random thoughts – Day 2,165 (Thursday) – polished

Cleaning underway.

Since attending the tai chi class last Thursday, I had every intention of returning this week. I was dressed and mentally ready for class when I realized I would need to leave early for a detour to get some cash from an ATM. I spent all the money in my wallet on dance trinkets Tuesday night when I bought two pairs of zills, a silk veil, and a pair of black dance pants from another dancer at class. (No regrets.)

Instead of leaving early, the Barkeeper’s Friend powder was fetched from under the sink in the guest bathroom. One zill was tested to see if the cleaning was as easy and effective as the YouTube video I watched for drum kit cymbal cleaning indicated. It was, and that is when I chose to skip the ATM and tai chi. Instead, I got busy cleaning four of my sets of zills, which were the two newly acquired sets and the two sets that usually live in my dance bag. There are still three or four more sets elsewhere, generally neglected because they are cheaper quality and don’t sound as nice.

The wetting and scrubbing and wiping and scrubbing and wiping went well and the zills look all shiny and new again. It was surprising how tarnished they all were, and satisfying when they were all cleaned up.

Shiny and fresh.

After the cleaning, a trip was made to Dollar Tree for small hair elastics to replace the old elastics. The hair elastics are hard to push through the slots in the tops of the zills, but it’s still easier than using flat elastic and sewing, gluing, or pinning them on the underside of the zills and running the risk of malfunction when in use.

I would have preferred black elastics, but the only colors available today were spring pastels in a pack of 30. No amount of my wishing and looking produced any black ones and I was not interested in dealing with the massive square footage of Wal-Mart to look for small black hair elastics in there. New pastel elastics were bought and installed in most of the sets with one color for the thumbs and a different color for the middle fingers in each set. For the rarely used emergency spare set I left the old elastics in.

Now it’s time to play.