And Again, Nobody Knitted Anything

I'm having a hard time explaining my long time away from knitting. For the most part, the spring and summer weather has remained cool and rainy. I'm not even out showing most weekends this season, as I used to be. Why, then, am I going through such a trough? I don't feel the need to pick up the needles, have pretty much given up on Ravelry and the blogs, and even delete sale notices on sock yarn unread. Knowing that the amount of money I have to pay for what passes as a heating oil "monthly budget plan" is roughly equivalent to what I paid each month for my car when it was new, you'd think I'd be doubly motivated to make warm things for the cold times ahead. But nooooooo.

With everything else that's been going on these days, maybe apathy is a form of rest. I've had so much going on during the daytimes between juggling three projects simultaneously at work, helping out with Second Life, Web stuff, stuff from various clubs, and trying to keep up with dog events that something had to break somewhere. I haven't been to a training class -- agility or rally -- in a couple of months. I don't knit. I'd still read more, but I fall asleep. Cripes!

The SL in SL5B Stands for Server Lag

Greg's been busy exhibiting his music at the SL5B celebration in Second Life this past week. He was selected to participate from among some gazillion people, since being one of the few classical composers in SL makes him fairly remarkable. He put together a short video about his music and its historical context, got some support from one of the classical music communities, and set up shop at the equivalent of the SL World's Fair. If you're in SL, stop by the Via Media exhibit and have a listen. When Greg's online, he's usually "playing" the piano at the exhibit, and is always happy to chat.

Funny thing happened: Greg struck up a conversation with the artist whose exhibit was directly across the street from his. It turns out that she lives in NJ, and was planning to visit Maine this weekend. We met up with her in Portland last night and had a delightful time. This is the first time that either of us has met someone we know in SL whom we haven't met in RL first.

This is just sooo SL: The server lag was so wretched on the first day of this much-ballyhooed, much-advertised celebration that the keynote speaker by the now-former CEO was about 15 minutes along before anyone could hear so much as "Can you hear me now?". Perhaps in his first act as former CEO, Philip should look into upgrading the parallel computing capacity to "adequate."

Sumer is icumen in (Already...!)

Seems funny to contemplate on this rainy, dark, and dopey Sunday, but summer really is only a week away. We had a bout of actual summer-like weather a little while ago, but it descended with such suddenness that no one was prepared for it. It's been a cool spring, so normal summer weather feels like a heat wave in comparison.

Dinah and I spent yesterday in western MA, doing CGC tests for NEOESR. We tested 13 dogs -- 12 Old English Sheepdogs and a German Shorthaired Pointer -- and 12 passed. Unless I'm mistaken, I believe all of them were former rescue dogs. A couple of them were deaf and responded to their owners' hand signals. Little Denver, a rescued Sheepie puppy whom I got to see (and smooch) at the Boston shows last December while blogging on my other blog, has grown into a handsome young lad. I was particularly happy to be able to award him a CGC. Collecting Sheepie kisses was a particularly nice benefit, too.

I don't think she reads my blog, but I'd like to thank Debe, husband Jim, and rescued Sheepie Princess for spending their day helping us with the tests. The NEOESR picnic is always a wonderful time, full of giggles, reunions, and lumps in the throat -- and Debe gave up a lot of her own socializing time to help me with paperwork and collecting funds for the club.

Music News From Two Worlds

A couple of weeks ago, we attended the annual ACA concerts in NYC to hear two of Greg's pieces performed. The first of the two, April for SATB chorus and piano, got a brief-but-positive mention in the next day's New York Times review of the concert. I don't know if the second concert, on which The Waking (for soprano and piano) appeared, but New York Magazine and some other traditional media types were present -- with cameras. Greg was favorably impressed with the performances of his pieces, and we're awaiting the CDs from the concert. He wasn't as impressed with the performance of Tony Lanman's piece -- he's heard a better performance before. I am happy to report that there weren't too many "squeeeee" pieces or tape-recorder games on the two programs this year.

All in all, the trip wasn't too bad. Our bare-bones, overpriced closet of a hotel room had a fridge and a great view of the river. We had some terrific meals, though I'm really sorry we never got to try the Japanese-tapas fusion restaurant in between SymphonySpace and our hotel. We also visited the Roerich Museum and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Cooling my heels for a couple of hours in an under-construction wing of JFK Airport and another frickin' hour on the tarmac in the plane didn't exactly make my day, though.

Apparently the recording session for the Sax Quartet is happening Any Time Now, so Greg will shortly have to beat it back to NYC for that event. The New Hudsons only have to do Greg's piece, and the CD is done!

The Man has been busy in Second Life, too, putting together a presentation booth for SL5B, the Second Life Fifth Birthday celebration. It's going to be a sort of World's Fair SL artists and contributors, and Greg might be one of a very small number of classical musicians featured in the show. He's been working with the talented staff and builders of the Music Academy -- they're helping him build his "set" and promote the exhibit. It could be a fruitful collaboration for everyone involved.

Rough Masters and Masterpieces

Exciting Man News: After a wait of roughly 6 months, a copy of the rough master for the Water Suite (the one that was recorded in Prague last summer) has finally hit the doorstep.

We've been awaiting this recording with quite a lot of anticipation. Greg couldn't go to Prague to hear the recording session, so this disc was his first chance to hear the orchestral version of the suite. He ripped open the Airborne package, put it into the PC, and we sat... chills running up our spines. It's GOOD.

Of course, the final mix will sound a teensy bit different -- things will be balanced a little more, and there are a couple of extra sound effects (a clunk here, a knock there) that will be edited out. This isn't intended to be a live recording, after all. When it's done, I hope it blows people's socks off as it did ours. We know the piece well, and we still were amazed.

Speaking of recording sessions... looks like the one for the Sax Quartet is coming together for June in NYC. Greg doesn't have the exact dates yet -- or maybe he does and I just haven't heard them yet. The New Hudson Sax Quartet recorded Lukas Foss's quartet for the CD at his place in New York, and they've also done Mike Veloso's quartet. Now that those two are done, Greg's is the last to be recorded before production starts.

We have our tickets and our arrangements for the two ACA concerts on the first week in June. All I need to do now is make hotel arrangements for the pups. To be honest, there are a gazillion things I would rather do with my hard-earned vacation days than spend them in New York, but the concerts should make the rest of the experience worthwhile. I only hope I can find free wi-fi.

Greg's computer bit the Big Kahuna last week. One morning, it just refused to boot. We thought that it might be the battery or the power cord -- with laptops, you never know whether your problem might not just be a lack of charge. Anyway, Greg packed it down to MacEdge to have them look at it. They reported that it had pretty much fried -- the system board, the power supply -- well, it might be easier to list the components that didn't fry. They couldn't say exactly what caused the problem -- only that there wasn't a lot left to salvage outside of the hard disk and the extra RAM chips. The laptop was way out of warranty, so there wasn't much else left to do except take it out behind the barn and bury it. Fortunately, Greg has backups -- so he's up and running again on one of my old spare PCs. Now he can gripe about a different operating system.

Canine News (Ours and Others)



Charlie Brown turned 11 last week. It seems as though it wasn't so long ago that I flew out to Jody's house to pick him up. We went downstairs to the puppy pen, and I spied a little brown Superball of a puppy, bouncing up and down and up and down while his brothers and sisters milled around in greeting. "Guess which one is yours," Jody said.

