And here's today's rondeau.

( His Hooded Eyes )

Have another rondeau. Don't mind if I do!

( The Waiting Room )

I am not sure what result I was expecting, but ( it wasn't this. )

I picked up Stephen Fry's Ode Less Travelled again recently and became intrigued by the rondeau form. This poetic form is long enough for one to explore an idea or sound, but short enough (for me) to knock one out and still have time read a bit during Simon's karate class.

( My Cruel Devices )

I am thrilled and honored to be Music/Filk Guest of Honor at Balticon 43 in 2009! (I hope to see you there Memorial Day weekend.)

*Does a little dance*

Oh, wow! What an amazingly awesome con! I will write more later, but for now, I am home. I have mountains of laundry and a husband and child that have missed me. But, I would like to say a heartfelt thanks to the FENCON concom, Panda*monium, and all the folks who attended and participated in FENCON for making Three Weird Sisters feel so welcome.

And I'm apparently on youtube thanks to the lovely joyeuse. Actually, I checked later she also put up a youtube of all three of us performing Brenda's "These Two." I'm not going to say (at this time) what song I performed by myself. *snerk*

And Z. is even cuter in person than he is in pictures. What a sweetie! :-)

All the daylilies I bought at the Huntsville Botanical Garden sale are planted. On the sweep of sidewalk where only stella d'oro grew, the stellas have been thinned and alternated with various daylilies in different colors. It may look exceedingly garish, and I'm delighted by the thought! I think the stellas will help pull it together conceptually though. I planted red tulips in that same area, since they tend to be dying back before the daylilies really get going in late spring.

I planted more daylilies on the right side of the house too. There were only weeds there before, so I actually added some stellas and an unidentified orange daylily to that row. I don't know if I'll plant that area with spring bulbs or not. We'll see how I feel when I get back from FENCON.

That leaves two major projects for the coming year: dig out the junipers on the front sweep and plant that area with pretty plants mixed with herbs (I think herbs are pretty too -- just a little less flashy.) AND after Wesley and his Dad remove the swing set which is falling down, plant a vegetable garden in its place this summer. That area is the one (mostly) flat and sunny spot in our backyard -- that the lawnmower team tends to avoid.

And I found a quote I posted in an earlier gardening-tagged post.

. . . Is today.


It's today if you need me to transcribe your song. Basically, if it's waiting in my email box by the time I wake up tomorrow and I have room for it, I can get it done.

If you want to put in a parody, or you have already transcribed your song(s) into Finale, something Finale can read, or a pdf, jpg, tiff, gif or some such, you may have until November 14, 2008.
(Pay no attention to those '2007's on the publicity page of Gafilk.org!)

Please, send your entries to
songbook@gafilk.org

For those of you who might not know, Three Weird Sisters are Music Guests of Honor at FENCON this coming weekend (October 3-5, 2008). WHEE! And thanks Panda*Monium! (They sponsored us.)

I know we're going to get to see abovenyquist, joyeuse13, Z.(Squee!) marcgunn, Dene Foye, msminlr, meltatum, faxpaladin, and maybe kilbia at FENCON, and I'm really happy about that!

The full Guest Line up at FENCON V includes the following:

Guest of Honor: Gregory Benford

Music Guest of Honor: Three Weird Sisters
sponsored by Panda*Monium

Artist Guest of Honor: Real Musgrave

Fen Guest of Honor: Gerald Burton

Toastmaster: Howard Waldrop

Special Guest: Jay Lake

ORAC Special Guest: Doris Egan

(There is a link to yet more guests at the website.)

I ordered this from my local music store along with Jazz chord Hanon, Salsa Hanon, Rock Hanon, and Blues Hanon. (For some reason as I write this, I'm briefly reminded of Eddie Izzard's riff on Stonehenge, Stickhenge, Strawhenge and the three little pigs.)

I have played through the first couple of exercises of Jazz Hanon and one of the Salsa Hanon exercises. They definitely felt like good finger exercises --especially the Jazz Hanon exercises because they are already transposed to all 12 keys for you. I will need to play through more of them before I decide if these are sets of exercise that will actually help me play jazz better. I have to say that I played through Get Down Mama right after practicing my various Hanon-age and immediately noticed a greater ease at the keyboard.

Rosemary (my fostered acoustic upright) definitely got a work out today. This is good, because she has just had her first tuning in 26 years and really wasn't played regularly for the last thirteen. I think we'll have to do the 6 week booster tuning sooner rather than later. I like playing her because she has a more organic feel to her, because she's well -- organic! So, the sound has a different way of resonating; the hammers sometimes lock up a little; some of the notes stick occasionally; she's imperfect. But, I find I really like that. I feel like it's a partnership.

