Hey there, long time no post
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I'm the prodigal kid, but when I finally came home, my family had moved!
I left Facebook in January but am now pretty active on BlueSky
Hope you are all well. I'm still working, based at home. Not really travelling anymore. Starting to think about retiring, maybe within 5 years.
Not playing piano any more at all. Took up guitar a few years ago and am not playing that either! Everywhere I turn in the house are instruments staring at me reproachfully.
Into native gardening and political protesting these days.
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So good to see you, @rustyfingers !
Just a small, but very high quality, group still hanging together here! WTF's 20th anniversary was last month.
https://wtf.coffee-room.com/topic/1111/wtf-turns-20-this-year?_=1747484036305
The garden beckons me, too, but I'm doing veggies and fruits.
A few folks here are on BlueSky, too. I signed up but am not very active there.
https://bsky.app/profile/wtgardener.bsky.social/follows
@Piano-Dad posts some good stuff there.
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I leave the food gardening to thecomputerdude.
Also I've developed an interest in birds.
Happy belated anniversary everyone.
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I'm the prodigal kid, but when I finally came home, my family had moved!
I left Facebook in January but am now pretty active on BlueSky
Hope you are all well. I'm still working, based at home. Not really travelling anymore. Starting to think about retiring, maybe within 5 years.
Not playing piano any more at all. Took up guitar a few years ago and am not playing that either! Everywhere I turn in the house are instruments staring at me reproachfully.
Into native gardening and political protesting these days.
Hi @rustyfingers welcome back to WTF and welcome to WTF-Beta!
Lovely to se you hear!@rustyfingers said in Hey there, long time no post:
Everywhere I turn in the house are instruments staring at me reproachfully.
Tell those instruments to stop it! Reproach will never get them anywhere!
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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 have five bird baths that I try to keep clean and filled. It's been painfully dry here this spring and they seem to appreciate the water. I saw a Baltimore oriole last week - very unusual for us! And we have a great horned owl who loves to start hooting right around our bedtime.
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@rustyfingers said in Hey there, long time no post:
Also I've developed an interest in birds.
I have five bird baths that I try to keep clean and filled. It's been painfully dry here this spring and they seem to appreciate the water. I saw a Baltimore oriole last week - very unusual for us! And we have a great horned owl who loves to start hooting right around our bedtime.
@wtg cool. I saw a pair of Baltimore Orioles this week. I hear them often at the River/meadow near our house, but this was the first time I saw them.
Haven't seen owls, but we do have red-tail hawks in the neighborhood that we see occasionally.
Hi @Jodi ; hi @ShiroKuro !
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Hi @Big_Al ! Thecomputerdude is doing the same work, got his ham radio license and is putting in the veg garden and opening the fish pond for the season.
Choochiefingers is living with us and is working as a game master at an escape room. Monkeyfingers is living in Brooklyn and making a living as a recording engineer assistant at a well known studio and entertains us with tales of celebrity sitings.
The two dogs are..a lot.
How are you and yours?
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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!
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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 said in Hey there, long time no post:
Quirt's position on this issue is "I'll retire in five years, or maybe tomorrow if they p*ss me off."
Ahh, the best position to be in! I’m jealous.
I've started taking a Tai Chi class that's offered right across the street.
That’s wonderful! We really like where we live now, but it’s not really walkable…. Or rather, it’s a great neighborhood for “going for a walk,” which we do. But it’s not a great neighborhood for walking to get somewhere.
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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?
