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Hello, I’m Veronica

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    I Made This Up

    Words get stuck in my head – often.  If I hear “cattywampus” or “chartreuse” or “onomatopoeia” (and for the record, spellcheck didn’t flag any of them) my brain hangs on for a while because I’m entertained by the sound or the meaning. Sometimes a word repeats so often in my mind it doesn’t sound right anymore, like putting the accent on the wrong syll-AH-ble. But this is the reason I never struggle to include a unique word in every Life In A Word post. It’s the reason my topics often become unexpected adventures in writing – several hundred words spun from the single word ricocheting around in my brain. So what word am I stuck on this week, you ask? Make.

    I know, I know.  You expected a more sophisticated word; something you could really sink your teeth into.  Certainly a word with more than four letters.  But here’s the thing.  Some words have one meaning while others have a list of definitions a mile long.  “Make” is wonderfully (sometimes confusingly) versatile.  It seems to have limitless uses. So, while “make” shows up in, like, every other conversation we have, consider just how many different ways we’re using it.

    Here’s an example, probably my favorite for today’s topic.  We contracted with a bakery in Denver to create the perfect cake for my daughter’s upcoming wedding.  You call them first to make a sit-down appointment (yes, I’m aware I just used our word-of-the-day).  Then you work with a consultant on sketch paper to design exactly what you’re looking for. Then you taste-test six cakes and six frostings (using a tray of cupcakes) to come up with your dream combination.  The name of this establishment?  The Makery.  At first I thought it was a strange name, but then I realized, no; it’s a cool, tidy spin on words.  The Makery is not just a bakery.  A bakery would fill their glass display case with creations for you to choose from.  The Makery is all about custom creations, based on your input and your preferences.  In other words, The Makery declares “baking” a subset of “making”.

    Without peeking at your Webster, guess how many definitions you’ll find for “make” in the dictionary.  Five? Ten? Two dozen? How about fifty-six? “Make” has forty-seven definitions as a verb and another nine as a noun.  I told you “make” was versatile, didn’t I?

    I’m not about to go through fifty-six definitions of “make” because you can make better use of your time.  But here are my favorites:

    • To bring into existence by shaping or changing material, combining parts, etc. (as in, “Dave is making his Lego Grand Piano”).  The formality of this definition – the first in the line-up of the fifty-six – cracks me up.  It takes a lot of words to explain the most basic use of “make”.
    • To put in the proper condition or state, as for use; fix, prepare.  “This morning, Dave made his bed.  Then he made his coffee.  Tonight, Dave will make his dinner.”
    • To become by development; prove to be.  “Someday, Dave, you’ll make a heckuva writer.”
    • To be sufficient to constitute.  “One blog post does not make a writer, Dave.”
    • To arrive at or reach, attain.  Dave just turned sixty years old. Will he make it to sixty-one?
    • To plant and cultivate or produce (a crop). “Dave makes some of the best corn in the entire county.” (Note: this one is specific to the U.S. South.  Since I’m moving there soon I’d better get used to it.  And no, I don’t have any plans to “make” corn when I get there.)
    • To cause oneself, or something understood, to be as specified. “Make sure this is a good blog topic, Dave.”
    • To show oneself to be or seem in action or behavior.  “Dave plans to make merry the day his daughter gets married.”

    “Make Love, Not War” was a slogan born out of protests over America’s involvement in the Vietnam War but it’s probably getting renewed use in the last couple of months.  Not that I can explain what “make love” really means.  Something physical?  Metaphysical?  Peace treaties?  Making out? I can’t make up my mind (and don’t make me).  Besides, it’s time I make for the exits with this post.

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    Lego Grand Piano – Update #20

    (Read about how this project got started in Let’s Make Music!)

    Today’s section of the Lego symphony was a ten-minute sprint.  Bag #20 – of 21 bags of pieces – assembled nothing more than the underlying support structure of the piano lid, with hinges to anchor it in place on the left side of the instrument. The dark, raised bar you see running across the top of the lid is part of that structure.  The support “stick” to the right was already there, lying quietly across the piano strings from a previous build, just waiting to be raised.

