Sunset

For a change - caught while doing yoga 26.Jan.2010. Odd that the screen doesn't show up on this one.

Not feeling 100% today - wonder if I have a fever. Cancelled all appointments for today & plan just to rest. Rain's finally stopped & we're forecast to have near-80F by Saturday. Entirely too hot ask me, but the forecasters have been wrong before.

Sunbathing Potter

I caught her sitting in the sun, a favorite pastime, on 26.Jan.2010.

Despite the state of emergency declared because of the downpours (slated to last until tomorrow AM so they say) I headed off 2 rehearsal yesterday. Arrived & returned safe & sound. The conductor seemed a little discombobulated - though with having to replace our President of 30 years with 3 people doing different aspects of her job, I imagine that's to be expected.

Tootling & stitching, a consult with one of my 401(k) advisors about transferring my accounts from traditional IRAs to ROTH IRAs in my future. I might even don rain coat & pants and toddle over to the Post Office to return a DVD & pick up the Tuesday papers.

44F heading up to 50F today and rain, rain, rain.

Through a glass darkly

This from 24.Jan.2010. I didn't see the screen interference until I edited this photo just now. Call the effect artistic.

Rainy, blustery day so I guess no toddle for moi today (makes me feel all cozy & comfy hearing the bluster of the wind & not having to go outside in it!). Heading out later for a Melrose rehearsal unless it gets called due to flooding.

The concert last night was OK - though I had no idea I was going to be called not only to turn pages (gulp) but to act as recording technician (though that only entailed turning the recording device on & off for the 1st half - Andy did the honors for the second - when moi was involved with said turning of pages - happy to report no major disasters) and sommelier (look it up). The program was Arriaga (early Romantic/late classical composer who died @ age 20 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Crisóstomo_Arriaga), Shostakovich 11th string quartet, and Schumann Piano Quartet in Eb Major, op.47.

Read recently about the Violet Quill & thought I'd pass along a link for your enjoyment & edification. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Violet_Quill

Best I go tootle.

Dawn nochmal oder encore une fois

This one from 22.Jan.2010. I don't get up early enough to catch it now, even with the time change. Just remembered to check the auto set on the TV that's hard-wired to change on the OLD weekend - apparently not this one - anyone remember which weekend it used to be?

The concert last night was OK - though the pre-concert talk got off to a rocky start with amplification issues. It's not for nothing that Josquin is recognized as the master of the era. Next time I think I'll look for a concert of secular Renaissance music. More chance of some brighter tempi.

Weather report: 38F with a "feels like of 31F. Rain forecast from Monday sometime after midnight through Wed. AM. :|

Dawn

From 16.Jan.2010. Hey, the cross-hairs of the window is an appropriate image for this Easter season, no? Probably had some nice frost on the window this AM but by the time I got up slightly after 7AM, it had melted. Heading off soon to get the replacement spare tire for the car (that & taxes due will eat up 1/2 of the $$ coming in @ the end of the month. Gulp.) Then to tootle, a Polarity treatment & the concert tonight. Went for the cheap tix. I'm sure it will sound as good. The venue is a church that isn't _that_ big so what could be bad? (A poke in the eye with a stick.)

Dawn

This slightly blurry shot (I _have_ to get a tripod one of these days for flashless shots) is from 15.Jan.2010. Couldn't let the beautiful colors pass unrecorded.

Well, what do you know, a day off. Had plaNned to skip the BSO concert today & then got a call last night that my acupuncturist was sick - not surprising given the amount of coughing, etc., I heard in the room last week. So an entire day to tootle, stitch on the lovely mohair thingie I'm making & finally getting some laundry done. We had a high yesterday of 65F - today? 41. Tomorrow? 40. At least the flowers will last longer with the cooler temps.

The Tallis Scholars are giving a concert of music by Compère, Mouton, Gombert, and Josquin, some of my favorite Renaissance composers - question: do I want to spring for the $50 tix or the $19 that have obstructed view of the stage - it's in a church and, really, do you need to see the people if you can hear them perfectly well? Sunday Jan & Frances are giving a (free) concert in Brookline so it might end up being a concert-filled weekend after all.