It's still hard to believe that that little puppy is now a senior dog. Charlie's in great shape for 11, aside from a touch of arthritis in his left shoulder that is probably an artifact of his having had Lyme Disease some years ago. Half a Deramaxx usually takes care of things nicely, and he only gets that when he appears to need it. Otherwise, he's hale and handsome, and still can see, hear, dig, and eat dirt. (If anyone asked him what his secret for longevity was, he probably would answer, "Plenty of dirt.")

I did my second CGC tests this past week for my friend Mary's POC class. All of the dogs were adorable -- I particularly wanted to spend the rest of the evening smooching on Dewey the Boxer. Six out of our seven passed. Emma, the Springer Spaniel, was about as unhappy with the Supervised Separation exercise as Seamus had been, and squeaked continuously for her dad until we called him back to her. Dinah was the most distracted distraction dog in history -- not only did she not interact with any of the test dogs, but she kept her eyes focused on me no matter who was walking her.

My next CGC test would have taken place in June, but the date was moved to September to coincide with Responsible Dog Ownership Day/Month/Whatever. That works out nicely for Dinah and me, since it frees us up to attend a herding clinic on that weekend instead.


...And Still No Knitting Got Done

Geez, even my Second Life avatar gets more knitting done than I do! A friend of mine discovered a virtual knitting shop that sells animated knitting needles and tintable lace knitting projects. Of course, I had to have one -- if only so I can look like I'm doing some knitting.

In spite of the time I've been sinking into SL of late, I have been trying hard to get things accomplished, and am making a teeny bit of headway. I revamped Greg's Web site, keeping all the things he liked about the original while making the new one faster and more standards-compliant. Whatever he's been using to update the site re-declared the same font family statements every 4 words of every sentence on every page. That's a lot of Delete-key action!

Today is the Day

Every year at roughly this time, the farm store here in town runs its equivalent of an office pool. Staff and customers place bets as to the exact date and time when the mountain of plowed snow in their parking lot melts completely into a puddle.

The farm store snow still has a long way to go before it hits the dirt, but today -- after four successive days of warm and sunny weather -- the last filthy remnants of snow in our yard finally disappeared. I've been so deathly freakin' sick of winter that I feel as though I've won the office pool myself.

The dogs have been celebrating the advent of spring in their own fashion. They've started new holes in the mud in the dog yard, for which I'll have to buy more rocks and topsoil. They have also been more vocal about getting me to join in the fun outside, too. I throw the ball for Dinah several times a day, and that always precipitates a game of chase between Herself and one of the boys. This morning, Dinah and Seamus had such a great time playing chase and wrestling in the mud that I entirely forgot to rush back into the house for the camera. They were just too much fun to watch.

This is the time when installing a doggie door proves to be a smart move. The pups are in and out and in and out and in and out all day long. I want to say that I love the new metal storm doggie door, but it hasn't weathered the season as well as one would hope, given the outrageous price I paid for a custom-sized, custom-installed specimen.

Lowe's is like some of the guys I've dated in the distant past. They'll charm the pants off you, vowing that their customer service people will never sleep again until you can honestly say that everything is just plain frickin' wonderful with the product.

Once you say yes, and they have you where they want you, they'll install the thing, call once to see if you're happy, and grin while cashing your check. However, if anything goes wrong after that -- warranty or no warranty -- they dematerialize. I can't believe that the customer service people are on lunch break 24x7, but it sure seems that way.

Our door is beautiful, and the installation seemed to go pretty well. However, neither the doggie door nor the storm door close properly any more. They clicked into place perfectly for the first month or so, but now I can push or pull with all my might on the door and it just won't close. Calls to Lowe's return the equivalent of, "Of course I still love you, baby, but can't you see I'm busy right now? We'll get together soon, I promise." I've heard that before. The least they could have done was kiss me first.

Lots of Music News

Greg, who is sitting in the office as I write, reports that the new NYC venue for the recording of the Sax Quartet looks good, and the recording engineer is a good one. The producer didn't give a date yet, but it looks as though it will happen within the next couple of months.

One of the members of the New Hudson Sax Quartet just emailed him that he's coming to Bowdoin next week with another new music ensemble. Greg plans to go up there with the score of Louis, Louis and go over it with the group.

The Man has been busy with a new piece that has captured his attention and energies of late. Its working title is Thouros and Phosphoros, and it's based on the story of the same name from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Before he mentioned the project to me, Greg had had no idea how much I love Ovid's poetry in general and the Metamorphoses in particular. One of my "someday" projects is a collaboration with an artist friend of mine to produce a story based on the tale of Philemon and Baucis from the same work.


Busier Than a One-Legged Man in a Butt-Kicking Contest

I used to have a boss at Digital (in one of my many incarnations there) who used that phrase every time things got a little hectic around the office, and it never failed to crack me up. I still can't borrow it myself without giggling just a little.

Anyway, it sure describes things around the homestead right about now. Work's pretty steady and gaining in momentum, plus the Web site stuff is beginning to take off. I still maintain all of the sites I ever did, plus I've taken on two new sites and a redesign for one friend of mine, and a brandy-new site for a mutual friend of ours. Not to mention the fact that both Greg's and my sites are in dire need of a redesign that brings them out of the 1990s. My site, while still a useful resource that gets a lot of hits from information seekers, isn't exactly the type of site that cries out, "Look at me -- I'm a Web design expert!".

I've also picked up yet another CGC testing gig since my last post. I knew that I would be testing for another POC graduating class in Kittery next month and for NEOESR in June. Since then, I've also been asked to test at the Meet the Breeds event in Scarborough on June 8. It's all good; we can never have too many Canine Good Citizens out there.

This Blog Post is Brought to You By the Number 4 and the Letter S

S is for Seamus

Please forgive me if I start this post with a little brag on Almost Famous Seamus. The little guy and I spent last weekend at an APDT rally trial at Monadnock Canine Academy in NH. Since we weren't crashing over out there, we had to get up at four-frickin'-thirty in the morning each morning in order to make it there by 8 AM. Seamus, being the non-fan of car rides that he is, whined the whole way up and the whole way back.

In spite of that, the Famous One managed to qualify 4 out of 4 times, with two 4th-place finished in his class. (His lucky number for the weekend must have been 4, eh?) Since the RL1X title requires 10 qualifying legs, we're still collecting the set. Last weekend's legs bring our total up to 7. One more trial and we could conceivably finish this year!

This trial was a first for Monadnock, and indeed for NH. It was the first APDT trial held north of Massachusetts. The facility was beautiful, with a huge room for the ring and great flooring. We had a separate crating room with tables and chairs for the humans, and the food was excellent. They even had shopping available! The shelter's pet supply store was open both days and carried lots of great collars, toys, food, treats, books, and even whole bean coffee.

My friend Sissy came with both her Akitas and her 16-year-old daughter in tow. Axle, the male, appears to have re-injured a knee that has already had an ACL repair. He wasn't able to compete in the trial, but Kuma, the female, did and finished her RL1 title. Sissy will probably tale her on to RL2. Kuma has an AKC RE, so she won't have any problems with going off-lead.

You can guess what our next challenge will be when we finish the RL1X, though. I hope we can conquer off-lead work without too many choruses of "Seeeeaaaaaammmmuuusssss!" echoing around the rally-roo ring.

"S" is For...