I just read some of the Amazon reviews of the Jazz Hanon and Salsa Hanon, and they weren't good. I think at least one person had thought the Salsa book would be a how-to for playing salsa. It's definitely not that. Someone else mentioned 101 Montunos by Rebeca Mauleon, so that's now sitting in my shopping cart at Amazon. I'll probably ask Emily at EmiRon Music to order it for me though, so I can support my (favorite) local music store. The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine has an excellent introduction to claves and montunos in Latin jazz piano. I'll be interested to read Rebeca Mauleon's approach.

Wesley and I discovered he had a $100.00 gift certificate to Amazon sitting -- just sitting! on his desk. I had been wanting to order a couple of books -- especially, adamselzer's latest, I Put a Spell on You: From the Files of Chrissie Woodward, Spelling Bee Detective (Hardcover), and now they have shipped! Simon will be so excited!

I no longer want the inflatable I mentioned in this post. I saw it at Lowe's. It has that 'far away' look. When you look at it up close it is rather noisy and a bit butt ugly.


Instead I am interested in the much less expensive and cooler black cat. algoroth had mentioned seeing it at Lowes, and I saw it today while buying large bags of tulip bulbs.

It turns its head! And not constantly -- just every now and then. So, it looks like it is stalking anyone who might approach your house. Yay!

It will pair nicely with the black cat and pumpkin inflatable shown in this user picture.

Yummy! I saw this link in the girlgenius_lab community. Recipes for trilobite cookies!


Betcha can't eat just one!

I have ordered the upgrade. I'll be interested to check out the streamlined workflow and multi-page editing enhancements that have been added.

I have enjoyed the modifications to the mass edit feature that occurred in Finale 2008. It used to be that if you cut and pasted, you had to do entire measures. Last year they started allowing you to cut and paste certain sections of a measure. This is very powerful for instance if while playing a score into Finale you accidentally missed a beat. You can cut the music, shift it over a half a bar or so and paste it.

So Yay! (And tax deductible.)

algoroth sent me this via email:

Local officials say it was a mistake to allow a television commercial company to grind grooves into a stretch of desert roadway near Lancaster to enable car tires to play a song -- "The William Tell Overture" -- as people drive over it.

The sounds are disturbing people in a nearby subdivision, the Daily News reports. The City of Lancaster plans to pave over the musical grooves Tuesday.

Persons driving the posted 55 miles an hour west on Avenue K, in the high desert about five miles west of the Antelope Valley (14) Freeway, hear about 38 musical notes of the well-known theme, also known as the overture to "The Lone Ranger."

American Honda has paid for the promotion as part of a television ad campaign set to air this fall, but amateurs have peppered YouTube with homemade renditions of their own vehicles rolling over the grooves.

The road is tuned to a car just exactly the length, and equipped with tires the same size, as a Honda Civic, a spokesman for Honda said. But other vehicles are also successful in playing the notes, if a little off-key.

That noise is not exactly music to the ears of persons living in a nearby subdivision, who are telling the Daily News that the notes blend into a cacophony that keeps them awake at night.

"When you hear it late at night, it will wake you up from a sound sleep," said music critic Brian Robin, who lives a half mile away from the project. "It's awakened my wife three or four times a night," he told the newspaper.

But people from elsewhere are delighted. "I think it's kind of cool," said Peggy Hager of Llano. "When you are driving out on Avenue K, you're going out to the middle of nowhere. It's a nice surprise to come across this thing."

Avenue K got its groove on Sept. 5, and the sour notes from neighbors soon reached a crescendo at City Hall, said Pauline East, the Antelope Valley Film Office liaison officer. The street was volunteered to help attract filmmakers and their dollars to the High Desert, she said.

"Was it historic? Yes," she told the Daily News.

"Maybe the wrong location? Obviously. We thought it was far enough away."

Simon: I'm hungry!
Me: Already? What would you like?
Simon: Hot cocoa! I need a stimulant.

Yesterday and today I planted day lilies I bought at the Huntsville Botanical Garden and mums I bought at White Dove. (I'm not done!) I also brought home a lovely rose bush named Lily. (Bethany at White Dove named her.) Lily is a Pink Knock Out, indigenous to the area, who smells and looks lovely in our living room. Once I decide on the perfect spot outside, I'll plant her there next year.

I also weeded and dug up all the gladiola bulbs in one of my side beds. I've never been happy with my glads, because I never plant them deep enough. They bloom beautifully but always flop over. So, I'm planning to do a proper job of it this year. In the process of digging them up, I've discovered they made babies! Yes, little bulblets. I have waaay more glad bulbs than I need.

I also thinned out my freesias. They hardly bloomed this year, because they clustered too thickly around one of the red crape myrtles.

A Question for those of you attending OVFF: Would you like some gladiola bulbs and perhaps a few freesias? I have no idea what colors you'll be getting, because I have an assortment.

