Real Weather

Today I woke up to the sound of light rain! Jennifer and I took an early walk this morning instead of playing tennis. It wasn't raining then, but it was a little damp, and we saw a spectacular rainbow. It's been so dry and hot here lately that this change of weather has been quite refreshing.

Clearing Out

Today is a good day for clearing out stuff. I finally took the pile that had accumulated in my mud room to the Goodwill. I even went shopping at the Goodwill, but came out with nothing, so no new stuff to add to the house!

Also, and this is even better, the landlord next door has been removing the dead, overgrown vegetation that has entwined itself in our shared chain-link fence. We both want it covered up, but he's going to plant something on his side to do it. He's already removed a lot of ivy as well as that pesky asparagus fern.

AND, it's finally starting to cool down towards fall weather a bit. Yesterday it was around 90 and today around 80, and tomorrow should be cooler still, although I don't think I'll have to turn on the furnace before Nov. 1!

All the News That's Fit to Print

In Chicago, Hal and I became quite fond of the Chicago Tribune. It actually took us about an hour on Sundays just to read all the articles we wanted to. I also loved the Friday movie reviews which were not buried between huge ads. Anyway, I decided that I wanted to read a good paper on Sundays when we came home, so we ordered the Sunday NY Times to be delivered.

It's been great. The Sunday paper takes a good, long time to read, and I especially enjoy the Book Review, the Arts and the Magazine.

I was just about to cancel the home delivery and buy it on the stand when the Times called to offer us 7-day delivery for the price of Sunday for 8 weeks. I said, sure. After all, I can cancel after 8 weeks.

This is our second week of every day paper, here is the dangerous ground. I really like reading this paper every day. I actually read articles in the front section, and I love the arts section, too. We'll see what happens in 6 1/2 weeks. Maybe the sticker shock will get me to cancel....(or at least buy it at Starbucks on occasion.)

Tuesday music

This morning my friend, Lynn, came by with her cello and we played duets. She very kindly played my River to the Sea that I had arranged for violin and cello, and we also played Celtic fiddle music. We plan to do this on a regular basis. It's FUN!

My music on the web

I finally put a piece of music I wrote up on the web. I have a page HERE at the Sibelius website. The piece I have up is called River to the Sea, and I wrote it for violin and Bb clarinet last year. You can see the music and listen to it, but you have to download the software Scorch first. The web page tells you how to do that. The sound is not great - just a MIDI file, but it gives you an idea of how it goes. I plan to put up other works at this site in the future.

A Concert Weekend

I'm back in the swing of orchestra, and this is our first of four concert weekends of the year. The exciting part is that I am now in the viola section. Last night we performed the Faure Requiem and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. Both pieces have beautiful music for the viola section, and during the applause our section had special recognition. I've never had that as a second violin before!


Today is a very full day. Hal and I are going to usher in church, then we meet with the guy who will be landscaping our backyard, then I play a repeat performance of the concert, and then we have book club. Somewhere in there we have to get food to take to book club.... Maybe life will slow down a bit on Monday!

Roman Shades

New window treatments installed this morning:
dining room and our bedroom

Collapses

Last night I finished The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. I heard about this book from several friends who highly recommended it. The praise was so high that I actually purchased the hardcover at Costco. The writing IS beautiful. Don't let the phrase "Hamlet with dogs" put you off - the story is engaging, even if you figure out the ending ahead of time.

I finished this book while sitting at Harvey Mudd last night waiting to hear Jared Diamond speak. Hal knew that it would be an overflowing room, so we went a half hour early with our books.

Hal has read several of Diamond's books - Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, so he made sure we got to this talk. Diamond spoke about various socities that have collapsed and the five reasons they do, including enemies, climate changes, but most importantly, the mismanagement of natural resources.

Tree Work

Our neighbor next door had a huge live oak tree removed yesterday. Although I love those big, old trees, this one would drop all kinds of mess on our driveway and sometimes drip sap on our car, so I wasn't totally sad to see it go.

Coincidentally, I had just had our tree man give me a bid on some trees in our yard. For removing a dead walnut tree (behind the garage), trimming and thinning out our Chinese elm, he bid over $1800. My neighbor (actually, the landlord and manager of the apartments) said I should get his guy to give me a bid, too. Not only was the bid less than half ($625), but he also thinned out and cleaned up our orange tree. The crew started yesterday and finished up just now, and it feels as though we've had a major haircut - all fresh and ready to go!

Chinese elm before and after

Learning more about Blogger

I just found out how to add some items in my sidebar - Blogs I Follow and a slideshow. Currently in the slideshow are the pictures from our trip to Utah a few weeks ago.