Jing a Jong and Whistling Idiots

I am finally home safely from Key West, where I had a particularly rejuvenating and refreshing time both physically and mentally. It was so good to arrive home - yay, home! - to the enticing aroma of roast chicken and vegetables David had thrown in the oven before he left to pick me up from the airport (what a sweetie), to take a shower in my own bathroom (liquid hand soap in designer fragrances, yay!), and of course to commune with the kitties.

My homecoming joy was intensified by the fact that everything that had happened so far during the day had been exhaustingly annoying. The cretins running the Key West airport decided to announce less than an hour before takeoff that my flight would be leaving 10 minutes early and that everyone on it should be through security by now. Thanks for the memo, you weenie wagons! I panicked, because I wasn't.

But I made it on the plane to Miami. It turns out that this would be the least annoying of the legs of my air travel.

While waiting on the crowded airplane out of Miami into Houston, this guy sitting in the row behind me was subjecting everyone on the plane to his last-minute cell phone conversation. He literally kept yelling into it long after the announcement to turn things off, as if to say, "I'm soooo important that I have to talk right up to the last possible second before take-off." As if this wasn't grating enough, he was speaking in very agitated Spanish, and had clearly forgotten the oft-broken cardinal rule of cell phone usage to use your inside voice while in a public place.

Finally, to the great satisfaction and amusement of the passengers sitting in front of me and to my right, the flight attendant made him hang up. I could almost hear the collective celestial major chord sung by my fellow passengers.

I inflated my fleece-covered Brookstone neck pillow (man, those things are a godsend - worth every penny), read my latest James Patterson thriller "Mary Mary" and listened to my mp3 player. As soon as I turned it off as we were descending, I became aware of a slow, bluesy, whistling that was just out of tune enough to make your teeth itch. I thought, "who in god's name whistles on a crowded plane?"

After enduring several minutes of this (during which I was technically not allowed to drown him out with my digitunes) I turned around and made eye contact with the guy and raised my eyebrows. Several of the passengers behind me smiled at me in gratitude - clearly this turd juggler was irritating the crap out of them too. But the infernal whistling kept on, and was it my imagination or did he get louder after my death stare? Did he think we all really needed his nauseatingly tone-deaf serenade? Aircraft exit music or water torture? As soon as we were taxiing, at the earliest possible opportunity, I cranked up the mp3s again and let Gwen Stefani drown him out and felt better. :)

Then I had to figure out where the hell I was in the Houston airport, which was so big I'm surprised it doesn't have it's own damn zip code. It was the size of a small planet, and I had forgotten my space suit and Jetsons car. To my horror, I had arrived in concourse E and had to somehow teleport myself to concourse B in 20 minutes to board in time for my flight. This involved forcing my airplane-stiff knees and legs into a light jog for what had to have been at least a mile with my 30 pound horn case on my back - and taking a blasted train, all of which put me at the gate on time (phew!) but with no time to spare before boarding. I hadn't eaten anything all day at this point, which raised the IBF (Inner Bitch Factor) considerably.

The last leg of the trip was by far the worst. Continental's commuter planes are so innefficient space-wise that I literally had more room on the little puddlejumpers into and out of Key West. My ultra-thin new expensive horn case didn't even fit in the overhead compartments, which were ridiculously crowded with everyone's carry on baggage. God forbid people actually check their non-valuable/non-breakable luggage so as to leave space for the carry on bags that cannot be checked. Oh no! It's absolutely necessary that you lug every last suitcase and garment bag on with you! Because if they checked anything, they would have to go to the....gasp....baggage claim area!!! Which is at least 5 feet away from where they'll be exiting the airport anyway when they leave! The horror!!

Anyway, we sat on the damn tarmac for an hour while the crew repeatedly said that "our safety" was their "primary concern" and that there had been a "concern" that they needed to investigate and fix. Of course I was glad we weren't ultimately going to plummet to our miserable deaths because of some fart jockey's equipment malfunction, but it was still a drag.

But I will say I was extremely grateful that no one was using their playground voices on their cell phones or whistling in between semitones behind me. :) I wasn't about to discount whatever small blessings would happen to me today.

Finally, though we were up in the air and man, I was glad. It was a long flight but I read for most of it, which helped pass the time. And they did feed us a small sandwich about the size of a dinner roll with some chips, which was a godsend since I hadn't had any time to get breakfast or lunch yet.

When I finally got to Milwaukee's baggage claim, my largest suitcase never showed up on the conveyor belt and I had to report it. They said it probably didn't make it onto the plane in Houston. (The baggage space shuttle was running a little slow, apparently.)

So they're (hopefully) going to deliver it to our house sometime soon, and there's really nothing I absolutely need in it in the immediate future except my Y card, swim suit, cap and goggles.

I am going to actively avoid getting on an airplane in the near future.

However, despite today's travel "Jing a Jong" (a very handy family term, mainly used on my Italian mother's side, used to denote any stressful situation caused by any combination of incompetences, annoyances, loudness and useless behavior) I arrived safely, didn't miss any flights due to delays or layovers, and am absolutely ecstatic to be home again. During the blizzard on the 1st (the day I was supposed to fly out), I kept watching all the coverage on WGN of the people stranded at Chicago O'Hare sleeping on cots, and thinking, man, that's gotta suck big time. Even in my grumpiest of funks when unpleasant things happen over which I have no control (like the entire 10 hours of my travel today), I still try to make a valiant effort under my little black cloud to appreciate what I do have.

So to make a long story slightly less long, (or at least to end the dang thing), I'm home safely. :) The next few posts from me will be considerably more fun, involving lots of pictures.

And remember - unless you want me to personally come stand right behind you and argue loudly in french into my cell phone, don't whistle on an airplane. No matter how strong the urge. :)

Darcy

Twisted operas: Salome, Don Giovanni

I wrote this post a while ago, back in November, when David & I saw two operas in the same week!

Upon my request, having never seen a R. Strauss opera live, David and I went to see Chicago Lyric Opera's Salome with Deborah Voigt leading the cast in a stunning performance. Interestingly, Voigt was previously fired from a production of Salome in London for being "too overweight" for the director's "vision", sparking a huge uproar among opera fans. Voigt underwent gastric bypass surgery and went from a size 28 to a 14, and then was promptly cast as Salome in Chicago.

This was her first major post-surgery performance, and many were eager to see how (or if) she would be affected by her drastic weight loss. She was amazing, and probably would have still been amazing even with the extra weight. (I bet it was easier for her to dance around the stage without the extra 100 pounds, though.)

I just have to tell you, before I go on: of all the opera plots I've ever read or seen, this one was by far the most disgusting and sick.

Rewind to about 30 A.D. in Tiberias, Galilee. Herodias, Salome's mother, remarries her late husband's brother Herod, ruler of Judea. Herod is a complete creep and spends most of the opera lusting lasciviously after his stepdaughter. Nice, huh? Anyway, he's just plain nasty.

Meanwhile, John the Baptist is being held prisoner in Herod's palace prison for denouncing Herodius. Salome decides she wants him even after she hears him going off against her mother for marrying her brother-in-law. She comes on to him, but once he hears she's the daughter of Herodius, he thinks she's gross and rejects her. (Kinda judgmental of him to go spouting off against people like that, dontcha think? Oh well; it is the Bible, after all. Anyway...)

So what's a spoiled daughter of Judea to do? Salome's not used to being denied anything, and it does not go over well with her. She's seriously pissed.

Knowing her power over her lewd and perverse stepfather, she makes a bargain that she'll dance for him if he gives her anything she asks for. Panting and drooling and obviously thinking with his southernmost brain, he promises, and she dances the sexy "Dance of the 7 Veils" for him. (In this production, Voigt got down to a body stocking at the very last split second of the dance before the lights went out - very dramatic!)

After the dance, she insists time after time against his protests that she wants the head of John the Baptist on a platter. It's delivered to her in all its gory splendor, and she proceeds to hold it by its long hair kissing it, singing to it, and doing all kinds of other completely disgusting and unmentionable things to it. Herod sees her doing this and orders his soldiers to kill her, and they do. Nice story, eh? Geeeeeeeez! But a spectacular production, with lots of that edge-of-your-seat kind of morbid fascination.

