She's Not Broken Anymore

*Quick note* I switched computers and I haven't been able to access my blog from the "new" one. Google is on the case and will hopefully be helping me with that soon, but in the meantime, I am at my old laptop which has the info stored for automatic use....






You remember my beauty...some of you have met her in person...(I apologize for lack of a better picture; see above quick note)

She has finally been given the name Caliope. It means "Beautiful voice." My goodness does she have a beautiful voice.
Sadly, a few years ago I began to notice that her voice was changing. There began to be a metal-like string vibration noise coming from her E and B strings and other things were happening too. As you can see, Caliope is very special. What you cannot see in this picture is that Caliope is a 12-string guitar. There is an incredible amount of pressure on her at all times and she began to show signs of stress.

I took her to the local guitar repair shop, which at that time was in Rosepine. They shipped it to their best guy in Lake Charles. He called me with the news that he was unwilling to even attempt repairs to this guitar because of the danger to the finish. And so it went. Several attempts rendered the same response, "Put her on display." Then one day entered.....

I heard about him through my friend Jenster. Jenster has heard Caliope and she felt my plight! He said he was willing to have a look at her. The trouble was, He is all the way in Pennsylvania and I am not. This was also during the time when we were doing construction in the Barndominium and it was no good place to be storing a sensitive guitar. I asked, "Can you look at her and tell me if you can repair her without destroying her?" This gracious man agreed to house Caliope with him for as long as it took to repair her (if he decided he could) and then for as long as it took for me to have a healthy environment for her to return to.
 The calendar would show this to be nearly an entire year.  By the time UPS dropped her at his door, she had MAJOR cracks and her bridge was separating from her body. When he had given her time to show all of her colors,(cracks) and completed all repairs AND there was a suitable environment for her to come home to, he carefully packaged her back up and sent her home. I have included some of the work and pictures of some of the damage from his page. If you click on the first picture, it should take you to the album where he explains all the work he did.

This guitar means a great deal to me and this man lovingly, patiently and carefully restored her to playable condition. She WILL eventually have to be retired, but he assures me that I have several good years left to play her before that day comes. 

I very highly recommend Thompson's Guitar for your most complicated or not as complicated repairs.

Blessings on your day, 

Letters To War - Deja Vu

Epiphone

Beautiful lines of a beautiful instrument.

Chicas Of Faith 2008 - The Jenster Of My Dreams

Our plane got in a little before 8:30pm and as we are walking through the airport discussing where it is we are going to find our ride/tour guide/hotel hostess, we hear our names being called by a tiny voice in the distance. We turn and see a petite lady with a giant smile coming toward us. Do you know, Jen (as I am now allowed to call her) is nothing like I thought she would be and just like I thought she would be all at the same time. She is a softer, sweeter version InRealLife of the she of my imagination. Here is a summary of Jen gathered from our entire trip of knowing her.

J - Joyful
E - Eloquent
N - Nutty
S - Sweet
T - Triumphant
E - Encouraging
R - Radical

It was as though we had grown up in the same family. We fell right into conversation as we made our way to her prime parking space and loaded up our luggage. (Guitars made it safe and sound in case you were wondering)

