In anticipation of some camping on our vacation, we set up the tent in the backyard today. We bought the tent last year and never used it, and figured that we should give it a trial run. Of course, the kids asked if they could spend the night out there. We just saw them off, each equipped with a sleeping bag, pillow, flashlight, and stuffed animal. Yes, even the 12 year old. We'll see if they last the night...
Click here to continue....July 17, 2008
July 16, 2008
Dog days
Not much to blog about lately. We've been busy working away at getting bedrooms painted and furniture moved around. No one has any organized activities going on; the kids are just hanging out with friends. When we can't take any more drywall patching, sanding, scraping, or painting for the day, it's too hot and windy to enjoy ourselves outside, so we just collapse in the house with a cold drink. I've been putting in extra time at work, too, trying to get caught up for the vacation we're taking at the end of the month. There is some unbloggable political maneuvering that's going on there, too, which is affecting a good friend and has me feeling pretty powerless to affect.
All in all, it's enough to make me envy the dog, who stays stretched out on his cool and comfy bed while I'm running around being busy.
July 08, 2008
Fire season
Having always lived in the west, and reasonably close to rural areas, I don't remember a time when I didn't think of summer as fire season. Usually that wasn't at the forefront until sometime in August, but this year is scarily different. My beloved home state is under siege; the county where I grew up had three major fires before June was even out. Another place I called home is still threatened by a fire that started last week.
Tonight fire season has arrived here. When I drove home from work I saw a huge plume of smoke on the other side of the river. Now that it's fully dark, the red glow is visible from my upstairs window - a few hundred acres so far, mostly brush and no structures as yet, but it's not far from some housing developments and extensive wheat fields. I'm glad the wind seems to have died down for now. It's a long time until October's rains.
July 01, 2008
Today was a good day
I finished four projects at work and my new staff person was as good as I had hoped in her first presentation to the executive team.
I found out that I got a raise. A REAL raise, not the minuscule COLA the legislature granted but something I will actually notice. And I didn't have to ask for it. [As exempt, non-union employees, we do not get any sort of systematic pay increases other than COLAs, so this is unusual.]
My only other staff position was shared with another department. The person in that role was recently promoted and I got permission to have the vacancy split so I can hire someone with the qualifications I need instead of compromising on only the skills that are relevant to both departments. This will be a huge help given the workload I have coming at me over the next year.
I have the house to myself for the night. I can't remember the last time this happened. I cooked exactly what I wanted for dinner (ravioli with butternut squash and sage) and no one is angling for the TV remote or the computer.
I can look forward to sleeping in tomorrow, dropping the dog off at the kennel, and heading back up to the lake for three more nights.
June 30, 2008
I'm not sure I'm ready for this
Last weekend we were at the lake about an hour away from home. I brought my laptop figuring I would work on planning our vacation road trip later this summer. There is supposed to be wireless where we are staying, but I wasn't able to get a decent signal. So I decided to go up the road to a coffee shop with free wi-fi.
Guess who begged to come along? Son. Why? He had promised to email a girl he met at camp last week.
June 21, 2008
June 18, 2008
Sound waves
Spring is concert season in our school district. It's not enough for each school to have its own groups perform; all the schools across the entire district have to get together. Twice. The first round is all orchestras, and the second is all types of music ensembles: choirs, orchestras, and bands.
It is quite something to see so many students massed together and making music. It's impressive to hear an orchestra of over seventy middle school kids (strings only at this age, too; no brass or woodwinds or percussion). The drawback is that the only space large enough to fit them all is a gym. The acoustics are awful. The sound moves across the cavernous room and bounces back, and suddenly nothing is quite in sync any longer. This was too much for most of the elementary students to overcome; only those with a good view of the conductor could keep going. I watched two boys - probably 10 years old - in the back row of the violin section slow their playing, then stop, look at each other, put their bows down, and shrug in agreement: they had no idea where they were in the piece. The middle school students managed fairly well, even all the way through the 1812 Overture - but if your seat was near the top of the gym, as ours was, it was not easy to follow, especially in the less rhythmic parts. For the kids, it was exciting to play with and for so many people at once. Son went from being the only bass in his school orchestra to playing as one of nine. It was nice not to have to strain to hear the bass part.