Dawn

This from 13.Jan.2010.

This morning's speaking of faith's topic was "Did God create evil?" Now that's a tricky one & one that the theists in the mix had a hard time explaining. http://www.closertotruth.com/search_results.php?search=did+god+create+evil&x=0&y=0 The narrator interviewed three from the theist camp. 2 Christians & a Muslim, and one from the . . . what did they call it? pantheist? tradition, a Hindu. I wish he'd axed one of the Christians (the weakest of the whole bunch, ask me - Nancey Murphy) and included a Buddhist. Here's one interesting site I found http://mettarefuge.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/buddhisms-practical-answer-to-the-problem-of-evil-part-1/



Here is some background on the site's author http://mettarefuge.wordpress.com/about/ I like the quotation that starts the bio page:

Life is short and we have not too much time
for gladdening the hearts of those
who are traveling the dark way with us.
Oh, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind.
~ Henri-Frederic Amiel (a Swiss philosopher, poet and critic)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri-Frédéric_Amiel

And this one from the site's main page:

As a mother would risk her life to protect her child, her only child, even so should one cultivate a limitless heart with regard to all beings. So with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings; radiating kindness over the entire world." The Buddha, Sutta Nipata I, 8

Apparently there's a PBS program on Buddhism coming up on PBS - I'll have to catch it. http://www.pbs.org/thebuddha/?gclid=CJeCi_r606ACFctY2godkXMhsw


Heading out in about an hour (I wish Andy would get up so I could get some practicing in before I go) driving up to Carlisle MA again to have the picc worked on. Later today a new Wellesley chamber music summer program is to call for her phone audition. My friend Jan Pfeiffer, who's the director of that program told me the other day that she'd just lost her teaching/coaching job @ Wellesley. "Very political" she said. She'd built up the chamber program there mostly from scratch. Don't know any of the details yet but I can imagine how devastating that must have been.

On a more positive note, it's sunny today. Due to get up to 60F - then, guess what? More rain. Not sure about going to the BSO tomorrow - 300-some seats available in the front orchestra section - program SIBELIUS Finlandia, SIBELIUS
Valse triste, LIEBERSON Songs of Love and Sorrow, for baritone and orchestra (world premiere; BSO commission) & SCHUBERT
Symphony in C, The Great. I'd like to hear the Lieberson but the rest of the program leaves me cold.

Doughnut puss

Here's Potter's imitation of a doughnut (though you hardly ever see it spelled that way anymore).

I just got back from mailing the shawl I made for Millie Rich to her (shh - it's a secret) in thanks for her 30 years of dedicated service to the Melrose Orchestra. I'm hoping she'll have some occasion to wear it in FL where she's settled with her new hubby (though why they moved to Florida with his health problems, I'll never know. FL medical care is crap if my parents' experience is any indication) before the really hot weather settles in there.

Then I decided to take advantage of the not-rain to toddle around the neighborhood to see what had changed since last I stopped by. I was admiring the shape of the bare (soon-to-be-budded) branches of the various trees against the cloudy sky and as I tried to identify which tree was which, I thought back to my days at the Trees for Tomorrow camp (where we learned to distinguish such things) that I attended with some fellow Menominee High chums when I was a junior there. It occurred to me that I was (perhaps) as close to death now as I was from birth then and that, the remaining years being such a shorter percentage of the total than those before my junior year were from birth, they would undoubtedly seem to pass much more quickly. We know the date of our births. We cannot know the date of the other so best we savor each moment, to hear the sound of the wind, to follow the flight of the gull, to feel the air on our skin. Living too far in the past or the future is only cause for anxiety and sorrow. As Bette Davis said in Now Voyager "Don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-KGiwGn1d8

January dawn

11.Jan.2010. Good God, it's almost 10 & I'm still poking around on the computer. Rain, rain. rain. I might don my rain pants & head down to the local Tedeschi's for the Tues. papers, as is my wont. Like the Science section that the NY Times runs on Tues. Almost to the end of my Wisdom Yarn Poems pullover - might need another skein to finish the 2nd sleeve - but to I want to pay as much for the postage as I do for the yarn? The tricky licks in the Prokofiev Classical Symphony are coming easier (another year on, I should have them up to tempo. That'll teach me for not learning them when I was 16).