Reply here if you are interested (or just want to comment.)

When I read in several people's journals that they were going back and tagging all their old posts (basically anything written in the Time Before Tagging, I thought "No way! What a colossal waste of time. And I don't need a new thing to be OCD about."

But, one day, I looked to the left of my journal and realized that I created tags randomly for no good reason, and I had entirely too many, and some of them were misspelled.

So, I had to clean that up. It was untidy, and that bugs me on a deep level.

In the process of cleaning up and removing redundant tags, I began to think about how a tag would have been perfect for this or that old entry. And I waxed a bit nostalgic and thought I might just pop back and tag just a post here or there. Nothing too excessive. Riiiight.

Now 2002 is tagged.

I wrote about conversations with Simon ALOT. I don't do that as much anymore. He is wonderful to listen to and talk with, but I am much more conscious that these are his ideas and thoughts and he might have an opinion on who they should be shared with. I usually ask permission.

All too soon he will be thirteen (less than 4 years!) and be horribly embarassed by everything I say or do or write -- particularly if it pertains to him.

Other things I realize by reading 2002's entries is that I was terribly afraid I was losing my intellectual edge. I really thought academe is where I needed to be. I craved colleagues.

Needs change. I have really enjoyed meeting other music teachers up here, and I liked being on the semester system again. But, I have more local friends to have lunch with and converse with now. I suspect that the mental stagnation I felt back then resulted more from sheer loneliness than any true need for a different career. On the other hand, it gets boring doing the same thing every day -- even if you really enjoy it. And I did and do.

Also, in Mobile I gardened all the time -- and wrote about it. I am returning to that now as well. I've met a really wonderful lady who sells fruit, flowering plants, and now herbs. We liked each other instantly, and I plan to return to her market Friday and purchase several mums.

My schedule is more fluid. The challenge is to do something meaningful with the additional time. I'm still really busy, and it is very easy to squander time on cleaning rooms that could stand to go another day, doing laundry when we have plenty of clothes, answering email when I've just checked it, etc.

Also I miss karate. I've been teaching yoga for over five years now. I plan to continue yoga, but maybe it's time to be a little aggressive again. ;-) We've just got to get Simon to orange belt, and then he'll be in the intermediate classes which meet back to back with the beginner adult classes. (I want to start over completely at white belt.)

I've been finally going back through yea old ancient posts (2002) and tagging them. It is interesting to me that I remember so many of the first year's post and so few of the later ones. Part of it was live journal was sparkly new to me then and one of my only forms of socializing -- particularly with all the wonderful people I met through filk conventions and house filks. And part of it was that there were not that many people on my friendslist yet, so there was this sense of sitting in a room with just a few people and talking.

And I'm a little nostalgic for some of that. When we moved up to north Alabama to a much more close-knit community, I felt I needed to be more close-mouthed, so I began friendslocking more and writing superficially when I did post. I had started teaching at a community college, and my students were older, more internet savvy, and more curious about their music teacher.

I have to limit the tagging to one month at a time lest I get completely sucked in to the history of the Mary-that-was and forget to get all the things done that the Mary-that-is needs to get done.

THINGS:

One is a new (PAYING) transcription project.

Two is a new song about underwear.

Three is practicing on Rosemary, our foster piano (Baldwin upright), newly tuned. (She'll need a booster shot of tuning in about six weeks -- poor thing hadn't been tuned since 1982!)

Four is working out and keeping a careful food journal. I'm toward the end of the transition phase and finding I still tend to go ketotic even though I have added a number of foods back. This is because I have resumed weight training, and now I exercise almost every day 1-3 hours. So, I'm still trying to get enough calories in to stop losing weight (but not gain it.) This is tricky.

Five is practicing violin. I had stopped practicing violin for a while, but now Simon is getting private lessons with an excellent teacher (The others were great too, but they were teaching group lessons.) So, we're both practicing it more.

Six is practicing clarinet. I love playing in our local community band!

Seven is practicing piano. I had two gigs last week! I'm in a piano ensemble too.

Eight is transcribing music for GAFILK's songbook.

Nine is composing the rest of the "Leafy Faces" piece.

Ten is recording another book for a teacher.

Eleven is recording music for a couple of my friends' albums.

Twelve is reading Late Eclipses.

Thirteen's a charm and thirteen's a murder and thirteen's the feathers underneath your skin. . .
[heh. I couldn't resist. Make sure you buy Vixy and Ton'y album Thirteen if you haven't already done so.]

Fourteen is writing.

And there's the things I always have to do, like make sure Simon is fed, does his homework, gets to collaba/story with me in the car, practices violin, gets to karate on time . . etc. Take care of Wesley too, pay bills, keep the house clean (I'm a little OCD there.), etc.

Note I didn't even mention talking to friends who live far away. *sigh* Well, there's live journal.