    Bag #21 will be a rapid final chapter, perhaps as fast as this one.  We only have the free-standing bench for the pianist to go, and (with a final flourish), the sheet music we’ll center on the stand above the keys.  We’ll bring the entire assembly to the finish line inside of fourteen hours. Then you and I will step back, admire all that we’ve accomplished these last twenty-one weeks, and take a well-deserved bow.

    Next week: the final movement!

    Running Build Time: 13.5 hours.  Musical accompaniment: Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3 in A-flat Major (two times through). Leftover pieces: None again!

    Conductor’s Note: Liebestraum means “love dream” in German. This short piano piece could certainly be interpreted that way. It starts out soft and melodious, a soothing lullaby. But it picks up steam in a hurry, building to a crescendo and using the entire keyboard.  It’s a beautiful piece, which is more than I can say for Franz Liszt’s last name.  Every time I say “Liszt” I sound like I have a lisp.  Maybe he did too?

    Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Curtains for Calls

    Denver’s getting a new area code next month!

    No, I’m not short on blog topics – stay with me here.

    “983” will be added to 303 and 720 because Denver’s rapid growth means they’re running out of new phone numbers. But it’s not our state’s fifth area code itself that has my attention (by comparison, California blows us away with 36). It’s the 25 years “983” is expected to last before Colorado needs a sixth area code. Seriously? Will we even have phones in 25 years?

    “719” reaches my corner of Colorado

    “Area code” feels like an old-fashioned term. I associate area codes with the physical act of “dialing” (also an old-fashioned term). Sure, we need area codes to establish new numbers the first time we get smartphones (as preschoolers?) but then they become more labels than three-digit numbers, don’t they?  Think about it.  If you need to call someone these days, forget about their area code because you already have it in their profile.  You either tell your phone to call the person or you pull them up in “Contacts” and simply touch the number on the screen.  In other words, your phone dials the area code but you do not. Not anymore.

    How to call someone in D.C.

    Before smartphones, area codes had more prestige.  They were required to make “long-distance” phone calls, which meant you had to dial an extra three digits.  Outside of toll-free numbers, area codes conjured up exotic destinations, as if dialing halfway around the world instead of somewhere else in your state.  Area codes made you feel like you were calling someone important.  Today, they’re just labels.

    If I really wanted to date myself, I could be talking about telephone exchange numbers instead of area codes.  KLondike, WRigley, and TEmpleton all referred to the central offices of telephone exchanges, with every phone number in an exchange starting with the first two letters of the central office.  PEnnsylvania 6-5000 was a memorable example because it connected you with the famous Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City, and Glenn Miller made the number into a popular swing jazz tune in the 1940s.  I wasn’t around in the 1940s (or even the 1950s), so enough with this topic.

    Let’s flush “dialing” out of conversations about phones, shall we? Nobody “dials” anymore.  Dialing (for you preschoolers) hearkens back to a time when phones were phones.  You picked up the corded “handset” from the “cradle” on the “base”, nestled it against your jaw so the “receiver” lined up with the ear and the “microphone” with the mouth, toggled the “switchhook” for “dial tone”, and placed a call by spinning the rotary dial once for each digit in the phone number (got all that, kids?)  The dial would rotate back to its original position after each digit so you could dial the next one.  The whole process took 30-45 seconds, followed by a long pause, and then the “ringer” sounded on the receiving phone.  With that in mind, do you take the ease of your smartphone touchscreen for granted?  Of course you do.

    [Author’s Note: The mechanics of rotary phones (base, dial, ringer, handset) made them HEAVY.  You can find movies from the 1940s or 1950s where a character uses a rotary phone as a weapon simply by clocking someone over the head with it.]

    Dialing eventually gave way to “touch-tones” (thanks to the invention of the transistor).  The rotary dial was replaced with a grid of plastic pushbuttons, one for each digit.  Yes, we still “dialed” area codes but with buttons instead.  The buttons then migrated from the phone base to the handset.  The handset then went cordless.  Finally, the base disappeared altogether, and voila! – you had the first “mobile” phone.

    Area codes make me nostalgic because I associate them with actual phone calls, one voice talking to another.  Today we’d sooner text than talk.  Delivered mail to your box on the street isn’t long for this world.  One of these days it’ll be curtains for phone calls as well.  Which re-begs the question about Denver’s latest area code.  Do we really need bright and shiny-new “983”?

