let's find a time to get together!
@Mary-Anna said in Hey there, long time no post:
American academia is a scary place right now.
It certainly is.
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@rustyfingers, I don't think Amanda has met either of your kids, but I'll ask when they visit this weekend. Maybe at BeeLady's party, but I'm not sure they were there. I've met them, but I think it was another time.
I've thought of you as academic funding has been thrown into chaos. I've got a proposal for a monograph out at an academic publisher at the moment, and I'm working on a proposal for an edited collection with a colleague who has a publisher in mind. Both of them are British publishers. (And one of them owns the other one, but the contraction in the number of both academic and commercial publishing houses is a whole nother conversation.) Both projects probably belong with British publishers anyway, since there's a lot more interest in our research focus, Agatha Christie's work, in the UK than there is here, but American academia is a scary place right now.
Yes, let's find a time to get together!
@Mary-Anna btw my publisher is a UK-based publisher as well. And I recently found out that my book (published in hardback and ebook versions in 2023) will be released in paperback in Sept. (yay!)
I feel lucky that I ended up with that publisher rather than a US-based one.
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@Mary-Anna btw my publisher is a UK-based publisher as well. And I recently found out that my book (published in hardback and ebook versions in 2023) will be released in paperback in Sept. (yay!)
I feel lucky that I ended up with that publisher rather than a US-based one.
@ShiroKuro Congratulations on the paperback!!! That's exciting!
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@ShiroKuro Congratulations on the paperback!!! That's exciting!
@Mary-Anna thank you!! I'm super excited about it!
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Great to see you!
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Just gotta say...it's so good to have you back, @rustyfingers !
@wtg thanks! It's great to be back. Have missed you all.
Hi @Steve-Miller!
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@wtg my new mantra is "don't fall". (My old saying was "life is too short to wear uncomfortable shoes".). The fall I took was on New Years Day. I was hanging a picture and missed the last step of the stepstool on the dismount and fell backwards hitting my head on the first step of our central staircase.
This past August I fell again hanging pictures. I was standing on my bed and walked into a running ceiling fan, which knocked me down onto the bed. Ended up with a laceration on my head, but no other damage.
I'm not allowed to hang pictures anymore.
Thanks for the link to @Big_Al 's knee saga. BA, what a nightmare, and did you really say they used leeches? I thought that went out in pioneer days. So glad you were able to stay with your daughter during your long rehabilitation.
In my rehab my physical therapist and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to get me into my house, which has 8 stairs. We ended up using a shower chair to manage the stairs. Something like this:
Link to video. (She makes it look a lot easier than it was). Once in, I lived in the living room on the first floor for a few months.We also spent a long time practicing getting into a car. To this day I say to myself "don't hold the door" every time I get into or out of a car.
@rustyfingers said in Hey there, long time no post:
BA, what a nightmare, and did you really say they used leeches?Yes, they really did use leeches. As the plastic surgeon explained to me, the leeches feeding on the blood promoted vascularization of the muscle that was inverted and transplanted into the wound left where all the dead tissue and knee cap had been removed. Without the growth of new blood vessels, the muscle could probably not have survived. The leeches came from a leech farm that one of the local hospitals maintains for this purpose.
They would be applied a couple at a time and were about the diameter of a pencil and less than an inch long, They proceeded to ingest blood and became about as big around as my finger and about twice as long as they started. When they had finished feeding, they would release their grip and try to crawl away. At that point, the nurse would collect them and drop them into a jar of alcohol, which ended their lives.
There was great interest in seeing this procedure in the hospital. I counted as many as twelve people in my room watching once.Big Al
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I leave the food gardening to thecomputerdude.
Also I've developed an interest in birds.
Happy belated anniversary everyone.
@rustyfingers said in Hey there, long time no post:
Also I've developed an interest in birds.
I saw a hummingbird today! It made a brief stop at a columbine flower in my front yard.
