It's hard for me to describe the musical path Greg has been taking lately without ranging off into some musical technical terms so arcane that I don't even understand what I'm saying. Maybe the simple version is this: he's doing some exploration into pushing tonal harmony to its limits, and he's been doing much of that work through improvisation on the piano. He does record all of these works to MIDI, and I have no doubt that something of them will resurface when he gets back to good old-fashioned composition again. In the meantime, the best place to hear him do his thing is in Second Life. He plays 3-4 hour-long gigs in a given week, and he even has a booking agent who finds him concert venues and makes sure he gets paid. (Yes, the agent gets a percentage. Second Life is a reflection of real life, after all.)
I've created a tab on his Web site for Musical Improvisation, but it's up to him when he fills that page, and what he puts there. If I find out that he's uploaded something, I'll announce it in the blog.
Caffeine Makes It All Possible
On Monday, I'm taking off to New Brunswick (Canada, not New Jersey) with Dinah for a cluster of dog shows. We'll be joining our friends Val and Pat up there with Trav and Fiona -- and there should be plenty of fodder for my other blog.
As soon as I get back, I'll barely have enough time to switch out dirty clothes for clean and Dinah for Badger before it's time to jump back in the car and drive in the opposite direction to make Badger's AKC debut in Springfield. Just thinking about that schedule makes me tired already!
Showing posts with label Canada. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canada. Show all posts
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Minnesota Nice, Home Nicer
Sue, Dale, and the rest of my blog buddies have probably despaired long ago of regular updates from me. I know, guys, I know. The thing is, you have to sit in one place long enough to be able to write anything. That hasn't exactly described my summer to date.
Today is Labor Day, and I've already done my labor for the day. BCCME held a Board meeting over at the Panera Bread in Biddeford. I swilled coffee and scribbled notes. That's the extent of today's effort, thankyouverymuch. The weather is lovely, Greg's practicing piano, I'm drinking wine, and the pups are eagerly awaiting the time when we fire up the grill. Business as usual tomorrow, but today is ours.
So Whatcha Been Up To?
My other blog details Dinah's and my adventures in Canada with our partners-in-crime Val and Traveler. Quick summary: We went, we saw, we kicked butt, we drove a long way, and we replaced the radiator in my car.
Although I hadn't planned it to happen that way, I spent about 12 hours at home between the last trip and the next one. This gave me just barely enough time to drop the bag with the dirty laundry, pick up the one with the clean laundry, and boogie to the airport to catch the plane to Minneapolis. I was still fairly pie-eyed from the long drive back from Gananoque by the time I left again.
I'm not the superstitious type, but if I had been thinking clearly, I might have realized that the bag I'd packed for Minneapolis was none other than the Notorious Lose-Me Bag. This freakin' bag has been cursed since the day I bought it in the Target in Omaha, Nebraska to carry home a bunch of stuff I'd accumulated while at the 2005 BCCA National. It got lost on that flight home, and has managed -- I kid you not -- to get sucked into the Bermuda Triangle on every single flight it's taken since. This is the bag that took the vacation to London while I went to Vancouver Island last year. It hasn't been lost in about a year, but that correlates directly with the number of times I've taken it on a plane in the past twelve months (zero).
Anyway, it was only while I stood in line at the bag check counter in Portland that I realized that I'd packed The Notorious Lose-Me Bag and was about to send it on another glorious round-the-world vacation. I mentally budgeted funds for the extra clothing and supplies I'd need while it visited Shanghai, or Auckland, or someplace I wasn't going.
To my shock, the bag actually followed me to Minneapolis, through a stop in Baltimore and a plane change in Atlanta. If I were a betting person, I would have put money on it going AWOL in Atlanta.
I visited Minnesota to help out with some 2009 BCCA National business. The show chair and a couple of the other chairs would be visiting the club president during that week, so I planned to be there at the same time (I'm the official Web monkey for the show). It only occurred to me later that I'd really have to beat it home from Canada in order to get out there in time.
We had a blast in Minnesota. We visited the host hotel, herding venue, auction/40th-anniversary banquet venue, and agility venue for the show. We pored over the various suggested fundraisers and the show trophies, designed the souvenir logo coffee mug, and had ourselves a fun and creative time. We even found time to hang out at a local brewpub downtown and enjoy the evening. We dropped by a dog show just in time to see Best of Breed in Beardies and browsed all the vendors there. We even had a fabulous chicken dinner with Jane and Sandy, who own Dinah's handsome blue half-brother Widget (Breaksea Boddy's Brew).
Cindy, the show chair, and I had planned things so we'd leave for home on the same day. Her plane left in the morning and mine in the afternoon, so I figured I could amuse myself in the airport for a few hours in the usual fashion: drinking coffee, knitting socks, and buying tacky tourist postcards to send to everybody. Sadly, MSP Airport is deeply lacking in tacky tourist stuff, and I was forced to buy actual nice postcards. They didn't even have a single crummy postcard of the statue of Mary Tyler Moore. Really, where's the fun in that?!