My friend Jane lives out in Encinitas, CA, so we're lucky if we get to see each other once a year at the Beardie National Specialty. She called me up recently. Turns out she's serving as chair of the nominating committee for the national club, and was wondering whether I'd be interested in taking over the spot of the corresponding secretary. The current secretary is leaving the office to take over as president.

I don't know what came over me, but I told her I'd do it. My term begins in July, and I get to serve a maximum of two terms (I think). Someone must have seen the "S" on my forehead and thought it stood for Secretary.

Now, if that isn't enough madness for one person, I was also elected to the Board of my local kennel club. I'm glad to help, really, but I wish all of the former Board members could have stayed on the Board as well.

"S" also stands for Steward. One of the local chief stewards recruited me to help out at her local kennel club's show this year. Since I won't be entering Dinah (less than zero chance of a major there), this frees me up to work in the ring at more of the local shows. A couple of the chief stewards trained me last year and I stewarded our kennel club's fall match, but this show will be the first time I fly solo. I've been promised a ring next to an experience steward and my very own set of rocks! (A steward needs rocks to act as paperweights when stewarding outdoors on windy days. Since I've passed the initiation and been accepted into the fraternity, I will be presented with my own set of bone-shaped cut stone paperweights. Woo hoo!)

4 Trips to NYC for The Man

Any time now, the 21st Century Masterworks volume that contains Greg's Water Suite should be available. ERM had said that the collection would be out by the end of March, but they're still a few volumes behind in their release schedule. The Man should still be out on iTunes sometime this year, though.

June seems to be the big month for Greg this year. Not only is he getting two pieces played in NYC, but the recording session for the Sax Quartet finally seems to be happening, and will happen in June. Since Town Hall is no longer an option for the recording, the producer had to find a studio somewhere else in the city. One has been found, but I don't know which one just yet.

4-lorn-Looking Half-Finished Knitting Projects

With everything else that's been going on, I've been lucky to steal a minute here and two minutes there to get some knitting done. I did manage to finish the latest watch cap for Greg - this one in navy blue Bernat Softee Chunky. (I know, I know, knitting with cheap-ass Wally World yarn and all... but the cap had to be made of something lighter than wool that would stand up to abuse and hot water washloads, yet be denser than cotton yarn, yet be cooler than wool yarn... )

I started an "idiot knitting" project on the side in my negative spare time. Although knitting twisted rib watch caps is pretty close to idiot knitting, the very dark navy I used for the last one made the stitches harder to see, and reduced the project's "idiot knitting" quotient.

"S" is also for Second Life, but more on that in another post. I have to go see what's 4 Supper.

Can the Equinox Be Far Behind?

Now that the snow is beginning to melt, Dinah and Seamus are finding all sorts of buried treasure in the back yard...



What a time for the camera on my cell phone to fink out on me! Last weekend at this time, I was sitting behind the backstop at a spring training baseball game in Phoenix, drinking beer in the sun and cheering for the Cubbies. (They lost in the bottom of the 9th.) Because I'd decided to travel light (and thus, not lose my luggage for a change!), I'd left my camera here at home. I figured that the one on my cell phone could do the honors... but no. It failed. Here I'd been hoping to capture some shots of saguaro cactus, red rocks, and baseball in the sunshine to brighten up my miserable, wintry blog.

Ah, but it was freakin' sweet while it lasted. Spring training has been a sorta-biannual tradition for some years now. My friend Lise, a fellow Sox fan, and I get sick of winter at roughly about the same time, and we agree to converge on Scottsdale to visit mutual friends of ours who live there. Liz and Jim aren't into baseball, but they graciously allow us to crash at their place and soak up some sunshine for a weekend. We all get together in the evenings for dinner and to spoil their two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. (I'm not a small-dog person, but I LOVE Cavaliers. If I ever did have small dogs, I'd have them.)

We were just there long enough to get used to relaxing in the sunshine. We saw two ball games: Giants vs. As and Cubbies vs. As, in two different ballparks. We wore sunglasses, drank beer, and cheered.

Will the Real Maine Maple Sunday Please Stand Up?

Maine Maple Sunday is one of my favorite days of the year. It comes as a sign of hope that winter is on its way out, the sap is rising in the trees, and that spring is just around the corner.

Traditionally, this day falls on the fourth Sunday in March. Unfortunately, for the past few years, the fourth Sunday in March also turns out to be Easter Sunday. Some farmers want the day off, and some want to stay open. Some sugar producers decide to open for both weekends, since many of them derive most of their year's income from Maple Sunday sales.

Greg and I did our Maple Sunday rambling yesterday, since the weather was relatively nice and we didn't have any holiday obligations. I looked forward to the maple cotton candy, maple hot dogs, maple baked beans, and maple whoopie pies -- but by the time we got to the farms, they had all run out of food. They did offer us samples of vanilla ice cream with maple syrup and some pretzels with maple cream, anyway. I'm glad for them that they had so much business, considering that some of them will want to close for Easter.

The Man's Ticket to Tune Town

Greg has been spending Saturday mornings over at church, accompanying some of the singers and instrumentalists who were putting on a concert to raise funds for the church's youth group activities. He allowed himself to be talked into playing, but didn't have time to practice the piece he really wanted to do, Ben Folds's "Philosophy." He decided at the last minute to work up "Bohemian Rhapsody", with "You Get What You Give" for a possible encore.

He ended up playing both. Turns out that the concert was also a "Battle of the Bands," and Greg -- to his surprise -- came in third. He won a $15 gift certificate to Tune Town. Not bad for a day's work.

He has just found out that his two NYC concerts have been moved. One piece (the four-part choral work) is now the first piece of the first concert in the series. The second piece appears in the second concert, along with a work from a friend of his from the composers' forum in Eugene a few years ago. Of course we'll figure out a way for both of us to go, and of course I'm bringing knitting.

Speaking of Knitting...

The watch cap factory is up and running at full productivity, such as it is. I've finally hit on something that Greg likes and will use, so I'm sticking with a good thing for now. Cap #4 is on the needles now, and I have some skeins lying around that will eventually become #5 and #6 (and maybe even #7).

I also sneaked in another scarf for Susannah out of some fantastic reddish-bronze ribbon yarn I picked up at Marden's. If the label hasn't disappeared into the black hole in the living room (apparently we have one in every room), I'll have to dig it out and identify the yarn. It's pretty, anyway.

Time for some more doggie shots...

I like to call this one "Glamour Girl Meets Punk-Haired Boy."




Tug of War, take 2:

Concerto for Nose Honk and Tissue Box

Well, it's time to make the annual announcement: I'm officially Sick of Winter. This is true in both the figurative and the literal senses, since I'm still struggling to throw off the last remnants of a nasty virus that not only hit me once already, but backed up and ran over me again. The paper industry has me to thank for single-handedly increasing sales of facial tissues for this month.

Since I can no longer stand the sight of cold and snow, I finally cracked and bought myself a ticket to Phoenix for the first weekend in March. Every other year or so, my girlfriend Lise (a fellow Sox fan) and I escape winter in our respective areas by meeting at the home of a mutual friend of ours out in Scottsdale, Arizona. We enjoy the sunshine, watch the Cubbies in spring training, wear shades, and drink beer in the bleachers with all of the congenial snowbird Cubs fans who have also converged on Ho-Ho-Kam Park to escape winter back home for a while.

Why don't we go to Florida to see the Sox? Because Liz lives in Arizona, and we get to visit her while we're out west. We don't even know anybody in that part of Florida.

