I'm Real!

The other day, you may recall I was having problems with my violin pegs slipping.  While I was researching the issue, one of the videos I was watching on YouTube said to push the pegs into the holes really hard.  Of course, I knew to do this, but I always worried about breaking Cody's violin.  This guy said that you would not break the violin doing this.  He said you're more likely to break a string than the peg box, following up with the statement, "You're not a real violinist until you've broken a string."

I guess I'm real, then.

Friday I'd gotten Cody's violin out and was attempting to tune it.  Here's the thing -- the string will tune a whole lot better if you turn the right peg.  Sigh...

I was trying to tune my G string, to no avail.  For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why that string wouldn't tune properly.  Neither could I figure out why the peg had gotten so hard to turn.  I gave it one more good, hard crank, when to my horror, I heard the tell-tale sproing, and saw my D string fly across the room.  And that's when I figured it out...

Quickly, I hopped on Amazon and ordered a new set, which arrived today.

I'm probably going to go ahead and change out all the strings, so they'll all be the same type, and save the unbroken ones for spares.  While I'm doing that, I'll go ahead and soap up the remaining pegs, then they'll all be good.  I don't know when I'll have time, as .... I'm getting overtime again!

Just before I left for the day, Group Leader said to come in early tomorrow.  I'm glad of that.  My bank account was getting so tight, it was Heimlich-ing itself.

In other news, I got my Christmas tree up over the weekend.

I did something a little different this year.  Usually, when I'm stringing the lights, I weave them up and down each branch, because I don't want to see the wires.  After staring at my tree all day Friday, dreading the process, I decided I'm getting to old to do all that crawling up inside the tree, this time around, I'd just wrap the lights around the outside.  If I didn't like it that way, I could always re-do it.  However, once I got it done, and all the decorations on it, the tree looks fine. Beautiful, even.

Look, there are a few presents under it.

Rylea says, "I sure hope one of those is for me."

Um...*adds present for Rylea to shopping list*.....*adds present for Jesse to shopping list, too*

Moving right along, here is my newest ornament:

Live Long and Prosper.

Finally, my latest Yes.Fit medal has arrived.

It's really cute, and the gumdrops on the medal are 3D!

I'm probably going to hold off signing up for another race until the overtime kicks in again.  Money is just too tight right now.  I'm still walking the steps at work, even though everyone else has quit until after Christmas. 

I'm trying not to get any fatter, or I'll have to go up a jean size.