While I was browsing the sparse offerings in the postcard department, Murphy's Law was busy working its usual airline magic. On the day I planned to fly home, Hurricane Fay faded to a tropical storm and poured rain on the whole Southeast. Hurricane Gustav became a hurricane and bore down on Cuba. The FAA suffered a massive system failure that had the greatest effect on the two airports I'd be traveling through: Atlanta and then Baltimore. Oh, and did I mention I'd already checked the Notorious Lose-Me Bag?
The scheduled departure time for our flight was delayed, and delayed again. I did the math and realized that even if we settled on an actual departure time, there was no way in H-E-double-hockey-sticks that I would make the only evening flight from Baltimore to Portland that day. I took my place in line to discuss my options with the airline staff at the gate.
The airline rep explained to me that I had two options at that point: stay another night in Minneapolis, or get as far as Baltimore and stay there. Either way, I'd be a guest of the airline and could set things up for the very first flights out the next morning. Even if the weather and system issues forced me to miss the first flight out, at least I'd have a couple more schedules to choose from before having to miss the last flight home. I decided to opt for Minneapolis, and called my friends to let them know. The airline rep called baggage and asked them to locate my bag and bring it out to the carousel, and then she promised to meet me at the ticket counter with a hotel voucher after I retrieved my bag.
Obediently, I toddled off to the baggage carousel. I waited, and waited, and waited. No bag. No people with bags. Nobody with my bag.
After some time had passed, I met the airline rep at the ticket counter. She handed me the voucher for the hotel and the hotel's phone number. She also looked up my baggage claim check, and verified that since I'd checked my bag in early, it had been shipped off home on an earlier flight. It didn't occur to me then to ask why I couldn't have been shipped off on the same flight. At least she was readily able to verify that it was indeed in Portland, Maine -- not Portland, Oregon or Oporto, Portugal. I could pick it up when I deplaned the next day.
So there I was, with only the very casual clothes on my sweaty carcass and my single carry-on bag (containing my laptop and my knitting), headed for the Park Plaza Hotel. I didn't exactly feel appropriate for the occasion. The hotel staff, used to taking in airline orphans, provided me with a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a miniature Lady Speed Stick in addition to the usual hotel-room toiletries. I showered, took dinner to my room, and managed to feel as normal as one can without clean clothes. I knitted a sock and watched the tube, and enjoyed the high-speed broadband. Life was almost good.
The next day, I made it home without incident. I knew I'd touched down on my own Mainiac soil again the moment I heard someone else greet a relative with "Welcome to Pawtland, deah!". My bag was waiting for me exactly where it was supposed to be. If it visited any other cities on its trip home, it wasn't saying.
It's a Sock! No, It's a Milestone!
Hard to believe, but I actually finished the second of Jody's Yankee Knitter socks on this trip! They're lovely -- Jawoll yarn in autumnal-colored stripes which she'll just love -- and of course, I only remembered to take a photo of them after they'd already been shipped off in the mail.
I thought I'd never finish that pair of socks. I tore out and re-knitted the heel twice on Sock #2, and then I messed up once more and ripped it all the way back to the initial slipknot. I was positive I'd have to send one sock and one ball of yarn with a little note attached saying, "Sorry. Just wind this around your other foot."
Those suckers are done and now living the good life in their new home, and I've even made a couple of inches' worth of progress on their successors: another Yankee Knitter pair in red Happy Feet yarn with terrific, subtle color variations in the red. At least for now, Happy Feet is my current favorite sock yarn. (That's because I can't quite bring myself to buy some of the Opal Harry Potter yarn while I still own 60-odd balls and skeins of various brands of sock yarn. I want it badly, though. Badly.)
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Bogus Journey, Eh?
A couple of weeks ago, I took a week of vacation time and headed off to the BCCC National Specialty out in Victoria, BC. I'd been promising my friend Ann that I'd come to see her new house on Vancouver Island anyway, so the Specialty seemed like just the right time to pay a visit. In addition, this was the show where Dinah won Best Puppy in Show last year, so I felt the need to come back and support this year's entries. (I supported them in a monetary sense, too -- I underwrote the cost of the trophies for Best Puppy and Senior Puppy Bitch.)
Greg likes to play word games, and will do so at any opportunity. He adores puns, spoonerisms, twisting letters around, and any other play on words (or parts thereof). That's probably what makes him such a crack Scrabble player, but some days it's also like friggin' Final Jeopardy just trying to decipher what he's saying when he's being clever. Anyway, it came as no surprise when he referred to the airline I'd be taking to Vancouver as "Untied Airlines." Maybe he's not so much a punster as a prophet.