That same week, David and I went to go see the Florentine Opera's performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni with the Milwaukee Symphony in the pit. (I wasn't playing, only 2 horns.) The plot is basically about Don Giovanni (Italian for Don Juan) running around and seducing women, sometimes breaking into their homes and raping them.

The women in the cast had the voices of angels and sounded positively ethereal.

I was much more moved by this opera than any of the other Mozart operas I've seen, for some reason. Basically, DG is arrogant and almost pathologically self-assured in his advances toward women throughout the opera until he decides to piss off the ghost of a man he killed. He mockingly invites the ghost to come to dinner with him, and the ghost accepts.

Now, most of us would be a bit worried if an other-worldly spirit of someone we'd killed was talking to us, but not Don. He's just confident as ever, right up until the time that he gets dragged down to hell for his transgressions. Amazing.

At the end of this opera, however, the producers did something David and I thought was completely tasteless. After DG has gotten his rightful come-uppance in getting dragged down to hell, they show him in a white jacket and sunglasses with a smoking (i.e., fresh out of hell) suitcase, chasing two scantily-clad bimbos across the stage.

David and I thought this completely ruined the whole point of the opera, which is that Don Giovanni finally gets what's coming to him in hell. I guess it sort of goes with the last aria that attempts to end it on a happy note, but I still thought it was pretty lame.

It was very cool, though, to get to see two world-class productions of really amazing operas in one week!!

Movies & books

So....seen any good movies lately?

We saw the movie Borat a few weekends ago and it was absolutely sidesplitting, though I admit it wouldn't be for all palates. The humor was definitely crude, but in a brilliant and politically satiric way. It's basically a mock documentary (mockumentary?) about a journalist from Khazakhstan (played by SNL's talented Sacha Baron Cohen) who comes to the US and basically offends everyone he meets with his culture-shocked political incorrectness. Check out a preview of some of the funnier moments here: http://www.boratmovie.com/. I can't remember the last time David and I laughed so hard at a movie. What's amazing is now there are tons of people and groups that are mad at the movie producers because they were simply told it was a documentary, not a spoof, and they don't like the way they were portrayed. Ha!! That even further cements the film's brilliance, in my mind!

Let's see...recent Netflix movies have included:

• The Jagged Edge, a suspense thriller starring Glen Close who falls in love with the rape/murder suspect she's defending. I think someone told me a long time ago what happens in this movie, because the whole movie I kind of knew what was going to happen which kind of put a damper on it. But it was still good.
• North Country, starring Charlize Theron, about a class action sexual harrassment lawsuit against the a mining company in upstate Minnesota. Fantastically done, heartwrenching, inspiring.
• Mr. & Mrs. Smith, starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (a.k.a. Brangelina). Always thought that Angelina was amazing, but this movie also restored my respect for Brad (which for some reason I can't presently identify had waned considerably). Suspenseful, quirky, humorous, and lots of great buttkicking danger and entertainingly destructive fight scenes. Loved it!

So....read any good books lately?

I'm reading Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult, a real page turner about an Amish girl who is accused of (and denies) concealing her pregnancy and then murdering the baby she conceived out of wedlock. I think I've found another author to add to my "favorites" list which includes Dorothy Allison, James Patterson, Sena Jeter Naslund, Dan Brown, and Fannie Flagg. I think I saw the made-for-TV movie that it inspired, The Plain Truth starring Law & Order SVU's Mariska Hargitay, but fortunately I don't remember what happens so I'm still reading in suspense. :)

James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia was refreshingly different, albeit much more gory and grotesque than I had expected, from my usual murder mystery reads. It is set in the '40's, in film noire language and tone. As I read it, everything was in black and white, and I was instantly transported. Fascinating, but again, not for the faint of heart (or stomach).

For anyone who thinks s/he has the worst job on earth and wants a change in perspective, you need to read Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada. As part of my "quality chick lit" reading (in the reading rotation with whodunnit mysteries, legal thrillers, historical fiction, and non-fiction), it was a rather harrowing take on the tyranny of the fashion industry from the insider lackey's point of view. Although a work of fiction, the author writes from a very autobiographical standpoint as she was in a similar position as her protagonist for the editor of Vogue.

Happy post-Thanksgiving week!

Thanksgiving princesses

David and I have returned home from a brief and fun visit with my family in Cincinnati. We especially enjoyed our little niece, Jenna, who is totally into the whole princess thing. She has both Cinderella and Snow White dress-up outfits and loves dancing around in them. I was recruited several times to provide live dance piano music for Jenna and David; it was so cute when she needed a dance partner and asked matter-of-factly "would you be my handsome prince?" Priceless! Also priceless was me trying to play the Sleeping Beauty Waltz by ear - it sounded like Sleeping Beauty with sleep apnia knocking things over in her sleep. But it was fun.

Below is an adorable picture of Jenna (in the middle) at her 3rd birthday party this past October, with two of her best friends in full princess regalia:

And again at Halloween in her Cinderella costume:

The dinner was just marvelous. My dad, who I'm convinced is moonlighting somewhere clandestinely as a chef for a 4+ star restaurant, made this stuffing that had the most amazing savory flavor and light texture. I think he makes it differently every year and it's always scrumptious.

My mom again blew my mind with her seasonal decor. She had this absolutely breathtaking table setting, resplendent with a gorgeous autumn-y tablecloth and napkins tied with gossamer wire-ribbon bows. Everything on the table had perfectly coordinated harvest colors. When it comes to decorating, I can only stand in awe of my mother, who gives Martha Stewart a run for her money (without the jail time, no less!) every time the seasons change. Regrettably, I forgot to bring our digital camera on our trip, or I would have taken pictures.

I think Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. Its message is simple and easy to understand, and can be fully appreciated and practiced by people of all faiths. I love gathering together with my friends and family and the simplicity of giving thanks - focusing on the things we have and being grateful.

This year, I am particularly thankful for my life. I love where I am now, that I have a profound sense of what I have and how precious and short my time here on earth is. I am looking forward to the new year with excitement and anticipation of many exciting new beginnings!

The Great Piano Search!

My lifelong dream has been to own my own piano, and we'd been saving for a while for it. Finally I decided it was time, and started doing the research which I had time to do because of the Mozart Festival's scant horn requirements.

What I found was that really good, used, full-sized uprights (48" or taller) often sounded better than a lot of the used grands out there. I really enjoyed the process, during which I wrote several emails to friends who were either professional pianists, owned their own pianos, or were experts on instrument acoustics. Their feedback was invaluable - thanks, guys! :)

So, a la diary entry style, here are some excerpts from those missives...if this is way too much information for you, if it doesn't interest you, or if you've already received these emails, scroll down to the end to see pictures of my new piano! :)

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October 23rd: I was surprised at how extremely sensitive to quality I was - being a mere horn player and not a 'real' pianist - and that I could tell, immediately, whether I liked a piano or not.

First, I went to the Yamaha dealer. I figured, I haven't played piano in years and until this point have never considered buying one before - plus I'm a horn player and not a professional pianist - so I might as well start with something affordable that's mass-produced and easy to find, right? Right. Enter the Yamaha Professiona Upright "U" series. The U1 is 48", the U3 is 52". This is the 48" U1:

So I tried the new U1 they had in their showroom. I hated it. It sounded like a hail storm on a tin roof. I couldn't believe how offensive it sounded to me. So I thought, well, maybe the longer strings of the U3 will be better in sound, and tried it. It sounded like somewhat larger hailstones falling on a slightly larger tin roof. I tried the other U1's and U3's, hoping that maybe a different instrument of the same models would be different. They were all abominable.

Depressed at how this was going so far, I asked the guy if I could check out the Yamaha grands, just for comparison. [I loved the Yamaha C2 - the 5'8" concert grand, but at $19,5K, it was definitely out of my price range.]

