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 30, 2008
I'm not sure I'm ready for this
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...]
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