Praxeum

“Acoustic culture: living simply, living well, living harmoniously, living with purpose and living to live!”

- Ed Meers in Bicycle Times letters

As mentioned in my 2010 resolutions I’m going to learn to play either guitar or piano this year. I just need to figure out which.

I have access to both and interest in learning to play. I can think of more music / styles I’d like to learn in piano. Guitar seems it would develop skills that’ll help when learning other instruments like cello and electric bass, it’s has a wide range of styles and techniques.

both can be played ‘quietly’, i’m not a person that likes to make a lot of noise. guitar is a little more portable / flexible in that i can take my guitar various places (vacations, friends houses) easier than i can with our electric keyboard.

my manual dexterity has never been super great, about the first thing i was really good at with my hands was typing on a keyboard, so piano seems like maybe it would be more familiar.

andrew knows how to play guitar and could give me some tips, other the other hand andrew doesn’t know how to play piano so i wouldn’t feel like i’m trying to catch up to his level.

i think at this point i’m about 70% piano.

December has been quite enjoyable thus far. I’ve been to Ashland Oregon for two weeks attending Bike School and then came back for a week of work which was fairly calm with upcoming holidays. Now I’m on holidays for two more weeks, going back to work on January 5th 2010.

I’ve been out snowboarding a few times since starting holidays and will be going a few more times indeed. I’ve also got my holiday shopping done and Andrew and I have been organizing and really settling into our place, and enjoying eachother’s company.

My mom is visiting for a couple of weeks and it’s great to see her. And great to have some family around for the holidays.

Cup of tea given to my seat neighbor on the flight home. It’s just too cute! Great postscript … She kept the cup “throwing it out seems cruel”

I’m now on day 3 of the UBI course in Ashland. Wheel building went great yesterday! It was a lot to learn and a lot of work but the instructors broke the steps down and helped us along.

Currently I’m on lunch break. I haven’t been watching much TV, just a little Hulu while i’ve been here and it’s been interesting. I find myself reading more, sitting quietly, thinking of what i could do. Where when you just automatically turn the tv on when you get home, it sucks you in, like it has gravity.

Its obvious from the outside, but when you are in the gravity well it seems much harder to perceive.

One of the truly great things about America

The greatest little bar in the land

I’m in Ashland Oregon for the next couple of weeks. I’ll be attending a bike course at United Bicycle Institute.

I left Vancouver around 8:30 this morning, took a short flight to Portland and then another shorter flight to Medford. From the Medford airport I took a shuttle to Ashland.

I’m staying at a group hostel with a private room. The price is real good and so far the place is quite cool. Interesting people around.

I spent the afternoon wandering downtown Ashland, it’s a really interesting town, lots of small shops and quirky eateries.

Tomorrow I’ll be adventuring a bit more.

It’s interesting that we spend so much of our time trying to be like no one else, to be completely unique in some way we define and the rest of the time we spent trying to some glimmer of similarity between ourselves and others, some means to feel connected and like someone else.

I’ve noticed in this my 31st year that most often I feel that sense of connection most profoundly and happily when I find people that share experiences, thoughts or idiosyncrasies that I don’t understand or even feel embarrassed about.  Particularly if I find only one or two people, it makes me feel not unique but rare and being rare I’m not like everyone else, but I’m not alone either.

I’ve been feeling a bit off for a couple of weeks. Last week I was having a lot of nausea and motion sickness, I felt like I had the flu but then a day or two later I’d feel ok again.

This morning I woke up really late and felt terrible. Fortunately my doctor had an open appointment and I went in to see her in the afternoon. She says I definitely have the flu and that I have to stay home for a week. There is a lot of H1N1 going on here in Vancouver and so they really want everyone to stay home for a while to avoid spreading it even further.

So for the next week I’m house bound, hoping I can rest and recover and get back to feeling good real soon.

Recently I changed my online handle to atiniir. I’ve been using kerfufl or my real name sort of sporadically for 5 or 6 years but recently using kerfufl has bothered me. I’ve been going through a lot of changes in 2009 and I don’t percieve myself as “a noisy disturbance or commotion” anymore. I don’t think it suits me and it’s not the idea I want to project.
After a few months of consideration (not continuously) I have chosen ‘atiniir’ it is a Mando’a (as in Mandalorian, as in Boba Fett, as in Star Wars) word:

• atiniir (ah-teen-EER) – to endure, to stick with, to tough it out

I like how it sounds and i like what it means. i also like that it seems sort of vaguely elvish.

I’ve had a few different handles in my ether life and i’ve had a few different names in my corporeal life, i think your name says a lot about you. i think part of what makes you “you” is your name, just as your hands and nose and feet make are part of “you”.

What’s in your name?