• Aida
• Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
• Feeling Electric (the workshop of Next to Normal)
• The Last 5 Years
• The Little Mermaid
• Tommy

I’ll be driving down to CT for my grandmother’s birthday (91!), and it will be nice to have my iPod and iTrip all set up with great music. And I love Sherie René Scott! She has the prettiest voice, and is such a wonderful actor.

I got my week off, alright.  I hurt my back two weeks ago, and it got better day by day.  By last weekend, I was getting cocky, and pretended I hadn’t hurt it at all.  Big mistake. Monday morning I was in even worse pain, and it hurt to even take a step.  I went to the doctor Tuesday, and ended up being told to stay home the rest of the week! What a waste of time. I found out that I  do not work very well when I’m in pain. For all the extra “work” I got done, I might as well have had a full week!

And just some random things I also discovered. One is that I am never in my car a 1:11, am or pm. Monday through Friday I am at work, so that makes sense. Most Saturdays I have a music lesson, and I’m usually home by then. If I go out on Sundays, it’s for a matinee, and I’d be anywhere I need to be well before 1:11. And of course, I’m asleep at 1:11 am.  But I got to see the 1:11 Tuesday on my way to the doctor. (See, this is why I don’t have a digital watch; I’d spend most of the day trying to “capture” times like 12:34:56 or 2:52:52.)

I have also discovered Robyn Hitchcock. How can I have lived on this planet for 46 years without ever hearing of him before? He is my-kind-of-music. I have also been listening to Ralph Vaughn Williams Flos Campi over and over again; it is so beautiful. Last month I discovered George Butterworth (1885 – 1916), a student of Vaughn Williams who tragically died at age 30 in WWI. Oh, the beautiful music we lost when he died. I could listen to Two English Idylls (1911), A Shropshire Lad (1912), and The Banks of Green Willow (1913) over and over again. Actually, I do listen to them over and over again! The people at work must think I’m crazy.

But perhaps the most random thing I discovered was that Diamond carries stuffed animals in her mouth when she yowls at night!  She is a weird cat.  Old too, but she was weird when she was young as well.  She’s a tabby cat, and they are supposed to be “feisty” animals.  That she is.  Pixel is also tabby, but she was never feisty.  That is, not until we got her hernia removed, poor kitten.  Now she’s feisty, and even a bit bossy!  One night when Diamond was downstairs yowling, we brought her up to stay on the bed with us for the night. Well, Pixel didn’t like that! Not only does Pixel consider herself our “baby”, it’s her bed. She (Pixel) growled, howled, yowled, scowled, meowed, and pouted until Diamond left the room. Guess she told her.

How do I know it’s a great show? Because I saw it! Smashing, just absolultely smashing! My only complaint was that I couldn’t hear the reed player hardly at all, and there were some pretty awesome bari sax parts (at least, on the CD).

Not one disappointing performance in the group.  I was most excited to see Sasha Allen, who was in the movie Camp.  Another outstanding singer and actor was Bryce Ryness. Ker and I got his CD Ryness, and it is incredible (maybe I’m a bit biased, but Miss Jennifer is my favorite song on that CD).  After the show, the audience could go up on stage and dance with the cast.  Naturally, Kerri went. She also got a chance to talk with her favorite tribe member Lauren Elder.

• Never give Schrödie flea medicine while wearing a decent shirt; she still has back claws.

• There is a limit as to how much milk one can ingest in the span of three minutes.

• High school kids that play in pit bands are really cool.

• The Comfort Inn is not that comfortable.

• It can take 50 minutes to drive 5 miles when there is night construction on I-95.

• Always make a backup of a database table before you do anything to it.

• Agatha Christie is still a good read.

• Some vampire cable shows should never have been made.

Here’s Constantine and Kerri, a few years ago, after Rent in Boston.

Kerri has been in love with him since then.  We had to watch nearly an entire season of American Idol because Constantine was on it!  It confirmed my suspicions that I would hate the show, but I was really impressed that Constantine made it as far as he did.

Hope you win tonight, Constantine!!

Maybe I’m prejudiced by being a clarinet player and all, but I highly recommend Gumboots for Clarinet and String Quartet by David Bruce, played on bass and Bb clarinet by Todd Palmer. I sure wish that piece was available for download.  David Bruce talks about the piece on his website. This is one score I HAVE to have!

