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Grooming Day
From time to time, we get the dogs groomed. For Newfs, this mean a really good bath, followed by blowdrying and brushing as well as a bit of trimming, especially around their feet. Getting this trimming done means they only bring in huge amounts of dirt and mud from the outdoors as opposed to unbelievable amounts of it. As well, they get their nails well trimmed.
We have a mobile groomer named Lorraine come and visit. Her van is self-contained except for hydro, and Lorraine runs an extension to the house to take care of that. The van has tanks of water, a large tub (big enough for a Newf) and a table that goes up and down. It’s quite a set-up.
The dogs have recently blown their coat. For Newfs that means they lose their underfur, which is replace by new winter underfur. They shed again in the spring. Ellie Mae has a much thicker coat than Memphis and she sheds a huge amount over a period of two or three weeks. I’ve brushed out bags of fur. Hopefully this grooming will take care of the last of it.
Memphis and Ellie Mae visit Santa
They would have just written letters to Santa, outlining what smelly treats they like best, but they don’t have opposable thumbs. Every time they try to write they end up chewing the pen to bits. So we sallied forth to visit Santa.
Search term of the day…
what do hydnum umbilicatum eat
Well geez, they’re mushrooms. Fungi often exist in relationships with plants or other fungi in order to get their nutrients, but I don’t think of them as eating exactly. This particular mushroom does have teeth though…but it doesn’t chew. The teeth act the same way gills or pores do in other mushrooms, for distributing spores.
Hydnum umbilicatum is the smaller of the two hedgehog mushrooms, and although they don’t eat, I do eat them. In fact, they’re very tasty and if you can find and identify them, they make a great addition to a meal.
too many or not enough?
I seem to have accumulated a few accordions over the years. I’m not sure how that happened. I love them all of course. Some of them don’t get played so often though.
For instance I have a nice old Hohner single row diatonic job that I rarely play since I much prefer playing my triple row boxes. I have two of those. My Guerrini gets the most play (every day), but I have a Hohner triple row box as well. I play that one occasionally, but these days it’s mostly a backup in case I break a reed on the Guerrini and it has to go into the shop. I don’t know if I could part with the Hohner though. I’ve customized the button-board action for speed and I had a ceramic mic installed for busking – plus it’s my first button accordion and has lots of sentimental value. I also have an old full-sized 4-reed piano accordion – it’s a nice old box…and a couple smaller piano accordions….
I’d like to learn to play the C-system chromatic accordion, but how can I justify another squeeze-box in the house (especially not an expensive one)? And so, I’m considering parting with a box or two…maybe one of the piano accordions and the single-row Hohner. I guess this is how people who collect things get started. Accumulate a couple things and next thing you know, they’ve turned into several and then lots and then too many.
It’s like that old joke about the guy who left his accordion on the back seat of his car and stopped into a restaurant for lunch. When he got back to the car, his back window was smashed and there were 3 accordions on the back seat.
Brave Combo plays an Oberek
Brave Combo is a group from Texas who have done a lot of work to revitalize polka music since 1979. Here they are playing the crazy Goose Oberek.
Mother Nature’s Fuel
I was just about out of gas in the Anchovy-mobile so I pulled into the nearest gas station, which happened to be a Husky station. I’d never fueled up at a Husky station before, at least not in the city. The pumps have green trim, and there, right on the pump, it says: “Mother Nature’s Fuel”. I’m not making this up. I asked myself, what are these folks trying to sell here? Am I expected to believe their gas is any different than the gas from any other station, extracted differently, refined differently?
Fortunately in 2010 we have search engines, so I plugged “mother nature’s fuel husky” into the Google-bar on my browser.
Who knew? Not only does it keep my engine clean. Not only does it prevent pre-ignition. Not only does it prevent gas line freezing. Not only does it represent a boost for the economy. Not only does Husky purchase more than 2 million bushels of wheat from farmers throughout the west. It’s also better for the environment. Wow, it even reduces greenhouse gas emissions and uses up all that nasty surplus grain. I think I’m going to go get me a bigger car, one that uses up more of that good gasoline. I’m going to go get me a Rocket 88.
You’ve know them early jalopies you’ve heard the noise they make, let me introduce my new Rocket 88….
Gammal Dalavals Carl och Eberhardt Jularbo från Klockarnäs
The Indifference Waltz
I was surfing around YouTube when the title of this piece caught my eye…turns out it’s beautifully played on a Bayan chromatic accordion. I’m not too knowledgeable about chromatic button accordions but I think that Bayans are what they call B system or B griff, as opposed to C system, the other alternative. I think the two systems are related – one is somehow arranged the opposite of the other. I don’t know really what that means to a player, except that I can’t imagine anybody learning both systems.
One of these days when I win a small lottery, I’m going to get myself a nice chromatic button accordion (perhaps not a full-sized one like this…I’m thinking maybe a 96 bass accordion) and take on the project of learning the fingering.
Doris McCarthy RIP
Canadian painter Doris McCarthy died on November 25 at age 100. Ms McCarthy had a 40 year career as a teacher before dedicating herself full-time to painting the Canadian landscape. She was also the author of three memoirs. She is best known for her paintings of the Canadian Arctic.
“When I retired from teaching, I thought that the next major event of my life would be dying,” she said in an interview with the Huffington Post’s Julia Moulden. “There was no imagining that the best years were still ahead of me.”
27th Street 