fast flute bits

Today I came home to find a USPS 2nd delivery attempt slip in our mailbox (did they skip leaving the slip for their first attempt?). I could barely make out the name of the sender but it looked something like "ooter" which I figured might be "Cotter."

Cotter would be Eamonn Cotter who made the wooden flute I bought a few years ago. (If you missed the first part of the story, which would be easy considering it started before my blog did, I opened my flute case in mid-December to find that the barrel had cracked. Good solid nasty crack. Wooden flutes shouldn't live in Wisconsin when they were born in a climate with permanent 66.6% humidity.) The back of the slip said the package would be held at 702 E Wash (all of 5 blocks from the house) and that I could pick it up the day after delivery.

They had a phone number listed with the address that was some version of 1-800-get-usps. Those are never helpful numbers unless you have a tracking number and plenty of time to kill waiting through the menus and hold music. I should also mention that it said the hours at 70 E Wash were from 10am to 5pm. My clock said 4:42. It was also the same day as the attempted delivery. But I'm stubborn like that so I found a local number for them and called.

There were some delivery troubles on the Irish end when I sent the head joint for repair/replacement, and this morning I called FedEx again to see if they'd managed to get it to him finally. I've just finished blasting out my first proper tunes in a month. Nice change in 12 hours :-)

The flute is now living in its case, in plastic box with a damp rag. And I'm planning to acquire one of these:

It's 1 3/4" in diameter, and only costs $6.99. We're so used to seeing all these digital things now, but analog can be cheap and beautiful.

Blogging gets difficult with a cat like Fionn. He's adorable but he likes to sit on my lap, where the laptop is supposedly perched, and he likes to nudge his face into my hands, which disables my typing abilities somewhat. At the moment we have a decent truce worked out - he's laying sideways with his chest, front paws, and head flopped over my right wrist. Probably not so good for carpal tunnel.

PS - I can't believe the Blogger spellchecker doesn't know the words "blog" and "blogging" - official oversight!