Beginning month two of Andy's unemployment. Fingers crossed that something he likes shows up soon. 44F with a "feels like" of 38F heading up, reports say, to a high of 49F. Rain forecast through tomorrow. Here's hoping it's not too heavy when I head out for lunch with friends @ Harvard. The Records Manager there (well, former) asked me if I'd be a reference for him in his job search. Spoke to someone on his behalf at a major governmental agency (to preserve privacy issues) in D.C. a week or so ago. Felt quite the important person (still don't know why he thought feedback from moi would help). Wonder if he'll have job new @ lunch tomorrow. Will be sorry to see him leave the Boston area. Stay tuned.

Ou sont les neiges

Thought you might enjoy this shot from January 10 of this year. I like the kitty paw prints. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballade_des_dames_du_temps_jadis

Well, spent 2 hours @ the Toyota dealership yesterday but the tire was replaced. Bad news: our spare also needs to be replaced.

Heading out soon for the Cambridge grocery run. Hoping to beat the rain. At least I know all the tires are inflated to their correct capacity! Then tootling & stitching - I guess the laundry will have to wait until the sun comes out Wed. afternoon or Thursday. Vacuuming, anyone?

Clown frost and Blake

Well, it's only 10AM and already it's been an adventuresome day. The driver-side front tire looked a little flat when I headed out for the grocery run this AM & I decided to test the pressure when I left the store. It was pretty low, so I headed to the local gas station that has an air pump (for $.75 mind you for a couple minutes' worth of at least a grinding noise - I'm still not convinced it actually dispenses any air). Well the tire was completely flat by that time so I had to change it - which I did in record time - it was the same damned tire (or at least position on the car) that went flat a couple years ago - so I guess practice does make better. It looks like I'll be headed to the local garage later today since I planned to do the Cambridge grocery run tomorrow instead of Tues. since it's forecast to be pouring down rain then, and I _can't_ miss tomorrow's Melrose rehearsal after staying home last week because of the state of emergency declared by the governor because of the three-day nor'easter. Hadn't planned to go to the fixit place today, but you know what they say: To make God laugh, make plans.

Thought you might enjoy this Blake quotation from his Auguries of Innocence that I heard on this weeks episode of Speaking of Faith "Heart and Soul" the Integrative Medicine of Dr. Oz (http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2010/heart-and-soul/) well, for some reason the transcript isn't up there so I had to look elsewhere:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

May you behold these wonders every day.

Holiday cards

Here's what our dining room mantel looked like on the 5th of January this year. I think that's 12th night. If you look closely you might find your card. :)

Student showing up in 20 minutes. Then off to the yarn crawl - I guess Andy's going to accompany me. Should be fun. Free coffee & yarn tasting (whatever that is) at the first (of three) shop(s). Yippee skippee! 50F here now supposedly heading up to 70F. Then a high of 50F tomorrow. Now _that's_ more like a March temp. & will keep the flowers around longer!

This from this week's Living on Earth (beware the cell phone, esp. 4 kids) David Carpenter is director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany. He tells host Jeff Young about research that shows a link between cell phone use and cancer.: http://www.livingonearth.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=10-P13-00012&segmentID=1

Morning frost

This from 05.Jan.2010. Interesting article in recent NY Times "Old age from youth's narrow prism ends thusly:

For age is opportunity no less

Than youth itself, though in another dress,

And as the evening twilight fades away

The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

Full article here: http://tinyurl.com/ye656te

Heading out in 10 minutes to try to snag another BSO rush ticket, thence to acupuncture & back again for the concert - oops - best make my sandwich.

Intelligent aliens

Took this picture on Jamie's b'day (02.Jan.2010). It no longer hangs from the tree so I don't know if it's a seasonal thing or if someone stole it.

This week's Closer to Truth was about "Would Intelligent Aliens Undermine God." Again the Christians tie themselves in knots - this time trying to explain, if there is other intelligent life in the universe, whether Jesus saved them or not. Seems like the more dogma attaches itself to a belief the further from truth that belief becomes. These people are in, those people are out. You have to do this. You can't do that and call yourself one of us. The whole us/them dichotomy.

