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Wow. Whirlwind!
Eric was offered a 3-year job last Tuesday at the Max Planck Institute in Astronomy...which happens to be in HEIDELBERG, GERMANY!!!!
To say that life has just gotten crazy would be the understatement of the year. We're wrapping up our respective professional business by the end of July, packing and selling off most of our stuff by the very start of August, visiting the OR relatives, and then possibly driving my car cross-country to sell to one of my East Coast relatives. By around Sept 1, we will fly out of some East Coast airport, and settle into our temporary digs at the Institute's Guest House.
In the meantime, I'm turning cartwheels over the chance to learn Western Art Music in its birthplace. I will hope to learn German fast enough that I can enroll in school in a year.
This is likely to be one of my last blog posts on this site..."CACherylGA" is a sign-in name I picked when I was 17, and as I have not been a resident of Georgia for a good 12 years (and am about to lose my CA status - waaaa!), I will be moving virtual homes. E and I will have a joint blog while we are overseas, but the name is currently under intense discussion. When it is decided, it will be posted here. Needless to say, it will be some play on our names...highly likely to be DasFoMos.blahblah.com, or something equally silly. That is currently the least important detail of all, but it seems to be taking up an inordinate amount of our chit-chat time. :)
Just one question for the blogosphere: does anyone have any friends who recently moved overseas who are NOT part of the US Military? We're looking for recommendations for shipping companies. We won't have any furniture, so we're only moving a studio apartments' worth of household goods.Current Mood:  excited Current Music: Wagner |
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This crossed my inbox...perhaps others out there might enjoy reading it. Yes, it brings up both 9/11 AND the Nazis, but in a way that's actually useful...
( Welcome address to freshmen at Boston Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division at Boston Conservatory )Current Music: Quartet for the End of Time from youtube |
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So I turned 30 this past week...argh! Friday the 13th, to be exact.
My birthday itself was generally nice, and by now, I'm used to my February 13th birthday meaning a late-February / early-March birthday party with friends, as scheduling a party over Valentine's Day weekend is nearly impossible when most people I know are paired up. I had a lovely dinner with a family that E and I are close to - their daughter, who was my junior bridesmaid, has a Feb 13th birthday as well.
However, there were some annoying things that did happen that day that are somewhat amusing in total in hindsight, so in no particular order...
1) I woke up with a screaming headache.
2) Halfway through my birthday breakfast webcam meal with my folks in Georgia, Eric's phone rings. It was USAA, calling to confirm that he had just made an in-person credit card transaction somewhere in India that is registering as astrology.com. Whoops. Thankfully, USAA caught it immediately. The annoying thing was having to call up HRC and KQED and say "please don't bill this credit card - bill this other one, now."
3) Back in the conversation my folks and I were having...my Dad mentioned that some guy who also rents space in the same professional office space building as my Dad came in and was talking to him the other day. He saw a picture of me up and said, "hey, my son dated your daughter..." Small world, ha ha ha....
This man's son was the worst boyfriend I've ever had - verbally abusive, constantly belittling, tried to take advantage of me physically...I've forgiven, but can't entirely forget. His name being brought up was like being splashed with ice-cold water. In an very self-centered way, I didn't want to be reminded of someone like that on *MY* birthday - and especially by my lovable but clueless (on this count) parents.
4) We were housesitting for my pastor / boss, and the previous day (Thursday), her french bulldog had chewed up the pillow lining the bottom of his bed in the 10 friggin' minutes we weren't watching him. We weren't sure if he had ingested a fair amount of the white polyester fluff, or had just ripped the pillow-stuffing material to shreds. We were therefore on "poo watch"...if his excretory systems continued working normally, it was likely that no lasting damage was done. He spent my birthday morning and afternoon being as mopey and no-energy as possible, which was a huge change in his personality and didn't give me happy positive feelings about his inner health.
Visions of the previous time I dogsat for a boss (my last boss at Stanford) danced through my head...HER dog, Magik, died 3 weeks after the month I spent caring for him, and had started to show signs of decline the last 2 or 3 days I was there. Magik's heart defect wasn't my fault, but the guilt of "my boss left me a healthy dog, and it is now not" was coming back in spades. Crap, I can't kill another dog...c'mon, Tanq, go defecate for me!!!! c'mon, dude...please!
