Note to self: Purchase a tuner. Aiming about an octave too high on the E string is a good way to nearly lose an eye. I was planning on trying out different strings anyway, though.

And of course, all of you know what this means. Rook came to me today! Fashionably late, of course, and delivered to my office, silly thing. His arrival made quite a scene. I'd have more pictures of him, but he's a little embarrassed that he's one-quarter naked right now, and I feel like I should fix that for him before I let the internet ogle him more.

He also facilitated my introduction to one Mr. Sherry, who has had a music store tucked in next to the Symphony Center on Michigan Ave. since nearly forever ago. I'd always meant to go in there, and my aversion to hauling Rook all the way up to the far north side to get taken care of finally propelled me inside. He was full of huge, wandering stories and occupied me for my entire lunch break (before I even brought Rook in to be properly strung, bridged, and tuned). He even refused payment for the stringing and tuning, which was silly of him, though obviously he does pretty well for himself. I just have to figure out what reason I could have to go back. Except purchasing another instrument. He had a concertina in the window. That'd be cool... Or the charango made of an armadillo shell. And oh, the place is full of violins and guitars. It's pretty wonderful.

I think I'm through shouting uselessly into the ether for now. Instead, I am crawling through Craigslist looking for things to do with my time (other than sitting around trying to figure out what to do with my time).

I am probably going to put in a profile for this, because I remember almost doing the 24-hour plays at the UofC once, and almost signing up for these particular 24-hour plays once before, so it's about time I actually, you know, threw my hat into the ring. The main problem is coming up with a witty enough profile. This is hard when I haven't done any actual, substantial writing for two years now (two years!) Any suggestions? I don't know... at least tell me that I'm cooler than some of the people on the list right now? I have to hope that at least one or two of them are cooler than me, because just about everyone agrees that I need more friends in the city, and I'd like them to be less the office-bound type.

There's also a music blog trying to get off the ground here. Considering a significant number of Pitchfork writers already seem to be from Chicago, I am officially interested in working for a different music blog because the people from Pitchfork annoy me. The bonus, of course, is the hope that I'd get advance copies of CDs and get into concerts for free. I can BS my way around indie music with the best of them for that. (And I just added like, six concerts I want to go to to my last.fm list, and I'm thinking, you know, it'd probably be good to have someone subsidize this addiction, so I can afford to pay for taxis on the way back from the shows that run until 1:30 in the morning, after my bus stops running).

The best news of the day, by far, is that my mandolin should be here by the end of the week, which means I can (almost) safely sign up for the next session of lessons. I'm just kind of torn between whether I want to potentially embarrass myself by taking Mandolin 2 without taking the semi-required in-between class. And I'd mostly be doing it because the last instructor I had went a bit too slow, and I want to get more out of the 8 weeks than just a few more chords. And I want to prove to myself that I can still study and practice and get good at something when it's challenging. I just have to hope I don't get myself laughed out of the class (or gently talked-down-to by the prof afterwards).

WTB some self-confidence?

Don't think this means I've forgiven you for screwing me over, University of Chicago. I will never forget.

Blue Remy's case and strap arrived today. Still no Blue Remy. (He is apparently shipping straight from the manufacturer, and while that makes me feel better about the care he'll receive on the way, I don't have a tracking number, so I have no idea when he'll be here.)

I have subsequently decorated the case for his arrival. It's about forty times more hardcore than I thought it'd be, but this pleases me. My requirements were basically 1) Light and 2) Able to be strapped to my back. It fulfills both of these requirements, and as an added bonus there is no way anyone on the CTA or elsewhere could ever harm him without harming me seriously first. There's also no way I could harm him without harming myself first, and since my clumsiness makes this likely, I'm glad I won't really have to worry. Unless I get hit by a truck.

In other news, today was my one-year anniversary at work. I had such great plans for this day. Curse you, economy! Curse you!

