Gift Givers and Recipients

Apple cider and Reese's really don't go together.

Now that we have gotten that important bit of information out of the way, on with the post. I have a bit of a headache (thanks to Tylenol and tea it is waning) so I don't really feel like looking at a computer screen. Ergo I resort to e-ink! This post is brought to you by my Kindle. We shall see how this goes, since it gives me a warning that Blogger is not compatible with this browser.

I've been meaning to blog more, but various matters need tending to and have absorbed my time. And, okay, I confess I just haven't felt much like writing. But I do have good news, for we have gotten a new wireless router, and it actually works and doesn't kick us offline every time we watch video or upload pictures, so you may get to see more photos.

I am not really fond of how those last two paragraphs turned out and I would rewrite them, but it is just too hard typing on this thing.

Now for the test. I shall see if inserting video works from the Kindle. Drumroll, please.

...

Well, I guess I can't know for sure! The cursor jumps a certain distance when directed by the five way controller thing, and I can't get it to hover over the video insertion button. This poses a problem.

Instead, maybe I'll just tell you  about a guy named Delius. I was reading one night and a nice song playing on the classical channel caught my attention - his Florida Suite.

I looked him up on Ye All-Telling Wikipedia. Delius was  the son of a merchant but had no interest in doing the same, and somehow ended up in Florida manging an orange grove (whether of his own volition or of his father's coercion is unclear). He paid little heed to his managerial duties, however, and instead pursued composing.

I was fascinated by his story, until I read on to his unfaithful marriage and strings of affairs. It makes me wonder, why does God give such gifts to staunch atheists?

I suppose it's up to those who receive the gifts whether they praise the gift Giver or turn around and spit in His face...

(Announced)

*whispers* This post is just to prove I really did remember Musical Monday, just in the nick of time, before going to bed, in case going on YouTube to find this week's to-be-announced selection angers our router. It is really quite petty, our router.


This post will be edited upon successful video-insertion.

Edit: And here you go!

There are a number of posts I need to get around to writing, including an award from Faith and pictures of the mountains and a post exhibiting some of my new masterpieces which is probably only amusing to me, all of which will hopefully happen sometime this week, if I find the time.

The Gullibility of Olivia Longfellow

Note: Longfellow is not actually my last name, but such a title needed a last name, and not wanting to put my actual last name on the internet, I resolved to make one up.

Now on to your regularly scheduled post.

All over the internet, amid compilations of random facts or useless information, I had come across the statement that the commonly used word gullible is not in the dictionary.

When I first saw this, I scoffed, for of course the word gullible is in the dictionary, and I questioned the credibility of the other facts listed. The next time I saw it I wondered if perhaps the word was commonly misspelled, and the proper way was to omit one L, but I was busy and went about my tasks for the day without consulting the dictionary.

When I came across this piece of information again, I double checked to be sure I was, in fact, spelling gullible properly. There it was on dictionary.com: "gullible - adjective - easily deceived or cheated."

I was so perturbed by this, that such blatantly false information was circulating the internet, that I brought it to the attention of my mother.

"Mother," I said, "I don't understand. I keep seeing this thing that gullible is not in the dictionary. But it's on dictionary dot com!"

Here, she grinned.

I stared blankly, wondering what was so funny.

"Olivia," she began.

And then I got it.

We fell in heaps laughing.

Gullible! The dictionary! I looked up gullible in the dictionary! This was a trick and I fell for it!

Of course, all this was a trick meant purely for the amusement of my mother. Of course.

I would never actually fall for anything like that.

It was just a... blonder than usual... moment.

Postscript:

It's Monday!

The day of music!

A psaltery and guitar ensemble, it says*, of Waltz from Masquerade by Aram Khachaturian.

*Well, Google Translate says it says. 

Pretty Colors! Pretty Music!

Yesterday I pondered what piece I might post for this week's Musical Monday, and suddenly it occurred to me, "I have not posted a Chopin ever in the history of Musical Monday! How shameful! What a disgrace! I must amend this!"

This revelation was quite shocking, given my fondness of Chopin's music. So, I am amending this.

A YouTube search for "chopin" wielded this video.

I thought that was kind of cool.

A Great, Terrible Tragedy

"Oh no!" you say. "Olivia missed Musical Monday! Something must be terribly wrong! Was she kidnapped and held hostage? Did her house burn down? Did she contract the reallyscarysoundingosis?"

No, my dear readers. I am afraid a calamity far greater befell me last night. The most tragic, most dreaded scenario of all did I face:

I was internetless.

GASP!

Okay, so maybe I'm being just a tiny bit dramatic. Just a tiny bit. Yesterday morning, I read a book, so I did not post in the morning. In the afternoon was my piano lesson, and then we went and got me some new glasses (squee! I can see again! Well, not quite yet--they won't be ready for seven to ten days) and some groceries ('cause, you know, I guess eating is kind of important. Who'd have guessed?).

In fact, I did not even open my laptop until 6:03 yesterday evening.

I told my mother, "It is 6:03 and I have not been on the computer today. Are you proud of me, or concerned?"
"I'm concerned," she said.
And she went and got my computer.

But at 6:03, I was wiped out from the activities of the day (piano lessons are tiring!! And add Walmart on top of that... phew...), and I could not breathe very well (my respiratory system goes on strike sometimes), and I could not think of a unique-ish video to post (because I've done a lot of piano lately, and I wanted something orchestral, or at least different). (Are you tired of the parentheses yet?)

