Jen Plays Ukulele

Here we are, nearly the end of January. I know I've been promising more ukulele content and posts here, but the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of visiting with my nieces who live on the other side of the country and celebrating my son's 16th birthday and getting sick with something really nasty that may or may not have been Covid.  The visit wiht my nieces was just what I needed, although I was a little freaked out to see my older niece, who is 22, drinking a beer one night after dinner. In my head, she's still seven years old, holding Colden on her lap and talking about her friends from school.  Right after they went back to Reno, I started in with some sniffles, and I didn't think anything about it, until I woke up one morning with that same burning sensation in my chest that I had when I had Covid in the autumn of 2022. It was the same damn sensation, but slightly more intense, but none of the home Covid tests I took came up positive. (To be fair, none of the h...

 Oh, my, another blog coming at you late in the day. I don't even know if anyone is actually reading these, but I'm still gonna write 'em. It's good practice for me to get these things out of my head and into the ether-world, right? Anyway.  While much of the country is in a deep freeze right now, we're still in the relatively balmy mid-20s here in the northern Adirondacks. Later this week is a different story - we're expecting night time lows below zero, but not much below zero. And while sub-zero temperatures are totally normal for this part of New York at this time of year, they're not nearly as low as they were 20 years ago. Yes, the climate is shifting. And yes, it worries me every time I see a weather forecast.  ********************************************************** Today is a day off from school for my son, and it's also his birthday. We went out for sushi last night with one of his friends, and drove home in a mini-blizzard that threatened to...

 Well, hello there, 2024! Part of my goals for the coming year is to learn how to play my chords all the way up the neck of the ukulele. Why? Well, back at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, I was watching a lot of ukulele videos on YouTube, and I saw a video of the amazing Taimane Gardner playing some kind of medley of incredible songs going aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the way up the neck of that uke of hers. Someone in the comments quipped, "Taimane paid for the whole uke, she gonna use the whole uke," and I knew right then that I wanted to master the fretboard of the ukulele.  But being a ukulele noob, it was hard for me to find the info I wanted. I stumbled across bits and bobs here and there, but nothing that would really show me how to play chords up the neck of the ukulele. I did find one website that would show you all the different positions of the chords if you typed them into their internal search engine, but it seemed like a major PITA to do that for every chord I wa...

 Here we are again, another Monday. We had a huge snowstorm over the weekend, which was even more harrowing than usual, because we had family racing across the country to arrive in Albany before the snow started, and then my husband had to somehow make it down there and back up here (a 5+ hour round trip) before the roads got too bad. Thankfully, it all worked out, there were no flight delays and no luggage lost, and everyone was home and cozy and toasty by the time it started to come down.  It snowed all day yesterday, and we took Tucker outside multiple times to chase snowballs and run around. The chickens weren't so happy, though, and mostly just stayed tucked in the coop all day under the warm heat lamp. It snowed late into the night, which wasn't part of the original forecast, and this morning is predictably beautiful with clouds and sun and everything frosted in light, powdery, sparkling snow.  I spent a good portion of yesterday afternoon sitting with some music ho...

 I mean, I wish I had a new uke, but...that'll have to wait for my 50th birthday in May, I guess.  Meanwhile, to fill the void until my next New Instrument Day, I'm sitting down with some new year astrological and personal stuff. I was watching the Energy Of the Day yesterday that my dear friend, the Rev. Debbie Philp, does in her private FB group for those of us on the shamanic Reiki path, and she talked a lot about how even though January 1 is just a page on a calender that was created by humans and not really rooted in any kind of natural cycle, it's celebrated by literally all humans on the planet, and that gives it some big energy.  So. With that in mind, I read Tarot for another dear friend the other day, and the energy exchange I received from her was just enough to buy a new 2024 planner along with a lovely reusable suede cover. The tracking number says it's down in NJ this morning with a projected delivery date of next Monday, but I'm hoping that it doesn...

 So this is Christmas... And it was pretty good, I have to say. Despite the "weird" heavy energy that a lot of us are feeling (even my kid and his cousins noticed it), we had a lovely, laid-back day with lots of food and Christmas movies.  My son was up until almost 2 a.m., and I figured he'd be sleeping in, but he was awake by 8:30 and we had potato chip omelettes  (they didn't come out quite as good as the video), and then we opened presents.  I put out a bunch of the cookies and baked goods me and my husband made (it's amazing what you can do when you're unemployed and living in Greeland) and then we had my father in law over for a meal of turkey and stuffing and homemade cranberry sauce and all the fixings.  Tucker tried to convince us all that he was having a blue Christmas and needed another peanut butter dog treat. (It worked.) After dinner, we played around with the space scene projecter my son got for Christmas, and it was spectacular.  There are s...

 Holy shit, Christmas is one week from today. We've got the tree up, I've got all my ingredients for baking ready to go in the kitchen, got some giant containers for storing all the cookies and stuff I'm gonna bake... But I haven't really been playing many Christmas tunes this year and I haven't wrapped a single present yet. Maybe it's because Mercury is in retrograde this year, but I'm having some trouble finding that Christmas spirit that Buddy the Elf talks about. Maybe I need to get out my Christmas tunes today and do a little bit of that.  Meanwhile, I have a lot of stuff to do this week. Cleaning up the dining room and getting rid of things that have been cluttering up my house and my life for the last 8 years is a good start. I also want to bake this week, all of the good things that I usually bake for Christmas and a few new things.  *************************************************************** Mercury retrograde is retrograding HARD around here si...