Here's just a piece of the Canadian part of Niagara Falls. It was just too big to fit all in one exposure. Photos do not do this place justice!
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Monday, May 09, 2005
It Practically Slices, Dices, and Cries 'Mama'
This past weekend was another musical weekend for us, in addition to all the other stuff that's going on. Greg has been talking about the marvelous Allen digital organ that was installed at the church where he works. This weekend, I had a chance to hear what he's been talking about.
Greg wanted to play the Toccata from Widor's Organ Symphony on the Allen as the postlude to Sunday's service, and asked me to come to church and turn pages for him. The Toccata is a well-known part of the organist's standard repertoire, but it's a guaranteed crowd-pleaser and can really set the floorboards to rumbling once the pedal part kicks in.
Church is Greg's thing, not mine, but to prove my absolute devotion to this wonderful man, I put on a dress and some eyeliner and went down to the church just as the second service was starting. It was hard to be invisible up on the podium in front of the congregation, but I tried my best. The service included a prayer of thanks for the organ, and the organist (this was Greg's second week at his new gig), and the bulletin contained a flyer with photos and a story of how the Allen came to the church.
When the service concluded, Greg fired up the Toccata and showed the congregation just what their spiffy new instrument could do, including the floor-rumbling. I've heard him practice this piece a bazillion times, but he's never played it as well as he did yesterday. He says he missed the F pedal once, but no one noticed; once he (literally) pulled out all the stops, that organ could howl, scream, dance, sing, and do just about anything except mix a dry martini. Yowza!
Naturally, the congregation loved it. They gave him a standing ovation when he had finished, and everyone came by to compliment him profusely as they left the sanctuary. They even congratulated me, and all I did was turn pages! I think they're happy with the direction that music is takng in their church now, between the fine new instrument and the fine new organist.
Later on in the afternoon, the church held a dedicatory concert for the organ. Ray Cornils, the municipal organist for the City of Portland, came down to the church and played a varied program that demonstrated the terrific versatility of the Allen. He played Bach, Pachelbel (not the Canon), and some other novelty pieces that demonstrated the chimes and other stops.
The two performances made for quite a long day, and Greg and I didn't get home until dinnertime after leaving fairly early in the morning. It was definitely a worthwhile trip, though. There's nothing like music appreciation when it's your music.
Greg wanted to play the Toccata from Widor's Organ Symphony on the Allen as the postlude to Sunday's service, and asked me to come to church and turn pages for him. The Toccata is a well-known part of the organist's standard repertoire, but it's a guaranteed crowd-pleaser and can really set the floorboards to rumbling once the pedal part kicks in.
Church is Greg's thing, not mine, but to prove my absolute devotion to this wonderful man, I put on a dress and some eyeliner and went down to the church just as the second service was starting. It was hard to be invisible up on the podium in front of the congregation, but I tried my best. The service included a prayer of thanks for the organ, and the organist (this was Greg's second week at his new gig), and the bulletin contained a flyer with photos and a story of how the Allen came to the church.
When the service concluded, Greg fired up the Toccata and showed the congregation just what their spiffy new instrument could do, including the floor-rumbling. I've heard him practice this piece a bazillion times, but he's never played it as well as he did yesterday. He says he missed the F pedal once, but no one noticed; once he (literally) pulled out all the stops, that organ could howl, scream, dance, sing, and do just about anything except mix a dry martini. Yowza!
Naturally, the congregation loved it. They gave him a standing ovation when he had finished, and everyone came by to compliment him profusely as they left the sanctuary. They even congratulated me, and all I did was turn pages! I think they're happy with the direction that music is takng in their church now, between the fine new instrument and the fine new organist.
Later on in the afternoon, the church held a dedicatory concert for the organ. Ray Cornils, the municipal organist for the City of Portland, came down to the church and played a varied program that demonstrated the terrific versatility of the Allen. He played Bach, Pachelbel (not the Canon), and some other novelty pieces that demonstrated the chimes and other stops.
The two performances made for quite a long day, and Greg and I didn't get home until dinnertime after leaving fairly early in the morning. It was definitely a worthwhile trip, though. There's nothing like music appreciation when it's your music.
Gadzooks! It's an FO sighting!
Alert the media! Not just one, but two FOs have actually been sighted!
Yes, it's true. After weeks, months of talking a good knitting game, I've finally finished something that isn't a scarf. Two somethings, if you want to get technical about it.
First up is the little red felted bag, in all its glory. The adorable Bearded Collie button came from my friend Val at Showstopper Gifts. I'm sending this little feller back to Val so she can see what I'm doing with all the crazy stuff I ask her to make for me.
Next is the blue felted tote. Pam, if you're reading this, don't look if you want to be surprised. I needlefelted the sheep on the large side pocket. This was my first attempt at needlefelting, and it was wicked fun. I'd love to do more of this.
