Meanwhile back on the ranch...

We got our day started by going over to Nick’s house and taking Jennifer and the grandchildren on an outing, While Nick remained home in his downstairs office, we took the remainder of his family to the Tulsa Air & Space Museum for an outing. There were five of us on this trip. We looked at the aircraft (both the real thing and the mock-ups) until it was time to go to the other building for a showing of an IMAX movie on what conditions might be like on other planets in the universe. The grandkids seemed to enjoy the film. They were well-behaved for the 40-minute showing. Perhaps, since momma was with them, they were more cooperative than usual.

Afterwards we went to McDonald’s for lunch. The McDonald’s we went to had no playground. So lunch did not last as long as it might have. After we got momma and the two kids back to their house, we went home. I took as brief nap and then we headed for the TCC Fitness Center. J walked for 40 minutes, and I walked for an hour. Then I did 60 reps at 110 lbs on the abs machine. While I was walking I was listening to a CD by the title of “Play Bach” by Jacques Loussier. As I listened to the CD I wondered if the sheet music of Loussier’s interpretation of Bach was available. After I finished walking, I phone Saeid’s Music and inquired about the sheet music. As it turns out, the entire album is available as sheet music. The store did not have copy, but they ordered a copy for me. It should arrive in ten days.

The album contains eight selections, mostly preludes and fugues. The first selection is one of my mother’s favorites: the Prelude No. 1 in C major from the Well Tempered Clavier. What I like about the Loussier interpretation is that he plays the piece pretty much as you have always heard it; but then, he shifts gears and plays it in a jazzy style. He does that for eight of Bach’s best-known preludes and fugues. I am looking forward to this book coming in.

After the exercise, we came home and showered. We were home not long when the doorbell rang. It was the Fed-Ex delivery person. She had the page proofs for my next indexing job: Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century. I opened up the package and took a quick look at my next job. It is about 400 pages long.

I watched the NBC Nightly News, and then we headed to Tulsa. We went first to Best Buy. We did not see anything there that interested us, but there is a Staples store across the way. I had a few things in mind to buy in conjunction with indexing. I got three things: a new desk, a new keyboard, and a new document holder. The desk is the kind you assemble yourself. It weighs a ton. Well, maybe not that much, but it is heavy. Lots of particle board in the thing, and you know how heavy that stuff is. To get it into the car we had to lower the back seat cushions so that the trunk area was increased considerably. That’s a nice feature of the 1996 Saturn. Otherwise, it may not have fit.

When we got home with it, I could tell it was too heavy to lift by myself. I simply opened up the cardboard bos, and we took it into the house in pieces. It seems like it has a hundred pieces, and that’s not much of an exaggeration. I’ve got my work cut out for me tomorrow.

I bought a new keyboard because the one I’m typing on now sometimes does not shift when you hold down the shift key. You really have to be mindful to hold it down firmly. Sometimes when I proofread my work I will notice a lowercase letter where an uppercase letter should be. Another thing about my old keyboard is that the letters are wearing away from the keys. The “n” is gone completely; the “a” and “e” are but specks of their former selves, and other letters have bits and pieces missing.

The new document holder is made of metal, unlike my old one which is plastic. It was always falling apart. All you would have to do is look at it real hard, and it would come apart and fall down. The new document hold is made of metal and looks like an inverted “V.”