    The Jetsons don’t know “phones”

    Phone calls of the future may simply be mind games where we’re able to “ring” each other brain-to-brain. A little far-fetched, you say?  Probably, and the idea of thought control makes me squeamish anyway.  Call it old-fashioned, but I hope we’re still talking about area codes in 25 years after all.

    Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Lego Grand Piano – Update #19

    (Read about how this project got started in Let’s Make Music!)

    Today’s section of the symphony was short and entirely predictable.  Bag #19 – of 21 bags of pieces – assembled the rest of the piano’s top lid, shown completed in the photos below.  I simply picked up where I left off from last week’s Bag #18, continuing to build up the “wall” of the lid until it was complete.  It’s a repetitive process using pieces of similar sizes and shapes.  Now, all we are left with – my patient audience members – is the support structure of the piano lid (so it can be raised to its very elegant angle when open), and the free-standing pianist’s bench.

      Today’s build took less than twenty minutes. (I could’ve built Bag #20 as well, but why change my weekly pace this late in the game?)  As I was finishing the piano lid it occurred to me using Mr. Instruction Manual is a lot like using sheet music.  You shift your eyes between the manual and the piano itself constantly as you work, step-by-step-by-step.  Just as you would when playing the piano from a sheet of music.

    Running Build Time: 13.3 hours.  Musical accompaniment: Brahams’ Violin Concerto in D. Leftover pieces: None again!

    Conductor’s Note: Johannes Brahms had to be included in the list of musical accompaniments for my Lego Grand Piano build because, well, he’s one of the “bigs” in classical music. His Violin Concerto in D Major sits on Germany’s Mount Rushmore of violin concertos, beside Beethoven’s, Mendelssohn’s, and Max Bruch’s.  You, however, know Brahms best for his beloved lullaby “Cradle Song”, which starts “Lullaby, and goodnight, with roses bedight…”

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    Changing Planes

    My wife & I are boarding more flights than usual as we anticipate our upcoming relocation to South Carolina. “More than usual” deserves context I suppose, since so many of us skipped airports altogether the last couple of years. Flying is different now – some ways better, others not so much (and unquestionably more expensive). Regardless, I was happy to learn our favorite choice of airline before AND after the emergence of COVID just earned the label “world’s best” for 2021. Care to guess which one?

    I already gave you the subtlest of hints in my blog title.  With mathematics at least, the world’s best airline is also known as “an incremental change in a variable”, which makes its logo – the triangle – a fitting symbol.  Its slogan is the uber-confident “world’s most trusted airline” but I prefer one of its older ones:

    Maybe Delta Air Lines is your airline of choice too.  If not, you’re wondering where your favorite ranks among the world’s best.  I’ve never heard of Cirium (have you?) but the data-mining company spends its days converting 300 terabytes of aviation performance metrics into annual best-in-class rankings. (300 TB meant nothing to me until I crunched a few numbers.  A ten-page Word doc is about 2 MB  By my calcs Cirium is sorting through five million pages of data.  I’d say their rankings are legit, wouldn’t you?)

    Let’s end the suspense.  Here are the top ten airlines measured by “operational performance”, for 2021:

    1. Delta (“Platinum Award” winner)
    2. Alaska
    3. American
    4. United
    5. Spirit
    6. Frontier
    7. Southwest
    8. JetBlue
    9. Air Canada
    10. Allegiant

    Delta should put a lot of stock in this win, and not just because 9 of its 10 aircraft arrived on time in 2021 (10% better than second-place Alaska).  It’s more about the impact of the passenger experience to the result.  Is the boarding process efficient?  Is the flight crew rested and available?  Is the aircraft properly maintained? How is baggage handled? How are unruly passengers dealt with (a more recent trend)?  Every one of these details number-crunches to a measure of on-time arrivals.  And no one does it better than Delta.

    I may be biased but my own experiences seem to back up the numbers.  My wife & I have flown Delta several times since 2019 (including a trip to Europe) and every one of those journeys met or surpassed our expectations.  I’m not saying Delta goes over the top to gain customer loyalty (though a warm chocolate-chip cookie would help).  They simply do what I expect.  Arrive on time and make the journey as pleasant and efficient as possible.  Is that too much to ask?