Yes, it's true. After weeks, months of talking a good knitting game, I've finally finished something that isn't a scarf. Two somethings, if you want to get technical about it.
First up is the little red felted bag, in all its glory. The adorable Bearded Collie button came from my friend Val at Showstopper Gifts. I'm sending this little feller back to Val so she can see what I'm doing with all the crazy stuff I ask her to make for me.
Next is the blue felted tote. Pam, if you're reading this, don't look if you want to be surprised. I needlefelted the sheep on the large side pocket. This was my first attempt at needlefelting, and it was wicked fun. I'd love to do more of this.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
I Thought Cats Were Supposed to Be Neat
Our cat must have been someplace else when the Cat Manuals were handed out, because she doesn't seem to have read hers. Cats are supposed to be clean animals, right? If your cat is clean, could you please ask it to come over and talk to my cat?
I can't really get after her about shedding. She's a long-haired cat, and the fur gets all over everything. The kicker is that since she's a tortie, she has all different colors of hair in her coat -- and one of them is bound to show up on any article of clothing in any color or fabric (even yellow rubber rain slickers). Likewise, I don't really care for hairballs, but they happen.
This cat is such a slob, though -- she strews crumbs of cat food all across any surface where she eats. Today I picked up her food dish to feed her -- and it was crawling with ants! Since she eats in the bedroom, this will come to a screeching frickin' halt. Her dish will be relocated to the bathroom, whether she likes it or not.
And don't get me started about the kitty litter. I have never seen a cat spread kitty litter throughout the house as effectively as this animal does. It ends up in places where she doesn't even go -- like between the bedsheets. Every time I go into the bathroom, more stupid kitty liter covers all the surfaces, like some hellish feline pixie dust.
Yes, we're fond of her -- especially Greg, who tells her she's "cute, cute, cute" on the average of once every 1.5 seconds, all day and all night. She's not in any danger of going back to the shelter. All the same, if anybody has an extra Cat Manual lying around, could she please borrow it?
I can't really get after her about shedding. She's a long-haired cat, and the fur gets all over everything. The kicker is that since she's a tortie, she has all different colors of hair in her coat -- and one of them is bound to show up on any article of clothing in any color or fabric (even yellow rubber rain slickers). Likewise, I don't really care for hairballs, but they happen.
This cat is such a slob, though -- she strews crumbs of cat food all across any surface where she eats. Today I picked up her food dish to feed her -- and it was crawling with ants! Since she eats in the bedroom, this will come to a screeching frickin' halt. Her dish will be relocated to the bathroom, whether she likes it or not.
And don't get me started about the kitty litter. I have never seen a cat spread kitty litter throughout the house as effectively as this animal does. It ends up in places where she doesn't even go -- like between the bedsheets. Every time I go into the bathroom, more stupid kitty liter covers all the surfaces, like some hellish feline pixie dust.
Yes, we're fond of her -- especially Greg, who tells her she's "cute, cute, cute" on the average of once every 1.5 seconds, all day and all night. She's not in any danger of going back to the shelter. All the same, if anybody has an extra Cat Manual lying around, could she please borrow it?
Monday, May 02, 2005
A lot crammed into one little week
Whew! It hardly seems as though a whole week has gone by since the last time I sat down with this blog. I've missed all of you, and have so much to catch up with.
Music Stuff
The early part of last week belonged to Greg's music. He had three performances last week: the four-part choral work April on Monday, the Quartet (Double Fugue in One Movement) for Winds on Tuesday, and an orchestral reading of excerpts from his tone poem Penobscot on Wednesday. I took Tuesday and Wednesday off from work and attended the performances. We crashed at the home of one of my college classmates and her husband (and four cats), and she attended the Tuesday and Wednesday concerts with us.
The Tuesday performance went especially well, and Greg is still on a high from it. He'd told me that the student instrumentalists were quite good, but that they'd had limited time to rehearse, so the performance might not be letter-perfect. I'm happy to report that he was dead wrong on that score: not only did they deliver a dead-on flawless performance of the work, but they gave it so much color and life that I almost didn't recognize it as the same piece I've heard only in MIDI for the past several months. Someone sitting behind me gasped, "That was GORRRR-geous!" That testimonial from a complete stranger meant a lot to Greg; he expects me to say nice things and assumes my friends will also, but to have someone who doesn't know who wrote the piece praise it so highly (if simply) gave him a tremendous ego boost and reinforced the sense that what he's doing is right.
Wednesday's performance was also very good. Because Penobscot is an incomplete work and the orchestra was reading only portions of it, some folks were a little confused about the structure and flow of the piece, but loved the sounds they were hearing. This is another work that existed only in MIDI in my mind until the orchestra brought it out and gave it color. You can synthesize all you want, but the human touch is still needed to bring a work fully to life.
