Saturday, May 29, 2004
I just dragged myself away from my Vaio. This afternoon I finished up the choral parts in the Stardust County Overture, and figured out how to use metronome markings in Sibelius. It's really hard for me to stop working on the score, even with my back aching and a headache coming on like now. I don't know where that came from, unless maybe cumulative muscle strain from hauling sand and flagstones from Home Depot.
This morning as I was out in the garden, a hummingbird came up to within about 2 inches of my shoulder - it was a female, probably an Anna's. I could see a few tiny red feathers in the center of her throat. The doves also seem to be getting used to my presence. They really like the "spring" and the shade under the ash and mimosa trees.
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This morning as I was out in the garden, a hummingbird came up to within about 2 inches of my shoulder - it was a female, probably an Anna's. I could see a few tiny red feathers in the center of her throat. The doves also seem to be getting used to my presence. They really like the "spring" and the shade under the ash and mimosa trees.
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Friday, May 28, 2004
I dreamt about my father last night. I've been having the occasional dream about him since last November, roughly the 1 year anniversary of the last time I saw him. In one dream, Dad was still alive but Mom had recently died. In last night's dream, Dad was alive and talking to me about how devastated he'd been since Stan's death a few years earlier. Then Mom was predicting that Dad would just dwindle away in the years to come. I wonder if there was any significance to it - handling Stan's finances after his aneurism and in general dealing with having a son in a nursing home must have been a burden to Dad, but I never considered that it might have contributed to his declining health at the end.
Or it could just have been my subconscious' confused way of reminding me that I haven't put Stan's birthday card in the mail yet.
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Or it could just have been my subconscious' confused way of reminding me that I haven't put Stan's birthday card in the mail yet.
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Thursday, May 27, 2004
Suffered through an arduous review at work. Why does every discussion we have on this project devolve back to first causes or plunge into the weeds? Anyway, I was glad that I didn't schedule this meeting for yesterday, because my voice was toast afterwards.
Last night's performance at Encanto was the first one I felt really good about in a long time. Working around the acid reflux damage has changed my attitude - I don't worry so much about little bobbles as long as the overall effect sounds good. Plus, there was a large (for Encanto Wednesdays), friendly audience, which always helps. I'd been anticipating that all the folkies would be up at Fidd's for the Limelighters, and all the filkies down at Symphony Hall for the Lord of the Rings Symphony.
I seem to be clearing the caffiene withdrawal haze... I'm more alert evenings and wake up more easily in the morning, though that usually happens as we move towards Solstice and the days get longer. Most days I'll drink teeccino in the morning; sometimes I'll skip it and just have some juice. I'll still drink yerba mate tea occasionally at work, but not on a regular basis.
What I need now is a good, emotionally-satisfying substitute for soda.
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Last night's performance at Encanto was the first one I felt really good about in a long time. Working around the acid reflux damage has changed my attitude - I don't worry so much about little bobbles as long as the overall effect sounds good. Plus, there was a large (for Encanto Wednesdays), friendly audience, which always helps. I'd been anticipating that all the folkies would be up at Fidd's for the Limelighters, and all the filkies down at Symphony Hall for the Lord of the Rings Symphony.
I seem to be clearing the caffiene withdrawal haze... I'm more alert evenings and wake up more easily in the morning, though that usually happens as we move towards Solstice and the days get longer. Most days I'll drink teeccino in the morning; sometimes I'll skip it and just have some juice. I'll still drink yerba mate tea occasionally at work, but not on a regular basis.
What I need now is a good, emotionally-satisfying substitute for soda.
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Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Thanks to Pat for letting me know that the Commenting feature wasn't working. I diddled with the template some more and it seems to be finally up and running. Unfortunately, it turns out the "Anyone" who can post is "Anyone who has a blogger account". I hate that. Oh well, at least signup with blogger is free.
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Friday, May 21, 2004
Today was my Friday off, but I got up at the usual time anyway so I could spend a chunk of time working on the Stardust County score. I've been re-learning Sibelius and discovering some of the features new to 3.1. For example, there's a plug-in that sketches a simple guitar or piano accompaniment from chord symbols. The result's probably not what you'd want for a final product, but it takes some of the drudge work out. The downside of all these new features is that the manual is now huge and the indexing system is obtuse in places. It took me forever to find a reference to notating simple strum patterns for rhythm guitar, and it was in the noteheads section.
Putting Stardust on paper - first as the songbook, and now as a complete score - has been educational. All the songs & arrangements were originally done without recourse to staff paper, committed to memory, and transmitted via oral tradition to the cast. Working on the songbook, I became convinced that if the cast had been able to actually see how complex some of the melody lines were, they'd have fled from rehearsal in panic. Now I'm starting to capture the finger-picking and get a visual understanding of what I've been playing for the past X years.