In fact, there was a sad old 1910 Steinway in their showroom (they were selling it on consignment for a 3rd party) that had been violated with an electric player piano implant. I loved the Yamaha way better, no contest. But I attribute that mostly to the electronic sacrilege that had been committed against that poor Steinway.

However, I thought it was interesting that I had to get that far up in size (and price) before I found a [new Yamaha] piano I liked. Plus, it is still early in my search to fall in love with anything until I've tried a lot of pianos for comparison.

October 25th: I went down to Chicago to see a very nice piano dealer (www.chicagopianos.com) who sells primarily new Estonias, Bohemias, and Bluthners, as well as a lot of other used intruments like Yamahas and Kawais. I loved this guy, and his website (check it out!) was incredible - really informative and educational, almost as if he doesn't WANT to sell you a piano unless you know what you want and what you're getting. His dealership was the one where I found, hands down, more quality pianos I'd want to buy than any other place I'd been to.

The Europeans (Bluthner, Bohemia, Estonia): I could not for the life of me understand why the Bluthners were priced in the 6 figure brackets, because I did not like them. The Bohemian uprights sounded nice, but the sound was a bit too dark and fuzzy - almost as if the sound was coming from far away. The Bohemian grands, on the other hand, were absolutely out of this world. BOTH the Bohemian and Estonia grands were far superior to any Steinway I have ever played. The action was orgasmically facile, and the sound.....ooooh, the sound.....(insert celestial choir chord here). And they were less expensive than the Yamaha C2 that I had liked!

Steinway: Interesting side note about what I've learned from all these piano dealers about Steinways (even a Steinway Guy I visited contributed to this!). They're amazing pianos, to be sure, but their exorbitant prices ($25K for a new UPRIGHT? You've gotta be kidding me!) reflect the prestige and name in addition to the actual quality (which is excellent, but you're paying a lot for the name).

From what I've learned in talking to many different piano dealers at this point, Steinways are like the Rolls Royce of pianos - a fantastic, historic and extremely prestigious name, but I wouldn't necessarily feel the need to take out a 2nd mortgage to own and drive one.

Kawai: The Kawais were definitely the most affordable new pianos I had seen, and I liked them better than almost all the new Yamahas (I still love the C2). The sound was warm, gorgeous, and clear. My only problem with Kawai is that most of the used ones I've played on were bright and tinny - which makes me fear that in time, after they've broken in, they start to show why they're priced lower than other pianos.

Yamaha: I tried out the 1973 Yamaha U3 [the Chicago guy] had. I loved the sound - the sound was grand quality, rich and bell-like like the C2 grand - clear, but not tinny or like the Yamadealer's new ones, which I described to Karin on the phone yesterday as sounding like the Abominable Snowman having violent diarrhea in a metal toilet. :) But the action on this U3 was slow and groggy....The Chicago Guy said, "D'oh! Our technician just hasn't had the chance to work on the action of this one yet." He promised to have his tech guy work on the action. So I'm going back to Chicago on Thursday to see if it's any better. If it is as good as the action on the Steinway Guy's U1, I'm going to buy it because its sound was just beautiful.

October 26th: Today I drove down to Chicago again, first to see a guy in Arlington Heights (NW Chicago suburb) who had a Yamaha G1 baby grand that was shockingly in my price range. It was very nice, but also very old (1968). It had a decent sound, and I was definitely tempted by the allure and aesthetics of having a grand in my home now, without having to wait to buy my ultra grand Bohemia.

So I gave the tone, touch, and overall ratings for it, told the guy I was definitely interested, and went on to the Chicago Guy to compare it to the U3 I had liked on Tuesday. I was mostly curious to see if his piano tech had sufficiently improved the action on the Yamaha 52" U3.

The touch and action was flawless, like butter. And the sound...I was shocked at how amazing it was compared to the baby grand's. There was literally no comparison. The U3 was, hands down, the better sound. I rated the piano again, and it came out on top, no contest.

I was thrilled. This piano was, by FAR, the best piano in my price range, and it sounded almost as good as some of the really nice grands I'd played on, and infinitely better than almost all of the Yamaha grands I'd tried! Incredulous, I asked the Chicago guy why this was. He said that many people want the prestige, aesthetics, and image of owning a grand, and don't necessarily consider the sound that much of a big deal. The Yamaha full sized uprights, however, are made for serious professional pianists who don't have the room (or budget) for a grand. This is why they have superior construction and sound.

Get this - my U3 has the same length strings as a 5'1" baby grand!! So I guess that helps to explain why its sound was so wonderful. Also, it's a 1973, which means it isn't going to suddenly change once it breaks in.

The best thing? Including delivery, the first tuning, and the really nice adjustable height microfiber-padded bench, it was well within our price range, under the price cap we'd set for our first piano.

And because I tried so many pianos [final count was almost 40], I'm absolutely sure I found the perfect piano for me [for what we could afford right now].

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The piano was delivered Nov. 1st, and is settling in nicely! The pitch has changed a bit and now that it's been here a while, I can schedule the first tuning soon. (You have to wait a few weeks after it's delivered for it to settle in first.) It still sounds fabulous, and I'm vastly enjoying practicing on it again! Here are some pictures.

I've been having a ball practicing! I'm working on a Bb Major Mozart Sonata, Handel's "Harmonious Blacksmith" variations (they're SO much fun, and E major is such a great key), the Brahms b minor Rhapsody which is probably way over my head but I just love it, and I just had to practice something juicy and big and impressive and romantic. I'm taking it ultra-slow - as in quarter note = 2 or something ridiculous like that - and learning it one measure at a time.

It's extremely humbling to practice the piano again. I've only played the horn for 3+ years since I moved here to Milwaukee, and as difficult as the horn can be, you can really only focus on (and miss) one note at a time. It's certainly cerebrally stimulating to have to take in all that musical information again! It's also refreshing to just sit down and get lost in the process of practicing piano. There's something so incredibly satisfying about it. It's so difficult, technical, and coordination-based in ways the horn is not. And unlike the horn, which is a "social" instrument (there are very few pieces that stand with just horn alone, whereas you can play an entire piece without accompaniment on the piano), the piano is wonderfully independent. I love that.

Anyway, that's all (hell, that's enough!) for now! Thanks, as always, for indulging me! ;)

Catching up on goings-on

Man, there has been so much happening and I haven't blogged about it at all. Ugh! I feel SO blogstipated! :) (Ha ha, the blogger spellcheck doesn't like that word!) I think that's because there's been so much I've wanted to blog about, so I wanted a big block of time to blog. (Would that be a large "blog" of time? har har)

But alas, that blog - er, block - of time somehow never happened.

So I'm going to do my best to give you the Reader's Digest version of what's been going on. (Incidentally, does anyone read Reader's Digest anywhere other than on the toilet? I ask because I don't think I've ever seen them anywhere else. They're always in the bathroom. Aren't they? I think RD knows this, which is why they put all those medication ads in there - because they know that timing is everything. If you spend enough time on the toilet to have a Reader's Digest collection in there, then maybe you need some of those medications.)

Sorry, tangent there. Anyway....what's been going on? Oh yeah. Here are just some random things that I kept forgetting to tell you that I'm finally remembering to now....

First of all, I must share with you one of the highlights of my summer. I was proud to have used an extra, formerly unused portion of my brain to outwit the neighborhood squirrels. That Masters degree finally came in handy. My Classic-era music history professor would be so proud. (Solely of himself and his own ability to spout off unintelligibly in Latin for paragraphs at a time, but that's not the point.)

This consisted of my glue-gunning several metal thumbtacks, business side up, on the roof of the old wooden birdhouse left by the previous owners of our house.

There hasn't been a single squirrel on it since! I sure told them where to take their nuts, didn't I? Didn't I? {**evil cackle**} The birdies are extremely happy and now can dine unmolested by flying rodents. The cats, indirectly, are also thrilled. They have a great view of the many birdies (Kitty HBO) through the big sliding glass doors that lead out to the deck.