    Sadly, my affection for Delta is bolstered by my dissatisfaction with its competitors. I’m surprised to see American and United make the top five.  My family and I have had several lousy experiences with American, including delayed or canceled flights and could-care-less customer service agents.  Meanwhile, United may know how to arrive on time, but their coach seats should be labeled “cattle class” (not unlike Spirit and Frontier).  Drop down the tray table and open your laptop.  I challenge you to type comfortably.

    Southwest could’ve been higher in Cirium’s rankings but I’m sure their logistical issues last year contributed to the number.  Scores of their canceled flights were attributed to “weather challenges” during an unprecedented upheaval in the workforce.  I’ll forgive the bald-faced excuse.  When Southwest is running on “all engines” their brand of customer service is second to none – which keeps me coming back for more.

    From my days in corporate America, I remember an equilateral triangle as the symbol of a successful company, giving balance to customers, employees, and shareholders.  Looks a lot like the Delta logo, doesn’t it?  More than just a nod to the Greek letter (Delta) or a throwback to its origins in the Mississippi (“Delta”, that is).  Even the dictionary definition of delta belongs in the conversation. Positive change befits operational excellence.

    If my wife & I were relocating to Salt Lake City or Atlanta (or one of Delta’s other hubs), we’d be changing planes and flying more often with the “triangle”. Just this week my wife enjoyed another Delta flight she described as “perfect except for a few inconsiderate passengers” (which seems to be the norm these days). Delta celebrates one hundred years of passenger flights in 2029 so it’s safe to say they’re guided by experience.  The Cirium ranking is just a numbers-crunching confirmation of what I already know.  Delta is ready when I am.  Or, to put it mathematically, Δ = (S)atisfaction + (L)oyalty.

    Some content sourced from the CNN Travel article, “The world’s best-performing airline has been revealed”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Lego Grand Piano – Update #18

    (Read about how this project got started in Let’s Make Music!)

    Today’s section of the symphony could’ve, maybe should’ve used a stand-in pianist.  Bag #18 – of 21 bags of pieces – assembled a little more than half of the piano’s top lid.  I show the structure on its side in the first photo because that’s how I built it, from the ground, er… desk up.  I imagined myself as a tiny mason, building a wall brick-by-little-brick, working right-to-left, then over to the right again.  You – my faithful reader – could’ve handled this part of the construction easily.  In Lego terms, it’s a wall made with various lengths of rectangle pieces.  That’s it.

    Not a wall, but part of the hinging piano lid.

    Know what I love about this adventure? (which is rapidly coming to a close!) You don’t always see what’s coming.  I knew I was building the top lid, but it was hard to see how it fit the piano until I set it on its side when I was done (second photo).  More to my point, I have three bags of pieces remaining.  One is the remainder of the piano lid.  One is the free-standing bench for the pianist.  Which leaves… you see? I still have no idea what’s coming.

    Running Build Time: 13.0 hours.  Musical accompaniment: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Leftover pieces: None!

    The top lid rests in its future location.

    Conductor’s Note: The story behind Louis-Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique is more interesting than the piece itself (seriously).  At the somewhat tender age of 24, Berlioz fell in love with an Irish Shakespearean actress, who kept him at bay until she finally agreed to be his –  seven years later. Maybe the length of Berlioz’s pursuit extinguished the flame because the romance didn’t last.  But Berlioz wasn’t left empty-handed.  He composed the Symphonie fantastique to depict the idealized version of his Irish lover. I just didn’t find his music fantastique.

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    Emerald Greens

    In the final lines of our national anthem, Americans sing, “O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave”.  Those labels are a little dicey today.  Are we really free?  Are we really brave?  It’s a debate best left to more intellectual bloggers. I’m simply looking for less controversial words to describe the United States.  Take Ireland, for example.  The little republic is nicknamed “The Emerald Isle”.  Of this, there can be no doubt.  Before your flight even touches down, the window seat view is nothing but endless rolling green hills.  And not just any green.

    See what I did there?  Inside of a single paragraph I distanced myself from heavy topics like freedom and bravery, and now I’m focused on the color green.  Bravo, Dave! Now then, let’s continue.