So on to less controversial topics. 54F now, heading up to 72F so the widget says - Yikes. That warm in March (20 degrees above the average). I hate to think what summer will be like.

Heading out soon for an Alexander lesson. Am picking up the power pedal to the sewing machine I got on Ebay a couple months ago. Turns out the cord was frayed. Didn't mention that in the description. Wonder why. Hmm.

Poobah pussy

Here's hoping this doesn't get forwarded to your spam folder.

Heading out later for lunch with a friend. Then gotta squeeze more practicing in, etc. Maybe laundry now that the torrents have ceased? 42F with a "feels like" 37F. Heading up, so they say, to 62F. There's a bird chirping outside the window - I think it's a mocking one. Soon to begin a vest in some luvly reddish orange mohair.

New Year's Morn

This from back in the day when the sun & I arose around the same time. Now I'm unwilling to drag myself out of bed @ whatever ungodly hour dawn cracks.

Consider this the aged issue:

I wonder when someone will take a picture of moi. http://advancedstyle.blogspot.com/

Forgive me for assuming for the longest time that the author was female: Holding Fast - Letting Go Appreciating a Difficult Mother (makes me realize how good we had it) http://tinyurl.com/yaemwbh

This from the Social Qs column:

Drop the Handkerchief

I have been at several business meetings recently where men over 50 pulled out old-style cloth handkerchiefs and blew their noses. Everyone under 50 rolled their eyes. How do we get these guys to use small Kleenex packs instead?

Todd

Au contraire, my dear Todd! A neatly pressed handkerchief is the height of style — either in blinding white or a snazzy Liberty of London print.

The key is liberal laundering, which might make them more environmentally correct than those little Kleenex packs, too.

And thank you for including your e-mail address, so I can forward the three million messages we’ll receive in response to your suggestion that men over 50 are “old.”

Heading out soon for that delayed dexa scan http://www.osteopenia3.com/dexa-scans.html then to one of the local yarn shops that sells the wool wash Eucalan. Decided to stay home from the orchestra rehearsal once the governor declared a state of emergency due to all the rain. Have to go somewhere every day this week - tomorrow lunch with a friend, Thurs. Alexander lesson, Friday acupuncture & maybe the BSO for the Mendelssohn. Sat. the Red Line Yarn Crawl. I know - poor me. I'm getting a week T-pass since that gives you unlimited ridership for 7 days & if one is making more than 9 trips on the subway, it's cheaper than paying/ride.

Guess what??!! The sun's shining. Supposed to get up to 50F today - 41F with a feels like of 33F. Won't know what do to with all the sun. Where are my shades?

Morning frost

This from around the New Year.

I think this 3-day nor'easter is beginning to get to me. In kind of a blue funk this AM - am trying to treat with with massive ingestions of caffeine stimulant. Andy just stopped but to ask if I thought we'd be having our Melrose rehearsal tonight because of all the flooding. I'd be relieved by surprised if they called it off. Stay tuned.


The vest is one I completed recently from a lovely Fleece Artist yarn - a combo of a blue faced Leicester and cobweb (really thin) weight mohair in a color combo they called Rainforest. Luvely, no?

Studious Potter

Rain, rain, rain, straight through from yesterday & Tues. Glad we can stay warm(ish) & dry. The Wellesley crunch is fast approaching - we have some of the applications in (were adding people through JUNE last year) and now have to begin sorting them into groups. Wish me luck. Other than that, tootling & stitching in my future today.

Des pas sur la neige

These from last Christmas Eve. The first is of the baseball field near here (you might recognize it from other postings. The other a very friendly puss who begged me to take her home - I haven't seen her since and can only hope she's safe inside one of the houses on the street by the P.O.