We also had some gorgeous flowers come right out of our humble (and very low maintenance) garden. This was probably the most incredibly HUGE rose I think I've ever seen, and it came straight from the rosebush on our front walk which we inherited from the previous owners. I swear to whichever deity you want me to that we do nothing to maintain these roses. We try to remember to water them occasionally but that's it - we didn't even cut them back and winterize them last year (although we had a very mild winter last year so that could be why they didn't die). You can also see Black-Eyed Susans which Mimi (David's mom) gave to us from her garden. They transplanted extremely well and thrived. They were still flowering in late October!

Here's our fall table as its set now. Don't you love that little teapot light? That was a housewarming gift from my mom to us that she brought up in October when she came up to see my concerto solo. Isn't it adorable? Oh, those miniature roses are from our front walk too. They just grow like weeds, again without any maintenance from us! We love our rosebushes so much and find them so easy that we just bought and planted 3 more - two yellow peach-trimmed sweetheart rosebushes, and one fiesta jubilee pink. If they survive the winter, we will have 8 rosebushes in our garden next year! I have always heard awful stories about how much work roses are. We don't do anything to them except water them, and only when it's really hot and dry.

David bought pumpkins, but we never got around to carving them. It looks festive anyway, doesn't it? David likes to use them for pies and muffins and cooking. I was skeptical at first because most of the pumpkin baking I had done used canned pumpkin, but the real stuff is really good too.

And if you look really closely, one of the little orange candles is a cute little candy-corn candle (candle corn?) that my sis-in-law, Pamela, gave us for Halloween. We love it and think it's so festive!

Here's a cute picture of my mom and me when she came up in October...she bought the flowers for me as a soloist gift, and arranged them herself! Beautifully, don't you think?

There's definitely more to tell, but I'll divide the topics into separate posts so as not to be too unwieldy in my entries! Hope you are all having a lovely autumn-into-winter, and that you and yours are happy, healthy, and well. XO

Green Bay Review

Hey all...it appears I can now add to my press quotes if I ever want to have a "press package" - here's the review from my Morceau de Concert performance in Green Bay, the last performance and the one my mom was able to attend! I was so happy she flew out to see us for a weekend and hear the concert.

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Posted October 16, 2006

Milwaukee Symphony shines for Civic Music Association
By Warren Gerds wgerds@greenbaypressgazette.com

A festive encore piece sandwiched between two standing ovations capped the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concert Saturday night at Ralph Holter Auditorium of Green Bay West High School.

Led by guest conductor Kelly Corcoran, the orchestra brought along a sure-fire popular program.

The combination of juicy music and fine playing propelled Brown County Civic Music Association to a lustrous start for its 80th anniversary season.

The list of favorites: The whirling "Slavonic Dance" No. 8 of Antonin Dvorak; the loving embrace of country of "Finlandia" by Jean Sibelius; the scope of "Peer Gynt" from the visions of a sprite in "Morning Mood" to the flashing excitement of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg; and the rich, exotic, majestic tapestry of "Scheherazade" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

The only non-"hit" piece, "Morceau de Concert, for Horn and Orchestra" by Camille Saint-Saens, provided the fuel for a player from the orchestra to step forward to solo proudly. Darcy Hamlin firmly maneuvered through the piece's demand for speed, softness and zest amid a sometimes-regal aura.

On the podium, Corcoran looked assured with a smooth conducting style that flashed dynamism when need be.

This was an important night for Civic Music in these ways:

The Milwaukee Symphony was the first full orchestra the arts group, made up of volunteers, has brought in since 1990. Civic Music wanted to start its season with a big splash, and did.

The special anniversary was marked on stage by Amy Kocha, president, reading the names of all the group's presidents. Surviving presidents rose in the audience. (One, Don Poh, recalled being present in the 1960s at a national convention at which the Milwaukee Symphony was named the nation's 22nd major symphony when its budget passed $1 million and its first road trip was to Green Bay to play for Civic Music).

The printed program included a four-page history of the organization as a "grassroots phenomenon." Knots of dutiful volunteers engaged such famed performers as Isaac Stern, Ferrante & Teicher, Richard Tucker, Birgit Nilsson, Roberta Peters, Lili Kraus, Dale Warland Singers, Leon Bates, the Tokyo String Quartet and Lilya Zilberstein (returning March 13).

Many of the names appeared again on display boards placed in West's cafeteria, where a reception was held after the concert. Pictures, programs and newspaper clippings filled the boards. The May 27, 1927, Green Bay Press-Gazette is of note. The main headline of the day was of a momentous event: "Lindbergh Wings His Way to Paris." At the top of the page: "Today is your last chance to join Civic Music Ass'n."

Saturday, the Milwaukee Symphony added another glint of glory to what Civic Music has accomplished.

Gem Of The Ocean

On Tuesday night, went to see the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's production of August Wilson's Gem Of The Ocean, which moved me more deeply than any other play I've ever seen. I cried and cried and kept crying as I left the theater. I told David I want to keep subscribing to this incredible group's productions - I felt honored to have been touched and moved so deeply. That's when you know you're in the presence of great art. What a talent August Wilson is as a writer, to know humanity as deeply as he did and to be able to convey it so vividly. And this is the 3rd season David and I have subscribed to the Milwaukee Rep, and we've yet to be to a production they did that we didn't think was spectacular (even if we didn't like the play itself).

I've pasted the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's review here. If you live in or near Milwaukee you should really consider going!

*******************

Rep proves 'Gem's' transcendence
Wilson's achievement grows with time
By DAMIEN JAQUES
Journal Sentinel theater critic
Posted: Oct. 21, 2006

The passage of time burnishes a great play, giving us perspective on the dimensions of the accomplishment and placing the piece in the context of its peers.

Lanise Antoine Shelley and Shane Taylor appear in the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's production of August Wilson's "Gem of the Ocean."

Move over "Death of a Salesman," "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night." Room must be made for "Gem of the Ocean," which three years into its life has emerged as a transcendent contribution to serious American culture.

The Milwaukee Repertory Theater on Friday night opened a production worthy of the play and its lofty place on the theatrical landscape.

"Gem of the Ocean" is part of August Wilson's unparalleled 10-play cycle that reflects the African-American experience in each decade of the 20th century. The playwright died last year, shortly after completing the largest and most important project in American theater history.
Wilson did not follow chronological order in creating his series, and although "Gem" was the ninth piece written, it is set in 1904. The location is Pittsburgh, the dramatist's hometown, and black people nationwide are grappling with a cruel reality.

Slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclamation 41 years earlier, but legal bondage has been replaced by a malevolent web of trickery, intimidation and manipulation of the law. The goal is to keep African-Americans poor and powerless.

Freedom has included so many hurdles and hardships, a few former slaves have even wondered if Lincoln did them any favors. Simple survival is a challenge for black folks.

History may frame all of Wilson's work, but he created soaring theatricality within the borders. His characters speak with the poetry of the black vernacular and burst with vivid life, dimension and humanity.

They tell phenomenal stories that sometimes wander beyond realism but never fail to engage the audience. At times, the plays seem to be floating on clouds of lyricism.

In the more than 20 years he spent working on his series, Wilson wrote with increasing insight and wisdom into not only the racial conflict that torments this country but the human traits we all share. His plays have become rich tapestries of American history that resonate with black suffering while offering whites a deeper understanding of how we got to where we are.

All of this has been accomplished with considerable humor that is as organic as it is entertaining.
"Gem" possesses a mythic, epic texture with biblical overtones and a spiritual underpinning. The play's title is the name of the model-sized boat a troubled young man, only weeks removed from the South, takes to the City of Bones, a place of death and rebirth.

Citizen Barlow, the young man, is burning with guilt over his indirect culpability in the death of another, and the journey is his quest to wash his soul. The person who sends him is Aunt Ester, an African sage and prophet who has been a previously unseen presence in several of Wilson's other works.

Ester presides over the rooming house that serves as the play's setting. She has had four husbands and lived 285 years but remains physically spry and intellectually quick. The woman is 20th-century African-Americans' link to the accumulated wisdom of their African ancestry, and her calm, confident presence is a beacon of hope and strength for blacks in Pittsburgh and beyond.