Even though I showed up an hour and a half before my flight, the automated check-in kiosk at Manchester Airport informed me that I was too late to check in my bag, and that I would have to do so at the gate. After the usual security checks and other stuff, I arrived at the gate and offered my bag to be checked. The gate agent was none too pleased, but she understood the situation and tagged my bag for me. Perhaps she was the one who scribbled in the secret airline code meaning "Lose this one." I'll never know for sure.
Due to the usual bad weather in Chicago, our plane sat on the runway for 45 minutes or an hour after its scheduled takeoff time -- just long enough so that most of the people on my flight missed their connections, and I just barely made mine. The plane from Chicago to Vancouver was stuffed full of humanity, just as most flights are these days. I got to share the back end of the cabin with about a million crying babies, including a pair of twins right behind me who kept kicking my seat back, and who smelled pretty friggin' ripe after 4 hours in the air between diaper changes. I listened to my iPod, tried to hold my breath, and made significant progress on the second of Joyce's Tofutsies socks.
When I arrived at Vancouver, I discovered that my bag had been lost (big surprise there), and that I would have to fly my final leg on the seaplane to the island without it. This wasn't the first, or the fifth, or the 25th time that my luggage has been lost, so I filled out the usual forms, left the usual instructions, and proceeded to the seaplane terminal. In times past, my bag has usually caught up with me that same night or the next day. I wasn't terribly worried.
The seaplane was an E-ticket ride if there ever was one -- smooth, beautiful, and the Absolute Best Way Ever to see the area between Vancouver City and Vancouver Island. If I'd packed my camera, it would have been lost anyway -- but I still regret not being able to get any decent pictures from the air. The tiny camera on my cell phone just wouldn't have done the view justice.
Ann and Ray met me at the seaplane terminal on the island -- and they brought Penny, the world's silliest Old English Sheepdog, to greet me. Penny and I have had a long-standing mutual admiration society going. Even though we hadn't seen each other for a couple of years, Penny was still so excited to see me that she whimpered as she slimed me all over. That dog has always given a mean free facial, however slimy.
Vancouver Island is gorgeous, and my gracious hosts took me around to show me the sights, including this place in Coombs, BC, where they have goats grazing on the sod roof. I searched for some tacky postcards and couldn't find any, sad to say. They had some Wicked Good "Goats on the Roof" T-shirts, and I should have bought one -- but little did I know that my clothing situation was about to turn desperate.
In between jaunts out to see the island, I spent time on the phone to United -- er, Untied -- Airlines, trying to determine the whereabouts of my bag. My cell phone and Blackberry had already started showing the red logos meaning "Charge us now or you'll be sorry." Did I mention that my chargers were in the bag?
Every time I called the airline, I would be put on hold for a minimum of 20 minutes, waiting for some support rep in India to pick up the phone. (I have come to the conclusion that companies who outsource their customer support in India basically don't want their customers to bother them -- or they don't want customers at all, for that matter.) In typical fashion, the people I did speak to were unfailingly polite and unfailingly unable to help. In the meantime, my bag hadn't shown up for 3 days, and we weren't going to be home to sign for the bag if it were to arrive. We were headed to the dog show, and I had nothing but some very old and smelly clothes on my back.
Ann took me to the local Wal-Mart to buy enough shirts, socks, underwear, and toiletries to get by. I was also able to find chargers for my phone and Blackberry, so I was at least able to shed my stinky traveling clothes and get back in touch with the outside world. I have never in my life bought clothes at Wal-Mart -- for which I should sue the airline for pain and suffering -- but I'm glad they were there when I needed them. I found some that weren't too horrible, plus an emergency backup pair of black jeans (since my nice trousers were on tour, and we had a banquet to attend).
We attended a bag-stuffing party on the island the night before we left for the show. Ray and another generous Beardie person had put up the funds for the show's souvenir gift bags, and we would all be recruited to come to the show chair's house, enjoy a fabulous buffet, and help to fill the bags with all of the goodies collected from various sources and donors. We drank, we ate, we shared laughs with the Australian visitors, and had a great time smooching all the Beardies. Some hosts have the ability to treat an entire household of guests like one large extended family. Our hosts that night certainly did -- I feel as though we were all kinfolks by evening's end.
I called the airline yet again, sat drumming my fingers on hold for the obligatory 20 minutes, and was relieved beyond measure when a woman with an identifiably Southern accent finally picked up the phone. At last -- I'd found a support rep who was not only polite, but who understood my situation. I explained to her that we were leaving town, so no one would be home to sign for my bag. "First, let me find out where your bag actually is," she told me. This, after three days where no one knew where it was. She punched a few keys on a computer keyboard. "Apparently your bag is in London." She paused for a minute, expecting me to start shouting and spouting obscenities.
I really thought I was going to start shouting too, but I opened my mouth to reply -- and started to laugh instead. It was all I could do. I didn't have an obscenity left in me.
Finally, when I could stop hooting and the nice Southern lady realized I wasn't capable of killing her, I gasped, "My bag got a better vacation than I did!". She joined in the giggles, and then arranged with me to just have my bag sent back to Manchester. I could pick it up on my way home. (I had to take it on faith that the bag would not then be routed to Manchester, England. At least I could have had someone there retrieve it for me.)