Alphabet Soup

A few weeks ago, I received my certification as an AKC Canine Good Citizen Evaluator. You may now call me Tester #35219 for short. Sue and Judy, my rally instructor, both graciously allowed me to use them as references. Thanks to them, I'm now official!

It sure didn't take long before my newly acquired services were needed. One of the reasons why I became a CGC tester was to help the POC instructors with the "final exams" in their CGC classes. (Instructors may not test their own students; thus the need for an outside tester.) I'll be helping Sue with one of her classes in April -- that's my very first assignment as a CGC tester. I've also been asked to offer the test at the New England Old English Sheepdog Rescue picnic in mid-June.

More Alphabet Soup

This week, I received my membership materials from the Dog Writers' Association of America. One of my rally classmates has been a longtime member, and she suggested a while ago that I join. She and a Beardie buddy both sponsored me into the group. I am now a card-carrying member of the dog press -- literally -- and a pin-wearing one, too! (DWAA sent me a very nice logo pin that also says PRESS across it.)

Why did I wait so long? Although I've been writing reams and piles and miles of prose for my Web sites since the mid-'90s and started blogging in 2004, I've always been strictly a "new media" writer. I didn't feel I had a legitimate place alongside the trained journalists and other more "traditional media" folks. Now that I write the occasional piece for one local print publication and am about to contribute to an online edition of another paper, I finally have some traditional print "clips" to add to my portfolio. I sent a copy of my very first article on the CGC test for Downeast Dog News, plus printouts of posts from this blog and my other blog.

Some years ago, one of my college friends asked me why I never wrote a book. "I have nothing to say," I told her. Wouldn't say that was exactly the case these days--!!

And In Music News...

Greg is pleased that two of his songs will be performed in New York in June at the ACA Festival of New American Music. I forget which one will be performed on which program, but his works get to appear in two concerts this year. April is a song for SATB chorus and soloists plus piano. The Waking is scored for solo voice (mezzo-soprano or baritone) and piano, and I think the soloist for this performance is a soprano. The NYC concert is the world premiere for The Waking. April was first premiered in Boston a couple of years ago, but this performance is its New York premiere.

The best part about this year's programs is that both of the concerts with his songs occur early in that week, when the press is most likely to be present to review the works. Greg's had pieces in the ACA festival for several years now, but they have almost all taken place at the end of the week, when none of the music reviewers are around. He's hoping that maybe a reviewer from the New York Times, or even the New Yorker magazine might come to one of the concerts and include a review of one (or maybe even both) of his pieces. (Yes, I'm a member of the press now, but I don't count. It's unlikely that Downeast Dog News would be overly interested in a music critique.)

Well, At Least We Didn't Go Home Empty-Handed

In retrospect, it might have been a less-than-sane thing to do, but Dinah and I entered the EMAC CPE trial in Manchester, ME a couple of weeks ago.

We aren't really ready for prime time as far as our agility skills are concerned. Whenever I begin showing in any new performance venue I get stage fright, tense up, and am an absolute stumblebum of a handler. My commands are off, my sense of timing is warped, and it's all my poor dog can do to figure out what I want. I do work through that given enough time, but it's rough going at first when you're as coordination-challenged as I am.

Our main objective was to get Dinah to experience the trial environment. Since she's a show dog, she's used to barking dogs, hanging out in a crate, and all manner of noise and confusion at dog events. I wanted her to be similarly used to the sounds at an agility trial: banging teeters, more barking dogs, wild applause, and all that. Dinah didn't even blink.

As for me, I was still coming off a raging head cold left for me by the flu monster that's been smacking me around this winter. It's really quite amazing how important a regular air supply is when you're running around a course! We ended up with three NTs (time disqualifications) and one NQ with time faults, simply because I couldn't get out of my own way and my handling was just appalling.

We did get a first-place ribbon for our one NQ run, for what it's worth. We were the best non-qualifying run in our jump height class. A leg would have been nice, but at least we got a souvenir.

At Least It Was Inspirational

Did I mention how miserably frickin' COLD it was at the trial? It was ONE lonely, wretched degree out in the early mornings when we came in, and the arena was unheated. About the only time I was comfortable was while I was running (and gasping) on the course. You could spot the handknitters in the crowd, since they were the ones sporting the best and warmest wool hats and mittens. A Sheltie person I knew lifted the cuffs of her jeans so I could admire the hand-knitted socks a friend had made for her (out of one of the Regia yarns. I have a couple of balls of that pattern in my stash, so I'd know it anywhere.) Another woman sported a chullo hat with earflaps, for which she'd spun her own yarn. I even met a couple of people from Ravelry when I pulled out a sock and started to work on it during a long wait between runs. People huddled under quilts and blankets until their turn to run came. I ran score sheets for some of the runs just so I could keep moving.

Everyone was so helpful and congenial, though -- I can't wait until we're good enough to come back and collect some Qs! In the meantime, I've been scheming about an entire wardrobe of knitted survival gear: maybe a chullo hat with some agility motifs on it, flip-top mittens, sweaters, and definitely more socks.

The Ugly Quintet

Once upon a time, there was a brass quintet that was so difficult that none of the brass instruments wanted to play it. Its composer was ashamed of it, and embarrassed by all of the insulting things the brass players said about it. The brass quintet lived in a distant, dark, cobwebby corner of the computer's hard disk where no one had to look at it, let alone play it. Other, luckier compositions got to come out to play, to be worked on, or performed, or even recorded... but the poor ugly brass quintet just sat all alone in the hard disk, day after day, wondering if it would ever see the light of day again.

One day, the composer got an Idea. He brought up the ugly brass quintet from the depths of the hard disk, dusted it off, and rescored it for string ensemble. Just then, a magical thing happened! The ugly brass quintet, with just a touch of transposition, magically turned into a beautiful piece for strings! All the strings adored the beautiful new piece, and the composer was very proud. He decided right then that he would add some double stops and other detail work, and see whether he could get the new piece premiered in NYC in 2009.

And they all played happily ever after. The End.

Of course, this fairy tale is based on a true story. Greg had been wondering what to do about the brass quintet for months. He'd shown it to one ensemble that rejected it completely. A couple of brass players he knew at his alma mater looked it over and kindly replied that it was extremely technically difficult, even for an expert horn player. The quintet ended up getting consigned to the compositional "frog pond", and Greg despaired of ever getting it played.

It just goes to show what a sudden inspiration can do to transform something. Just today, a wild notion occurred to him to rescore the piece. He thought about clarinets, but then tried the strings... and something just clicked. Greg couldn't be more tickled. Now that he has a beautiful, shiny new piece for strings almost ready for prime time, he's just thrilled, and as proud of the piece now as he was troubled by it earlier. The transformation really is amazing; it sounds as though it had always been a string quintet.

I guess if there's a moral to the story, it's that you should never throw an idea away. You never know when you might be able to find the exactly correct use for it. Oh, and recycling is good.

It's Baaaaa-ack!

...and Seamus celebrated.



Ayuh, the January thaw is now history. (Actually, I think it made history with a record warm temperature one day this past week.) Now it's back to Winter Classic and more of the white stuff.

I did manage to rescue most of the toys and bones from the yard as they emerged from the snow, but Dinah is busy dragging them back out of the toy box into the yard to be reburied. She does love a good surprise, and now she can get surprised all over again the next time a thaw takes place.