5) Thankfully, Tanq did eventually defecate, right before I had to leave for dinner. And where did this happen? All. Over. The Kitchen. Floor. TANQ - THANK GOD YOU'RE OKAY BUT YOU'RE A VERY BAD DOG! BAD DOG!
Oh well - the mythos that everything should go your way on your birthday is highly overrated.Current Mood:  amused |
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( my thoroughly self-centered contemplations )Current Mood:  contemplative Current Music: Gondoliers soundtrack |
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I swear I'm NOT going to turn this into a TMI weight-loss journal, but I got on the scale this morning and I've apparently dropped 7 pounds since the day I came back from the cruise. Some of that is probably due to my having been exceedingly virtuous since Jan 2 (working out and eating more veggies), but the vast majority is likely a testament to what happens when the human body is pulled off the 5-billion-calories-a-day cruise "diet of debauchery" and is placed on something more reasonable.
Given I'm not sure how much of this is actually due to my own efforts, I'm more proud of the fact I'm back to jogging 30 minutes straight without feeling like I'm going to die.
Just gotta keep this up...it's highly doubtful more weight is going to drop off as easily or as quickly.
Next blog entry - career musings.Current Mood: accomplished |
| » New Year's Goals - Body |
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Since coming from a LOVELY cruise (to be blogged about this coming weekend at some point), I had about a day and a half with dear hubby before he departed for the AAS meeting in Long Beach followed by a few days of manly bonding with Dave. 10 days as bachelorette has given me plenty of time to think and reflect on the past year, and plan for the next one. Low hanging fruit first...
My body is not how I'd care for it to be. I had the courage to get on a scale immediately upon coming back from the cruise and found that I was firmly 15 pounds overweight by my doctors' standards, and about 20-23 pounds from my "fighting weight". It's been hard to consistently work out with my back being off and on in spasm over the past year or so, but really - had I focused on the problem, it wouldn't have gotten to this point. I HATE the pictures of me on the cruise. My sister posting them to facebook was a necessary but highly unwelcome kick in the rear.
Looking back, I was my healthiest around 2003. Granted, that's when I lived in San Francisco with a very different lifestyle than I have now. I worked out an hour a day nearly every day of the week. I walked everywhere. I ate very little meat, and my alcohol was limited to Friday or Saturday nights. I had no career direction and no significant relationships, but hell - it was a really fun time!
Now, life is still fun, but in a different way. Married life has been wonderful and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but the good health habits I had as a single woman have gone by the wayside. Exercise has been sporadic since I moved in with Eric. Early in our marriage, and definitely before that during the stress of wedding planning, dinner would be something like pot roast or mac-and-cheese (foods that Eric loves - trying to be the good wittle wifey) accompanied by a beer or glass of wine. I'd go back for seconds - always less than Eric ate, of course, but good grief - he can put away a keg of beer and a small cow and still have room for dessert. Merely "eating less than E" is a poor metric for my own health.
This week, I've reset both my exercise habits and my eyes as they relate to the size of my stomach. I'm back to having a consistent first course of veggies for lunch and dinner. Alcohol is gone, replaced by tea. If I watch it, I can have this weight safely off by Easter, and will strive to keep it off after that.
Jan. 9th, 2009 @ 11:18 am
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| » Quick update |
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December has been...well...December. As a musician at a church, there's a sense of "this is the busy joyful time of the year!" just as the secular world is going all-out with "buy stuff - it will make you happy!!!" I'm increasingly "anti-stuff" and am continuing to delight in getting rid of things that I have no need for, but that will hopefully be useful to someone else. I heart Craigslist - just got rid of some old jewelry this morning to someone who works with kids in Hunters/Bayview - those kids will hopefully wear heart-shaped things more than I tend to these days.
So really - with my wonderful bit of luck - what has to happen just as I'm gearing up for loads of stuff at work? If you guessed "something to derail my ability to get work done", give yourself 10 points.
The biggest event over the last few days (sorry for the ick factor) is that I apparently had an ovarian cyst rupture on Tuesday. Didn't know I had been nurturing a cyst, certainly knew something was wrong when I went from feeling fine to rocking in a fetal position / throwing up / pain-induced space cadet in the space of 3 hours. Eric packed me up and took me to the doctor, where they thankfully ruled out the big scary things like ectopic pregnancy and appendicitis quickly. Without any associated bleeding that could have earned me a trip to the OR, as can sometimes happen when these sorts of cysts rupture, I'm basically stuck waiting for the cyst contents to reabsorb and my lady-bits to decide to come off of Defcon 1.