A load of laundry and a borrowed duffel bag later, and we (and Molly and Summer, Ann and Ray's two Beardie girls) were off to Victoria for the dog show. Although I'd left my camera at home because I worried that my (lost) bag would already exceed the seaplane's 25-poun weight limit, I did try to snap some pictures with my cell phone. Here's a shot of the harbor where we waited for the ferry.
Pretty, isn't it? What you can't see is that there are not one -- not two -- but three bald eagles in that picture. Two are in the trees, and one is perched on a tree stump down near the water. (Ray couldn't capture them with his ultra-mega-zoom lens at this distance, either.)
We had a great time at the show. Ann and Summer received High in Trial in obedience and also qualified in CKC rally. Little Bess Burfitt (Breaksea Another Song), Dinah and Buffy's half-sister, was at the show with all of her co-owners -- plus Travis, another relative whose dad was Breaksea Gone West (Dylan). Bess is a carbon copy of Dinah and Buffy, and I was compelled to smooch her the entire weekend. She took first in her class at the specialty. There were all-breed shows going on at the fairgrounds at the same time, but I don't know how she fared in those. She might have taken at least one first place there as well. She didn't get to Winners Bitch, though. Bess is right at the stage where Dinah was this spring: obviously adolescent, and not likely to attract notice from judges looking for more mature specimens. I reassured her mom that Dinah had gone through the exact same thing, and Dinah was now starting to win shows again. Travis took Winners Dog at the Specialty from a very competitive field, and Laura (his mom) was so hapy she stood in the first-place slot, wiping her eyes. Travis also won a few times at the all-breed shows, but I'm not sure whether he advanced far enough to finish his Canadian championship while he was there.
One evening we were invited to dinner at the home of a friend who lives nearby. Diane is the local rescue coordinator for Beardies in that part of the world, and she was the one who got the call when Molly (Ann and Ray's three-legged Beardie rescue) was in need of help. Diane introduced us to Blue, a 12-year-old Beardie boy who had been neglected in his previous home. His people didn't take very good care of him, and they'd let him wander. The poor boy was bony and had some sort of problem with infected nails and feet, but he was sweet as anything and leaned on anyone who would scratch his ears. He looked exactly like my Duncan. I would have taken him home in an instant, only the airline probably would have lost him on me. Ann and Ray said they'd "think about it," but by the next morning, it was obvious that Blue was coming home to their house.
We also had the great pleasure of running into some friends of ours from Washington State and their handsome brown Beardie boy, Beo (short for Beowulf). Dinah met Beo at last year's US Specialty and thought he was mighty handsome. She even gave him the little ear-sniff she reserves for only her very favorite Beardie boys. His people, Pam and Geoff, are two of the nicest folks you'd ever want to meet. I only see them every year or every other year, but it's as though we just saw one another the week before.
Here's Beo (who has a CDX and at least one rally title, by the way):
After the show was over and we said our goodbyes to everyone, Pam and Geoff and Beo caravanned with us back to Ann and Ray's house. (We drove back instead of taking the ferry -- and it was scenic!) This photo is supposed to show the end of the bay where the ferry docks:
So much for the power of a VGA cell phone camera. Trust me, it was gorgeous. You could even see Mount Baker in the distance, and just the teeniest glimpse of the city of Vancouver.
Pam and Geoff own a VW camper van, and they camped out in Ann and Ray's yard for the night before heading out to see the sights of the island. We shared a couple of meals and a few beers at a pub the night before they departed.
The answering machine light was blinking when Ann and Ray and I got back to the house. Ray started listening to the messages. One began with, "This is Air Canada at Nanaimo Airport. We have a bag here...". Apparently my long-lost bag had finally made it to the island after all.
When I called Air Canada, the man in Baggage explained that he'd sent my bag back to Manchester when no one answered, and that the bag would be there waiting for me when I arrived home. I never did hear whether it had a nice time in London. As I packed my borrowed duffel bag for the trip home, I swore to myself that it would fit in the overhead compartment in the cabin. I even mailed some things home to ensure that the bag would remain unstuffed enough to maintain carry-on status.
My flight home on Air Canada was fairly uneventful, though I grew a bit tense in Toronto when it looked as though the long line at Customs might prevent me from making my connecting flight to Manchester in time. As it turned out, all of the other passengers on my flight were in the same line (and the same situation) as I was.
When I arrived in Manchester, the baggage office was (of course) closed. I peered in through the glass and found -- wonder of wonders! -- my long-lost bag standing with a flock of other bags. I returned to the check-in counter and stood in a mob, awaiting a chance to ask a clerk to send someone to open the baggage counter.
