6 Things about me…
Wednesday November 05 2008
A while back Patty tagged me on this and I never responded, so here it goes!
- I love strategy games! When I was in high school, my friends and I joined the chess team. We had a great “friendly competitive” atmosphere which pushed us to study and get better together. By my junior year, the team won 7th in the USA… finals, and my senior year they won 3rd. This probably comes from my father, who raised us playing card games and board games, from monopoly to cribbage. I still love a good card game, or a long game of risk on a winter’s night.
- I am the youngest of 4 children. I have THREE… older sisters, who used to do unspeakable things to me. We are now all happily married, and 3 of us have now moved back to the Pacific Northwest which has made our parents very happy (but we still have to call and ask permission in order to stop by the old house!)
- My passions in life other than oboe include hockey, hockey and hockey! Living in Michigan for 4 years, you can’t help but catch the hockey bug. I didn’t discover it until around my junior year of college, and have loved it ever since. When I was at Michigan State, we were #1 in the country while Michigan was #2. Ryan Miller (of the Buffalo Sabres) was our starting goalie and won the Hobey Baker award. I’m a die-hard Red Wings fan.
- Three greatest “oboe excerpts” composers = Barber, Brahms, and Ravel
- I get on these weird snack streaks. I discover something and start eating it like a chipmunk for months until I get sick of it. Past snack streaks include Chinese Ginger candy, David Sunflower Seeds, and Yogurt Covered Raisons.
- As I child I used to have asthma problems chronically. I’d get plugged up to this nebulizer (which now have nice designs, but in my day it was an ugly brown box) twice a day and sit there for five minutes inhaling this misting medicine. Once I hit 6th grade and began playing oboe, it cleared up all Asthma symptoms I ever had, and the last time I went to my Asthma/Allergist, I was told I have 200% average lung capacity.
That’s me!
Hiniker Oboe
Thursday October 09 2008
Yes, I have it. Yes, it’s gorgeous in every way. Yes, I will write a full review of it when I have time.
Interesting Ebay…
Thursday October 09 2008
I peruse ebay quite often to see what junk people are selling, and sometimes I just wonder what goes through people’s minds.
Like this guy who’s been selling this Laubin for a month now, and every week it goes down $100. (It’s now the LAST… HOUR… and I see that it gets marked 10% off to a bargain basement price of $4400! Still $800 or so overpriced.)
Or this guy, who thinks a 80 year old ring-system loree in a ghetto looking case is worth $2700. Yeah. Right. (Meanwhile, you can get this oboe which is a few years older that the other one, with closed holes, and looking in better condition for $2000 cheaper.)
There’s even this guy who’s willing to repad your instrument for $350! ($400 for cork pads.) A great deal if he does good work! Who knows if he does good work though.
And then there’s this guy who sells terrible cane. I bought some a year or so ago, and it was like swiss cheese; every time I made a round, the flake (notice I don’t use the word “curl”) came out with gigantic holes in it and was stringy. Couldn’t do anything with it. (If you’re looking for cheap cane, go with the Bargain Bin cane from RDG…).
I guess the saying, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” applies here. In any case, with the Dow dropping the way it is, it’s going to be hard to sell just about anything.
By the way, anyone interesting in purchasing an XL?
The Mystery Serial Number, Solved.
Wednesday October 08 2008
To Loree:
Dear de Gourdons,
I was wondering if you could tell me if this is a “Q” letter? It’s a funny looking letter, and wondered if it had special meaning.Best of wishes,
Cooper
From Loree:
Read the Rest
Dear Mr Cooper,
Yes it is the letter “Q“ the one between the P and the R in the alphabet
there is no other meaning
With all our best
Anne de Gourdon
F.LOREE×DE GOURDON…
48 rue de Rome
75008 PARIS…
FRANCE…
MQOD
Wednesday October 08 2008
“We enjoy strawberry cheesecake, but not because we evolved a taste for it. We evolved circuits that gave us trickles of enjoyment from the sweet taste of ripe fruit, the creamy mouth feel of fats and oils from nuts and meat, and the coolness of fresh water. Cheesecake packs a sensual wallop unlike anything in the natural world because it is a brew of megadoses of agreeable stimuli which we concocted for the express purpose of pressing our pleasure buttons— I suspect that music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of at least six of our mental faculties”
Steven Pinker, from How the Mind Works, pgs. 525, 534
Um— No comment.
Read the Rest