Five Chairs and One Table by Daniel Bernard Roumain is for (what sounds like) a wind octet, and has some really cool bassoon in it!

John Adams has a really good piece up called Son of Chamber Symphony.  Not quite as captivating as The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra, but very powerful. I listened to it three times in a row, and found it better with each listen.

When this piece began (I’m listening to WGBH right now), I knew immediately that this performance would be incredible, even though at the time I didn’t know who was playing. There are certain spots in which I’m used to hearing the clarinet go over the register break, and I didn’t hear them. Also, there are other spots where intonation is tricky, and hers was flawless. The tempos she played in were quite fast, and her tounging and technique were again flawless. Her tone quality is rich, full and very smooth (liquid gold).

This was, of course, not the first time I’ve heard Sabine Meyer play. However, the most memorable piece I’ve heard her play to date was one of Spohr’s. It so inspired me that I purchased it, only to see how difficult it really was. She just made it sound so easy and so beautiful!

Read more about Sabine Meyer at EMI’s website. I am going to purchase this new CD of hers? “French? Recital” right now!

We actually really enjoyed the concert, at least most of it. First, the announcers should just be quiet. I won’t say any more about that. Secondly, I don’t particularly care for John Melloncamp, but I won’t say anymore about that either.

The lineup included a fife and drum corps (now that I have a piccolo, I want to play with them!), some pops search contest winner with a beautiful voice singing Sondheim, a performance by the Blue Man Group, the Boston Children’s Chorus, and some really great fireworks. The orchestra played some good music too: Samuel Barber, songs from the musical “42nd Street,” and those perennial favourites “The 1812 Overture” and “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Just wonderful.

And it was so cool to see my teacher on TV! During Stars and Stripes, we saw a lot of him, and Vin decided that his clarinet was blue. I insisted, no it couldn’t be, I KNEW his clarinet was NOT blue. I kept insisting it was the lights, and Vin kept insisting it was blue.

Hmmph, guess who was right? Not only was my teacher’s clarinet blue, the other two players’ instruments were white and red!

View the photo here. Sorry, but I had to password protect it! If you know the name of my beloved kitty, you can enter it as the username and password to view my teacher and the other two clarinetists with their festive instruments!

The first car I rented was a Dodge Stratus. I don’t recall the color (my receipt says it was “magnesium”), but it had 4 doors, electronic locks and controls, and rode very nicely. It also had a CD player, and the indoor temperature of the car was very easy to control and keep me either warm or cool, depending on whether my body was acting normal or being terribly hot. Also, I had no problem finding the window controls as I approached my first tool booth on the Mass Pike (don’t laugh! with our new SUV, I had to open the car door the first time I drove it and needed to use the window quickly).

The next weekend I received a Chevy Cobalt. I always thought cobalt was a color, and was pleased when the car turned out to be blue. Of course, that was from a distance. Up close it looked more of a purple, and indeed the car’s key tag also identified it as purple. This car wasn’t quite as spiffy as the Dodge. The windows and locks were manual (on the other hand, no confusion at the toll), but the lights had an option to be either manual or automatic. I couldn’t figure out what setting I had on, so I ended up just turning them on and off manually. One major annoying thing about the Cobalt is that every time I used my blinker, I’d turn my bright lights on. But the CD player was great, the temperature controls perfect, and I always knew the outside temperature when I looked at the speedometer.

Oh, and speaking of the speedometer, I not only saw it turn over to 11,000, but I saw 11,111! I’ll post the photo of it as soon as I figure out how to get the picture off my cell phone.

I absolutely hate the Adobe Reader. I am not sure why I continuly have problems. I am religious about keeping up to date with software. I’m so fast about it, that when Macromedia (back when it was Macromedia) offered a backpack for the first few hundred or so to upgrade to MX, I got one! (Well, Kerri got it ultimately, but that’s another blog.)

The latest issue I had was that every time I tried to open a pdf file in FF, the whole thing would stop running. Oh, task manager said it was running, but it wasn’t running. I had to kill it through task manager, and, since I couldn’t restore the session when I reopened task manager, I would lose whatever browser windows I had open (yes, I know, I know, just use the history side, but that’s not the point). Fortunately, FF has an option to r-click and select “View page in External Application”.

However, now that I have Foxit downloaded and installed, opening pdf files is quick and painless. No, I’m not an affiliate or reseller. Just a pleased end-user.