Friday, it was my turn to start running the musical marathon. The chorus rehearsed one last time before the concerts on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday's weather was just plain miserable, with rain that splattered rather than just poured. We probably sang to about 40 people that night, but we were ON. In spite of the empty hall, we filled the place with energy and produced a performance that was practically perfect.
Sunday's concert was a bit better attended, but it was definitely sitting room only in the hall. We probably sang to about 100 people, far fewer than the hundreds who turned out to see us at Christmas. I sure hate to say "I told you so" to the folks who wanted to change the dates and hadn't planned the program until the last minute... so I might have to clamp both hands over my mouth at the next Board meeting and say nothing, unless someone has the temerity to complain about the lack of publicity.
I have decided not to sing in the Pops concert, and apparently a lot of other people have decided to opt out as well. I'd like to be able to spend some time around the house, and I want to get acquainted with Sneakers the new dog, take Charlie the current dog out for more romps, and make my yard look presentable. I'll rejoin the chorus in the fall.
Knitstuff
I've even made some real progress in the knitting department.
Donna has probably despaired of me, but I have redeemed myself. She's been knitting along on her Fletcher sweater, and is probably close to finished by now. Last week she had finished the back and the left front, and was working her way up the right front. I've emailed her for an update. Anyway, I am proud to announce that after many months of talking about it, I finally have the back of my own Fletcher on the needles and am making real progress.
One of the handiest tips Donna shared with me is simple, but really useful: Your pieces look neater if you try to cast on with the same color in your Noro Iro at the start of each piece. She chose one of the darker shades in the color she's using (I think it's #1, the color shown in the pattern). I opted for #16, and cast on with the emerald green shade. (Color #16 is still a lot browner in real life than I had anticipated, but no matter -- it's still a gorgeous yarn, and a real pleasure to work with.)
I have other happy knit news to report: I've felted the little red bag and the blue felted tote, and they're busy drying. All I have to do for the red one is attach the button and it's ready for its closeup. I have to add a needle-felted design to the side pocket of the tote bag, and then I can share its pretty face with you.
This time around, I started hand-felting the bags, but transferred them to the washer after I got bored with scrubbing and rubbing. Maybe I was just too flushed with success to make note of this last time, but the Lamb's Pride really shed a lot of fuzz this time around. I'm glad I used zippered pillowcase liners to hold the bags, or I'd still be picking little globs of blue and red off all our clothes (and probably, the washer's filter).
Also on the needles: I'd hoped to finish a quick peacock-colored Fun Fur scarf in time for this past weekend's concerts, but no such luck. It would have gone perfectly with the shirts we have to wear, too. The Eros Extreme is also sitting patiently in the pile. With my new-found Sunday time, I want to finish the Warm Winter Poncho that I didn't finish in time to wear this winter, and then I'll frog my poor World Series throw and re-knit it while watching something that isn't baseball.
Are We Not Men? We Have TiVo
Okay, so sue me. Here I complain that I have no time to watch TV and that there's nothing decent on anyway, and then what do I do? I just invested a piece of my tax refund in a TiVo DVR so that Greg and I can record all the stuff we complain about not having the time to watch, so that we can watch all of it in other time we don't have. Makes sense to me.
We love the thing, though: it's a masterpiece of good user-friendly design. Greg had it installed within 5 minutes, even with trying a few different connection scenarios (since we have the DVD player and VCR on the same circuit, and want to use them all with our ancient stereo receiver and its single digital input). The on-screen interface is simple, easy to use, and gives you feedback at every turn. (Greg likes to play the "no more choices" sound effect in the menu, which is a gentle "boom" from tympani.)
It started out recording "suggestions" along with stuff we actually wanted, but I figured out how to stop that from happening after the third Spanish-language program it oh-so-helpfully recorded for us. The only two words I know in Spanish are not the kind one would share in a family blog, even if I knew how to spell them. We both speak French and a few words of German, but it hasn't discovered our one French-language channel yet. (Our cable system gets TV5 from Paris, which is nice, but I miss being able to get hockey games from Quebec. Hockey is more fun to watch in French.)
Music Stuff
The early part of last week belonged to Greg's music. He had three performances last week: the four-part choral work April on Monday, the Quartet (Double Fugue in One Movement) for Winds on Tuesday, and an orchestral reading of excerpts from his tone poem Penobscot on Wednesday. I took Tuesday and Wednesday off from work and attended the performances. We crashed at the home of one of my college classmates and her husband (and four cats), and she attended the Tuesday and Wednesday concerts with us.