Son is the sixth bass player (counting from the left) standing in the back row. No, it's not you - the photo is blurry; I had to turn the flash off and I can't manually set the shutter speed on this camera.
June 17, 2008
Germination
Somehow the calendar says it is mid-June. The weather outside is still saying March, with an occasional short lapse into May. My mind believes it is still April, because that was the last time I can remember having time to think. The days have just been too busy.
A more thoughtful blogger wrote about her decision to cut back on writing for her blog, saying she needed to have both feet in the three dimensional world right now. I have been feeling overwhelmed by all that's going on in my three dimensional world, and wish I could carve out more space to think. That's partly why I started this blog; if I am going to write things down and publish them, it pushes me to work out my thoughts and follow where they lead. So what happens when I don't have time to do that? I get swallowed up by everything that's going on, and can't seem to climb back into this space and close the door for a bit.
So I won't list all the things that have been making me crazy and keeping me occupied. I will just keep trying to nurture these little seeds and hope that they will grow when I finally get time to plant them. And I will make that time, somehow. [Actually, I know where that time is going to come from, since starting tomorrow I am relieved of middle school homework monitoring duty for the next 11 weeks...]
April 25, 2008
Spring Concert
Here are Son's youth symphony performances of
O Mio Babbino Caro
and the third Brandenburg Concerto
In O Mio Babbino Caro, he is playing a bass solo along with the harp for about the first 20 bars - admittedly, it's very hard to hear his part; I don't think their recording equipment is very sophisticated. But it's still cool. The Brandenburg has always been one of my favorite pieces, and they did a pretty good job. By coincidence, about a week later all the school orchestras in the city had a day-long judging/performance event, and the local high school group played the same piece, but in the original (not an arrangement). He was quite impressed with the difference just a few more years will make. Click here to continue....
April 20, 2008
At the Opera
As I mentioned earlier, our spring break adventures included an opera performance. I didn't start out planning for that experience, but it turned out quite well.
Prior to this, my opera experience was limited to two field trips to the San Francisco Opera House during elementary school. I know we saw Carmen, and I'm pretty sure the second was A Midsummer Night's Dream. I can recognize and name a couple of famous arias, but that's about it. It just wasn't part of my world.
One of the pieces Son played with his youth symphony orchestra this spring was O Mio Babbino Caro by Puccini, from the opera Gianni Schicchi. [In fact, he had a bass solo in this piece, and didn't even tell us before the performance! His rationale: "If you knew I was doing a solo, you would have made me practice and practice forever." I'll post a link to the MP3 file as soon as the concert CD arrives in the mail.] I recognized this aria as part of the soundtrack from A Room with a View, but didn't know anything more about it.
As I searched various events calendars for things to do while in Seattle, the name Gianni Schicchi popped up. The Seattle Opera has a "young artists" program, kind of a post-doc experience for singers between their formal training and their first full professional position. These performances aren't at the Seattle Center, but in Bellevue, the same neighborhood we were staying in. It was combined on the program with The Enchanted Child by Ravel, and tickets were quite reasonably priced. Since this was an opportunity to see Son's piece in its context, I decided to take the plunge.
The kids' initial response to this plan was less than enthusiastic, but they acquiesced with very little protest, and all of us ended up thoroughly enjoying the performance. Both productions had very contemporary staging: in The Enchanted Child, the Child was a bratty ponytailed girl in a school blazer and plaid skirt with headphones plugged into her ears as she ignored her mother's entreaties. One of the characters moved through the scene on a Razor scooter wearing leather, chains, and a flaming red mohawk.
Gianni Schicchi opened with the patriarch dying in his elaborate bed complete with canopy, draperies, and frescoed ceiling. Across the stage, his relatives gathered on red velvet sofas to await his demise... while they watched a soccer match on a flat-screen TV and shouted and cursed at the players and refs. There were several over-the-top characters, but the best was Gianni himself who had all the persona of Tony Soprano (not that the kids really got it, but the laughter from the adult audience was contagious). Both were quite funny and the kids really came away with a better understanding that artists can take their work very seriously to produce a comic result. And the setting was informal enough that the cast came out and mingled with the audience in the lobby afterward. I'll be keeping an eye out for these productions whenever we find that we'll be spending some time in the Seattle area.
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