This is the first day since that time that I came off of the Vicodin. I had two doses of heavy-duty motrin, decided to make a break for it to TJs after days on the couch with the walls closing in on me, and had to immediately go back on Vicodin after that brief trip nearly felled me. Ugh. It's so annoying that something so innocuous (at this point) can hurt so frickin' much. I should be praising God that I didn't wind up in surgery, and didn't lose an ovary to this episode...but really, all I'm doing right now is sulking and going through every bit of chocolate and every chick flick in the house while really really wanting a stiff drink that I can't have due to the narcotics. Hopefully, the praise will come.
Dec. 19th, 2008 @ 05:02 pm
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| » Overcoming the Tyranny of Stuff - 1 pile at a time |
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It's been an incredibly busy time...Pinafore went up, followed by E and I getting sick at the same time ("you give me fever...") and then the craziness of Thanksgiving. In short, Pinafore was career- and calling-affirming, the getting sick sucked, and Thanksgiving was the usual happy mess of too many carbs and lots of family time.
E's mother is moving up to Bend to be near his sister - her husband is a cop, and they are putting down roots in that town. As Irene's other child also lives in Oregon with his family and she's basically at retirement age anyways, she's bought a house up there and is starting the long process of moving. To that end, her house in Novato goes up on the market this month. To that end, E had to take home a good chunk of his childhood this past weekend.
Have I mentioned we live in a studio apartment that has about 300 square feet of space that was already packed to the rafters prior to this weekend? If not for Ikea being the next town over, we'd have no prayer. As it is, though, everything has a place - generally far above my head. :)
As my pastor enjoys the writings of Shane Claiborne ("Ordinary Radicals" and "Jesus for President") and a group he's associated with, Alternatives for Simple Living, we've gotten a good dose of those pro-Jesus / anti-blind-consumerism / responsible use of "stuff" ideas over the last 3 years. We've come to the conclusion that we are going to live our lives together as simply as possible - not really the ascetic existence of monks, perhaps, but certainly without extra bits, bobs, doodads, and square feet of living space. If we can do without it, we really want to try to do without it. If we can live in a small studio that is organized well, that is far preferable to moving someplace bigger, only to feel burdened with the task of filling it with "stuff."
With that in mind (and given the extra push of boxes of Eric's old things cluttering the walkways :) ), we've been going through everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - that we own, and saying "do we actually need _______?" It's been wonderfully freeing. Several armloads of books have made their way to new homes. (One in particular found its way to a woman who said "oh my GOODNESS - my ex-husband ran off with my copy of this years ago - and now I've got a new one!") Barely-worn clothing is headed for Goodwill. Clothing that was sitting there unused due to a missing button or a stain is off to one side, and will be dealt with so as to either restore function, or confirm non-usability. My heart-based jewelery from when I was a girl is going to wind up with some young lady at church. The 8 mismatched silver hoop earrings that were sitting there, hoping to miraculously be restored to their mates, have been tossed. DVDs and CDs we don't need are going to Rasputin, to hopefully be traded in for something we'll actually use.
This is only the first step, but dangnabit, it feels really good to do it.
Dec. 2nd, 2008 @ 07:03 am
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| » Imposition of "the gay lifestyle" |
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This is not an original train of thought, but one that's been bouncing in my head for a bit of time thanks to a phone conversation last week. As my church is "Open and Affirming" (ie - we don't discriminate against LBGT folks) we tend to attract two groups of people directly because of that. The first are people who are either part of the LBGT community themselves, or who have close family who are.
The second group we attract are people who are definitely NOT of the same mindset as we are. Some walk in or call looking for an argument. Others, though, contact us and seem genuinely interested in what we believe - their own beliefs being obviously opposite ours - and how we reconcile being gay-friendly when most churches tend to not be so. ( One guy called last week... )
Oct. 31st, 2008 @ 10:14 am
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| » ticked off at the Mormons - donate to No on 8! |
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Donate to "No on 8"
Mormons renew calls for California gay marriage ban
Normally in my daily life, the Mormons just exist...much like Buddhists, and Muslims, and the laundromat on the corner. However, now...they are the driving force behind the "Yes on 8" campaign, which if passed in CA on election day, will take away the rights of LBGT couples to marry. "They" includes not just Mormons in state, but Mormons outside of the state as well. I'll hand it to them - "they" are prodigious fund-raisers.