ScribeFire is Fired

Ah, sad thing it is, too. I really enjoy the convenience of having a screen pop up from Firefox whenever the inspiration strikes. Because I do what I do for a living and understand the complex and sometimes fragile nature of the client-server connection, I've never been wild about composing directly on the Web, either -- and there are certain things you can't do offline in a regular text editor. ScribeFire seemed like the ideal solution.

Anyway, I like everything about the ScribeFire plugin except the fact that it's turned all the text in my blog page to italic. Even if it's fixable, it's not acceptable. Buh-bye.

Taking the "Free" Out of "Freelance"

I just received my first check from Downeast Dog News this weekend. I honestly never much thought about the fact that I could actually get money for doing articles -- I've just been writing for the fun of it, and to take a break from writing about computer stuff for work. I'm also pleased that I have another publication to list for my application to the Dog Writers of America. A friend of mine who writes for Dog in Sight magazine encouraged me to join, so I can add the membership to my "journalist" credentials. DDN was just nominated for the DWAA's Best Canine Newspaper or Newsletter award.

Might As Well Take the Plunge

I've signed Seamus and me up for the next APDT rally trial, which will take place in Swanzey, NH at the end of March. Since we're working on a "money title" that requires 10 qualifying scores (RL1X), we won't finish any new titles at the trial even if we Q in everything -- but we could come home 7/10 of the way toward the next one -- and thus, we'd be only one more trial away from finishing the title. The joy of APDT rally is that there's still plenty to do on-lead, so we can continue to trial even though he might never be reliable enough off-lead to continue in AKC. I'll continue to train him, but I'm not sure I can ever trust him.

Dinah, on the other hand, is terrific off-lead, but needs time and work to acquire some precision. She's not working at the prodigy level that her sister Buffy is at this point, but that's because I'm a much lazier trainer than Jana is. I expect that eventually, with some time and some training, that Dinah will be able to do pretty much anything. If we didn't still have to chase those stupid majors to finish her conformation championship, we could plan to enter more trials this year and work on some other titles.

In the spirit of learning -- and not because I think we're ready for prime time -- we're going to our first agility trial next month. CPE agility is a great place for an agility dog to start. Level 1 courses contain no teeters (which Dinah likes) or weaves (which she doesn't care for), and the courses are simple. I've chosen to enter her in the Enthisiast level, so the jump heights are even 4" below what she'll be expected to jump in the Regular classes when we get there. It's about the best way we can find of easing into agility trialing. It's more important to me that she get used to the sights, sounds, and routines of agility trials at the moment. We probably won't Q -- especially if there are chutes on the course -- but we'll have acquired some experience. (Plus, we'll have friends there. A classmate from Auntie Cindy's agility class will be there with her Rottie boy.)

Seamus is back in Uncle Jim's agility class for this session, too. Because he's not an off-lead kind of guy, I'm not sure he'll ever run agility outside of the classroom, but we have a great time. We know most of the dogs and people there, and we still learn stuff. It's also a good way for me to sharpen my clumsy handling skills in a second class.

A Good Time for Wool

Greg's second hat is growing slowly. I've been able to make tiny amounts of progress each day. On snowy, crappy days like these, it just feels right to play with yarn. While we were in Portland over the weekend doing an art gallery crawl, I managed to sneak into Central Yarn for another ball of Encore (charcoal gray) for him, plus a skein of purple hand-dyed Seacoast Handpaints sock yarn for myself. No, I didn't need more sock yarn -- but I made the mistake of picking it up out of a conveniently placed basket on the floor, and the yarn refused to leave my hand. I had to buy it and bring it home -- I had no choice! I also saw a pattern for a gansey with a lobster design that I just have to make (maybe several times), so that leaflet also followed me home.

I've been so busy cranking out hats for The Man that I haven't started Jody's second Jawoll sock yet. The first one is beautiful, though. If we have a few more days like this one, I should be able to keep The Man in hats and still get some warm socks out to Nebraska for Jody pretty quickly. Lambing season's coming up, and she'll appreciate being able to wear something warm on those midnight slogs to the barn.

Comp'ing

Speaking of The Man, Greg's started a new piece for trumpet, piano, double bass, and drums. Its title is Comp'ing, and it's going to be a Very, Very Cool piece when it grows up. Greg's using it to take a bit of a break from The Seven Wonders. It's as spontaneous and playful a piece as The Seven Wonders is studious and involved, so the two make great foils for each other.

Greg received a Christmas card from ERM Media, but hasn't heard anything about the Masterworks series since. As far as he knows, the CD with the orchestral version of Water will still be released at the end of March, and people should still be able to download the piece from iTunes at that point.

This is a Public Service Announcement

Okay, all of you. You need to cease and desist with all this "dreaming of a white Christmas" crap immediately. Due to current weather patterns, every time that song plays in an elevator somewhere, we get another inch of snow here. It's getting old, people. Can't you dream of Cheeseburgers in Paradise instead?

The dogs are tickled about having yet more new snow in the yard, especially the boys. When I let them out first thing this morning, both boys hurtled down the back steps and dove into the snow. Seamus had some for breakfast...



...and here inside, whenever I'm not coughing up a piece of lung here and there, I'm putting the finishing touches on my Christmas shopping. I haven't started the cards yet, but my friends and relatives have probably grown used to getting my Christmas cards for Valentine's Day.

Dale has a hot new Nikon camera, and is looking forward to shooting some fabulous new pictures for her blog. Go on over there and see what she's been up to!

Back here at home, Greg's been updating one of his older piano pieces and migrating it from Finale into Sibelius. It used to be called simply À for Piano, but he's refitted it with a new name that's an hommage to the way Ravel used to title some of his pieces. Ravel would name them À la manière de So-and-so. Greg has retitled this piece À la manière de..., and follows that with a list of the composers to whom he pays homage in the piece. Messaien is one of them, and Hall makes it into the list as well.

He has a reason to be doing all that work. He has been invited, as a member of the ACA, to submit a piano piece for the next Van Cliburn Competition next May and June. Of course, composers from all over the world will be submitting to this thing... but the winner and runners-up are guaranteed to get some very fine performances of their works from some potential piano superstars of the future.

Oh Happy Day: Our doggie storm door gets installed tomorrow, and then I can quit my job as Canine Butler!

Knitting, Such As It Is

In spite of all the snow and the cold weather serving as inspiration for knitting, I haven't really felt up to doing very much of it of late. I've made some progress on the organic cotton cable scarf for Susannah, but I haven't had the brainpower to tackle anything else more demanding. Blame the cold medicine.

I've Created a Man-ster!

I try to keep up with news in my industry by reading some online tech journals. Some of it's interesting, some not so much, and some is Way Cool. Anyway, I got an article on one of my newsfeeds about how to get an online invitation to the Hulu beta. Well, no one loves old episodes of TV shows as much as Greg does, so I immediately hooked The Man Up with an invite.

He couldn't be more tickled. Now he can watch old episodes of Lost in Space all day long if he wants to. The video quality is really amazingly good for such old color film, and the playback is pretty zippy, even over wireless. Of course, the videos download with commercials, since nothing comes for free... but really, how much fun can you have?

Photos from Man Paradise and Other Stuff

(photos in this post by Ann Northrup)

Greg's been having the time of his life in Wyoming this week. He gets to work when he wants to, run when he wants to, and his lunches get delivered to his cabin while he's working so he won't be disturbed. The Foundation employs a professional chef who makes some incredible meals. They treat him so well out there he might never come home!