Boy was I confused yesterday - the program @ the BSO was actually Albeniz, Prokofiev & Rimsky-Korsakov. Hilary Hahn played the pants off of P's 1st violin concerto - which I'd never heard - gotta whip out that excerpt - the 2nd mvt. is fiendish! And the concertmaster did a brilliant job in the solos in the R-K. NEXT week is the Mendelssohn & Rossini. Elizabeth Ostling did a haunting rendition of the flute solos in the Albeniz pieces, which were all transcriptions of piano works.

We're so lucky to have such a great band in town. Now why can't our ballet & opera be equally brilliant, I ask you!!! The guy handing out (well, selling for $9) the tickets thought he was giving me an isle seat - in the very last row of the orchestra under the balcony but it turned out to be in the middle of the row so I decided to go up to the 2nd balcony, found an empty seat & sat down to knit on my socks before the concert started. Not long afterward I heard someone coming up from behind me and thought "oh, oh, I picked the wrong seat" but it was a woman who'd been "sent down" by her friends to ask after my knitting & to show me the pair of socks she was working on. I tell you, this knitting sure is a conversation starter. :)

I love the NY Times. Sometimes I can breeze through the arts section with seldom more than a a glance at most of the articles, then there are those issues, like last Sunday's that has an article on California artist Ken Price (who's work I have to admit I was drawn to more for the color than the form, which more often than not just looks like a pile of poop) http://tinyurl.com/yglj97a and http://www.kenprice.com/ and mentions several of his surfer artist contemporaries like Ed Ruscha (whom I'd actually already heard of - and liked http://tinyurl.com/ydq3lpq), Billy Al Bengston http://tinyurl.com/yc3e3uk, Robert Irwin http://tinyurl.com/yzlx4y6, and Larry Bell http://tinyurl.com/yh8t42m, and another article that covered a whole group of artists in their 30s & 40s called Lowbrow Art, or Pop Surrealism or, as the author, John Strausbaugh said, "more accurately Pop Pluralism" http://arrestedmotion.com/category/sculpture/ so of course I had to look them all up, too: Jeff Soto, Scott Musgrove, Kathy Staico Schorr, & Invader http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invader_(artist). Reminded me also of the Oakland Museum's wonderful collection of art about California or by CA artists. http://museumca.org/ And I'm not 1/2-way through the arts section! Best I get off & do something else now.

Snowy Buddha

This from a neighbor down the street. Only garden ornament like it in the neighborhood. Have to head out early today (like in 15 minutes) to get to the rush line for $9 tix for the BSO this PM - it'll be a long day with acupuncture & the concert afterwards, but they're doing Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night Dream overture & I've never heard that life. Not sure if I'll stay for the Rossini Stabat Mater afterwards - though if they do it without intermission I might not have a chance to high tail it in between.

I forgot to mention the Closer to Truth installment from yesterday this one about extra dimensions - again, I think it's better to listing to the online interviews since the 30-min. . version made no attempt to explain, for example, what "branes" (which when you don't see it sounds like "brains" & why would they be talking about something like that?? Anyway, as I said I need to be out the door in 10 minutes so I'll stop now.

Morning frost

Late posting this AM - back from the nutrition study. Free OJ, apple juice & graham crackers, whoopee (I had to go in fasting). Unfortunately the dexa scanstress was AWOL so I have to go back @ some point for that. I'm hoping to do it on a Friday when I'm in the relative neighborhood anyway for acupuncture. Stay tuned.

I think we've already hit our high for the day. Supposedly going up to 50F today, but I think it was colder when I left the medical center than when I arrived. Cloudy & rain forecast for most of the weekend.Got some work done on a sock to & from Tufts Medical Center - & am trying my first gusset version of a toe-up - it also has a slipped stitch heel, which I think will wear better than the simple wrap & turn I've been using. Getting in the weeds here, I know - but if you ever knit socks, you can larn from my wisdom. ;)


Best get to tootling so I can get 2 sessions in before my energy flags.

Morning frost

The next few will be from 23.Dec.2009. That was an amazing morning for window frost, apparently.

