Gifts for the blog, and a new distraction

This afternoon I attended a small weekly gathering of people at church.  In our intro session, one member of the group, (and a friend of mine, as well as one of my faithful blog readers,) said he had to go get something for "show-and-tell."  What he brought in was something for me that he found while working at a recent estate sale and here it is:

It's a new snow-measuring stick!  I can't wait for it to snow again!  (Just kidding, no "hate" comments please!)  This one has an additional 6 inches on the bottom so I can stick it down into the ground early in the snow season.  I had to promise them that I wouldn't put it out until at least next December though.  Can do!  Thanks, J & J!  I'll use it well!

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Back in December a few days before Christmas, we had a group of people here at our house to get together and sing Christmas carols.  I played one-handed piano (the right hand, of course) and another friend played her guitar.  We sang through all of the usual Christmas carols, had some good snacks and beverages, and the singing went quite well.  But, our piano was VERY out of tune, not surprisingly since it hadn't been tuned for almost 20 years since the daughters got older and moved on to other activities.

Sometime in February I called a man here in town, Tom Denker, who specializes in piano tuning, piano repairs, and all things piano.  He came and tuned the piano, and that was that...

...until a couple Sundays ago when I was talking to a woman before church who mentioned that Tom had been giving piano lessons to a young student she knew.  And I started thinking, (all during the church service), "Piano lessons.  I never thought about Tom giving lessons.  I used to take lessons.  I could start up with lessons again, because, really, what else do I have to do?  I'm going to ask him after church," because he was the accompanist that day in church.

So, after church I asked if he would take me on as a student, and I had my first lesson the next day!  I've taken lessons at various times in my life, and the last time was 1995 when I had an unfortunate, but memorable, experience at a piano recital I agreed to be in.  But that's another story for another day!

The main thing that I've found by starting again after 20 years is that now my left hand doesn't always sync very well with my right hand.  Couldn't be age, could it?  The other thing I've figured out now just two weeks into this project is that it's okay to "play outside the box."  And that's something I could take to heart in all kinds of aspects of my life!

What will be next?