Those powers are tested as several people involved in a rising wave of civil unrest in Pittsburgh come through the doors of the rooming house. Black frustration boils over in the streets and threatens the tranquil order inside.

The Rep's closely knit production, under the direction of Timothy Douglas, is a study in effective ensemble acting. Stephanie Berry's portrait of Ester is grounded in a wonderfully authentic earthiness that builds her stature as it establishes her humanity. Shane Taylor possesses a searing intensity in his depiction of the distressed Barlow.

Ray Anthony Thomas' portrayal of an African-American cop obsessed with following the letter of the law is notable for its ferocity and the actor's fearlessness in sculpting a complex, unlikable character.

Doug Brown, Lanise Antoine Shelley and Peter Silbert handle supporting roles with deftness and credibility. Ernest Perry, Jr. delivers ample charm playing Solly Two Kings, a sexagenarian rebel with a colorful and courageous past. But he needs to show us more fire to back up his actions.

"Gem of the Ocean" continues through Nov. 19 in the Quadracci Powerhouse Theater at the Baker Theater Complex, 108 E. Wells St. Tickets are on sale at the Rep's box office in the complex's lobby, by phone at (414) 224-9490, and online at www.milwaukeerep.com.

The Cure for Blogstipation

Hey you guys.

First of all, if you're getting this via email, it means I've decided to keep you on my Friends & Family email list. I deleted over 70 people from my list that never respond to or email me, and of course those who have openly criticized my e-missives. (Leslie, that was a great suggestion...thanks...)

So now, I feel much less of a need to censor myself for those I wasn't sure liked my writing. And plus, if anyone I've deleted ever really wants to know what I'm up to, they can always visit my blog online.

Is it my imagination, or do women, much moreso than men, get more flack in public forums for expressing their feelings openly and without shame or apology? I am asking based on my own observances and experiences, of course, so please do not take offense if your experience has been different. I'd really love to hear your side of this. Maybe it will make me feel better about the standing of and respect of women in the world. I just get the feeling that women's opinions - and their right to express them, and to actually have them heard and valued - are often ignored.

From my experience, it's worse in settings (which I won't name, again at the risk of offending - it's only my own personal history, after all) where the expectations of women are solely for them to look nice and to take care of everyone. I feel extremely fortunate to have secured a job and to have forged my own community where appearance and caretaking aren't the primary things for which women are valued.

It's always amazing to me how much positive feedback I always get from my true friends when I send out what I fear is a potentially contentious or negavite email venting frustrations. I got dozens of encouraging, supportive emails, and I cannot thank you enough for them. Mary Beth (who coined the term "blogstipation", as in what my critics were suffering from, in hers - hysterical!), Jenn, Leslie, Jack, Sheri, Jane, Tamara, Mimi, Eric, and Michelle...your responses were particularly wonderful and insightful. They made me feel better. I will, indeed, not be silenced!! (As if you were ever worried...)

So the summer is close to being officially over, is it not? The kiddos have gone back to school, the weather is becoming cooler, and orchestras are kicking up their seasons in full swing. Next Tuesday is our first day back at work! I am both excited and nervous - excited to see everyone and to play great music in a fabulous group of musicians again, nervous about my solo because I haven't played the piece with an orchestra before. And I'm also planning to stand (as opposed to sitting) and to play from memory. This should make for much more spontaneous, free performances, and I think it'll look better too.

This summer has been the best I've had in a long time for the sole reason that it has been completely stress free (with the exception of our 2 week road trip back in July). It is the first summer since I moved here that I haven't had a huge life change to go through and process - 2003 = moving to Mke., adjusting to new horn and job, 2004 = planning a wedding and getting married, 2005 = searching for, buying, and moving into our first house. This summer was blissfully settled and full of free time to practice, listen to music, nest around the house, garden, draw, and watch movies (I've become a Netflix addict!!).

I've also been reading a lot. Here're some of my recent reads with their amazon.com links for more info:

• Four Spirits, by Sena Jeter Naslund, was an engrossing slice of life historical fiction novel based on the 1960's civil rights movement in Birmingham, AL. I loved the way she wrote from the perspectives of many different characters in the book, from black children to klansmen. Fabulous.
• Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown, was at least 20x better than his famed DaVinci Code - I thoroughly adored the blending of mystery/thriller/art & culture in this fast paced read.
• I blew through James Patterson's 3rd Degree and 4th of July, the 3rd and 4th respectively in his Women's Murder Club series, with relish - I just love getting to know and then following the same characters through their crime-solving escapades. And hey, speaking of Patterson, his Honeymoon was absolutely riveting in its murderous thrill. I just love that guy - he knows how to take you for a ride!!
• I have joined the Buddhist study and meditation group at my church, in which I feel more at home spiritually than I ever have in my life. The peace and joy I've found in A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield is just indescribable. It's written from a Buddhist perspective, but it's universal in its wisdom and cites Christian, Jewish and Sufi parallels throughout the book. If you're feeling overwhelmed by or stymied by life's challenges, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Movies I've watched and enjoyed lately, courtesy of my Netflix account: Multiplicity with Michael Keaton (it was funnier watching it with you, Dana!! I totally thought of you the whole time #4 was making me laugh!!), In Her Shoes with Cameron Diaz (I loved Jennifer Weiner's book that it was based on), and Monster In Law with Jennifer Lopez. I also watched Rumor Has It with Jennifer Aniston and thought it was one of the stupidest plot lines I've ever encountered. (Aniston's character: "Gee, I know this complete sleaze of a man slept with my mother and my grandmother, but maybe I'll sleep with him too, and then whine about it for the rest of the movie..."....blech.)

In theaters, David and I have seen and highly recommend A Prairie Home Companion (the movie), Wordplay (a hysterical behind-the-scenes movie about crossword puzzles, the freaks who can do them in ridiculously small time brackets, and the geniuses that create them), and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. All were brilliant, fun, and intellectually stimulating.

Hey, enjoy the beautiful transition from summer into fall...and write to me and let me know how you're doing, okay? I'd love, as always, to hear from you.

XO Love,

Darcy

Garage Door Saga Continues (hopefully over soon)

Okay, so here's the continuation (and hopefully near end) of the Home DeepPoo Saga...

Tuesday, August 8th: I call Home Depot at 10am and ask for a manager to cancel the installation order and demand a full refund. This time, I speak to a guy named Franco. I go down the entire list of events with him. He said he was sorry but that short of giving me 10% off of the installation, there wasn’t really anything he could do.

I said that’s fine, and just to credit me the full amount for the installation fee. I also told him that I was planning to contact the Consumer Protection Agency, that I had emailed my Home Depot experience out to 164 people and had already published it online in my public blog, and that I had already composed a letter chronicling my experiences with this particular store to the Vice President of the Home Depot Headquarters in Atlanta, GA. Oh, and I casually added that we were taking all of our future home improvement business – which will be considerable - elsewhere.

These last little bits apparently got his attention. He said to wait, not to call any other stores yet, and that he would see what he could do about getting me a free installation. I told him I would wait until noon to hear from him, but that I would start calling other people if I didn't hear back from him by then.

Franco calls back in less than 20 minutes, which given my experience waiting for this blasted store to call me, is nice. He offers to give us 10% off of the garage door opener and free installation. This sounds great, but then he says that Mark The Installer may not call tonight or even tomorrow.

This is unacceptable to me. I give Franco the ultimatum that if Mark does not call tonight to schedule the installation, that I was returning the garage door opener tomorrow morning and taking my business elsewhere. Lo and behold, Mark The Installer calls within the hour and schedules the installation!! Astounding given that up until this point he was completely unreachable during the day because he was "out in the field" and never had his schedule.

The moral of this story is that sometimes you have to be a complete bitch to get some people to do anything.

Friday, August 11th: Mark The Installer actually arrives early to install our garage door! He does a great job and it works wonderfully and has been since he installed it. We were able to move my car back into the garage before we left on our weekend away so our neighbor who was housesitting didn't have to do it.