GGG rode shotgun and she and Jen spent the ride back to Jensterville chatting about history, trivia and theology and all things interesting yet way too above me to participate, except for the ridiculous crack here and there. Jen pointed out to us that in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, many of the skyscrapers in Philadelphia were lit up in pink lights. That was so neat. Sorry - still haven't taken any pictures yet. I can't remember all the talky talk that went on on the way to Jensterville (otherwise known as home). I just remember smiling the entire time and thinking how wonderful it is that my two friends were hitting it off and that I got to sit in on it.
We made it to the house and unloaded our luggage. Jen showed us to our room. There were chocolates set out for us on our bed! And also, we got to room with Arwyn! Arwyn is Jenster's husband's Martin made guitar.
*Dear Todd, although we lusted mightily after Arwyn, we did never one time touch her in any way, shape or form. Also, we lusted mightily after your Black and Decker tool with the guitar string twister attachment thingy, and restrained from fondling her as well.*
So anyway, here is where you can go over and give sympathy to Jenster for she had to endure the euphoric part of the cycle of my current medication. I am pretty sure that I told her my entire life story. All.night.long. I could not stop talking. I kept thinking to myself and then saying out loud, "Oh my gosh! I HAVE to stop!" Then I would say, "I am SO SORRY. You do not have to endure this! You can go to bed." She was so gracious and kind and funny. She finally told me that I was going to have to stop apologizing. What she probably wanted to say was, "NO, I didn't need to know about that bunny you had when you were 2 that was later used to make a pregnancy test for the neighbor who lived on the farm next door because they had already eaten their bunnies the winter before." Okay, I didn't tell her all that. Mostly because she finally ran away at 1:30am and maybe a little because that never happened. I was just trying to give you a fictional, yet dramatically accurate indication of what she had to endure. I was about 1/4 through the process of re-stringing my guitar at that point and nowhere close to ready to sleep. GGG had given up shortly after we had arrived at the house because she was fighting hard against a migraine. This was to be her fate the entire trip the poor dear. She was such a trooper though.

Sidebar: I know you are all wondering why I would re-string my guitar on vacation. Let me explain. I am a novice at tuning my guitar. When the strings(all 12) are de-tuned, or loosened, it is an equal amount of work for me to re-tune it, or replace the strings all together. When you fly with a guitar, it is possible if you do not loosen the strings, that it could actually snap into pieces. As I am not willing to take that chance with my beloved, the strings must be loosened. SO, because it is so much work for me to re-tune anyway, I try to make it a habit to put on new strings when I travel with my guitar.
I forgot to mention that Jen's children arrived home while we were chatting and I got the pleasure of meeting them. They also were not what I imagined, but they were just as they should be.

So, now I was faced with being completely dressed but ready to go to bed while my suitcases were in the dark in the room with the lady fighting the migraine. It took me about 20 minutes to decide whether I should just lay on the couch fully dressed across the room from Sookie in her crate and possibly disturb my host family like some crazy vagrant OR awake the poor dear with the goingtoruinhertrip headache. I decided that I would go quietly as I could upstairs and just get in the bed fully dressed. I know how to compromise and reason.

Thankfully, when I cracked open the door, GGG was sort of lucid. She said that she needed to take another pain pill. So she needed just enough light for me to be able to find my jammies. There you have it. Off to dreamland I went thinking, "I heart Jenster."

Worship The Creator And Get On Home

27 April

Day three:

I am awakened by the sound of conversation and activity. The first car of girls is already up and packing to head home. After saying our goodbyes to Tenor, Alto and Soprano and seeing them off, I got dressed, grabbed my guitar, songbook, camera and headed for the beach. At that time of day, there are few people on the beach. Totally worth being up at the crack of dawn. Just me, my guitar and God.

At some point, I caught sight of a vehicle out of the corner of my eye. right. behind. me. I didn't even hear it drive up, or stop, or idle. So, I turn around to see what it is. It's the Sheriff. I look at him like, oh darn. He's going to tell me I'm disturbing someone and I have to stop. He said, "I was just listening. Pretty good. Carry on." *sigh* geesh. Flautist came along with a plastic chair and joined me in worshiping our Lord (she sings too!). We stayed there until the rain started coming down.

When we got back to the house, Flautist baked us some berry bread and I went out and picked a bin of blackberries from the field next to our house. After cleaning up and packing up, we bagged up the leftovers from the meal that Alto made us and took them over to our Landlords along with the keys to our house. Imagine my very jubilant excitement at being in the land of Jack In The Box!! Neither Flautist or Guitarist have ever eaten there before so I made them a deal: I'll buy if you take me there! They agreed! Yahoo. After getting our lunches from Jack, we stopped for gas and Flautist pointed out this fun....

Katfish or Catfish? We'll never know. We had a lovely drive the rest of the way home, chatting some, mostly just singing and listening to music. It was a great trip. I want to do it again. With 2 more girls.