I have worked so much overtime in the last two weeks, I can afford to do one of several things:

- I can buy myself a mandolin. (I want blue Remy! Blue Remy would be awesome!)
- I can go to Bonnaroo. (Seriously, does anyone want to go? Because I aim to do at least one music festival this year.)
- I can adopt this adorable cat that I've been admiring for days. Though this brings up issues with future moves, and things with the landlord and Sirius now, doesn't she have the cutest cat smile ever? She looks like great trouble fun. (I have yet to get off work early enough to go see her.)
- Buy myself a record player... If I ever manage to decide how far I want to travel into audiophile territory, because that's a slippery, slippery slope. I also need good speakers. This would turn into a much more massive investment than my current overtime could cover.

Of course, my indecisiveness and unwillingness to spend money pretty much means I won't be doing any of these things. Unless someone wants to go to Bonnaroo! Or if I get over my fear of ordering a musical instrument online. But really, guys... music festival. Who wants to go? I'll bring my Blue Remy! (... I have a lot more overtime in my future.)

Remy has a new g-string! Yay!

Wednesdays are going to be a problem.

Today I ran out of complaints to type and had to learn something new. There's always something nice about doing something different. And so that cheered me up. And it was sunny, and that cheered me up. And I went to a music store on Michigan on a whim, because I always see it from the bus, and it was in the Fine Arts Building, which is wonderful and old, and full of people doing arty things, with elevators that have actual human operators. It's so, so, so early 1900s I was stunned and grinning for some time afterward. I highly recommend wandering into it if you're ever in the area. This, also, cheered me up. And I picked up prints from Walgreens, and am once again fearing an addiction to the slightly-delayed gratification of printing things cheaply from my camera's memory card.

And then I had my mandolin lessons, which were, as usual, wonderful fun. (Other than realizing that I'm still nervous when playing anything alone. I, er, in a brief lapse of self-restraint, started noodling around over my instructor's noodling, and played things right, and then, afterwards, realized my heart was beating a bit too fast for having done something like that. Goshdarn freaking retroactive stage fright.) My instructor is a bit... elitist, though not openly condescending. Thankfully, it just makes me want to work harder, though I do wish he'd be a bit more ambitious in teaching us things. The best part of lessons, though, might be the "second half", when we all sit down and play three- or four-chord songs with all the guitar classes. Everyone up at the Old Town School seems to have a political agenda during the second-half, which I imagine would be annoying if we weren't pretty much all a bunch of hippie liberals with guitars and mandolins. We sing union songs and today we had a song about Victor Jara, and Obama buttons were passed around. It's great fun to actually be around fun people, which is a pretty big chunk of the reason I'm there in the first place. So... mission accomplished!

Needless to say I'm all hyped up on sunshine and music and hippie liberalism. It's a nice feeling. But I'm going to have to go to work tomorrow anyway. (And, as I've stated before, nothing is more of a buzz-kill.) Maybe I'll call off because of the cramp in my left hand.

I also made some postcards on the train, which I intend to send to people next time I visit the post office. Looking back at my Christmas cards entry, though, I realize I mostly have addresses people aren't at anymore. If you'd like a random nonsensical postcard (with little-known facts or nonsense pop-quizzes with questions about Spiderman, or advertisements for the end of days), I'll need your right and proper address (you can e-mail it if you like, I'm too lazy to screen comments individually, and I'm still mostly without internets).

P.S. Guys I've figured out the chords to Magpie. The world is in severe danger now. (Also it's nearly midnight. I'm going to regret this in the morning).

I am now officially going back to school in the fall. Not, you know, proper school, and it's not for more than a couple hours a week, BUT I'll have an instrument that I have to carry to work and back on Wednesdays, and that will be geektastic (this being one of my minor motivations. Another being there were only three seats open in the class when there were 10 when I first saw it a few days ago. It kind of forced my patient hand.)

And now, unfortunately I'm kind of justified in ogling pretty little (actually affordable) acoustic-electric mandolins. (My goodness there are mandolins on there that cost more than small cars.)