Thursday, August 17th: David notices that on our credit card statement, Home DeepPoo has not refunded the "measuring fee" which they were never supposed to have charged us in the first place, and though they have refunded the installation fee, they have not credited us the 10% off of the garage door opener itself. I am planning to call them today to demand they follow through on these promises as well.

Thanks to all of you who wrote with your advice. I appreciate it. I got at least 15 emails from you telling me that I should have gone with Sears. I don't know why I didn't think of this before; there's a Sears right around the corner from me and they're known for their excellent customer service. We also have a Lowe's that we used to install our hardwood floor laminates and they were great. I really enjoyed hearing from you - thanks!! :)

Ciao,
XO Darcy

Help me, doc! I have Blogarrhea!!

Yes, apparently someone on my (perhaps not so rigorously screened) "friends and family" email list has told others in my orbit that I have "Blogarrhea"!

Of course the person who used what s/he probably thinks is such a witty term did not talk to me directly about his/her distaste for what s/he apparently thinks is "TMI" with regard to my blog, because where would be the drama in that? It's much more fun to gossip about it to other people, don't you know! Plus, it makes it so much more pleasant for your judgee when she ends up hearing it through the rumor mill rather than directly from you.

The thing that's hilarious here is that since I started this blog (last year) I have been averaging 2 to 3 blog entries a month. This is not a lot, folks. I have friends who blog close to every day. What, then, would their afflictions be? Sblogtaneous combustion? Blogchitis? Irritable Blogwel Syndrome?

Here's the deal, folks. I know not everyone on this email list is necessarily interested in my blog, or even actually reads my emails. But that's not why I write to you. I write because it's a small but significant way of staying connected, a way of communicating to you what is going on in my world. To tell you the truth, my favorite part of writing emails and blog posts isn't the actual writing but the feedback. I love hearing from you, hearing about your lives, getting your advice. Your emails, comments and responses just make my day.

To tell you the godshonest truth, I get a lot of emails that I could do without. I'd just rather delete them than go around insulting the person who sent them to me.

Whenever we get an email from someone, particularly an original email written by the sender, it means that person is thinking of us and wants to stay connected with us. Rather than sending out forwards with millions of undeleted headers with bouncing animated smilies and doggies wagging their tails telling me "You're my friend so forward this back to me so I'll know I'm your friend too" (god I hate those) or 100 reasons why the 10 Commandments and the American Flag should be mandatorily tattooed on the insides of everyone's eyelids, I would rather - I know, it's crazy - compose my own writings. So sue me.

Anyway, I have learned a hard but necessary lesson this summer, and I want to thank the insensitive and judgmental people who taught it to me. Gossip and mean comments are hurtful, and I finally realized that in my lifelong attempt to avoid them, I have wasted inordinate amounts of energy trying to be even more perfect, more fabulous and more outstanding in order to hopefully distract people from judging me. But it's never going to work. Believe me, I've tried every possible scheme for it. My performances in certain social situations have been so brilliant I deserve several Academy Awards.

What I learned this summer is this. There will always be people in the world who only see your faults. It doesn't matter how many auditions I win, how nice and funny and well-dressed I try to be, how many solo performances and concerts I land, how many achievements or contributions I make in this world. There will always be those who will judge us, say mean things about us - and never, of course, to our faces, because they know that what they're saying about you is hurtful. (This proves that they know damn well that what they're saying is inexcusable.)

I have also learned that these hurtful comments are much more of a reflection of the people saying them than on the people they slam. What you have to do is to develop your own sense of worth and realize that you have no need for their approval. (This is easier said than done, but if you want to stay on this side of the insane asylum fence, you'd better learn it.)

Most importantly, you must speak up when someone says something mean or insulting to you instead of making excuses for them. We teach people how to treat us. If we make excuses for people's bad behavior, they will learn that they can use you as their doormat.

For those of you who don't like my emails and would rather be taken off the list, here's a thought - have the cahones to actually write me and tell me yourself you want off, or just delete them. Please. I know that's not the most entertaining or dramatic route, but there you go.

For nearly everyone else on this list, your support, email feedback, and friendships have been tremendous - - thank you. You are true friends.

And I'm not going to stop writing. Sorry, Gossip Monkey.

Gossip Monkey. Heh. I like that. :)

Darcy

Chronology: July 20th-August 5th

So much has happened since we got back from our marathon trip out east.

For those of you who are interested, here's the rundown...

July 20th: Had a much needed 2 hour session with my massage therapist. It was pure bliss. She uses hot stones, this luscious peach scented oil, and fabulous relaxing music.

From there, went to Home Depot to purchase a new garage door opener. Old one died before we left on the trip. Took over an hour for the morons working there to figure out what the hell was going on; went through about 3 guys that said "oh, well, that's not my department, I'll find you someone who can help you tho". Finally found some guy in window installation who insisted that I pay for a "measuring deposit" before I could even schedule or pay for the installation. I kept asking, "but why do you need to measure my garage door when the opener I just bought is not adjustable?" But I had already been there for over an hour and wanted to get the hell out of there so I just did what they said.

July 21st: Some guy from Home Depot calls to let me know that the installer would be calling to schedule the installation. I am thrilled. I know opening a garage door manually isn't the worst thing on the planet but it is a drag.

July 23rd: David and I go to Festa Italiana. It is a blast. David eats Italian sausage while I opt for the eggplant sticks with marinara. It is incredible food and we are both enjoying ourselves immensely. We also split an order of "sfingi" which is fried dough. It is not that exciting and we don't finish it. But we have fun walking everywhere. We ride the little cable cars (sort of like a ski lift) that float you over the grounds slowly. It is so much fun. Even though I'm only 1/4 Italian, I am proud of my heritage. Bella!

July 25th: Attacked the sun room with a vengeance. Since we moved last August, it's sort of been the receptacle for all of the boxes and things we didn't know what else to do with. Hauled out Goodwill donation boxes, recycled other boxes, vacuumed the carpet, installed an automatic door closer on the screen door, installed braces for the glass shelves that kept falling off the wall before, and assembled the small new bookshelf I had gotten for my art supplies and books. Unpacked all of the art supplies that had survived and threw the old unusable ones out. It now looks beautiful out there, like a nice Florida sun room, plants and all. Now all I have to do is put my easel together and I can start drawing and painting...

July 26th: It's my Mom's birthday! David and I call and give a singing and playing (me on the horn) telegram to who we think is my mom. It turns out to be my sister the whole time, who is laughing. We then reenact the whole thing for my mom and she loves it. We wish her a happy birthday; we are, after all, very glad she was born. She reports that she loves the gifts we sent.

Later in the evening, David goes out to the garage to take a bike ride and we notice that our bike has been stolen right out of our garage. It probably happened when we left the garage door open during the day, which we normally wouldn't do if we had a functional automatic garage door opener. We were too trusting, thinking we live in such a safe and unpretentious neighborhood. We file a police report. The guy is very nice and files it as a theft because for burglary you have to have entry. Since the door was left open, there was no entry.

July 27th: I still have not heard anything from Home Depot, so I am irritated (especially since I blame our not closing the garage door on the fact that we don't have the opener installed yet) and call them. This time I ask to speak to a manager. I talk to a guy named Dave. I tell him about the bike and this is getting ridiculous. He tells me that I need to speak to Greg the Expediter who can tell me why no one has called me to schedule an installation. He says that Greg is not picking up his phone but that he will call me tomorrow morning.

July 28th: Greg does not call. No one calls. But I am too busy practicing and teaching all day to do anything about it, so it has to wait until next week.

July 30th: MSO performs Carmina Burana at Germanfest on the Milwaukee Summerfest grounds. The rehearsal and performance go very well. I get to play Principal since both Barnewitz and Krystof are out of town. I have a ball. (The more people kvetch about Carmina being profane and secular, the more I like it.) There is a reception after the performance where there is much German food and beer. I am not really a fan of German food since it is mostly starch and meat and is generally monochromatically brown as a cuisine, and I don't feel like drinking beer so I have diet Pepsi instead. David drinks beer so I drive home.