So I surfed the web for a little while (*coughafewhourscoughcough*) until I was recovered. And then I had a late-night date with Bach. I was playing one of his Inventions on my digital piano/full-length keyboard thing, setting it to all sorts of instruments (including the ancient percussion instrument, Rain, and the wind instrument, Wind, and other such things). Bach sounds lovely on everything from trumpets to mandolins to castanets! The only things that, erm, don't sound so good are evil laughter and clapping.

By then, it was ten-thirty, and then I remembered the horses still hadn't gotten their dinner. I went and did that. When I came in, I finished the last few voices on my piano/keyboard thing, and then logged onto Blogger.

And then... my internet died.

This happens all the time (several times a day, at least!), and is not-too-difficultly fixed by resetting the modem and unplugging the router. However, it was late, and the modem and router are in the bedroom in which my father was asleep. So I just went to bed.

Now that you have read the explanation of yesterday's events which turned out much longer than anticipated, here is this week's (slightly belated) installment.

This is the first movement (at least, I'm fairly certain it would still be considered a movement... but my limited classical knowledge fails in the subject of... konzertstücks... so maybe it's not a movement?) of Schumann's Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra. I got to see this piece performed live by the symphony orchestra a while ago. Much fun!

Appraised Historical Recordings

I'm out of title creativity today. Now, onto your regularly scheduled post.

Do you know what day it is?

It is the day you have eagerly anticipated all week,

the day you set your alarm for four AM but rose at three-thirty

because you were too excited to sleep and leapt out of bed and
quickly turned on your computer and went to Blogger and then went skulking
back to bed because the post you were waiting for was not yet in existence.

You mean you didn't actually do that?

Oh.

Well, anyway, it's

Musical Monday!

The day on which I give you...

...

....

.....

THIS!

(I haven't actually picked out a video for this week yet. I'll go do that.)

Ahem.

The day on which I give you

THIS!

It's Grieg. Playing Grieg. It was recorded in 1903, apparently.

But wait! There's more!

It's scratchy. It's raspy. But it's Brahms, in 1889. Isn't that just cool?

And because I'm in a random mood, a few bullet points for you.

• Last night I dreamed my aunt got a pet iguana, and it was forty-two years old. She wanted to get a photographer out, because it had some kind of medical condition and had really weird eyes.
• I had the first piano lesson of the new school year today.
• After my piano lesson, we got McDonald's and ate it in the car in the parking lot. Suddenly, water droplets appeared all over the windshield. This was very confusing, because it was bright and sunny out, and blue sky was directly overhead, and surely it couldn't be raining. Then my mother pointed out it came from sprinklers.
• After McDonald's, we went to Target. I got a book. They only had the mass market paperback edition, which I've considered getting before, but I'd decided to hold out and get a trade paperback copy. I don't like mass market, because they're hard to hold and have cheap ink that makes me itchy. But today I ended up getting the mass market one anyway. I liked the cover. There's a horse. (Actually, the trade paperback might have exactly the same cover. I've never actually checked. Oh well. Now I have it.)
• It's after nine o'clock and I haven't eaten dinner yet. Do you suppose I should?
• Actually, I think I will, because then I can eat dessert. My mother unwittingly participated in the Zucchini Revolution yesterday by baking chocolate chip zucchini cake. It's yummilicious!
• Actually, I just got my mother's permission to eat chocolate chip zucchini cake for dinner! I'm eating it with a spoon, because the forks are all dirty.
• As I was writing this, I felt something crawling on my neck. It was a tiny jumping spider. Crawling on my neck. How rude.
• People I actually know in real life* may end up seeing this blog.** That is a slightly terrifying prospect. Maybe I should actually try to write my posts intelligently...
• It has taken approximately ten hours to write this post.

*I know! I was surprised I had one too.

**Well, my parents have seen it too, but they already know I'm a cow admirer and zucchini revolutionist.

Scherzo in Bb Major

Silly Olivia forgot all about it being Monday, and scrambled to write a post. The instant she posted it, of course, she remembered it was Monday, and that Monday is the day to post good music. So, here's today's Schubert, and she supposes she'll delete the other post and reschedule it for tomorrow. Silly, silly Olivia.

By the way, this girl is ten years old. That is quite humbling, Olivia thinks.

What Am I Getting Into?

Dear reader, it is August. It is August. How did that happen?

I created this blog nearly a year ago (though I didn't actually post until September of last year). Since then, my posts have been very sporadic, and I've had several long absences. My third post was titled I'm Back. With each return, after much apologizing and naming of excuses, I've promised to try to post more frequently, and promptly poofed. In a year, I've posted less than fifty times.

Starting now, I am going to post every day.

That's not a promise, because you can see how well that's worked before. I don't know how long it will last, either. But I'm hoping even if it's for a few months, it will get me in the habit of finding things to write about, remembering to write about them... not that I'd ever forget or anything... and scheduling posts. This post is, in fact, scheduled. So it was weird to write, "It is August," at the beginning, because it isn't August. Maybe that's why I was so shocked.

This means a decrease in the quality of posts, I'm sure, (That's possible? you ask), but it also likely entails many late-night last-minute rambles, which may be amusing.

Oh, and it's Musical Monday, isn't it? This is the happifying Bach piece I mentioned in my last post:

That's not me playing, as you can (hopefully) tell by the big hands and skill of the guy, but I am learning it this month. It's hard, but so much fun! I have to try very, very hard to exercise self-control and not over-practice it. But once I start, it's so hard to stop...

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

I could watch that thing all day.