Wednesday, June 21, 2006

In the Money, and Out Again

Maury River Fiddler's Convention prize ribbon

I entered the autoharp contest at the Maury River Fiddler's Convention last Thursday, as planned. I played "Chinkypin," it went pretty well, and I was tickled to get my camping fee refunded, in cash, immediately after I played. There were quite a few autoharp contestants, so I didn't harbor any illusions about winning. Imagine my surprise to find I'd finished in the money--third, to be precise. This was my first contest, and I have the feeling that it will be like that first free taste of an addictive drug.


On another exciting note, the phone company called me last week to let me know DSL is available in our area. They installed it Monday, and within an hour, the power went out and stayed out for eight hours. I couldn't help thinking this was the Universe reminding me that I still live in a remote, rural area, DSL notwithstanding. Since then, I've been busy working on my home network. I've been backing up data, updating my Debian installations, and tightening up security on the Mac. I'm just beginning to appreciate the many things I never investigated before due to lack of bandwidth. Yesterday, I downloaded Flashplayer, and was able to watch someone else's kitty take a drink of water from the tap on YouTube. The Internet is truly a miraculous tool!

1 comment:

Dave said...

Congrats on the ribbon - and the DSL! I guess in some ways we're still remoter than you are, here in over-populated rural PA.

I played autoharp when i was a kid, but I wasn't that good. My sense of rhythm and ear for chord changes were O.K., but I couldn't distinguish between gradations of pitch well enough to ever successfully tune the thing - i always had to ask my brother to do it. We carried the autoharp along every year when we went caroling to our neighbor's house (we only had one neighbor).