Yesterday I went downtown with Olivia to rent a viola. I know. (Rest assured that RIM has already given me the lecture about good money after bad and all that.) But the girl would not be deterred. We got her a viola and signed her up with a teacher for lessons, because as long as I'm throwing away money renting the instrument, I might as well throw away some more helping her actually learn how to play it.
She was over the moon...hugging and polishing it the rest of the night. And then this morning as Caleb was practicing the violin, she pulled out her viola and started "fiddling" away on random strings. And we could hear her asking Caleb and Savannah, "Does that sound good?" and then "How about this? Doesn't that sound good at all?" (I think the viola actually does have a very lovely, dark, chocolatey sound.) She can't wait to get started. Of course it's the "boring middle" and the "excruciating end" that I'm worried about.
And then this morning, a friend from our ward called and said they would sell us their daughter's viola for $35. Sold! They got it off Ebay. I was complete astonishment. I would never be brave enough to buy an instrument off Ebay...that is a world I neither understand nor trust, but there you go.
In other "V" news, squarespace recently changed their website version from V4 to V5, and while I appreciate their efforts to make my life easier, this has not actually resulted in making my life easier. I had to reformat my blog (which you may have noticed) and David told me that it no longer all appears on his computer screen at once, that he has to scroll over to see it all...is this universal? In addition, my personal computer is having memory issues and is running slower than usual and so my pages are loading slowly...again, I'm wondering if this is universal. I'd love some feedback...is my blog loading slower for you and can you see it all on one screen? And I think I've finally re-figured out how to load pictures, but David also said that they sometimes load excruciatingly slow on his computer as well...and, as an aside, he said he also misses the pink typewriter. I reminded him (in my sweetest voice) that it is my blog. He said he was just saying. Anyway, I'm wondering how V5 is for the rest of you.
Well, I've now used "excruciating" two times in a post written on normal, uneventful Wednesday morning. I think my work here is done.