A surly woman arrived, displeased at the prospect of having to help people, and stomped off to the baggage counter, with those of us who'd lost bags flocking behind like ducklings. When we got there, another man had opened the counter and was reuniting bags with owners. The woman stomped off again, muttering. He brought my world-traveling bag out to me and mentioned that the airline was fairly good about honoring reimbursement requests. He reminded me to save all my receipts, and I mentioned that I had.
Finally, I dragged both bags out to the car and drove home, pulled into the garage, and yanked out my bags. I swore a solemn oath that this bag would never fly the friendly skies again. I'm not entirely sure I'm willing to give Untied Airlines another go, myself.
Greg likes to play word games, and will do so at any opportunity. He adores puns, spoonerisms, twisting letters around, and any other play on words (or parts thereof). That's probably what makes him such a crack Scrabble player, but some days it's also like friggin' Final Jeopardy just trying to decipher what he's saying when he's being clever. Anyway, it came as no surprise when he referred to the airline I'd be taking to Vancouver as "Untied Airlines." Maybe he's not so much a punster as a prophet.
Even though I showed up an hour and a half before my flight, the automated check-in kiosk at Manchester Airport informed me that I was too late to check in my bag, and that I would have to do so at the gate. After the usual security checks and other stuff, I arrived at the gate and offered my bag to be checked. The gate agent was none too pleased, but she understood the situation and tagged my bag for me. Perhaps she was the one who scribbled in the secret airline code meaning "Lose this one." I'll never know for sure.
Due to the usual bad weather in Chicago, our plane sat on the runway for 45 minutes or an hour after its scheduled takeoff time -- just long enough so that most of the people on my flight missed their connections, and I just barely made mine. The plane from Chicago to Vancouver was stuffed full of humanity, just as most flights are these days. I got to share the back end of the cabin with about a million crying babies, including a pair of twins right behind me who kept kicking my seat back, and who smelled pretty friggin' ripe after 4 hours in the air between diaper changes. I listened to my iPod, tried to hold my breath, and made significant progress on the second of Joyce's Tofutsies socks.
When I arrived at Vancouver, I discovered that my bag had been lost (big surprise there), and that I would have to fly my final leg on the seaplane to the island without it. This wasn't the first, or the fifth, or the 25th time that my luggage has been lost, so I filled out the usual forms, left the usual instructions, and proceeded to the seaplane terminal. In times past, my bag has usually caught up with me that same night or the next day. I wasn't terribly worried.
The seaplane was an E-ticket ride if there ever was one -- smooth, beautiful, and the Absolute Best Way Ever to see the area between Vancouver City and Vancouver Island. If I'd packed my camera, it would have been lost anyway -- but I still regret not being able to get any decent pictures from the air. The tiny camera on my cell phone just wouldn't have done the view justice.
Ann and Ray met me at the seaplane terminal on the island -- and they brought Penny, the world's silliest Old English Sheepdog, to greet me. Penny and I have had a long-standing mutual admiration society going. Even though we hadn't seen each other for a couple of years, Penny was still so excited to see me that she whimpered as she slimed me all over. That dog has always given a mean free facial, however slimy.
Vancouver Island is gorgeous, and my gracious hosts took me around to show me the sights, including this place in Coombs, BC, where they have goats grazing on the sod roof. I searched for some tacky postcards and couldn't find any, sad to say. They had some Wicked Good "Goats on the Roof" T-shirts, and I should have bought one -- but little did I know that my clothing situation was about to turn desperate.
In between jaunts out to see the island, I spent time on the phone to United -- er, Untied -- Airlines, trying to determine the whereabouts of my bag. My cell phone and Blackberry had already started showing the red logos meaning "Charge us now or you'll be sorry." Did I mention that my chargers were in the bag?
Every time I called the airline, I would be put on hold for a minimum of 20 minutes, waiting for some support rep in India to pick up the phone. (I have come to the conclusion that companies who outsource their customer support in India basically don't want their customers to bother them -- or they don't want customers at all, for that matter.) In typical fashion, the people I did speak to were unfailingly polite and unfailingly unable to help. In the meantime, my bag hadn't shown up for 3 days, and we weren't going to be home to sign for the bag if it were to arrive. We were headed to the dog show, and I had nothing but some very old and smelly clothes on my back.
Ann took me to the local Wal-Mart to buy enough shirts, socks, underwear, and toiletries to get by. I was also able to find chargers for my phone and Blackberry, so I was at least able to shed my stinky traveling clothes and get back in touch with the outside world. I have never in my life bought clothes at Wal-Mart -- for which I should sue the airline for pain and suffering -- but I'm glad they were there when I needed them. I found some that weren't too horrible, plus an emergency backup pair of black jeans (since my nice trousers were on tour, and we had a banquet to attend).
We attended a bag-stuffing party on the island the night before we left for the show. Ray and another generous Beardie person had put up the funds for the show's souvenir gift bags, and we would all be recruited to come to the show chair's house, enjoy a fabulous buffet, and help to fill the bags with all of the goodies collected from various sources and donors. We drank, we ate, we shared laughs with the Australian visitors, and had a great time smooching all the Beardies. Some hosts have the ability to treat an entire household of guests like one large extended family. Our hosts that night certainly did -- I feel as though we were all kinfolks by evening's end.
