Nina Lewis

Archive for July, 2009

I didn’t know that my husband was an organ builder.  Neither did he.  That is, we didn’t know until I inherited an organ from my nephew.

One of the pedals needed to be fixed.  So my Mr. Handy Dandy Do-It-Yourself-Fix-It husband went to work.  And work it was.  He ended up taking the whole organ apart.  I was a little concerned.  Would he be able to figure out how to get it all back together again?  And by that I mean all the right parts in all the right places.

He made new little wooden wheels that the organ sits on.  He constructed a new wooden pulley on the inside. He replaced the belts that went from the pedals to the bellows.  He mended the support block for the pulley.  And, best of all, he was able to put it all back together again.  Huzzah!

Here it is.  All in its taken apart glory.

When we built our house 22 years ago, we had originally intended to have a music room.  But, as our architect told us the cost of our home, we started cutting things out.  The music room fell victim to the chopping block.

So, our teeny tiny living room is where we have put our (er . . . my) musical instruments.  The west wall has a bay window.  On the south wall, I have my high gloss ebony baby grand piano.  On the east wall, I have my black electric piano. And now on the north wall, I have an antique organ.  Does the organ fit in with the interior design of the room?  I say, “Sure does, Nellie!  An interior designer might say otherwise.  Oh well.  Here is the organ in it’s all-put-back-together-again glory.

Now, I couldn’t only just have pictures of the organ here on my site because I’m sure you are dying to hear what it sounds like.   So, for your listening pleasure, here is a song that I played on it.  I had to use a slightly different pedal technic with this organ than the one I practice on during my lunch break.  By the way, the clickity-clack you hear in the background are the pedals and NOT my knees . . .

My husband did some research on this organ.  This style was very popular with itinerant evangelists because it was smaller, more light weight, and less cumbersome than a pipe organ.  I’d say!  So maybe when I go on a mission, I’ll pack it and then have revival-foot-stompin’-hallelujah-glory-be-praise-the-Lord sing-alongs.

Thank you, Larry.  I will have great fun with this new edition to our family.

By the way, I’m glad my husband is an organ builder and not an organ donor.

I went to a conference a couple of weeks ago. In one of the sessions, I learned about Voki where you can create an avatar. You select the character — from dogs or cats to political folks. (I almost selected the Sarah Palin face but I’ve already been told I look like her. Ha!)

You can change hair, clothing, voices, and even jewelry. Here’s what I created. Click on the play button to hear my avatar talk.

Get a Voki now!

This is DEFINITELY me!

I’m not sure if I’ll ever use the avatar. I’m not sure I’ll go back and use the Voki site. At least it kept my attention while I was playing around on the site . . .

This morning as I got on the bus to go to work, a young man was playing a ukulele.  And singing.  I smiled at him as I walked passed him.  I enjoyed what I heard.  After a while, he switched to a guitar.  And kept singing.  He played for most of my ride to work.  I was disappointed when he stopped.

Last year when I first started riding the bus, someone had a radio playing.  The driver told him to turn the music off.  I understand that maybe not everybody on the bus would enjoy the same type of music.  Maybe that was why the driver told him to turn it off.  It certainly wasn’t because the music was loud because I could hardly hear it.  Maybe there is an unspoken bus policy that there can’t be music on the bus.  The driver this morning didn’t say a thing.  Maybe that was because it was a different driver.

I wonder what it would be like if, instead of burying our noses in our books, everybody would sing while someone played an instrument.  What would the atmosphere on the bus be like?  At the end of our ride, would everybody be chipper and smiling instead of somber and grim?

Maybe next time when this young man plays and sings, and maybe if he sings a song I know, maybe I just might join in.  Maybe I might encourage others to sing along, too.  Maybe . . .

What would the world be like if there were only one flavor of ice cream, vanilla? Those of us who love caramel pecan would be sorely deprived.

What would the world be like if there were only one presentation software, PowerPoint? We’d all be mad as a hatter.  All college students and conference attendees would be asleep before the first click of the mouse. Huzzah that there’s Keynote for Mac computers. Alas, Macs in the classroom or business or conference presentations are small in number.

Now, thanks to innovation over the Internet, there’s another solution: Prezi. It’s a presentation method with an attitude.  It’s thinking out of the box. (PowerPoint never was this fun — nor will it be!)

Inserting text and images is easy.  Creating a path among your items is as simple as clicking on the items.  Navigation through the saved presentation is pretty intuitive.  However, they have their own little Prezi demos to demonstrate how to use Prezi.

I just realized something.  For me, someone who loves technology and uses technology lots, figuring out Prezi was a snap.  For those less skilled, it may be more the crackle and pop experience.  So, be sure to watch the videos.

Here’s a little Prezi that I made moments ago . . .

4 Out of 5 People Are —– WRONG!!! Wrong, wrong, wrong, I say.

In the painting of my exercise room (a.k.a. Christi’s old bedroom), we collected brochures showing rooms painted in different color palettes. The colors we selected are: Popcorn, hay, Arizona, and California Poppy. Everybody knows that popcorn is white, right? Right. We all agree on that. The hay color is a beige-khaki, tan-ish color. We all agree on that. California poppy is red. Once again, we all agree on that. So far, so good.

However, there is a slight misperception of the definition of the color Arizona.

Now, anybody who knows anything about colors know that there are three basic colors: red, yellow, blue. If you mix yellow and blue you get the green family. If you mix red and yellow you get the orange relatives. The more (or less) red you mix in will result in a deeper or lighter orange.

In the case of the color Arizona, there is a smidgen of red which makes it golden yellow. Do you hear me folks, golden yellow. NOT ORANGE!!! My husband thinks the color is orange. (Aren’t men color blind when it comes to the color red?) My son thinks the color is orange. (Again a masculine perception.) My sweet daughter-in-law thinks the color is orange. (I’ll forgive her because her starry-in-love-with-my-son eyes are aren’t seeing things in their correct perspective.) But even my own mother thinks the color is apricot! Mom, how can you desert me in such an important issue as this??

Sigh.

Regardless of what others think, I’m still going to call the room the ‘Sun Room.’ I am going to see the wall as being golden yellow. They can think all that they want that the color is orange. After all, isn’t life really just how you perceive things???