Rainy and Dark

Well, due to the unbelievable weather we have had, the early darkness, and the fact that I am in the thick of school work, Walter and I have not had any fun outdoor adventures in quite a long time. Sucks. I mean, it gets dark here by 4:30pm!!! And it is only November!!!!! In lieu of outdoor fun, I have been doing a bit of indoor stuff, particularly musical stuff. I have a pretty big choral concert coming up in December which I have been working hard on, and I have picked my guitar and mandolin back up and started dicking around with them. I have had an instrument hiatus for quite a few years. I have never been an accomplished musician, rather someone who could just sort of play, but I always enjoyed it. I thought that I would be able to pick them both back up and start in. I mean, how hard are chords? Well, I was quite wrong. My transition from one chord to another, on both instruments, is VERY rusty!!!! So the last week or so I have just been working on building up calouses on my fingertips and transitioning from one chord to another. It is not as easy as I remember. Maybe because I am older. I did get out my dulcimer as well, but as it is generally an easier instrument to play, I did not feel as defeated.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I have decided to break with my usual tradition of being alone and depressed and am going to spend Thanksgiving day with my friend Stacia and some other folks from school. Two days after Christmas I will be going to Illinois to visit my family. I am very excited about that. I have not been home in three and a half years since my Grandpa's funeral. He was the most wonderful man I have ever known and I credit him for passing on the outdoor gene. We also joke in my family that he was the progenenitor of the Smart Ass Gene. At my Grandma's funeral three months before he died, a woman who came to the visitation told him that she remembers how good looking he was when he was younger. He said, "What do you mean? I am still good looking!" Even at the age of 94 he was still a smart ass. He cracked me up. His last name was White and one time a prank caller called and asked if it was the White House. He said yes and the prankster said that he wanted to talk to the president. My grandpa said, "This is the president. What do you want?" They immediately hung up. Great man. Very much like my favorite fictional character Albus Dumbledore. My grandpa never even got mad at me when I lost his best bass lure. Funny thing, he found it in the lake three months later. I have it in the tackle box he wanted me to have when he died. Ah, sometimes I can get quite maudlin.

I have four days off from classes and Walter and I are planning a snowshoeing or back country skiing trip up on the Montana/Idaho border this weekend. I am not sure which mode of transport I will choose; depends on how many snowmobiles are around and how the snow is. I will be prepared for both. There is a lake on the border that we are going to go up to and part of the trail is a shared use trail. If the weather is just too bad and the passes (we have to go over two) are too bad we will just hit Mt. Spokane which has quite a bit of snow. I am looking forward to getting out. I am sick of rain (this has been the wettest November on record). If the precipitation is in the form of snow I am not as bothered by it. Rain just sort of sucks, especially the hard rain we have been having. At the moment it is raining really hard and there is a seven foot river in the street outside my house. I can see waterfalls coming down the hill behind my house as well...even in the dark!!!! So anyway, until I have something more exciting to share......

The pictures are of my guitar, mandolin, and dulcimer and then of course my Grandpa. Funny, when my mom and sister and I were in Glacier Park this summer my sister looked at me and said, "You have Grandpa's nose!" Then I told her she looked just like our father and that pissed her off. Man, when I look at this picture I can really see the Eastern US Native American in him. Wow. They look really different from the Natives in this part of the country. When I was a kid I used to always tell my mom that he was an Indian. Then he finally told us both that his grandmother was Chocktaw and survived the Trail of Tears when she was a child. Weird. I had no idea that he really was. Great man, that Arthur White. I always imagine him now sitting next to some lake in the sunshine with Morgan entertaining him with her "Cat with a Hairball" impersonation. Sometimes you just have to find something to smile about. That one always does it for me.