    “The Emerald Isle”

    Emeralds have always been my favorite of the precious gems.  In the jewelry shop it’s hard to ignore diamonds (because they’re everywhere), yet somewhere in the glass cases you’ll find the more colorful stones. Blood-red rubies. Royal blue sapphires. Modest little garnets (my birthstone).  And green, green emeralds.  I’m drawn to emeralds because green is my favorite color.  On that note, do you realize your favorite color never changes?  Nobody says, “Well, I used to like purple but now my favorite color is orange”.  You can move to another country, switch up your career, or overhaul your wardrobe, but your favorite color is a constant.

    I digress (sorry). I have emeralds on the brain for good reason.  My wife & I just celebrated thirty-five years of marriage (thank you very much), and she hinted emeralds might be a nice gift.  So I paid a visit to my jeweler.  I told her I was looking for something understated, maybe earrings and a necklace.  She showed me a pretty set, where I thought my only decision was the shape of the stones (Round? Square? Pear?).  But then she threw me a curve when she said, “Would you prefer natural or lab-created?” Huh? Why would I buy my wife anything other than the real thing?

    “Natural”
    “Lab-created”

    Here’s the rub of the green.  Lab-created gems are the real thing.  They’re “chemically, physically, and optically identical to their natural counterparts.” So why choose one over the other?  Cost. Lab-created gems can be significantly less expensive, especially as the number of carats grows.  In other words, easy choice, right?  Wrong.  The lab-created gems – at least in my jewelry shop – were small enough to be the same price as the naturals.  Instead, my decision came down to color.

    Was I tempted by the blue-green clarity of the lab-created?  Absolutely.  Did I choose them?  Absolutely not.  I kept coming back to the emeralds in my brain.  Call it natural green, kelly green, or Irish green, but I prefer the green on the left.  And I think my wife did too.

    Liz is wearing $6.5M worth of emeralds and diamonds

    I’d like to share some trivia on today’s topic but – warning – it’s a little pedestrian.  Emeralds are one of the twelve birthstones (conveniently, the month of May).  Emeralds come from the mineral Beryl (as do aquamarines).  Their rarity makes them “precious”, alongside diamonds, rubies, and sapphires.  They’re delicate, susceptible to chipping.  Finally, emeralds are considered, among other things, a symbol of rebirth.

    A section of the Florida Panhandle is called the Emerald Coast for the area’s clear, green water.  The Wizard of Oz lived in the Emerald City for reasons only Oz fanatics can explain.  And little Ireland, deservedly, earns its nickname for those rolling green hills, as well as Irish jewelry, made primarily from green gems (if not all emeralds).

    Florida’s Emerald Coast

    I saved one more fact for last, mostly to make points with my wife.  After I bought her the earrings and necklace, I said to my jeweler, “By the way, it’s silver for the 25th anniversary and gold for the 50th, but what about the 35th?” She replied, “Emerald” (even though several Google searches suggest jade).  Whoa. I didn’t plan on that coincidence but I’ll certainly take the credit.  After all, my wife is one-quarter Irish. My daughter’s name is Kelly. And my favorite color is green. How could it be anything but emeralds?

    Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Lego Grand Piano – Update #17

    (Read about how this project got started in Let’s Make Music!)

    Today’s build demanded more of an overhead view so you can see the difference between last week and this week. Bag #17 – of 21 bags of pieces – earned me the row of seventeen black caps you see in the second photo (on top of the piano wires), as well as the wide stand for sheet music, just behind the keyboard cover.

    Last week

    The piano is a remarkable instrument.  When you press down on a key, you’re actually pushing a “hammer” up against the underside of a piano wire, creating a musical sound (or “note”).  When you release the key, a black “damper” (one of the seventeen I just built) drops down on the top of the wire, silencing the sound.  Add in the functions of the three pedals at the base and you should consider the piano a musical mechanical marvel.

    Running Build Time: 12.5 hours.  Musical accompaniment: Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee. Leftover pieces: 2

    This week

    Conductor’s Note: The Bumblebee is a brief orchestral interlude of an opera, composed well over a hundred years ago. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s furious little piece, when played on the violin, really does sound like a buzzing bee.  It’s only 84 seconds in length, but you find yourself catching your breath after you’ve heard it.  It’s even more remarkable when played on the piano, the fingers almost a blur.  Have a listen to the audio file here. I’m sure you’ll recognize the tune from some of today’s movies and cartoons.