And by close association, "they" are all liars as well - the current "yes on 8" ad out promotes, among other BS ideas, that churches will be sued to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry. Um, no. Nice try, but try again...that's no more logical than, say, Catholic churches being sued by non-Catholics for the "right" to marry in a Catholic ceremony. If a gay couple wants to marry in a church, there are any number of churches that are Open and Affirming that will allow it - mine among them.
This is a matter of civil rights - plain and simple. This is about the right of partners to visit each other in a hospital. This is about rights of inheritance. This is about the 1000+ legal rights that Eric and I gained when we got married in one fell swoop being available to all couples in the state of California.
Fine, you don't "agree" with gay marriage? I personally don't "agree" with a vast majority of Hollywood marriages and a small number of ones that have occurred closer to home - does that I mean I should have the right to declare those marriages null and void, simply because I don't like the idea of those people marrying, or even more, because I imagine myself the mouthpiece of God? NO NO NO - specific churches have every right to decide who they will or won't marry within their walls, but that is NOT how America as a country works.
Aside from this, I'm beyond furious that out-of-staters are weighing in so heavily on an in-state proposition. The coalition that the Mormons are heading up of other like-minded conservative groups are cheerfully promoting that they are "defending" marriage when in fact they are doing the absolute reverse. And among undecided voters, polls now show them slightly WINNING, thanks to having $10 million more in cash than the "No on 8" folks, and the ability to incessantly run that ad full of lies.
Shame on them! Shame on them all!
E and I donated today to the cause, and tomorrow, I'm going to call up and get time on a phone bank.
Oct. 10th, 2008 @ 12:36 am
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| » Let's give three cheers and one cheer more,... |
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...I know I enjoy being busy, but this is NUTS. I'm still working, I'm still trying to be a good lil' wifey / life partner and all that, and I'm still trying to work towards grad school...but now I've got HMS Pinafore to deal with.
Rehearsals started just after I got back from the wedding in New York. I wake up with "I AM the captain of the PINA-fore...and a RIGHT good CAP-tain TOO!" going full-throttle in my head. I keep finding myself thinking, "where do viola players hide?" when I should be thinking about work, or husband, or friends, or etc....
I love doing shows, and being the Music Director (TM) in this context is new to me. I can't wait until opening night - I get to conduct an orchestra! Whoo-hoooo!
I just wish I could compartmentalize my thoughts on this project - i.e., think about Pinafore when working on Pinafore, and avoid it otherwise. My inability to do so is negatively affecting my life. Stray Pinafore thoughts keep creeping into everything else...like fungus...and I happen to like mushrooms...but I'd rather they stay put in pasta or other savory dish, and stay away from my biscotti and cup of tea, metaphorically speaking...
Oct. 7th, 2008 @ 11:57 am
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| » Quick rant as a mini-break from e-mail |
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Since when did we as a country NOT want the best and the brightest leading us?
When it comes to national office, I will never vote for someone whose intellect and training I don't respect. I can understand the jibes against the "Washington insiders", but the "elitist" charges just completely baffle me. I don't want "Joe Six-pack American" anywhere near the White House - I want LEADERS - people whose intellect I'm in awe of, and whose experience I respect.
Fuel for this rant - Sarah Palin - specifically her Katie Couric interview - just incredibly painful. To pick one of many things - since when did a question about Hamas give cause for a quick turn towards a rant about the evils of Iran's leader? I don't care for Iran's leadership, but c'mon - if I was a VP candidate asked a direct question like that, I'd answer about Hamas, or anything else having to do with Israel and Palestine...not go off into a "WE MUST PROTECT AMERICA AGAINST EVIL IN THE FORM OF IRAN" tangent.
And this is the woman my mom and sister rave about - "oh she's so smart, oh she's such a leader" blah blah BLAH. I wasn't planning to vote Republican this fall, but at least in past elections, I have had at least a modicum of respect for the opposite party's candidates. Sarah Palin? Really? Is this really the best the Pubs could come up with?
