I’m working shifts on a project online, so it gives me a few hours here and there to get errands done, as long as I’m available via cell phone. Two errands I have this weekend: rent a cello and buy some tennis rackets.

A luthier- because I know you’re dying to know- is a cello maker. Cello, plural, is celli. Violinello is the same as a cello. Other random trivia: my teacher used to call it a donut, that round rubber thing that kept your cello from sliding around the floor. The guy at the music store pronounces it “rosin” whereas I had pronounced it “resin.” Facts from wikipedia. The internet is amazing. When I was learning cello at the ripe age of 13 (ah, the grandpa Simpsons recollection time) there was no internet. Now, I can go to “online cello tuner” to match my tuning. Then, I forget how to read the clef with the strings and wikipedia has a nice string to sight reading correspondence. There’s a page on selecting a cello at a store that I should have read. Ah, these interweb tubes are great!

I’m having a hard time enduring through the bad sounding beginning time of learning something. I’m battling through the Minuet in G, which I can play on piano, and yet struggling on the cello. I got cocky when I quickly played Mary Had a Little Lamb, but now I’m forgetting how to read music and my bowing is all wrong. Oh well, time and tons of scales will mend this broken cellist.

Best bit about this whole process was getting tipped off by my professional musician neighbor that Yo Yo Ma playing Bach’s Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cellos solos is a great CD.

Oh, and finding a nice teacher at the music store.