Various Updates

Here is an article by WorldNetDaily regarding Abraham Cherrix and the judge's ruling, but I can't find anything about the appeal they made today. The state has threatened to put him in juvenile detention with drug dealers if he doesn't comply, or to put him in a foster home. Whatever happens, they're determined to give him the treatment, if they have to take him away and strap him down in order to do so. I find it astounding that they can take someone away and do that because they don't like the medical decision a person made. I fully agree with the decision Abraham and his parents have made, and I think it's tragic that the government is trying to control this aspect of our lives. Please be praying for them as they continue to fight for their rights. I'm about to watch Abraham on Hannity and Colmes.

I had a lot of fun Saturday. I took a class on Sacred Harp singing, which I enjoyed. I took that workshop last year as well. I love singing the harmony, though we had to hit some rather high notes in the section I was in! I also took a workshop on playing the tin whistle, which I'm learning. Then I took a beginner's flatfooting class and learned a few basic steps. Two of the people in that group were cloggers, so they told us about clogging and its history and taught a couple of clogging steps. I think that was the part I enjoyed most. I also played in a few hours of jam sessions. My favorite part then was when most people were eating dinner; we had a smaller group(about ten people) and we played a lot faster. After all that, there was a concert, which I enjoyed a lot. There was a wonderful autoharpist, Jo Ann Smith, who played the autoharp beautifully. You can listen to clips on her site.

As a lot of you probably know, I joined a traditional music group back in the spring. They're breaking for the summer and starting up again in September. Even before the break, I was trying to decide if I wanted to keep playing with the group or not, but I've decided not to go back. The music is nice and I enjoy it sometimes, but that's not the kind of music I want to devote a lot of time to playing. It would take up one night a week to meet with the group, practice during the week, then possibly performances from time to time. I'd rather spend that time on other things, or other kinds of music.

I've also decided I'm not going to be doing much more running. I haven't been running in about two and a half weeks because it's just so hard on my lungs. Even if I'm not feeling bad from the asthma, if my lungs are bothering me in the least, I can't push myself to run because of the asthma. Even if something like dancing or walking doesn't bother me, running is much harder on my lungs and I can't take a lot of it. The times I can run are so sporadic, I'll start getting my muscles and feet used to it, then I won't be able to run for a while, so by the time I can run, I'll have to get used to it all over again. Then after running once, I might not be able to run for a couple more weeks, then I just have to start all over again. So because of my health, I think it's best not to push it.

Also, I think we have a cold going around the family now. Hannah, Rachel, and I all woke up feeling bad today, and it seems to be a cold. At least, I think that's what I have, and they're having similar symptoms.

You can't see any changes yet, but I'm working on changing the layout of our evangelism site now. I'm hoping to get that up within the week. After that, I'll probably work on changing my other site around and fixing it up.

Music

Saturday, I'll be spending my day at the second annual Bayou City Old Time Music and Dulcimer Festival(that's a mouthful!). I went last year and enjoyed it immensely. They hold workshops during the day, with jam sessions constantly playing in the main room, and there is a concert that night. Last year, I took a guitar workshop and a class on shaped note singing, and played in a total of approximately five hours of jam sessions. It was quite an experience to play in jam sessions with so many other instruments! You can read more about my thoughts on that here, in the blog entry I wrote afterwards. I'll have to get in a lot of practice before Saturday to toughen up my fingers, but I think it will be a lot of fun.

Decisions

It's taken me a few days, but I've finally decided I'm going to stick with Blogspot for my blog, and just make my other site for things like my writings, etc. I can be so indecisive at times, so I couldn't make up my mind at first. I like the simplicity of Blogspot, but I do like being able to have the other pages on my site when I want them. What finally settled the decision for me was the issue of spam. I have to delete two or three spam comments off my other blog every day. I get email alerts when someone comments, and I would get alerts each day about a comment being posted on some old entry. I'm getting rather tired of that, and the security step I tried before didn't work so well, as some people weren't able to comment then. At least if I start getting such comments here, I can use their word verification setting to cut back on that. I've been wanting to post some lately, but haven't been able to decide which blog to use! I'll post a notice over there, then only post here after that. My one hangup about not using that one anymore was that I wanted to keep my archive, so I'm going to work on a way to link to them from here. I'm going to be rebuilding our evangelism site soon, and I'm working on other websites for family members, so I've got plenty of computer work to keep me busy already. It feels nice to have something simpler for myself now.

Last night, I practiced my guitar for quite a while, working on my flatpicking. I hadn't practiced much lately, so my fingertips are sore. The metronome I use is on my computer, and sometimes I play along with recodrding I have on the computer, so I play sitting in my computer chair so those things are easily accessible. Well last night, I was working on one of the songs, and had gotten it up to a decent rate of speed along with the metronome. I took it up a bit faster, then I just couldn't get it at that rate of speed. I kept focusing too much on either the playing or the metronome, and that would get me off on the other thing. I had a blog open on my computer, and something caught my attention and I started reading it while playing. After about a paragraph, I noticed I was playing perfectly in sync with the metronome, and having no trouble with the speed at all. I came to realize I try to focus too much on where my fingers are moving instead of just playing. I knew the song well, so there really was no need to think about it that much. I get so caught up with thinking I'm going to make a mistake, I overanalyze everything I'm doing, which then causes me to get off. I set the metronome to go faster, and just played, aware of the metronome, but not concentrating too much on any one thing. That helped me tremendously, and I began to see a great deal of improvement. I got down some of the easier songs, and moved to some with just about all eighth notes. I practiced until my fingers were too tired to keep moving so much, but it was great to be able to see myself making some improvement. :)