He did ask the Foundation whether he could stay another week, but another composer is coming just after Greg leaves -- so there's no room for him. He has to come home. In the spirit of fairness, he's not allowed to apply for 2 1/2 years after he's done a residency there, but you can bet he'll have his application ready to go the minute those 2 1/2 years are up.

He also mentioned to me that the other artists he's met there are all folks who have been turned down multiple times by Yaddo and McDowell, so he no longer feels like he's the only one they've turned their noses up at repeatedly. That makes him feel better about being rejected.

He's promised me some photos of the outdoors today, if the wi-fi connection there cooperates. Here's one of the hills outside the Foundation:



Here are a couple of interior shots:

This one shows Greg playing the piano in his work cabin. There's one in the main building, too (a converted railroad depot that now contains the bedrooms for all of the artists and the communal space). It's a 7-foot Kawai, and he loves the heck out of it. He likes the piano in his cabin well enough, but he looooooves that Kawai.



The one photo I have of the living room is kind of dark and not really good enough to post, but there are quite a few pictures of the kitchen and dining area. I wish mine looked like this...



I promise some pictures of the Bighorn Mountains and the big sky when he sends them along.

Greg was feeling uncertain as to which of his works to concentrate on while he's out there. He had three pieces on his "to do" list: Ongiara, There and Back Again, and Les sept merveilles. He's finding in practice that he really only wants to concentrate on Les sept merveilles, and he was feeling a teeny bit bad about not wanting to make progress on the others. Les sept, or The Seven Wonders, is a piece for solo piano and very involved, so he's decided to take advantage of the time and the two pianos at his disposal to work on that one. He can pretty much work on the other two anywhere, since he already has the basic architecture of both pieces figured out, and all he has to do is write the music to fit the scheme. The Seven Wonders still needs to be constructed before it can be filled in. He describes it as "incredibly dense, denser than the usual Man harmony."

Here's a photo he took of The Seven Wonders on the piano in his cabin, facing out the window:



Quick musical aside: He says that The Waking will be premiered in NYC next June at the ACA concerts.

Meanwhile, Back at the Homestead...

It's been deadline time at work, so things have been just too wacky for me to get very much done anywhere else. I had grand visions of carting half the crap in the house to the Treasure Chest at the transfer station and cleaning the house so well that Greg wouldn't recognize the place. Neither thing has happened, though I'm making progress in reducing Mount Laundry and in replacing stuff that really needed to be replaced, including a dying lamp in the living room, a busted window blind in the bedroom, and my worn-out moccasins. I've also ordered the new storm door. I'd hoped to be able to just point at it and have it delivered, but our door frame is about 5" too short for the standard size. It has to be a special order... ka-ching!

I'm looking forward to finishing up the dog-show year next weekend. There weren't enough entries in Fitchburg to bother going down there (mainly because some genius decided to hold the Minuteman Club's 35th anniversary party that weekend, so no one from Massachusetts will be going to the show). I wish I'd known that before I paid the entry fees. There goes another $50+ that could have gone toward something worthwhile, like yarn.

While We're on That Subject...

Fran and I were able to get away from our respective packs long enough to attend an Open Knit Night up at Rosemary's in Cornish on Friday night. I've never minded knitting by myself, but it's nice to be able to get out and join a group every so often. The knitters up at Rosemary's are all congenial, and we had ourselves a fine time. I brought Jody's Jawoll socks to the party. Fran worked on a pair of mittens. There were a couple of people working on Cat Bordhi's Moebius cowl with help from Cheryl, the resident instructor, and a couple of other folks knitting the same sweater from Knitting Pure and Simple.

I was strong -- I didn't succumb to the lure of all those rooms of yarn singing "come hither." That's not only a good thing, but a necessary one. I've just had a good hard look at my own stash, and I could probably open my own store.

I just dragged the yarn stash out from the bedroom closet (where I hid it before Greg's cousins came to visit), and I was staggered yet again by the sheer amount of stuff I'd stuck in there. In the name of home improvement, I picked up three of the biggest translucent plastic tubs that Wally World has to offer and stuck most of the stash in those. My tastes have changed radically since I learned to knit a few years ago, and I'm no longer interested in most of the novelty yarns I've picked up. I'm still knitting scarves on request, but even Susannah (who loves scarves and novelty yarn) would admit that I've acquired too much of a good thing. Might be time to put some of this stuff up for adoption.

My current "Idiot Knitting" project is a little skinny scarf for Susannah in black Berroco Bling Bling. The name of the yarn really turns me off, but the yarn is pleasant enough to work with and knits up nicely. I've hit the gusset decrease on the first of the Jawoll socks, so I have to pay a little bit of attention there.

Dispatches from Man Paradise

I razz Greg all the time about "Man Paradise," which is our nickname for the downstairs family room. Because I rarely go down there, Greg has decorated the place in all his typical manly squalor -- I mean splendor. He has the downstairs TiVo filled to overflowing with reruns of dusty old "Star Trek" episodes (I am the only person in the computer industry who's sick to death of "Star Trek"). The treadmill and exercise bike are set up to accommodate him. Because he'll happily eat the same things every day and likes to water down everything he drinks, I kid him that he takes his gummy microwaved spaghetti and his watered-down water down to Man Paradise every night for his workout.

This explains why I had to squelch a chuckle or two when Greg called from Wyoming yesterday to proclaim that "It's Paradise!" Not that I'm surprised. If you could put together a collection of Greg's favorite things, including mountains and grand pianos, you'd probably get Ucross. This residency is probably going to be the quickest two weeks in his entire life -- but he should be coming home with inspiration enough to last him for at least another year.

He says he took about 100 photos yesterday, and will send me some of the best ones when the network comes back up out there. Apparently the winds knocked something around last night, with the result that Internet access went down. At least the cell phone signal is strong enough to keep in touch.

Meanwhile...

As for the rest of us, we're muddling along. After I dropped Greg off at the airport on Sunday, I did what any red-blooded American woman would do when the Man goes out of town: I went shoe- and yarn-shopping. (Honest, the yarn-shopping part was an accident. I took Route 1 toward Freeport to buy a new pair of moccasin slippers, and the yarn store pulled my car off the road and sucked me in through the door, no matter how hard I struggled to resist. I was forced to buy some of the new Regia sock yarn by Kaffe Fassett, plus some black Berroco Bling Bling for a scarf for Susannah. It was an accident, I tell you!)

My mercantile-therapy excursions haven't stopped there; I stopped over at Lowes to take an in-person look at a storm door I found on their Web site. It's a Larson brand metal storm door that has a large-sized doggie door built right in! That's my idea of Paradise -- no one barking at me to open the door while I'm trying to think (this means you, Charlie Brown). This could mean a whole new level of productivity for me! Isn't technology wonderful? (Hey, Reading Public: I'm eager to hear reviews. If you have one of these doors, could you please leave a comment about it?)

A long time ago, I remember reading an Erma Bombeck column about how much she enjoyed book tours and hotel rooms, because she had the time and the quiet to do things she normally didn't get to do at home, such as paint her toenails in bed. I keep telling myself that these two weeks on my own will be filled with pedicures and bonbons, but really -- who's kidding whom here? I don't even wear toenail polish. I'm thinking I might just take half the junk in the house to the Treasure Chest at the local transfer station before Greg gets back, though.

I took The Lovely One to the beach on Saturday...



