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All the little parts that you need

My sister recently got interested in going to a karaoke bar every week with some friends. Her husband decided to buy her a little karaoke machine to use at home. She was hoping to get a wireless microphone to use with the machine.

The microphone that came with the machine has a cord, and she likes to dance while she is singing. She finds herself almost tripping over the cord when she is dancing. The problem seems to be that she doesn’t know all of the different parts that she will need for the wireless microphone to work.

I am trying to help her find out, and have been trying to understand if the wireless microphones we have been finding have their own amplifier or not, and what she would be able to use for speakers. Can she use her current karaoke machine at all for any of that? Or her TV set? We are feeling pretty stupid right about now!

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Did You Dress Up?

So many adults are claiming Halloween as their right to party, that I wonder if this is about the kids anymore? I mean, so many people are going out to parties tonight – will there be anyone home to hand out candy to the trick or treaters?

I am dressing up and going out – but I am staying home to hand out candy until after 9:00. I think there will be at least 40 or 50 kids coming to my house this year. But 9:00 is late for little kids, so that’s when I’m cutting out the porch light and stopping the giveaways. Then I will head downtown and find some of my friends at a club and have some adult fun, too.

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Guess I never thought about that before

Even though I grew up in a family of musicians, my own personal “hands-on” experience has been limited to childhood piano lessons. I used to watch my other family members play their instruments, and I enjoyed singing and dancing to the music that they played. I never really payed a lot of attention to the logistics of tuning any of their instruments. I guess that is why I was mildly surprised when Chuck was telling me that he was teaching Jack how to tune a drum set this weekend. I never really ever thought about having to tune up a drum!

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Repair the credenza

I don’t know how the drawer guides on two of the drawers on the credenza in our dining room managed to get mangled and torn off. Yesterday I was looking for a new book of checks in the drawer where I keep the old check registers and books of checks and deposit slips, and the drawer came crashing down onto the floor. I was lucky it didn’t hit my foot! I found the mangled drawer guide inside the drawer. I don’t know who put it there, or when it was put there, but I was quite annoyed that nobody told me that it was broken so I could arrange to repair it! I hate when things like that happen!

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Guitar lessons were too boring for me when I was a kid

When I was a young teenager, my parents gave me an acoustic guitar for a birthday gift. I was sure I wanted to learn to play the guitar! And they signed me up for music classes. Unfortunately, the music teacher didn’t seem to appreciate the fact that young teenagers don’t want to spend hours and hours every day learning ONLY to read music and play the “mary had a little lamb” types of songs. Young teenagers ALSO want to learn a few “quick and dirty” songs that they can play fairly quickly. And no one had explained how much it would hurt my fingers to put pressure on the guitar strings when pressing them down on the frets!

So I abandoned the classes fairly quickly – they were boring and my fingers hurt. I wanted no More painful, boring hours of practice alone in my room playing songs I hated! Sometimes people ask me if I wish I had kept at it, and when I hear gifted musicians play, I do find myself wishing I could play that well, too. But, my tolerance level for pain was too low, so the answer to that question is “no.” I’m not a big fan of pain!

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Touch of Homesick

My niece is a bit of a drama queen and frequently complains about feeling homesick when the family goes out of town to visit relatives or friends.

I have been away from the DC area (where I grew up) for several years now, and I have to admit that every once in a great while I feel a touch of homesickness. But I know in my heart that I do not live there anymore and there’s no “going home.” In fact, the house where I grew up was sold to another family within months of my high school graduation and the new people remodeled it. So that’s a closed chapter of my life.

Now it’s on to greater adventures, here in Nashville and beyond!

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Cute hand painted box

I was so excited to find this beautiful hand painted box for sale online when I was asked by my sister to help her find discount furniture at goods to furnish her new apartment. I don’t know how much the box costs, which is a little bit frustrating. The website doesn’t have a price listed, and has the notice to call them for a price. This puts me in mind of going to a restaurant and being given a menu without any prices listed.

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Fasteners

I decided that I will fix the deck out back myself. I just went online to order the fasteners that I will need. I started expanding the deck with the help of a friend last summer. He was supposed to finish it, but then had to move out of state for work and was unable to. We had already bought all of the wood, which has been stored in the shed over the winter. The base has already been up and all I need to do is the rest. It shouldn’t take me very long.

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Merry Christmas to all

Today we had a good, large, family Christmas dinner at a local Masonic Lodge dining hall. All of the extended family members that could attend brought food to share, and nobody went away hungry. Much to my surprise, there were no family fights that I was aware of, and everyone had a good time. We sang a few songs (Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) and played a few games. We exchanged a few gifts here and there. Everyone chipped in with setting up the tables and buffet, and everyone chipped in with the dish-washing and cleaning up.

My mother said she thought it was a lot more work than when the dinners were held at someone’s house, but I completely disagree, since the dinners have been held at my house every year for the past six years. This year I didn’t have to run around the house in a panic, cleaning, de-cluttering, and worrying about the pets being upset, or about my things being broken (or stolen) by someone.

I really hope that all future family dinners will be held there. I liked it a lot.

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Blech

Have you ever had one of those days when you just want to go back to bed and pull the covers up over your head. Well today is that day for me. I woke up groggy and feeling out of sorts and apparently I am not the only one. I think I am going to make it an early night tonight. I have no desire to watch TV or anything else other than to crawl into bed and go back to sleep. I hope I am not coming down with something. Blech again…