The Tuesday performance went especially well, and Greg is still on a high from it. He'd told me that the student instrumentalists were quite good, but that they'd had limited time to rehearse, so the performance might not be letter-perfect. I'm happy to report that he was dead wrong on that score: not only did they deliver a dead-on flawless performance of the work, but they gave it so much color and life that I almost didn't recognize it as the same piece I've heard only in MIDI for the past several months. Someone sitting behind me gasped, "That was GORRRR-geous!" That testimonial from a complete stranger meant a lot to Greg; he expects me to say nice things and assumes my friends will also, but to have someone who doesn't know who wrote the piece praise it so highly (if simply) gave him a tremendous ego boost and reinforced the sense that what he's doing is right.
Wednesday's performance was also very good. Because Penobscot is an incomplete work and the orchestra was reading only portions of it, some folks were a little confused about the structure and flow of the piece, but loved the sounds they were hearing. This is another work that existed only in MIDI in my mind until the orchestra brought it out and gave it color. You can synthesize all you want, but the human touch is still needed to bring a work fully to life.
Friday, it was my turn to start running the musical marathon. The chorus rehearsed one last time before the concerts on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday's weather was just plain miserable, with rain that splattered rather than just poured. We probably sang to about 40 people that night, but we were ON. In spite of the empty hall, we filled the place with energy and produced a performance that was practically perfect.
Sunday's concert was a bit better attended, but it was definitely sitting room only in the hall. We probably sang to about 100 people, far fewer than the hundreds who turned out to see us at Christmas. I sure hate to say "I told you so" to the folks who wanted to change the dates and hadn't planned the program until the last minute... so I might have to clamp both hands over my mouth at the next Board meeting and say nothing, unless someone has the temerity to complain about the lack of publicity.
I have decided not to sing in the Pops concert, and apparently a lot of other people have decided to opt out as well. I'd like to be able to spend some time around the house, and I want to get acquainted with Sneakers the new dog, take Charlie the current dog out for more romps, and make my yard look presentable. I'll rejoin the chorus in the fall.
Knitstuff
I've even made some real progress in the knitting department.
Donna has probably despaired of me, but I have redeemed myself. She's been knitting along on her Fletcher sweater, and is probably close to finished by now. Last week she had finished the back and the left front, and was working her way up the right front. I've emailed her for an update. Anyway, I am proud to announce that after many months of talking about it, I finally have the back of my own Fletcher on the needles and am making real progress.
One of the handiest tips Donna shared with me is simple, but really useful: Your pieces look neater if you try to cast on with the same color in your Noro Iro at the start of each piece. She chose one of the darker shades in the color she's using (I think it's #1, the color shown in the pattern). I opted for #16, and cast on with the emerald green shade. (Color #16 is still a lot browner in real life than I had anticipated, but no matter -- it's still a gorgeous yarn, and a real pleasure to work with.)
I have other happy knit news to report: I've felted the little red bag and the blue felted tote, and they're busy drying. All I have to do for the red one is attach the button and it's ready for its closeup. I have to add a needle-felted design to the side pocket of the tote bag, and then I can share its pretty face with you.
This time around, I started hand-felting the bags, but transferred them to the washer after I got bored with scrubbing and rubbing. Maybe I was just too flushed with success to make note of this last time, but the Lamb's Pride really shed a lot of fuzz this time around. I'm glad I used zippered pillowcase liners to hold the bags, or I'd still be picking little globs of blue and red off all our clothes (and probably, the washer's filter).
Also on the needles: I'd hoped to finish a quick peacock-colored Fun Fur scarf in time for this past weekend's concerts, but no such luck. It would have gone perfectly with the shirts we have to wear, too. The Eros Extreme is also sitting patiently in the pile. With my new-found Sunday time, I want to finish the Warm Winter Poncho that I didn't finish in time to wear this winter, and then I'll frog my poor World Series throw and re-knit it while watching something that isn't baseball.
Are We Not Men? We Have TiVo
Okay, so sue me. Here I complain that I have no time to watch TV and that there's nothing decent on anyway, and then what do I do? I just invested a piece of my tax refund in a TiVo DVR so that Greg and I can record all the stuff we complain about not having the time to watch, so that we can watch all of it in other time we don't have. Makes sense to me.
We love the thing, though: it's a masterpiece of good user-friendly design. Greg had it installed within 5 minutes, even with trying a few different connection scenarios (since we have the DVD player and VCR on the same circuit, and want to use them all with our ancient stereo receiver and its single digital input). The on-screen interface is simple, easy to use, and gives you feedback at every turn. (Greg likes to play the "no more choices" sound effect in the menu, which is a gentle "boom" from tympani.)
It started out recording "suggestions" along with stuff we actually wanted, but I figured out how to stop that from happening after the third Spanish-language program it oh-so-helpfully recorded for us. The only two words I know in Spanish are not the kind one would share in a family blog, even if I knew how to spell them. We both speak French and a few words of German, but it hasn't discovered our one French-language channel yet. (Our cable system gets TV5 from Paris, which is nice, but I miss being able to get hockey games from Quebec. Hockey is more fun to watch in French.)
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