Productive People

Sue mentions on her blog that she's learning to spin! Woo hoo! She's been wanting to try it out for a long time, and she was welcomed with open arms at a local spinners' gathering a few months ago.

A bunch of my friends have taken up spinning, including Pam and No-Blog-Rachel. I'm not yet sure whether spinning is for me, even after Pam patiently taught me the basics while she was visiting. I just didn't take to it the way I'd hoped I would. Maybe that's just as well. If I'm having trouble finding room in a 9-room house (with a garage and a barn) to fit a yarn stash, just imagine what the space issues would be like with a roving stash to squeeze in someplace!

I finished the Sockotta socks a little while ago. They please me because I can reliably match up the stripes on the two socks with this yarn, instead of knitting along on faith (as I have with the Trekking and Tofutsies yarns) and come out with two socks that at least show some family resemblance. I'm a bit on the anal side when it comes to making stuff match.

Next on the sock needles: the Jawoll socks in autumnal colors for Jody. The Trekking socks were originally intended for her, but I was so put off by the mismatch in the two socks that I kept this pair and am knitting her another from yarn that won't let me down in the perfection department.

Go West, Mr. Man!

Here's a shot of Greg dancing with the lovely and talented Miss Dinah Moe. Pop Quiz: Which one has two left feet?

(Actually, they're both pretty good dancers, though Dinah's talents lie more in the realm of aerial ballet.)

The Man is headed west on Sunday for his two-week residency at Ucross. He's been packing for a couple of days now -- hiking stuff here, computer monitor there. I take him to the airport on Sunday after he's done with church, and then he's off to live inside his head full-time until just before Thanksgiving. They'll even bring him his lunch so he can work all day without interruptions, and his cabin doesn't have a TV. (Heck, where do I sign up??)

He thinks he'll be spending much of his Ucross time working on Les sept merveilles (The Seven Wonders). He says of that piece that it's possibly the most intense piece he's ever written, and that he had to finish working through The Waking before he could figure out how to approach it. He has been working with headphones on, so I literally haven't heard more than two notes of the piece. He expects to spend a goodly amount of his composing time at Ucross giving it life and form. I wouldn't be surprised if he came home with a new idea or two, either.

The Waking is essentially done, except for some minor cleanup. On occasion, I've also heard phrases from There and Back Again, which is also somewhere close to being finished -- I think. Until Greg declares a piece to be done and stamps the place and date of completion on it, it's still open for changes.

The Man has actually had quite a lot of news of late. Who's Who in America has now officially left the presses and has started arriving at every public library in the country -- and Greg's in it! He ordered a copy for himself, and it came in two ginormous volumes. Volume 1 bears his name on the front cover and contains his biography (as well as those of everyone else who is Who for 2008). I'm in it too -- listed under Life Partner. I always did love libraries, and now I'm in every one in the country, too.

Greg was so tickled when his copies arrived that he opened up the index of names in Volume 2 and pointed to all of the ones where no address was listed (he did so for privacy reasons). "Look! There's Jon Stewart! Look! There's Zach Braff!" You get the idea. At least in the second volume, the talented and adorable Mr. Hall (Greg, not Monty) rubs shoulders with column upon column of noteworthy persons.

The local papers run columns of community news for the various towns that constitute their readership, and each community has a local reporter. Greg called the Biddeford Journal-Tribune, figuring that he'd get a nice little one-liner in the column for our town, right next to the school cafeteria menu and the Cub Scouts' meeting notes. Was he surprised when the paper sent a reporter and a photographer for an interview and several photos! He ended up in the top right corner of page 1 in last Friday's edition, and the article with a huge second photo ran on page 2.

Of course, we needed to buy several copies for friends, relatives, our bulletin board, and posterity. I stopped into the Irving station and picked up four copies after pumping gas. The cashier looked at the papers, looked at me, and shyly asked, "Do you mind if I ask you something?"

"Sure," I replied, uncertain whether I'd have to give a long spiel about the state of modern classical composition.

"Did someone die? Another lady just left here with another stack of those papers."

2008 might well be the Year of the Man. The 21st Century Masterworks anthology, featuring the orchestral version of his Water suite (the one that was recorded in Prague this summer), will be available in March 2008 in every outlet from Borders Books to ITunes. We never did see a master CD from that session. It might still be in production at this point.

The Sax Quartets CD might be released sometime next year, too. It should have been recorded at Town Hall in NYC a couple of months ago, but the recording engineer has contracted Lyme disease and wasn't feeling well enough to do the sessions. He hopes to get back into the booth and get the sessions going soon. Two of the pieces have already been recorded, and the New Hudson Sax Quartet will get extra time to learn the other three works in the meantime.

A Rare Day in October

...is one where I'm actually home on a Sunday morning so I can dust the cobwebs off my poor old blog.

If I were a responsible adult, I probably wouldn't be here now, either. Sunday morning is rally-roo day for Seamus and me, and we haven't been to a rally class in months due to dog shows every frickin' weekend since forever. Don't get me wrong. I love dog shows. I love rally class. It's just that sometimes, I love taking a little break even more.

Greg's cousin Dan (actually, his mother's first cousin) and his wife Nancy came to visit from BC for the weekend, and the pups and I just bade them farewell at the door with go-cups of coffee. They're headed over to the church to hear Greg play the organ at the second service, and then they're off to visit Nancy's relatives in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. They're the first of Greg's relatives whom I've met, and they're delightful people -- plus they're Golden Retriever folks, so we had plenty in common. We took them out walking on Wells Beach and to the Weathervane for a Maine clambake (using the gift certificate I won a little while back). They and Greg shared stories about the family and old photos, and Greg played piano for them. In addition to the go-cups of coffee, we sent them off with copies of the old photos (courtesy of my scanner and Photoshop) and a CD of some of Greg's more recent pieces. I meant to cook them a proper Danish breakfast, but we ended up at the Maine Diner instead.

Anyway... sloth, glorious sloth. I have to be by myself in some distant locale in order to be able to sleep later than 9 AM any more, but it's still luxurious just to be able to greet the morning at my own pace, armed with a cup of caffeine and a complete lack of an agenda. Oh sure, I have a BCCME Board meeting this afternoon, but the afternoon is still a long ways away.

My busted finger is just about healed, enough so that I've stopped wearing the irritating "buddy tape" on my right ring and pinky fingers. Both fingers are a bit creaky from lack of use, so I have to keep practicing making a fist. At least I can close my right hand now -- a while back, I couldn't even hold on to any coins I received as change unless I did so left-handed.

If You're Ever Hungry in Portland...

Greg's birthday was October 9, already ancient history by this end of the month. His birthday-dinner instructions to me were, "Pick someplace in Portland where we don't usually go." That could be most of the city; I guess we're just creatures of habit. (I should have chosen hot dogs and beer at Hadlock Field, but that would have suited me better than him.)

It's said that Portland has more restaurants per capita now than just about any other city besides San Francisco. I'm not sure whether it's true, or whether they were counting the Mickey Ds along with the fine chef-owned establishments... but no matter. It's easy to be spoiled for choice when looking for a really good restaurant in Portland these days.

We ended up at 288 Fore Street, which (surprise, surprise!) is located at exactly that address, just one block up from the ferry terminal and just outside of the Old Port. The building was a ship's chandlery back in the day, and the interior still features the beams and brick from those days. The kitchen area is situated in the main dining area, and you can enjoy the fires from the brick roasting oven and the roasting spit while you await your meal.