I called the airline yet again, sat drumming my fingers on hold for the obligatory 20 minutes, and was relieved beyond measure when a woman with an identifiably Southern accent finally picked up the phone. At last -- I'd found a support rep who was not only polite, but who understood my situation. I explained to her that we were leaving town, so no one would be home to sign for my bag. "First, let me find out where your bag actually is," she told me. This, after three days where no one knew where it was. She punched a few keys on a computer keyboard. "Apparently your bag is in London." She paused for a minute, expecting me to start shouting and spouting obscenities.
I really thought I was going to start shouting too, but I opened my mouth to reply -- and started to laugh instead. It was all I could do. I didn't have an obscenity left in me.
Finally, when I could stop hooting and the nice Southern lady realized I wasn't capable of killing her, I gasped, "My bag got a better vacation than I did!". She joined in the giggles, and then arranged with me to just have my bag sent back to Manchester. I could pick it up on my way home. (I had to take it on faith that the bag would not then be routed to Manchester, England. At least I could have had someone there retrieve it for me.)
A load of laundry and a borrowed duffel bag later, and we (and Molly and Summer, Ann and Ray's two Beardie girls) were off to Victoria for the dog show. Although I'd left my camera at home because I worried that my (lost) bag would already exceed the seaplane's 25-poun weight limit, I did try to snap some pictures with my cell phone. Here's a shot of the harbor where we waited for the ferry.
Pretty, isn't it? What you can't see is that there are not one -- not two -- but three bald eagles in that picture. Two are in the trees, and one is perched on a tree stump down near the water. (Ray couldn't capture them with his ultra-mega-zoom lens at this distance, either.)
We had a great time at the show. Ann and Summer received High in Trial in obedience and also qualified in CKC rally. Little Bess Burfitt (Breaksea Another Song), Dinah and Buffy's half-sister, was at the show with all of her co-owners -- plus Travis, another relative whose dad was Breaksea Gone West (Dylan). Bess is a carbon copy of Dinah and Buffy, and I was compelled to smooch her the entire weekend. She took first in her class at the specialty. There were all-breed shows going on at the fairgrounds at the same time, but I don't know how she fared in those. She might have taken at least one first place there as well. She didn't get to Winners Bitch, though. Bess is right at the stage where Dinah was this spring: obviously adolescent, and not likely to attract notice from judges looking for more mature specimens. I reassured her mom that Dinah had gone through the exact same thing, and Dinah was now starting to win shows again. Travis took Winners Dog at the Specialty from a very competitive field, and Laura (his mom) was so hapy she stood in the first-place slot, wiping her eyes. Travis also won a few times at the all-breed shows, but I'm not sure whether he advanced far enough to finish his Canadian championship while he was there.
One evening we were invited to dinner at the home of a friend who lives nearby. Diane is the local rescue coordinator for Beardies in that part of the world, and she was the one who got the call when Molly (Ann and Ray's three-legged Beardie rescue) was in need of help. Diane introduced us to Blue, a 12-year-old Beardie boy who had been neglected in his previous home. His people didn't take very good care of him, and they'd let him wander. The poor boy was bony and had some sort of problem with infected nails and feet, but he was sweet as anything and leaned on anyone who would scratch his ears. He looked exactly like my Duncan. I would have taken him home in an instant, only the airline probably would have lost him on me. Ann and Ray said they'd "think about it," but by the next morning, it was obvious that Blue was coming home to their house.
We also had the great pleasure of running into some friends of ours from Washington State and their handsome brown Beardie boy, Beo (short for Beowulf). Dinah met Beo at last year's US Specialty and thought he was mighty handsome. She even gave him the little ear-sniff she reserves for only her very favorite Beardie boys. His people, Pam and Geoff, are two of the nicest folks you'd ever want to meet. I only see them every year or every other year, but it's as though we just saw one another the week before.
Here's Beo (who has a CDX and at least one rally title, by the way):
After the show was over and we said our goodbyes to everyone, Pam and Geoff and Beo caravanned with us back to Ann and Ray's house. (We drove back instead of taking the ferry -- and it was scenic!) This photo is supposed to show the end of the bay where the ferry docks:
So much for the power of a VGA cell phone camera. Trust me, it was gorgeous. You could even see Mount Baker in the distance, and just the teeniest glimpse of the city of Vancouver.
Pam and Geoff own a VW camper van, and they camped out in Ann and Ray's yard for the night before heading out to see the sights of the island. We shared a couple of meals and a few beers at a pub the night before they departed.
The answering machine light was blinking when Ann and Ray and I got back to the house. Ray started listening to the messages. One began with, "This is Air Canada at Nanaimo Airport. We have a bag here...". Apparently my long-lost bag had finally made it to the island after all.
