I Remembered!

Sure enough, as soon as I shut down my computer last night, I remembered what it was I was going to tell you.  And that something is, I saw my two yearling bucks Sunday night!  They are looking really good -- especially my little seven point.  Unfortunately, it was already too dark to get a good picture.  That's what happens when the sun sets at 4:30 -- ish. 

I haven't seen the mama does or this year's babies recently, though.  Maybe they'll come around sometime. 

As you may know, I've been trying to learn to play Cody's violin -- like I need more on my plate.  Anyway, I'd been getting frustrated because the thing simply will not stay in tune.  Every single time I play it, I have to re-tune it.  Even then, before I've finished, at least one string is back to being out of tune.  Naturally, I did what any red blooded American would do.  I googled it.

Apparently, I need something called Peg Dope.  See, a violin peg board is different from a guitar peg board. On a guitar, you have these little gear things.

 
I don't know what the official name for them is.  Whatever they're called, they help hold the tuning pegs in place, so that once your string is tuned, it's not going anywhere.  Oh, they loosen over time, but once they're set, they're pretty much set.  They just need to be tweaked every now and again.

Violin tuning pegs aren't like that.  You just have to jam them into the holes and hope friction holds them in place.  But there is help.  You can put this Peg Dope stuff on them and it'll help hold them into place.  The bad news is, you have to unstring the peg and pull it out of the hole to apply said Peg Dope.  I don't know that I want to get into all of that with Cody's violin.  If it were mine, I would.  But I don't want to mess his instrument up. 

The good news is, now I know it's not something I'm going wrong.  They also say that changes in humidity and temperature can cause the pegs to slip.  We've had a lot of that lately.  Once I figured that out, I got a lot less frustrated.  I mean, it's still going out of tune, but at least now I know why. 

By the way, I'm trying to work up a little something for you.  It still sounds pretty rough, but hopefully in a few weeks, it'll be ready. 

Well, it'll be Thanksgiving in a couple of days, and I wanted to take this opportunity to share something.  I will be thankful when my place of employment decides its employees are worth new soap dispensers.  You know, so we don't have to jury rig them with pieces of cardboard any more.

I told a friend that if the company ever goes out of business, we can all get jobs milking cows.  We'll have plenty of experience.