Christmas was a rather quiet affair with just my parents, The Husband, and myself. My sister was upset about not coming home for the holidays, but they went to spend it with her husband’s family in Ohio.
My dad left early Boxing Day morning to head down to Phoenix to help go through my grandfather’s things. I told him about wanting the violin, and also told him that I understood very well that I most likely wouldn’t get it, so I asked for old photos and letters and such.
Wednesday, The Husband and I drove up to Mendocino to spend a couple of nice quiet days on the foggy wet coast. Unfortunately, because there was not really any snow in Tahoe everyone decided to go to Mendocino as well. The place was full of people, so we stuck to our hotel room and those places we knew would be empty like the Botanical Gardens in Ft. Bragg (We hiked out on their ocean trail… the waves were wicked, heralding the storm to come). We had a delicious meal at the Rendevous Inn in Ft. Bragg. The foie gras starter was decadent and made me realize what all the fuss is about.
I stopped in at the Mendocino Yarn Store, which was having a yarn sale — all the yarn was 20% off. I picked up 10 balls of Rowan Felted Tweed in a purple color and 2 skeins of Manos.
Friday was the day we headed home, but first we stopped in at Lark in the Morning. I had half a mind to see what they had in the way of used violins. I’m still slightly uncertain as to how it is that I left with a harp — a 29 string floor harp with levers on the Cs and Fs to be exact.
The topic of harps came up while talking with the store lady (whose name I seemed to have missed), and she said they had some down in the back. I went and found them, and as I usually do when I find harps in musics stores, I began plucking at them. The nice store lady offered to play a tune on them if I wanted to hear what they sounded like. She started with the floor harp. The first note cause a gut reaction in me… it was beautiful. She went to help another customer, and I sat down to play with the lap harp. When she came back she told me that because the floor harp had been there awhile and had a couple dings she could give me a discount. I found myself unable to refuse. After everything was settled and we were on our way out the door with the harp, she told us that someone almost bought it just the day before. Now I have to see about finding a teacher. My LYS owner told me she knows a couple people in the area that teach Celtic harp, I just need to get the names and numbers from her.
The drive back down was crazy; we were right in the middle of the storm the slammed into Northern California last week. There were a couple times when the car in front of me disappeared in waves of rain. The Husband and I traded off driving duty a couple times to give the other a rest. It was good to get home.