When I called Air Canada, the man in Baggage explained that he'd sent my bag back to Manchester when no one answered, and that the bag would be there waiting for me when I arrived home. I never did hear whether it had a nice time in London. As I packed my borrowed duffel bag for the trip home, I swore to myself that it would fit in the overhead compartment in the cabin. I even mailed some things home to ensure that the bag would remain unstuffed enough to maintain carry-on status.
My flight home on Air Canada was fairly uneventful, though I grew a bit tense in Toronto when it looked as though the long line at Customs might prevent me from making my connecting flight to Manchester in time. As it turned out, all of the other passengers on my flight were in the same line (and the same situation) as I was.
When I arrived in Manchester, the baggage office was (of course) closed. I peered in through the glass and found -- wonder of wonders! -- my long-lost bag standing with a flock of other bags. I returned to the check-in counter and stood in a mob, awaiting a chance to ask a clerk to send someone to open the baggage counter.
A surly woman arrived, displeased at the prospect of having to help people, and stomped off to the baggage counter, with those of us who'd lost bags flocking behind like ducklings. When we got there, another man had opened the counter and was reuniting bags with owners. The woman stomped off again, muttering. He brought my world-traveling bag out to me and mentioned that the airline was fairly good about honoring reimbursement requests. He reminded me to save all my receipts, and I mentioned that I had.
Finally, I dragged both bags out to the car and drove home, pulled into the garage, and yanked out my bags. I swore a solemn oath that this bag would never fly the friendly skies again. I'm not entirely sure I'm willing to give Untied Airlines another go, myself.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Kick Brass!
Last night Greg and I saw La Bottine Souriante in concert at the Lowell Folk Festival. Next to Seamus, screech, maple leaf cookies, and Kroy sock yarn, they could be about my favorite thing ever to come out of Canada. Imagine what would happen if Beausoleil got themselves a Quebecois fiddler and Joe Jackson on piano along with the Memphis Horns for backup. That's just a rough approximation of the La Bottine sound. They're just amazing! We couldn't stop dancing. We also picked up their new CD for the drive home.
We had reason to celebrate, for sure. Greg received an enthused email on Thursday from the alto saxophonist of the New Hudson Saxophone Quartet, saying that the guys really liked the score for the Sax Quartet and were wondering if they could get parts in time for Monday's rehearsal. Greg has essentially done nothing else but print and bind parts since then, and the whole lot went into an Express Mail package to NYC yesterday morning. It will be a while before Greg hears about the premiere, but it's a shame he won't be there to see and hear them play the piece at tomorrow's rehearsal. No matter how good the MIDI approximation might be, it never comes close to the experience of hearing your composition played live for the first time. Of course we'll be there for the premiere performance, whenever that might be.
I really hope this piece might be Greg's big break. There really aren't very many pieces scored for sax quartet and there are actually quite a few such ensembles around (including one at BU), so the piece might get some notice in those circles. The New Hudson people record on a number of labels from the boutique (Capstone) to the reasonably well-known (Koch Classical), and maybe they'll like the piece enough to put it out on CD! You never know, and Greg deserves the chance.
More Doggie Stuff
Seamus and I have started rally obedience classes with Judy again, which really pleases me. They're not strictly classes per se -- we get together with a couple of friends and practice with her one morning a week -- but we have a great time. We've also signed up for the rally run-throughs at It's a Dog's World this week. It will be a while before we're ready to enter the Advanced level trials, but we have one remaining leg to our RL1 title in APDT rally. We're entered in a trial in October, and hope to earn that there.
I'm also thinking of entering him in Pre-Novice at the Saccarappa trial at the end of September. There is no real Pre-Novice title in AKC, but trial experience is always valuable. We're not ready for the off-lead portion of a real Novice-level trial just yet.
We did have one breakthrough that makes me very proud of the little guy, though. He has never been able to resist the food bowls in the offset figure 8, even though he understands the "leave it" command and follows it in every other application in life. I'm trying hard to make myself a more attractive handler for Seamus so we can work effectively off-lead -- this involves moving fast enough to keep his mind from wandering and some other ways of keeping his attention focused -- and the attention is critical if we ever hope to advance in either Rally or regular obedience.
Anyway, Judy laid out the dreaded offset figure 8 and placed dog treats in each bowl. I was sure Seamus would make a dive for the bowls, but I lured him with a handful of Ritz bits, and he paid no attention at all to the figure 8. Good Leave-It!!! Of course, we'll have to practice this again and again until we can navigate the bowls without the use of treats, but the fact that he actually did pay attention to me this time is a breakthrough in our training. He received the Ritz bits and a whole pile of praise for negotiating that obstacle.
Dinah has another herding lesson this week. We're going to work on circling/wearing and when to keep back from the sheep. It will be her last chance to have fun in the dirt before she has to get prettied up for the BCCC Specialty in Canada.
