Sun-kissed list

Summer break is project time! May was fine for loafing, vacationing and getting approximately nothing done while resting up from a most demanding (but rewarding) semester. June and July will see Ben and I on the move, both by working out at the gym and on walks, and by moving house, down the walkway to a larger flat. But we also need to park our behinds in our chairs and study. He has some coding projects lined up. And for me?

List of Colleen's Projects:

1. Learn a semester's worth of beginning Spanish. (Books, CDs and online resources, check.) Be ready to jump into semester 2 at the U this fall.

2. Work on my rug-hooking project (I do this while listening to the Spanish CDs).

3. Finish and turn in the final projects in the Certified Clinical Musicians' course I began a couple years ago.  Needless to say, that went on a back burner while we moved to Moscow and studied here.

4. Choose one or two of my favorite young peoples' fantasies, such as A Wrinkle In Time, one of the Narnia or Prydain Chronicles, or an Earthsea book, and pick it apart. See what makes it live and breathe. Identify the craft elements and how they create the flow and function in the story. Take lotsa notes.

5. Sort through books we own and household items and get rid of the ones we don't need. Preferably before we move to the new flat on June 23rd.

I got something done towards #3 today: replaced a harpstring, tuned up my harp and the monochord side of my kotamo, a large tall box with dozens of strings on it. Ben bought a nifty tuner app for his nifty new Android phone for me.

Here is the koto/tambura side of the instrument. The monochord ("mo" in "kotamo") is on the back.

The strings were in the slack, G-ish range I'd left them in for the move here, and I needed to pull each one up to D. Thirty-one metal strings to raise a fourth, and any one of them could SNAP-twang and whip me across the face.

By the grace of God, none did.

I don't expect the other projects to wrack my nerves so neatly.