Blissful day of not having to go anywhere - except out for the daily toddle. Laundry should get done. Will it? Stay tuned. Otherwise, boning up on the tricky licks in the Pops stuff & stitching, per usual. Andy's even going to take a walk down to the Ashmont area to cash his last checks from Ramp. No news on that front that he's communicated to me anyway. Tomorrow I head off early to a blood draw & interview with a nutrition study I'm in (and paid a few extra pennies for the privilege, which will be welcome). Then Friday it's acupuncture & maybe a trip to the BSO in the afternoon since they're doing Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade & I don't think I've ever heard it. Sat. I get a Polarity treatment if the practitioner doesn't cancel.

Morning frost

This from 22.Dec.2009. Heading out soon for the Cambridge grocery run. Still no news on the job front for Andy. The phone interview he had yesterday was less than inspiring since the HR person he talked to last week mentioned this software product he's been working with & the Indian (as in from India) engineers he talked with on the phone yesterday & could hardly understand said "Oh, we outsource all our Flex work." So the right hand apparently knoweth not.

Typical dreck (i.e. selections from Cats - cue the sound of a cat coughing up a hairball) with the upcoming Melrose pops concert, though the Weber Oberon overture (which we didn't rehearse last night) & the Copland Lincoln Portrait (with Kim Khazei, one of the local TV anchors as narrator - how do we snag these high-profile folks? Apparently the koto player who joined us last week has had her playing included in major motion pictures.) do up the quality quotient. The thing that bugs me about so much of this pop concert music, like Hayman's Pops Roundup is that it's technically so hard - what a waste of time practicing all that crap - though I guess in the long run it improves technique so there's the silver lining.

Porch detail

Here's a shot from 21 Dec. 2009.

Getting a late start cuz I stayed up to watch most of the Oscars last night. As always the dresses were the most interesting, though I thought Neil Patrick Harris did a good job in the opening - where did he go after that?? And why wasn't he dancing with a boy?? Not having seen a single nominated film (or any movie in a theater last year) not sure why I bothered - though some of the acceptance speeches were touching and any chance to see Helen Mirren is worth a go.

Tootling, toddling, stitching & rehearsing on the docket for today. Wow, 47F already today heading up to 55?? In March?? Some of our early croci & snowdrops are apparently blooming - I'll have to go out & take a look.

Martians in disguise?

This from 21.Dec.2009. Apparently we had snow the night before.

Happy to say the concert went OK last night, with the occasional brain fart. The koto soloist was stunning in her kimono & my Sat. student & hubby joined us since their car was side-swiped by a hit & run driver (sometime during the night Thurs. so they were safe in bed when it happened - apparently the driver rammed the car parked behind theirs, which plowed into their car & forced it forward into the car in front of theirs. They're hopeful that, since it was around the State House, where there are cameras everywhere - Big Brother, anyone? - that the authorities'll be able to identify the perp.) & is in the shop. Fortuitous, too, that said hubby works for a search engine company (I guess) that has a job Andy might be interested in. So there's another lead. fingers crossed.

I'm taking the day off from practicing - and maybe even laundry, etc., & just going to enjoy myself. Tomorrow PM I head back to Melrose to begin to prepare for the final concert of the season - a pops concert that will include (dreck alert) selections from Cats. Thank the goddess I only have to play one of the orchestra's pops concerts/year. The December (which includes _two_ performances) I'm gainfully employed (at least this year) playing the Nutcracker down in Franklin.

Speaking of faIth this AM interviewed the author of "The Evolution of God" - I was in & out of the car during, so will be heading over to http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2010/evolution-of-god/ to listen to the .mp3 or read the transcript. One interesting bit I did hear was this:

But what's interesting to me is that the world seems to be set up in such a way that either humans make moral progress in the sense of expanding their conception of compassion and love more broadly or they pay the price of social chaos and collapse. I really think the world is set up that way, and that's why I think it's not crazy to speculate that there's a purpose that merits the term "divine."

Elegant puss

Here's Potter in a particularly elegant pose. Student soon to show up, then getting ready for the orchestra concert tonight. Here's hoping it's not sweltering in the hall - every since they installed the "computerized" climate control, it's been a mess. 41F & sunny today, heading up, so they say to 51F. Same for the next few days.