And also (referencing Troopergate) - since when did subpoenas become optional? Are they now optional for everyone? I didn't get the memo - anyone else get the memo?
Oct. 1st, 2008 @ 11:13 am
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| » Already feeling ackward about needing to lose 12 pounds... |
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...and what do I see on the sidebar of LJ before I log in and the ads disappear (on my main page), but ads for a dating service for Big Beautiful Women! How did that get matched to my blog? Argh!
Thanks, Internet gods...are you done laughing yet?
Typing from New York - my uncle is getting married, and the family is assembling. I pulled about 5 hours of sleep between Monday and Wednesday - in two spurts - and poor E pulled about 3. After sleeping for about 10 hours, I'm now in that lovely "wired with adrenaline but still tired" phase...no more sleep (I've tried) but still definitely feel like I need sleep. Grumble grumble.
Sep. 25th, 2008 @ 06:21 am
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| » Musings and a general call for September 8th resolutions |
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In church, we're one week into a month-ish-long series on "Life in Balance". Pastor Elane's first sermon, called "First Things First", is here, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page.
I'd heard of the existence of a book called "the 7 habits of highly effective people" before yesterday's sermon, but that was where my knowledge ended. From that book / from that author (Stephen Covey), Pastor Elane talked about the 2x2 matrix of "urgent v. non-urgent" and "important v. not important" , as listed here.
NOT that I am blaming Eric!....but the entire process of engagement-wedding-planning-wedding-happening-married-bliss has left me off kilter, now a year and a half or so later. I feel like I stay busy, but don't ever get done what actually needs to get done - in Stephen Covey-speak, my life tends to be more focused on quadrants 3 and 4 and less on quadrant 2 than is perhaps wise. Elane's sermon has been rolling around in my head for the last 24 hours, and so, I'm tossing out my September 8th "Only 8 months late New Years' Resolution", and invite anyone else out there to join me - at least in a months' attempt to make some changes to daily living.
What is in my quadrant 2 on a daily basis
1) Quality time with God and with the Word
2) Quality time with husband (side-by-side computer-ing and talking about bills doesn't count!)
3) Exercise
4) at least an hour of grad school audition material practice...ignoring any other gig-driven practicing
What is in my quadrant 2 on a weekly basis
5) time with family in person, in video calls, or on the phone
6) time with friends on the phone or in person
7) A few hours to attend to "practical family business" - basically, E's and my Wednesday AM "Family Business Meetings". It's boring and non-urgent on a daily basis, but our household already is running so much smoother for it after 5 or 6 weeks.
I'm going to try to focus more on what actually matters, keep track of how I've done, and report back in a month.
Sep. 8th, 2008 @ 09:36 am
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| » in the category of "my life is easy"... |
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...my major problem is (still) unfortunately my wedding of last October. The top 775 pictures are up in a group room on snapfish as of last weekend. Of those top 775 out of 2500+, E and I have both gone through and selected our tippy-top favorites for the formal album. We're on a roll, woot woot...but gosh darn it, this project involves more than just the two of us - it involves his mom, my mom, and my dad.
( my whining )
(examining what I just wrote...) I'm doing a poor yet surprisingly verbose job of explaining my annoyance. Basically, it's coming down to another "power play"-type situation, where Eric is expected to put members of his family foremost in the album and my mother expects me to advocate for photos of her side of the family - not of my father's family. (and yes, my parents are happily married, but this "my family / your family" thing has been going on for years, much to my dismay.) Meanwhile, Eric and I are under the delusion that as we're married now, our "family" is much larger than either mother seems to get, and "our" wedding album will damn frak it reflect this fact.
Oh yeah - and we both despise maternal guilt, and are blessed with mothers who are fantastic at handing it out...must have been something in the Queens water back in the 1950s.
Aug. 24th, 2008 @ 10:15 pm
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| » MUST...COMPLETE...MY...WEDDING... |
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I've been exceedingly remiss in actually "completing" my wedding. Yes yes - the one that happened back in October 2007. I just recently (within the last week) realized that E and I had about 40 thank-yous left to write (massive big "whoops" - only 10 months late :S), and I've been avoiding my wedding photos like the plague.
