I’ve been practicing piano like a motherfucker lately. For whatever reason, I’ve had a decent amount of free time at home — work is a little bit lighter right now, I’m sleeping less, whatever — and have been making myself spend a lot of it at the piano. Last year (last month, even) I would have wasted my time watching mind-numbing TV or dicking around on my computer…this year, not so much. Maybe it’s my resolutions. Maybe I’m actually improving myself. Maybe I’m over interpreting this situation.

That said, practicing scales is boring as all get out. Even with the addition of a few chords at the end of the scale this week, after about ten minutes my mind starts to wander. To force myself to focus, I’ve had to make practicing into a game. The current game is that I have to play five perfect scales (with chords) consecutively before I can progress to the next one. I played the B-flat major scale twenty or thirty times the other night, and last night I feel like I spent half an hour on A-flat major. The game seems to work, though, because this morning I was able to rip through all of the major scales with very few errors. And when I slowed the tempo a little, I think my only mistake was on A-flat. I keep wanting to play G-flat rather than G-natural. Oh well. Practice, practice. Maybe this next week I’ll get to start using my left hand…

In other soul food news, I ordered a bunch of seeds last night from Seeds of Change! I’m so enthused by having chickens (THAT LAY EGGS!) in our backyard that I want to put some time into the garden this spring. I bought the easy-to-grow garden sampler, which seemed like a reasonable first stab. We have a bunch of germinating trays lying around the house, so this weekend I’m going to set a few up. I’m cautiously optimistic. This seems like the right time of year to start germinating seeds in these parts (it may actually be a few weeks late) and we’ve got some good space for our garden. My father-in-law has a tremendous garden in his backyard, so I may need to go pick his brain a little as I progress.

Okay. Back to work. Happy Thursday (and happy February!)