Morning Frost

Don't see these so much now that the AM temps are often above freezing & the sun rises before moi. Heading out soon to acupuncture, then in the PM to our final dress rehearsal before tomorrow's onslaught, er, performance. Gonna get some tootling in before I leave now that Andy's up. I've donned that mohair sweater that I finished yesterday. It's rather an odd shape but you can't tell unless I hold my arms out. The next one will be better.

Sunbathing Potter

Something she'd never stand for in a tub.

This morning's Closer to Truth was on "Arguments Against God". Unfortunately the three interviews listed here http://tinyurl.com/ydbvoev don't include all the folks featured in the show, though admittedly the ones not included were mere snippets, apparently from other shows. (And he expects us to remember??) I like the fact that I can now find the interviews if only I pay attention to the top of the show where the topic's displayed before the interviews start. And I find that, like more & more things these days, the analog version, whether a news broadcast or a newspaper, is more or less just an advert for the online version where they can go into much more detail (i.e. all the online videos here are much longer than their broadcast counterparts). On the other hand, who has time??!!

Speaking of which, heading out soon 4 acupuncture. Hope to get a stint of practicing in before I go - if Andy gets up in time. He does enjoy sleeping in. Then more tootling & stitching (I count my schleps to & from the subway as toddling on those days I do that - am I cheating?). Rehearsal tomorrow PM then a concert Sat. PM then another rehearsal Mon. PM for the May concert - I _wish_ we'd get a Monday after a performance, but no.

Cathedral overhang

This from early December. We're having snow now, too, but it isn't sticking (and I calls it sleet but Andy disagrees). He got a nibble from a resume posting yesterday - but the guy hasn't sent the contact info promised. I star-69'd the number and it ends in 666 so I told Andy maybe he doesn't want this job - tho it's @ South Station on the Red Line so couldn't be more convenient - unless it were @ UMASS Boston which is even closer. The search continues. On my side of the equation? Tootling, stitching & if the weather doesn't clear up pas de toddling pour moi today (unless it's just to the P.O. - what's this about no Saturday delivery???)* to drop off the last of the Berkley Square DVDs.

http://tinyurl.com/yhpcahb

None so blind

More shots of the house on Waldorf St. Truly a kewl place.

Tired this AM - up til 'round midnight after the rehearsal last night & then wakened early for a trip to the powder room, then dreams of moi being the one laid off & trying to figure out how to live on the meager HU retirement payments, then awakened again by someone stomping around getting the garbage out for pickup before 7AM. At least I didn't have to get up myself & do that chore.


This marks the beginning of week 2 of Andy's post-Ramp life. No further reports of being contacted by head hunters. He's still fiddling with his resume & waiting for final word on COBRA costs - fortunately Massachusetts has a program that will cover up to 80% of what COBRA doesn't once he applies for unemployment, so that's good.

A day free for tootling, toddling & stitching - no student showing up tonight. I might have to schlep out to a flute repair place in Porter Sq. area tomorrow just to put my mind at ease that the key that stuck down during a student's lesson on Sat. doesn't choose to do the same in the middle of the concert this Sat. As they say in Frogland, "on va voir."

Martians in disguise?

Here are some shots I took the beginning of December. The Martians not on a truck are from the yard of a very interesting house on Waldorf Street in the Ashmont Hill neighborhood. I'd really like to meet the owners.

Melrose rehearsal tonight (and Friday with the concert on Sat.), and if I can get out between the raindrops some toddling & rehearsal-preparatory tootling, in addition to laundry. Since we don't have a dryer, I don't usually like to do laundry when it rains, but we're having rain or have had rain for more than a week - what are we, Seattle? - and the heat will be on so I suppose that'll dry out the house enough.

Oh, and stitching - coming up to the end of the body on that mohair sweater - hope the sleeve openings aren't too big - this being my first raglan . . . well, time will tell.

I heard a show recently, can't remember whether TV or radio about destressing - the suggestion was to ask yourself three questions in any stressful situation: 1. Can I do anything about it? 2. Would other people I know react as strongly as I? 3. Will this matter in 5 years (or something like that). If the answer to any of the 3 is "no" you just have to let it go. I've tried to find a web reference but none's showing up so far that exactly fits the bill, tho this one looks good: http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/wellness_articles.asp?id=596