Oh, and Knitting Stuff
I haven't had much time to work on the India socks, but hope to get the second sock done this week and to get some pictures taken for Lisa. I took along a couple of skeins of one of the Knit Picks Sock Garden yarns to the La Bottine concert and wound them into balls, though I haven't set needles to them yet.
Just because it's late enough in the summer that one can't help but notice that fall isn't too far off, I gave in to temptation and cast on some yarn for the first sweater of the season. Last year, I bought some Seacolors yarn at the big craft fair in Wells, and I've been longing to spend some time with it since. The yarn is lovely -- I bought a sort of raspberry heather worsted and some more in a muted shade of teal -- enough between the two shades for a tunic sweater. This week, I needed some "idiot knitting" to do, something even easier than decreases for sock toes. I cast on the back of the sweater in the teal Seacolors yarn, and will be playing with that for a while in between finishing off socks. It's very nice yarn -- a bit like Shetland wool in texture, and the lanolin's been nice to my hands. I don't crochet much at all, but will have to learn the crab stitch in order to finish off the neckline (and maybe the cuffs).
We had reason to celebrate, for sure. Greg received an enthused email on Thursday from the alto saxophonist of the New Hudson Saxophone Quartet, saying that the guys really liked the score for the Sax Quartet and were wondering if they could get parts in time for Monday's rehearsal. Greg has essentially done nothing else but print and bind parts since then, and the whole lot went into an Express Mail package to NYC yesterday morning. It will be a while before Greg hears about the premiere, but it's a shame he won't be there to see and hear them play the piece at tomorrow's rehearsal. No matter how good the MIDI approximation might be, it never comes close to the experience of hearing your composition played live for the first time. Of course we'll be there for the premiere performance, whenever that might be.
I really hope this piece might be Greg's big break. There really aren't very many pieces scored for sax quartet and there are actually quite a few such ensembles around (including one at BU), so the piece might get some notice in those circles. The New Hudson people record on a number of labels from the boutique (Capstone) to the reasonably well-known (Koch Classical), and maybe they'll like the piece enough to put it out on CD! You never know, and Greg deserves the chance.
More Doggie Stuff
Seamus and I have started rally obedience classes with Judy again, which really pleases me. They're not strictly classes per se -- we get together with a couple of friends and practice with her one morning a week -- but we have a great time. We've also signed up for the rally run-throughs at It's a Dog's World this week. It will be a while before we're ready to enter the Advanced level trials, but we have one remaining leg to our RL1 title in APDT rally. We're entered in a trial in October, and hope to earn that there.
I'm also thinking of entering him in Pre-Novice at the Saccarappa trial at the end of September. There is no real Pre-Novice title in AKC, but trial experience is always valuable. We're not ready for the off-lead portion of a real Novice-level trial just yet.
We did have one breakthrough that makes me very proud of the little guy, though. He has never been able to resist the food bowls in the offset figure 8, even though he understands the "leave it" command and follows it in every other application in life. I'm trying hard to make myself a more attractive handler for Seamus so we can work effectively off-lead -- this involves moving fast enough to keep his mind from wandering and some other ways of keeping his attention focused -- and the attention is critical if we ever hope to advance in either Rally or regular obedience.
Anyway, Judy laid out the dreaded offset figure 8 and placed dog treats in each bowl. I was sure Seamus would make a dive for the bowls, but I lured him with a handful of Ritz bits, and he paid no attention at all to the figure 8. Good Leave-It!!! Of course, we'll have to practice this again and again until we can navigate the bowls without the use of treats, but the fact that he actually did pay attention to me this time is a breakthrough in our training. He received the Ritz bits and a whole pile of praise for negotiating that obstacle.
Dinah has another herding lesson this week. We're going to work on circling/wearing and when to keep back from the sheep. It will be her last chance to have fun in the dirt before she has to get prettied up for the BCCC Specialty in Canada.
Oh, and Knitting Stuff
I haven't had much time to work on the India socks, but hope to get the second sock done this week and to get some pictures taken for Lisa. I took along a couple of skeins of one of the Knit Picks Sock Garden yarns to the La Bottine concert and wound them into balls, though I haven't set needles to them yet.
Just because it's late enough in the summer that one can't help but notice that fall isn't too far off, I gave in to temptation and cast on some yarn for the first sweater of the season. Last year, I bought some Seacolors yarn at the big craft fair in Wells, and I've been longing to spend some time with it since. The yarn is lovely -- I bought a sort of raspberry heather worsted and some more in a muted shade of teal -- enough between the two shades for a tunic sweater. This week, I needed some "idiot knitting" to do, something even easier than decreases for sock toes. I cast on the back of the sweater in the teal Seacolors yarn, and will be playing with that for a while in between finishing off socks. It's very nice yarn -- a bit like Shetland wool in texture, and the lanolin's been nice to my hands. I don't crochet much at all, but will have to learn the crab stitch in order to finish off the neckline (and maybe the cuffs).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)