Tonight's shape-note singing was actually more of a rehearsal for a concert we're going to be in (scroll down) featuring music from the time of Thomas Jefferson. The host and organizer, Shelley, was advising us to use vowels that were less California and more Cornwall, i.e. talk like pirates. She mentioned Talk Like A Pirate Day but didn't remember ( Read more... )

In Santa Cruz these days the shape-note singings are first and third Sundays from 2-4 (though they get canceled about half the time due to conflicts with other music events), and the Celtic slow jam sessions are also first and third Sundays of the month from 2-4. In general I try to go to shape-note on first Sundays and slow session on third ( Read more... )

Earlier today my new President and Vice President (and families and guests) took the train to Washington DC, and now my violetclm (along with nitoya2, and hopefully nbm91 made it as well) just left on the train for another four months up in Portland -- reasons to get all choked up all around!

As I had posted elsewhere, in the early days of violetclm's month of winter break, ( Read more... )

The Westside Community Folk Song/Gospel Choir concert was tonight, and other than the church getting hotter and stuffier by the minute, everything was going fine until the next-to-the-next-to-the-last song ("The Virgin Mary had a Baby Boy", a calypso "traditional West Indian carol" which had replaced the last two songs on the original list) when I ( Read more... )

violetclm is off doing a photo shoot for a yearbook page. I'm sitting here eating "m&m's Premiums", which are kind of disturbing because they don't have the "Melt in your mouth, not in your hands" hard candy shells, plus that the "Triple Chocolate" ones are basically the same color, size, and shape as my iPod earbuds.

Last night broccolipwns and I went to Celtic Music ( Read more... )

Back from the farmers market, I'm sitting here eating Girl Scout cookies and looking at FAFSA (financial aid) stuff for violetclm's 2008-2009 school year. And I just put a care package in the mail for him, after some talk about such things the other day.

After we got home from games group yesterday I finished the DVDs for the 12/8/2007 improv show ( ( Read more... )

I was just playing Adventures in Neopia with broccolipwns (he won), and between turns also digging through an old box (OK, a mini-suitcase with a seen-better-days jeweled-cable-car design) of pictures and odd bits of paper. I found an October 20, 1981, letter to one of my brothers where among other things I listed the concerts I had been to since moving to ( Read more... )

This afternoon I made a loaf of the pumpkin bread described in this message. The bread remains the same, but the 14-year-old violetclm in that message is now 19 and has recently finished (and thoroughly enjoyed) his first semester at Reed. He's been back here for winter break for just over two weeks now, and while at first I just couldn't stop going into ( Read more... )

Last Sunday's shape-note holiday party got bumped to January 6 due to a conflict with a San Francisco event, so I was off to Celtic Slow Session at the Windmill Coffee Spot cafe. This was the first time we'd met there where there was an overcast sky rather than seriously glaring sun -- I liked it, and was looking forward to not having to constantly ( Read more... )

Today I left broccolipwns's improv a little early to go to a theater meeting (I get the feeling that following his current play, broccolipwns will be in a play conceptually described as "Sgt. Pepper's Magical Mystery Yellow Submarine" in February, and then something by Shakespeare come May), leaving that a little early as well to go to a free (Newman's Own Organics was ( Read more... )