Well, with a Galante family wedding coming up in September, my name will be worse than mud if I arrived in NYC without both of those things completely taken care of as per my mother's explicit promise. The thank-yous were the closest to being finished, and are now on track to be done tomorrow afternoon. Whoo-hooo!
The pictures are a much more daunting task. We received about 2500+ photos back from Bella. Slightly complicating things was the fact that we got 2 photographers' worth of material - separated by photographer. It's pretty simple to figure out the best 1 or 2 of each of the "important" shots within a sequence, but it's annoying to have to merge all of the pictures for the purposes of making comparisons.
We chose Bella Photography because they give all couples the complete rights to the photos after the wedding...they make their money off of designing beautiful books and taking the pictures in the first place - not selling them back to people at a huge mark-up. Therefore, Step One of "dealing with the photos" has been sorting and loading them up on snapfish.com, so that we can blitz all of our guests with the group room URL. I knocked the 2500+ photos down to 1042 as of Saturday evening, with much more rearranging and culling tomorrow courtesy of Eric, whose turn it is to deal with the task.
Once that's done (as of Monday, I hope?) we can then proceed. "Step Two" in this whole process is where we take whatever is left after this weekend's culling of photos, and knock that number down to 100-140 total pictures. That pile will then become fodder for our professionally-designed blah-de-blah wedding album. I hope and pray that we'll be able to pass things back to Bella to start designing our layout as of next weekend. The weight of this "to-do" hanging over my head has gone on long enough.
Aug. 16th, 2008 @ 10:39 pm
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| » yesterday and today's events |
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Yesterday: gave 2 piano lessons at the church with the precocious W. boys (aged 5 and 7, I think?...) Younger brother came in with major attitude - head-butting his Mom, flaying on the floor, choosing the most echo-y part of the church to pitch a loud fit in...PRAISE GOD that he got whatever was bugging him out of his system in time to have one of his better lessons. I now fully realize the impact of a stern in-your-face admonishment, immediately followed by leaving the child alone and deprived of an audience - it completely broke the tantrum.
Elder brother came prepared, but (dum dum DUUUUMMMMMM), had not entirely filled out his practice log. ("I forgoooooot...isn't it more important to write down how long I've practiced than to write down those pre-goal and post-session wrap-up thingies? And see, my Mom signed off on it and here's all the time I practiced...") He seemed a bit surprised that half of his lesson was then devoted to pulling weeds around the church property. I was feeling generous - he *had* partially filled out his practice log, not forgotten it entirely - else his entire lesson would have been yard work.
The "you come unprepared, you do yard work" shtick is working beyond all of my expectations. It seems to take just 1 session where the kid realizes that smiling up sweetly at me isn't going to save them from getting their hands dirty...and amazingly, practice logs are beautiful and complete thereafter. I just wish that I didn't have to go through this with what appears to be EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY STUDENTS...eh. They'll get it eventually. And in the meantime, the church won't have a single weed anywhere on campus.
The rest of my work day yesterday, and a vast majority of today, is going to be spent accompanying the Palo Alto Children's Theater's production of "Pecos Bill." This gig dropped in my lap last Thursday, and on Friday, I had the music in hand about 15 minutes before I was accompanying a full run-through with bass and drums. Easy money, and I love accompanying, but GAAAAA - I wish the kids had been rehearsing with something other than a CD with vocal track on it the entire time...at least a CD WITHOUT any vocals on it. Entrances are really shaky. Also, unless just coached "louder!", the kids default to these itty-bitty singing voices that I'm struggling to hear - and I'm in the pit, directly in front of them. I wince every time a spoken line in the middle of a song comes up...having never had to do it fully by themselves until I came on board last Friday, it's a bit of a uncertain situation for all concerned.
Well, we open tonight with a four-day run - so it will be what it will be. And in the meantime, I'm going to practice this morning by singing along, just in case I have to rescue some 11 year old from the deer-in-the-headlights-open-mouth-no-sound situation.
All things considering, my problems are nothing. :)
Jul. 22nd, 2008 @ 08:50 am
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| » Vacation / "mindfulness" / random gig! |
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We spent last week traveling up towards Ashland, OR and the Morganson Family Fun that awaited us there. First up was a bit of a "staycation" in the Bay Area - we camped out overnight at Eric's Mom's place in Novato after tooling around Kirby Cove and other SF locations. I finally got to visit the Jelly Belly factory. E and I kept singing the Oompa Loompa song to each other. High marks went to the Jewish camp group that was on our tour for overall good behavior, and high marks to the counselors of the other group of camp kids that were on our tour...there were several squabbles, but the counselors were on each of them in about 0.2 seconds.