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    Happy Holiday

    If you subscribe to Disneyland’s claim of “the happiest place on earth”, you’re really talking about the several happiest places on earth.  Besides the original parks in California and Florida you now have more exotic locales like Tokyo, Shanghai, and Paris – a total of twelve Disney theme parks across the globe.  Now throw in Hawaii’s Aulani (Disney) Resort & Spa for a baker’s dozen.  But do a search on “the happiest place on earth” and nothing remotely close to the lands of Disney comes up.  Instead, you get the land of the Finns.

    Maybe you haven’t heard of the World Happiness Report? I have. I first blogged about it five years ago in my post, Happy Days Aren’t Here Again.  Back then I wasn’t lamenting the fact the UN established a rather desperate-sounding holiday (“International Day of Happiness” – March 20th).  Rather, I was un-happy the United States ranked #14 in the holiday’s companion report.  Thirteen countries, including #1 Norway, were happier places on earth.  To make matters worse, the U.S. had been slipping in the happiness rankings since the first report in 2013.  This year?  The Americans dropped again, to #16.

    The Northern Lights make me happy

    An objective report on happiness sounds a little ridiculous but when one country (Finland) ranks “happiest” five years running, you sit up and wonder what you’re missing with Laplander life. Consider the variables in the happiness report calculation:

    1. Healthy life expectancy
    2. GDP (goods and services) per capita
    3. Social support in times of trouble
    4. Low corruption
    5. High social trust
    6. Generosity to the community
    7. Freedom to make key life decisions
    Cold = contentment?

    Maybe you assume Finland’s proximity to Ukraine (and Russia) puts it in a nonpareil position to earn high marks for say, “social support” and “generosity to the community”.  But this year’s rankings were determined before Russia’s invasion.  Finland was already socially supportive and generous (and apparently “happy”).  So, does Finland come to mind when you consider the list above?  It doesn’t for me, but I will say this. The Finns enjoy day-to-day living. On a Baltic Sea cruise a few years ago we spent several hours in the capitol city of Helsinki, where we had the chance to observe the locals.  What were they doing? Sunning themselves in the parks on an unusually warm day. Shopping in open-air markets.  Children walking home from school unattended.  Peace and quiet wherever you looked.  Happiness.

    Eight of the ten “happiest” are on this map

    Let’s visit some of the other happier-than-America countries.  There must be something good in Baltic Sea water because Norway, Sweden, and Denmark also make the top ten.  Iceland skates in at #3, which almost makes for a clean (and happy) sweep of the Nordic countries.  Switzerland (#4) and New Zealand (#10) are also “happiest”, and I can think of several reasons to spend time in both places.

    As the song goes, “don’t worry, be happy”, but I confess I’m a little concerned about happiness here in America.  We need to step up our feel-good game from more than just Disney theme parks.  Maybe post those seven criteria on our refrigerators as regular reminders. Or, spend more time in saunas like the Finns do.  Otherwise, it may be time to pick up and move further north.  After all, happiness beckons.

    Some content sourced from the CNN Travel article, “The World’s Happiest Countries for 2022, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Lego Grand Piano – Update #16

    (Read about how this project got started in Let’s Make Music!)

    Every piano keyboard demands a cover to keep it clean. Bag #16 – of 21 bags of pieces – was entirely dedicated to the protection of the keys.  As the photos show, the keyboard cover hinges gracefully up and down, blending seamlessly with the rest of the black piano frame.

    A word about leftover pieces (another 3 this week).  I need to be more thankful they’re “leftover” and not “missing”.  I swear I was shorted an important piece this time around (and maybe I really did swear).  But as usual, there it was in plain view in my pile of pieces.  I’m grateful to the human or the machine making sure every last piece was included in my Lego Grand Piano box.

    Running Build Time: 12.0 hours.  Musical accompaniment: Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Leftover pieces: 3

    Conductor’s Note: Peter (or Pyotr, if you prefer) Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture was an interesting choice for this week’s build, because I completed the keyboard cover before 8:30am.  If you know the Overture, you know it’s fortíssimo, like an alarm clock firing on all cylinders.  It’s a blast better meant for an Independence Day fireworks celebration (and some orchestras add a real cannon for the finale). The Overture is also brisk; a mere sixteen minutes from start to finish.  I wasn’t that quick with the keyboard cover build, but I did wrap it up in less than a half-hour.

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The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.

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