August 1st: After successfully escaping them for nearly 36 years, I go to my very first Tupperware Party. Nancy, my fabulous next door neighbor and kitty/plant sitter, is hosting it. I usually despise all-female parties of any kind since they tend to regress toward the infantile and ridiculous with all the games and such, but agree to go since Nancy will get more free stuff if I go. I also want to support her since she's been so good to us and our kitties, and figure I could use some social time.

The presentation itself does, indeed, regress to the infantile, with cutsie little games, the host passing out raffle tickets to anyone who asked her a question, getting us to fill out of index cards, "can I get a woo HOO from you ladies??", "just think of them [the breathing ventilators on the veggie/fruit storage units] like little belly buttons, 'kay?" and "those of you who roll an even number on your nerf dice get an even better prize if you have me over to have a party at your house!"

Despite the childhood birthday party mentality, I end up meeting a lot of really nice women from my own neighborhood, and spend a good amount of time socializing with Nancy's fabulous daughter, Wendy, who I adore and discover is a kindred Tori Amos fan. She's even been to see her live, and we discuss the possibility of going to concerts together. I even order a salad spinner, because Tupperware stuff (despite the patronizing presentation) is of really great quality. I had a really cheap salad spinner once and ended up flinging baby spinach all over my kitchen ceiling at a very high velocity. It was not a happy moment. I am looking forward to getting my quality salad spinner and keeping my salad in one central location.

August 2nd: I call Home Depot because I have not heard boo from Greg the Expediter, who is turning out to not be very Expeditious at all. I am irate and ask to speak to a manager. This time I speak to Shannon, who actually conferences me into the call she puts into the installer, and lets me listen to her leaving a message for him asking why I hadn't heard anything from them.

An hour later Mark, the installer, calls, and says that he never received the order from Home Depot in the first place, (I am seething at this point) and that that was why he never called. He says he is "out in the field" and doesn't have his book with him and that he will call later to schedule.

Later Mark calls and says, "are you aware you didn't pay for the installation?" I say, yes, I'm aware, I tried to convince the Home Depot buffoons to accept full payment but they insisted that they needed to "measure" first. He says that this is all wrong and that I need to pay for the installation before I can schedule the install. At this point I wish that I had just bitten the bullet and figured out how to install the garage door opener myself. I had thought that paying someone else to do it would have saved me aggravation, but clearly this was not turning out to be the case.

August 3rd: I call Home Depot first thing in the morning. I ask to speak to a manager. This time his name is Sean. Sean says that he's referring the case to Hank, who is in charge of installs. He says that he will call back as soon as he calls all my information up on the computer and will set it up to receive my payment for the full install. I wait by the phone for an hour. I call back and Sean says that he was working with other customers, puts me on hold, and tells me that he's going to transfer me to Hank.

I am on hold for 15 minutes.

I am seeing red at this point and my blood is boiling. I hang up and call back, shaking with rage, and tell Sean that he is going to fix this right now, that he's not going to put me on hold again, that he should be handling this problem of a customer being blown off for 2 weeks due to their mistakes and not passing it off to another idiot who doesn't know what he's doing. Sean is taken aback and says that Hank had been having problems with his phone. I repeat to Sean that no, he was going to fix it directly himself.

Sean finally gets it into his thick skull that I'm going to be harassing him all day until he fixes this, and tries unsuccessfully to take my credit card payment for the full installation over the phone. He calls back and says that the system is frozen and that it won't let him do anything about it until tomorrow. I refuse to accept this and tell him to run another payment today and to cancel the previous one. He marvels at this idea and says, "why didn't I think of that?" I bite my tongue to keep myself from saying, "because if excrement were brains, you'd have to fry yours in onions just to make them stink?"

After a harried morning dealing with Home Depot's cretinous idiots, I get in my CRV and drive to Watertown, which is about an hour west of Mke. to visit my good friend Monica from CIM, who just moved there for a full time church organist job. She and I have a great time. I had made Baba Ganouj (basically the same as hummus except you use roasted eggplant instead of the chick peas) which I brought along with flatbread, and brought her bagloads of parsely and basil from our garden. We make asparagus risotto and a romaine salad (which thankfully does not wind up on the ceiling) and have a great time chatting and catching up. Monica is a fabulous friend. We watch a hilarious video of Margaret Cho.

From Monica's, I call Mark the Installer to schedule the install. I specifically tell him to call me on my cell phone because I am visiting Monica in Watertown in the afternoon. Despite this, he ends up calling David at home instead and says he'll call me sometime next week to schedule the installation. As of today (8/6) we still do not have a garage door installation scheduled.

August 4th: I call Mark the Installer who finally picks up the phone. He says he is on vacation and that he won't be able to schedule anything until he gets back on Saturday, the 5th. I tell him to just mark me down for his earliest availability and to call to let me know when he'll be coming. He says he'll call Saturday.

August 5th: David and I go to the Wisconsin State Fair. We talk on the way there and I reveal to David that I have never been to a State or County Fair that involved agriculture, at least not to my knowledge or memory. We have a great time. We see lots and lots of cows, pigs, bunnies and chickens. We saw a pig race, where potbellied pigs and goats raced around the track for a treat. It was hilarious. The best one was the rookie pigs who hadn't raced much before. There was one pig who got confused who kept turning around and racing halfway back around the track and then hightailing it back in the other direction, kicking up sawdust as he went. The highlight of the pig race was when they raced 4 ducks. Watching the ducks waddle at full speed, some of them flapping their wings as they stood up tall running, was just sidesplitting. Ducks are funny.

We also saw a very long cooking show of some stainless steel kitchenware that was ridiculously expensive, but got free paring knives for answering the host's questions correctly and won a carving knife from a raffle out of it. It was a load of fun walking around to all of the kiosks of the different wares being sold. We saw cheese graters, pet hair removers, fabric softener balls (fabric softener sheets cause dryer fires, you know...who knew? I still use them...). Amazing.

Later we get home and check our answering maching. Mark the Installer has not called to give us an installation time. My friend Kari told me that I should contact the Consumer Protection Agency to tell them about Home Depot's jerking me around on this. I am going to.

August 6th: So there, now you're all caught up with the past 3 weeks-ish. Hope you all are having a great time and that you're enjoying your summer and staying cool.

And may your garage door openers whiz easily in a good working condition. If they don't, do not under any circumstances hire Home Depot to do it.

XO Love,
Darcy

Bianca!

We have a new addition to our family!!

Meet Bianca! She is a 9 month old long haired kitty, white with blue eyes and brown spots/tail. She is extremely affectionate and loves to snuggle! She makes the cutest little squeaky meowing sounds. She's in that awkward "cat puberty" stage, where she's not really a kitten anymore but she's not really full grown yet either, so she looks a little gawky (to use David's word). But I love her.

Emma and Gabs do not yet share my love of her and there has been much hissing, yowling, and growling. But Bianca seems to shrug it off well so far, and I am confident that as they get used to her they'll love her too.

We are thinking about getting a dog some day, but it would just be too much right now. Another cat posed a lot less change and maintenance than a dog would, and neither of us have ever owned dogs before so it would be a major change. Some day...but not now.

After all, we've had a LOT of change in the past 3 years - moving to Milwaukee, getting engaged and then married, buying a house...I think we can put off the dog a few more years! ;)

Lots of love (and cat hair),

Darcy

Going Junebuggy

Sheesh...I never thought it would come to this, but...

....I haven't had time to blog lately!!

Yes, shocking, but true. But understandable and even logical, given the work I've been doing for our quintet's huge Symphony on the Square feature concert debut this Thursday at noon at Cathedral Square. I'm really psyched about it. I did arrangements of Star Wars, Joplin's Elite Syncopations, the Stars & Stripes, Harry Potter, and am currently working on a Phantom of the Opera medley. It's a lot of work but it's fun. And for those of you who know Finale 2004, I learned how to fully use Speedy Entry mode, which combined with the MIDI keyboard, makes the previously lugubrious entering of complicated rhythms fly like lightning! I blew through the Joplin in one day, and the Stars & Stripes in one day as well! (My arrangement of Star Wars was B.S.E. - Before Speedy Entry, har har - and took me over a week...but that was also because I wanted all the juicy ostinatos and underlying rhythms that John Williams uses in the original Main Title for the movie.)

