Key Bored

I really like my Casio MT-240. it belonged to Grandpa Williams and the demo on it is the friggin best song EVER, seriously. That song is GREAT, it's catchy and I've always loved it. I like playing it, and I've been playing it a lot lately. I felt like they keys were a little small though, and I'm used to an actual piano, which has "normal" sized keys. Grandma & Grandpa had a really nice keyboard upstairs at their house they let me take, and although the keys are great because they're full size, the sound isn't the same. It's a Casio CA-110. I do love playing it because the keys are full size. It wears my arms and fingers and wrists out pretty quickly but I really should be playing it because of the size of the keys. This got me thinking, we have quarter size violins and small guitars, we really should have pianos with keys that are the MT-240 size for children who are learning piano. I'm a grown up and I have trouble sometimes with the stretches between keys in some of the songs, and kids who are taking piano lessons must have more trouble than me. Here's a picture comparing the sizes, the bottom one's keys are the same size as those on a piano.

I'm still working on recording the demo from the MT-240 into mp3 or wav format to put on my iPAQ to listen to on the go. Yes, the song really is that good.

Unexpected Skill

For those of you who don't know, I'm mostly Norweigan (not entirely but mostly). So I grew up around lefse, krumkaka and yes, lutefisk. My family members say "Uff da" and actually so do I sometimes. Grandma made lefse for the first time last year and it was quite tasty. She didn't like that it was thick but I didn't really care because it was very good. She asked me if I wanted to help make lefse this year and I figured what the heck, I've always wanted to learn how it's done. Storebought lefse is like...eh...machine made I think. Lefse should he made by hand whether at home or in a grocery store. Lefse is one of those make-at-home things though for sure. I try not to purchase the already made stuff. I'd never made lefse before so Grandma & I put on our aprons and she showed me what to do. It looked KINDA easy as far as rolling it out on the big round board, but there's a certain way it has to be rolled, and Grandma was having a little trouble but I offered to try since she had showed me how. So I got a glob of the dough, rolled it out, and it was a PERFECT CIRCLE and perfectly thin WITHOUT the stick poking a hole in it! I was impressed! First of all, I'm really not that great in the kitchen. Unless it's in a can or in the microwave, I don't get it right. I really figured I better not even try to cook the lefse on the griddle thingy because I would probably burn it or make it stick or something, so Grandma handled that. We decided right then & there that I would be the roller and Grandma would be the cooker. It didn't take us very long, and for the most part, the pieces turned out pretty good, there weren't many holes or rips or thick spots, and it was VERY tasty. We have to save some for Christmas though so we couldn't snack too much. When I agreed to help make lefse, my brain was saying "Oh boy, this is gonna be really frustrating and I'm gonna be really bad at it because I can't cook and I'm a klutz." I'm really glad I was wrong!! Grandma & I decided to do this every year now because I roll it so well. I like that rolling pin with the ridges in it because it makes those lines on the lefse. I love lefse so it was really hard not to eat it all! I'm so glad I can do this, what a handy (and unexpected) skill!

Use of Swears

Ok, so my buddy Larry put this thingy on his web site about his use of profanity. Here's a link http://larrygasik.com/articles/071125_Profanity.html

This inspired me to take a look at when I swear, what causes it, and even things I say instead of swears when one would normally just swear. Here's a handy graphic that shows what percent of the time I'm doing a certain activity is spent swearing. For example, when I tell jokes, I estimated swears are used about 5% of the time (so not very often).

Sometimes a "replacement swear" slips out. One particular example: I was making some chicken nuggets in the oven. I opened the oven to flip the nuggets over with tongs and I dropped one and it landed on the bottom of the oven. Although I was home alone, I said "Ya friggin' fart!" I could've said anything I wanted, there were no children or family members around! My hermit crabs have heard me say much worse, yet "Ya friggin' fart!" is what slipped out. Go figure!

Some other examples that have slipped out include:

Oh flibber flabber!

Aw shibber shabber!

I don't give a flying fart!

Wanker!

In so many ways I'm a bit of an old lady, and this is one way. And yes, I really do swear that much when I play Tibia. Lots of kids playing and lots of BRs and stuff, plenty to swear about. And yes, I'm such an old lady that I say stuff to the TV. Such as "Excuse me Charlie Bell?!?! That is bull sh**! Your a** is gonna lose this mayoral race and I'll be darn happy about it! It's your own d*** fault!" Etc, etc. Don't worry, it's only that bad every once in a while. Usually it's something more like "Pshh, frigginay I don't need that sh**." Any swears used at work are NOT around customers by the way!! I know not to do that. As far as objects/items, this includes "finding a knife the hard way in a drawer," hammering a finger, dropping my box of earrings, or any other negative interaction with an object. I'm glad I saw Larry's thing on his web site because although it was kinda just for fun, it made me take a look at some of the things I'm saying. I do watch my language in any situation where one should (being around family or children or customers at work), but sometimes it just flies out if something huge happens (such as running into that knife in the drawer). I'm also glad to look at my use of swears and know that I don't call anyone names (like b**ch or a**hole or anything). Oh, and any censoring in this post was done by me and not Blogger. I censor anything that "anyone" can read just so it's fairly G rated.

Loser Pants

Look, I'm a loser--of weight, that is! I bought a new pair of pants and I put it on top of my old pants. Lookit!