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pecuniumKorea proceeds apace. I wasn't awake enough to get my shots yesterday, so I'll have to go in on Weds.
I just got word there are two more missions to Korea this year, and I have to decide about asking for one, or not. I suspect not, because I am already making at least two more trips OCONUS this summer.
Today the weather got cold again. Short eddies of snow. Wet and heavy flakes at dawn, while it was dry and light flakes about 1500. The air is sharp and clear.
The night shift isn't so bad, though I am only getting 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Two more nights of it, a trip to Seoul, a day off (to sleep and shop) and then the plane for home on Saturday. I'll arrive in San Francisco an hour before I left. I then get to wait on standby for six or seven hours to fly forty minutes south to SLO.
I've been amusing myself with a game (Cossacks II, Napoleonic Wars). Not bad. Sort of like Risk, but with detailed battles. Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery; of dffering types, and varied by nation (the Russians get cheap infantry, with no muskets, the Egyptians get camels, etc.). Resource management and real time fights. It was frustrating at first because I couldn't figure out how to win a battle. Once I got that figured out, well the computer isn't as smart as I am at fighting set piece fights.
One can also fight historical battles. Routing Nappy at Austerlitz was fun.
For more cerebral entertainments (since the people I was hanging out with are on duty when I sleep, and vice versa) I have been working the penny whistle I brought with me (a water weasel, Key of C, made of high grade PVD, tunable). I've added about half a dozen songs to the not quite memorised repetoire, and worked on the interpretation of the ones I do have memorised. I need to make a play list, because I am starting to lose track of some, and for lack of practice they are falling out of mind.
The thing I've been working on most is style. I've been playing "Scotland the Brave" and "Loch Lomond" as though I was using pipes, which is to say I only interupt the air flow when I have to breathe, and all serial notes of the same value are separated with cuts, rolls, grace notes or other; audible, interuption.
It's hard. The mind gets lost as to where things need to go. Some of that has made for pleasant variation, some has made for muddy mess. Each session gets a little better, and the effect carries over to a better ear.
I am also frustrating myself with learning one song I know by heart, in a new key. It's odd, because there are places where the pattern overlaps, because a fifth is a common relationship, and the trivially played keys on the instrumnt are a fifth apart.
I'll probably finish "Origin of Species" on the plane, and make a larger dent in "Grant's Memoirs". I finished, "A Rum Affair" last week. A very good book about a little know fraud in the field of Botany, which took place in the thirties. Venality, personality, dedicated amatuers and people worrying about appearance and "delicate feelings."
The sort of thing which makes Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie so compelling, and this was in life.
I just got word there are two more missions to Korea this year, and I have to decide about asking for one, or not. I suspect not, because I am already making at least two more trips OCONUS this summer.
Today the weather got cold again. Short eddies of snow. Wet and heavy flakes at dawn, while it was dry and light flakes about 1500. The air is sharp and clear.
The night shift isn't so bad, though I am only getting 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Two more nights of it, a trip to Seoul, a day off (to sleep and shop) and then the plane for home on Saturday. I'll arrive in San Francisco an hour before I left. I then get to wait on standby for six or seven hours to fly forty minutes south to SLO.
I've been amusing myself with a game (Cossacks II, Napoleonic Wars). Not bad. Sort of like Risk, but with detailed battles. Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery; of dffering types, and varied by nation (the Russians get cheap infantry, with no muskets, the Egyptians get camels, etc.). Resource management and real time fights. It was frustrating at first because I couldn't figure out how to win a battle. Once I got that figured out, well the computer isn't as smart as I am at fighting set piece fights.
One can also fight historical battles. Routing Nappy at Austerlitz was fun.
For more cerebral entertainments (since the people I was hanging out with are on duty when I sleep, and vice versa) I have been working the penny whistle I brought with me (a water weasel, Key of C, made of high grade PVD, tunable). I've added about half a dozen songs to the not quite memorised repetoire, and worked on the interpretation of the ones I do have memorised. I need to make a play list, because I am starting to lose track of some, and for lack of practice they are falling out of mind.
The thing I've been working on most is style. I've been playing "Scotland the Brave" and "Loch Lomond" as though I was using pipes, which is to say I only interupt the air flow when I have to breathe, and all serial notes of the same value are separated with cuts, rolls, grace notes or other; audible, interuption.
It's hard. The mind gets lost as to where things need to go. Some of that has made for pleasant variation, some has made for muddy mess. Each session gets a little better, and the effect carries over to a better ear.
I am also frustrating myself with learning one song I know by heart, in a new key. It's odd, because there are places where the pattern overlaps, because a fifth is a common relationship, and the trivially played keys on the instrumnt are a fifth apart.
I'll probably finish "Origin of Species" on the plane, and make a larger dent in "Grant's Memoirs". I finished, "A Rum Affair" last week. A very good book about a little know fraud in the field of Botany, which took place in the thirties. Venality, personality, dedicated amatuers and people worrying about appearance and "delicate feelings."
The sort of thing which makes Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie so compelling, and this was in life.