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Putting Stardust on paper - first as the songbook, and now as a complete score - has been educational. All the songs & arrangements were originally done without recourse to staff paper, committed to memory, and transmitted via oral tradition to the cast. Working on the songbook, I became convinced that if the cast had been able to actually see how complex some of the melody lines were, they'd have fled from rehearsal in panic. Now I'm starting to capture the finger-picking and get a visual understanding of what I've been playing for the past X years.
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Thursday, May 20, 2004
I've just turned commenting on to see if anyone's actually reading this rag...
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The phone bill arrived today, and it's official: the amount my insurance company reimbursed me for my doctor visit in Greymouth, New Zealand, was just about equal to the cost of the phone call to Greymouth to get a duplicate receipt after my insurance (mistakenly, it turns out) told me they'd lost the original. I think I might be about $5 ahead. Way to go Blue Cross!!! And a costly lesson to me about making copies of my medical receipts and keeping them in a safe place.
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Monday, May 17, 2004
I was watching a show Sunday night that featured Microsoft's take on the "kitchen of tomorrow"; it revolved around a smart countertop that would sense what ingredients you had set out on the counter and suggest recipies using them. Sounds like a great idea - for people who keep their countertops fastidiously tidy. What about the rest of us slobs? What sort of recipies would a smart countertop suggest to make use of 2 organic onions, bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, half a box of Girl Scout cookies, a Scuba magazine and a jar of rubber bands?
This same show also stated that most people keep their prescription meds in the kitchen. Is that really true? Whatever happened to keeping medicine in the medicine cabinet?
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This same show also stated that most people keep their prescription meds in the kitchen. Is that really true? Whatever happened to keeping medicine in the medicine cabinet?
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Tuesday, May 11, 2004
I started to watch ABC's production of A Wrinkle in Time last night, but left in the middle to go buy groceries. It wasn't horrible, but I just couldn't get pulled into it emotionally like the book. The writers didn't seem to have enough faith in their source material. They kept undermining the sense of wonder with stupid wisecracks like "I feel like I'm being held hostage in some wacko's dream".
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Monday, May 10, 2004
Well I'll be dipped. Once I finally got the right forms (see my 27 April post), Blue Cross came through with a check for my doctor visit in New Zealand, and they covered 90%. We've yet to see how that stacks up against the long-distance charge to get the duplicate receipt - I've yet to receive my phone bill for April.
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Saturday, May 08, 2004
There was a horrible racket out in the garden this morning, so eventually I interrupted my breakfast to see what was up. A mockingbird was screeching and dive-bombing a black cat that looked much like a younger version of Omega. The cat hardly seemed to notice.
The temperature's been topping 100 on a regular basis, hot enough to kill the pollen, so we won't get any more fruit setting until the temps start to drop in December. However, it stayed cool long enough for about half the tomatoes to set green fruits, so I'll have to put up the bird netting soon. Oddly - it's not the season - one of the artichoke plants has begun producing little chokes. They look likely to bloom before they reach any kind of size. Very strange.
Called Sibelius yesterday to get my upgrade so I can start on re-orchestrating Stardust County for the studio version. Ran into a snag - my software says I'm registered, but their records say I'm not, and tech support was in a meeting for the rest of the day. I'll have to call them Monday morning to get this straightened out. The good news is, the upgrade to 3.0 comes with an additional license, so I can run a copy on my Vaio without paying more.
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The temperature's been topping 100 on a regular basis, hot enough to kill the pollen, so we won't get any more fruit setting until the temps start to drop in December. However, it stayed cool long enough for about half the tomatoes to set green fruits, so I'll have to put up the bird netting soon. Oddly - it's not the season - one of the artichoke plants has begun producing little chokes. They look likely to bloom before they reach any kind of size. Very strange.
Called Sibelius yesterday to get my upgrade so I can start on re-orchestrating Stardust County for the studio version. Ran into a snag - my software says I'm registered, but their records say I'm not, and tech support was in a meeting for the rest of the day. I'll have to call them Monday morning to get this straightened out. The good news is, the upgrade to 3.0 comes with an additional license, so I can run a copy on my Vaio without paying more.
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Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Bizarre moment from the Des Moines airport: As I sat down at a table in the cafe, I picked up the paper that had been left behind by another traveller. After reading for some minutes, I slowly realized that the paper was dated December 4 of last year. Had it really sat on the table that long? Did the cafe really go uncleaned for 5 months at a stretch? Or was it only the reading material that got passed over? I can imagine a restaurant in LAX being so busy night and day that a newspaper might have been occupied every time the cleaners came through and so survive from December through May, but Des Moines? Surely they must have a few dead hours late at night to do a cursory clean-up.
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Monday, May 03, 2004
Surreal moment from Demicon: At 2 AM, as we spilled out of the Grand Ballroom following TICC After Dark's production of "Moulin Smooth", a crowd in hall costume burst from the doors directly opposite on the mezzanine, and seranaded us all with "Nymphomaniacs" to the tune of "Animaniacs".
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