And what a meal it was! Greg opted for a selection of different seafood mini-entrees featuring local crab. (The restaurant makes use of as much locally-grown and raised food as possible.) I opted for the dry-rubbed, spit-roasted pork with locally-made sauerkraut. Veggies and other side dishes are a la carte, so we ordered and split a side of fresh local beets.

What a complete pleasure everything was! The place was a little on the noisy side with a capacity crowd, but it was easy just to lose yourself in the food. Greg and I stole morsels from each other's plates. I'm shocked that we even had room for dessert, but Greg's came dressed with a birthday candle -- and no one was forced to sing.

Reservations are a pretty good idea -- even on a Tuesday, the place was humming -- but the staff does set aside a certain number of tables for last-minute diners. Whether you plan ahead of time or not, just go there sometime.

Dog Stuff

I'll get to Dinah's show news on her blog when I'm done here. Let's just say there's a lot of it to catch up on.

Last Saturday BCCME held a fun match here in my yard. I like to think a good time was had by all, but I'm afraid that probably includes the yellowjackets (like the Bush family, yet another species with no real purpose on earth). Folks inundated us with all manner of treats, from cider and donuts to fresh-picked local apples to birthday cake to cookies to... you get the idea. Greg bundled up a lot of the leftovers and brought them to church the next morning. Everyone had fun at our "practice dog show," and I think we might even have inspired one of the new members to consider showing her new puppy when she gets one.

While all that was going on, Dinah was at the Beardie beauty parlor, getting ready for a show on Sunday. I had to be insane to let myself get talked into driving to New Jersey just for a one-day show, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. That's a story for another blog, though.

Sad to say, Seamus's and my next APDT rally trial, scheduled for next weekend, was cancelled. There were some problems getting the judging panel in order, apparently -- but there will be more trials next year. We might even practice for them ahead of time!

Greg Stuff

I can't believe it's almost November! Greg will be leaving for his residency at Ucross in a couple of weeks. He'll be home just in time for Thanksgiving, hopefully with some good work and some inspiration. By that time, he'll need to start making plans to head to New York for the recording session for the Sax Quartet.

We're still awaiting the master copy of the CD from Prague with the Water Suite on it. Not that Greg's been idle in the meantime. He's finished The Waking (song for voice and piano), and has been messing around with There and Back Again (instrumental for winds and percussion). He also burned a CD of the premiere performance of Clayton's Runaround and sent it, along with a printed and bound copy of the manuscript, to the owner of Clayton Farm in Mabou, NS, where the piece was inspired. (You can see a photo of Greg playing the antique pump organ at the farm here on his Web site.

Knitting Stuff

There hasn't been a heckuva lot of progress to report. Since I shipped off the Tofutsies socks to my sister, I've been putting in occasional moments on the second of the Sockotta socks. I've just about finished the heel turn.

Now that it's fall and my thoughts turn to wool, I hope to get back to the old sticks and string pretty soon. I've meant well -- I've carried my knitting with me everywhere I've gone this season -- but it hasn't really seen the outside of the knitting bag for more than a minute here and a minute there.

Most of the time, my stash lives in the living room on my overstuffed easy chair. Back in the olden days, only a couple of projects lived there and the rest lived downstairs in my work room. Now that the work room is in a complete shambles, all of the knitting projects are crammed into the easy chair, and no one can sit in or anywhere near it. I had to shove everything but the "sock bucket" into the bedroom closet just so our company could sit down someplace in the house. Now that our company has departed, the migration from closet to easy chair will begin again shortly.

Tails of Adventure

Geez, I didn't mean to let this much time go by between blog postings. I can write them and post from anywhere, but I haven't had sufficient mental quiet and enough time in one spot to do much writing since the last time. I'll try and make it up to you here.

The Glory That Was Grease

Greg and I visit the Acton Fair at this time every year to get our fair share of saturated fats and to check out the antique tractor pull, the livestock, and the craft and produce exhibits. Compared to the Nebraska State Fair, the Acton Fair is microscopic -- but it's always fun for an afternoon. I love agricultural fairs -- I love the livestock, the jam jars, and the smell of wood smoke from the wood-burning stoves on sale.

The Man lives for the one time a year he can get fried chicken livers and onions from the Rotary Club grill at the fair. I tend to regard liver as dog show bait, not intended for voluntary human consumption; I can tolerate the smell, but I refuse to eat any. My arteries scream for mercy as I grow torn between the onion blossoms and the funnel cakes. At least the fresh-squeezed lemonade and the Hawaiian shaved ice make up for these dietary indiscretions by not throwing too many more calories after the first lot.

Sue has been known to exhibit her quilts and other handcrafted works at the Fair from time to time, though I didn't see anything with her name on it there this year. There were some lovely quilts this year, though fewer knitted items and not a lot of fine crochet. Maybe people just had less time this past year.

The Return of Rally-roo

Seamus and I haven't done a rally course together since June sometime. Our instructor's husband had a hip replacement this season and one of her Labs had a litter of puppies, so classes were suspended for a while. Between that and the fact that I've spent nearly every weekend at some dog show or other with Dinah, I haven't spent much time keeping our rally skills polished.

Since I'd already decided to eat the entries for this weekend's dog shows due to a lack of class bitches entered, Seamus and I were able to show up for class this morning. It was like Old Home Week -- all of the usual suspects were there with their dogs, and Judy was ecstatic to see us. It was hot in the sun and there were people practicing target shooting at the rod and gun club down the street, but Seamus and I managed to get through the course twice without looking too rusty. Seamus did decide to lie down and roll over in the middle of one exercise, but rally wouldn't be rally-roo without some antics from Seamus. People have come to count on him adding some comedy to the proceedings.

I've entered us in an APDT trial at the end of October at Gemini Dog Training. There's nothing lie an upcoming trial to give us a little focus. We need 7 more Level 1 legs to get Seamus's Level 1 championship (RL1X), and we might even try Level 2 for the first time. Heaven help us.

The Royal Treatment

Greg and I eat at The Weathervane fairly often. The seafood's fresh and very reasonably priced, plus I'm a major-league sucker for their highly addictive onion rings. I'm on their email list, and I hardly remember entering the sweepstakes to win a clambake for 4 people... but I won! I received an email from their corporate office announcing that fact. When I called to give them the mailing information for the certificate, one of the executives offered to meet us at the Sanford office at dinnertime to award me the certificate in person and to take my picture for the Web site.

Would you believe it -- when Greg and I pulled up there, the huge sign in the front was emblazoned with "WELCOME, WINNER CLAMBAKE FOR 4" and my name all over the place. Or something like that. I was just amazed that they'd made such a big deal of it.

We entered the restaurant, and I mentioned to the hostess that Jeremy (the executive) was waiting to meet us. Her face lit up and she said, "He's in the kitchen, and he's waiting for you." Jeremy emerged a minute later and cheerily escorted us to our table. He brought the certificate to our table, and he, the hostess, and our waitress made sure that we had a great dinner and everything we needed.

When it came time to pay, our waitress departed the table with the check and my MasterCard, and returned a moment later saying, "Jeremy picked up the check. You don't owe anything." This was above and beyond -- we'd just been treated to two dinners instead of just one. The manager snapped pictures of Jeremy and me at two of the signs -- including the big one with my name all over it. I wish I'd worn something nicer, but it was 93 degrees out, and I wasn't feeling terribly f