So tons of things have been happening lately. The MSO's season is almost over. We played our last subscription concert a few weeks ago which featured the Saint Saen's Organ Symphony, the music used as the Soundtrack for the movie "Babe". (David relayed to me that he heard that the translation for this movie title in China was "The Pig That Talks and Solves Agricultural Problems." I thought that was hysterical.) All of the horn solos in that piece are 3rd horn so it was a lot of fun (and work) for me. It went extremely well for all 4 concerts, and that pleased me.

Before that, the Florentine Opera did a production of Aida that was incredible. For those of you who know opera, Aida is all one big huge spectacle. I had done Aida years ago with the Cincinnati Opera - memorable not only because of the great singing but because one of the horses took a huge dump on stage right in the middle of the 2nd act.

Maybe when I have time I'll do one of my "Opera for non-OperaDorks" synopses of Aida for you. It really is a compelling plot and I found myself getting very drawn into it more and more every night. I sit on the audience side of the pit, so I can see the stage quite well. The sets were just gorgeous, and were gargantuan - I have no idea how they got those things on stage, much less on a truck to get them here. Aida, sung by Angela Brown, was probably one of the best, if not the best, sopranos I've ever heard. She had a gorgeous, incredibly resonant and powerful voice but she never sounded like she was forcing or belting like so many singers do.

But my favorite part of this production of Aida was, by far, the dancing. In the first dress rehearsal during the Triumphal March section in the 2nd act, where traditionally all the animals are paraded across the stage, something caught my eye. I thought I had seen a naked man's buttcheek fly by. I thought to myself, "no way!" and took another look. Incredulously, there were these gorgeous male dancers in gold Roman/Egyptian style coiled-rope loincloth-esque thongs, with gold body paint smeared all over their gluteal glory and dancing in a very aboriginal style with spears. Yum! For a while I was very disappointed after the 2nd act because I knew the manbutts weren't coming back in the 3rd or 4th acts.

Meanwhile here we are in the brass section, playing all kinds of juicy fanfares. It was loads of fun. And I had to laugh - the women were completely covered in body veils. Definitely indicative of the Egyptian culture, of course, but also of the fact that two gay men were producing/directing this production. ;) I have to say, it was a nice role reversal from the usual exploitation of women's bodies and sexuality! Ha ha!

The other fun news - David and I planted a large vegetable garden in the strip of land to the north of our garage - we have a fence there and lots of land we don't use, so we figured it would be a good place for it.

So the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, David went to Home Depot and rented a sod cutter and hauled it to and from our place in my CR-V. (I would have helped him do all this except I was in rehearsal at work.) For those of you who have never seen a sodcutter, it is a behemoth of a machine, weighing at least 200 pounds. David cut a plot of about 10' x 13'. We planted 5 different varieties of tomatoes (Sweet 100's, Better Boys, romas, grape, and cherry), jalapeno peppers, red peppers, pole beans, parsley, and basil. I am most excited about the tomatoes. I remember our neighbor Nancy bringing over Sweet 100's last summer when we first moved in in August. She had a bumper crop from two plants that had apparently gone wild. I used to eat them like candy. They were so sweet, popped in your mouth and you could still taste the sun in them. I am sure I will turn into a tomato by September!!

Anyway, there's much more to write about, so I'll go to another post for it. Ciao!!

XO Love,
Darcy

Beethoven's 9th, flourishing flowers, and Cinci trip pics

We're doing Beethoven's 9th Symphony this week. It's one of the "top 40" classical pieces, to be sure, but it's still a fantastic piece of music, and I had a "moment" last night toward the end. We were careening full speed ahead to the very end of the piece, and I was thinking about how amazing it is that I get to do this, to participate in one of the world's greatest artistic masterpieces. What an honor.

I just had a really strong sense of the energy of the audience (we had a nearly full house, and our hall seats 2500) and how much they were enjoying it. That always enhances my performance experience, no matter how tired or hackneyed a piece may seem to me - imagining the piece through the ears of someone who doesn't get to hear it as much as I do. It's a great perspective. And there were problems with the performance last night - it wasn't perfect. But I still managed to really enjoy it.

One of the reasons I enjoyed last night's performance so much was the fact that I finally could play the 3rd horn part. I'm really struggling with my new position as 3rd as some of the pieces I played over and over again as Principal while freelancing turn up here. This piece is one of them. I totally have the Principal part associated with many pieces, since that's what I played for so many years before coming here. So when it comes to playing a new part, one that often is in a completely different key and that has completely different entrances and rhythms, I find myself wanting to fall into the groove that I wore into my memory of so many Principal performances of so many pieces.

It's not that I want to play that part anymore; it's just that I keep thinking that that's what I should be playing while I'm sitting there when I hear that music. It's really hard to do something completely different at first. It's very weird. But I overcame it successfully last night (about time!) and was very happy.

And now for something completely different! Here's a neat sequence of pictures showing the progress of our new flower bulb bed in our front yard. They span from mid-April to the present. (The last picture was taken about a week ago.)

David has been cutting gorgeous arrangements of daffodils and tulips for our vases. We've been enjoying their beauty immensely on our various tables in our kitchen and living room. My favorites, though, are the hyacinths; they have such an enticing scent, and they give the entire room a luscious and fresh smell.

The other cool thing about these pictures is that we can see the "bald spots" of the garden so we know where to plant more bulbs this fall! Hooray!

So here are some really neat pictures of my trip to Cincinnati a few weeks ago! It was pure serendipity that I was visiting during one of my mother's amazing music concerts! This was her 5th grade chorus's debut concert - as in, these kids had never given a concert before in their short lives - but you would have never known it to watch and listen to them!

Here is my mom and the entire 5th grade chorus, warming up in my mom's ultra-festively decorated classroom:

This is the stage in the gym where the performance took place. The theme of the concert was very progressive - EARTH DAY. I was blown away by how many songs my mom found that were directly related to Earth Day - songs about recycling, getting Corporate America to care about its waste disposal, about how one person can really make a difference; African songs about the different earth elements, a really neat Spanish song about Fire, and a few feel-good songs with CD accompaniment for good measure.

She had these kids using the Orff instruments (the many xylophone-type objects which you can see below), rain sticks, percussion instruments, bongos...you name it! She also featured several kids in their own solos and in poetry narration. And my sister, Dana, had come in to teach these kids choreography on top of it all! It was SO neat!

Note the neat mural tapestry in the background:

I told my mom that I hadn't expected to be so completely entertained as an adult who has fairly sophisticated musical tastes, but I was pleasantly surprised - no, blown away is more like it! In fact, one of my favorite songs of the entire night was one that I memorized because the audience got to sing along. It's called "Good Garbage." I loved it particularly because David is an avid composter. When he first moved up here he started a biodegradable rubbish heap in our small garden patch at our old place (before we had our own yard). I got sick of looking at it (and finding it strewn across our driveway by various rodents) so I bought him an Earth Machine. We love it and it really improves the fertility of our gardens.

Anyway...back to the song. David laughed and laughed when I sang him the refrain of the "Good Garbage" song that my mom did with her kids (she had the whole auditorium full of parents and kids singing along!):

Good garbage breaks down as it goes!

That's why it smells bad to your nose!

Bad garbage grows and grows and grows...

Garbage is s'posed to decompose!

And for the closing shots, we have the star of the trip...little Jenna, who isn't so little anymore! She is 2 and a half, and is just the most adorable and fun bundle of energy you could ever hope to meet. But don't ask me...I'm hopelessly biased. ;)

I pushed Jenna on the tree swing my parents have in their backyard. We had lots of fun! (Kids are great exercise, I found!)

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

That's all for now. I hope you're all enjoying your weekend, and that May is treating you wonderfully!

XOXOXO

Love,

Darcy