The drive up and back to Ashland was hellish. Air quality was absolutely AWFUL due to the wildfires, and we saw plenty of emergency vehicles on the road. Additionally, the dashboard temperature read 100+ degrees for everything north of the Bay Area almost up to the CA-OR state line. My prayers are and continue to be with the firefighters.
Our time in Ashland was quite nice. The "10-headed Morganson Hydra", as I liked to refer to all of us, had a lot of relaxing fun. Various combinations of people took in 2 plays (Our Town and A Midsummer Night's Dream). We ate, we laughed, we celebrated my M-I-L's birthday, we saw a rubber ducky race down a creek, we hiked around, and and we spent at least an hour each day on the playground - fun!
I'm still trying to conquer my back problems. As it is clearly a stress-triggered problem, my new "thing" (not that it's a new idea at all) is to be more mindful of what's in front of me right now. I tend to multi-task, and wind up running at a far higher RPM than I should, given that I'm not out fighting fires or doing anything that actually endangers life and limb. Eric and I are trying hard not to take home work, or if it is indeed a "work from home" day, it's clearly delineated - 10 AM - 6 PM is work, and nothing but work happens in that time and only in that time....not "oh, it's 10 PM and I need to send out just 1 last e-mail."
And in other news - I just got a random gig! The Palo Alto Children's theater needed a pianist for a show that goes up next week, and a friend of mine from the Savoyards e-mailed me late last night about it. Whoo-hooo, extra money from out of nowhere! :)
Jul. 17th, 2008 @ 09:47 am
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| » Haven't blogged in forever....quick catch-up - help me name my domain! |
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Married life continues to be great. We're getting our lives in proper order...weekly Family Business Meetings (FBM, in a bit of a nod to CCF) help us stay on top of annoying personal business matters.
I've officially been 75% Music Director since starting at Campbell UCC in a full-time capacity - the other 10 hours of my work each week have been as the receptionist / secretary in the office. I've used a good chunk of those hours for music prep, but with people coming in constantly, it's hard to stay focused, and harder still to prepare music sans a piano or keyboard in arms' reach.
My music job currently looks like this: deal with each Sunday's music (selection, scoring out / arranging, and rehearsal of the adult musicians), teach 10 or so students piano, deal with our once/month deep Worship service, and deal with a steady stream of one-off events.
Drum roll, please...as of July 1, I'm full-time music! Whoo-hoooo!
With that extra time, I'm going to regularly attempt to compose, as well as provide Worship education broader than what I've been doing. Piano is a great instrument to lead Worship with, but it takes a while to gain enough competency to lead songs. Guitar? Heck, you just need to know 3 chords! I'm going to start up regular guitar jam / teaching sessions (aiming for at least 1 rep from each of the Bible / book study groups) and I'm starting up a youth group band as well. The latter will be an absolute joyride - nearly every youth group member plays at least 1 instrument - it's bizarrely wonderful how musical those kids are.
Now that I'm formally a full-time certified musician, I need to do what I should have done a while ago - get a domain name and set up shop for free-lance non-Campbell-UCC projects, both paid and unpaid. For now, it looks like I'll be one of the accompanists for SJ Lyric Opera's fall show (Rose of Persia), and I'm the Music Director (TM) for HMS Pinafore at Stanford. The latter show goes up in 6 weeks from auditions to opening night in November- it's going to be an interesting few weeks.
Anyway - so here's the question - what should my domain name be? I don't want to pigeonhole myself for weddings/events or for the Bay Area. I'm leaning towards "Music by Cheryl" or perhaps "(blank) Music by Cheryl" (Fine? Elegant? Stately? On-time? arggh...)but "Morganson Music" is also on the table...not original or creative by any means, but it gets the point across. Of course, using adjectives like "fine / elegant" does start to put you firmly in the "let me play your bar mitzvah! It will be CLASSY!" category....not that it's bad if that's what you want, but it's limiting.
Anyone else got something better?
Jun. 28th, 2008 @ 09:32 pm
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