big day

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The day started off customarily for a Saturday, with me trying to sit at the computer for a few minutes while Sarah danced around and demanded that we go out for the biscuit. Eventually I had processed enough ones and zeros and out we went, bumping along on the recently scraped street that runs close enough to our house that we can hear lots of other cars bumping. (Last night I heard what sounded like a bike towing a ten-foot steel pipe -- shades of China! It'll be nice and smooth when they finish it, and maybe passing trucks won't shake the record player so much.)

At McDonald's, Sarah made for the play area right away, once again. Three weeks ago, I finally managed to talk her into going up the stair tube and coming down the slide tube, and she's been unstoppable since then. We were about to leave for Holyoke, to try and get some of our money's worth out of the one-year membership we bought a while ago, when some other kids came in, so we stayed longer. First a pair of twins arrived, one of whom immediately headed up the stair-tube. Then a little boy and another girl arrived separately. I sat and talked about dad stuff with the father of the twins for a while before the party broke up.

After that, it didn't seem like we had time for Holyoke before lunch, so we explored what happens when we turn left under the train tracks by the car wash on the way back. Turns out this put us on Dewey, a road I'd explored earlier, so I knew where I was going, more or less. We passed another playground, and one of us wanted to get out, so we found an entrance and parked. The play apparatus was about 90% similar to what we have three blocks from home at Mittineague Park. After a bit, Sarah reported a raindrop, and I used that as an excuse to head on home for lunch. Cathy had been cleaning up the house and was tired (and coughing from a cold that moved in after the sinus illness went away), so I made lunch. We ate. I got interested in aquariums, and a brief search revealed one in Springfield, along with a history museum and two art museums, all in one place. We went.

We parked and made our way past the Dr. Seuss sculpture garden to the welcome center/gift shop, where Sarah started asking for things right away. Instead, we went in and looked at fish, stuffed ones and live ones, then found the kids' activities area, where Sarah happily plunged into coloring and taking part in little experiments, including a vinegar-and-soda volcano. I played with the soda-bottle tornado and the oil-and-water wave tank (bottle) and then visited the Madagascar hissing roaches. They didn't hiss, but I got to hold one while I told the docent about the roaches in Georgia and Florida. She said maybe they should call them beetles, and people wouldn't associate them with the nasty ones. I theorized that people are more interested in them as roaches.

We continued through the museum, looking at stuffed animals and then mineral displays. A brief pit stop at the vending machines downstairs replenished Sarah's energy -- like that was a problem! -- and we continued to one of the art museums, with holdings in sculpture casts and Asian art. The first sculpture that greeted us was Moses, who we'd seen in the marble in a small church in Rome, getting cleaned up. I was happy to see a display that explained the process of making a plaster cast of one of those big works. Oh yeah. They do it in little bits, of course!

Cathy took Sarah upstairs, where they quickly located another activity area. Sarah was still being active there when I came up and took over so Cathy could, like, look at some stuff. I traced the ideogram for "Monkey," being as that's my birth year mascot. That's a complicated character! I must find a site where I can investigate what makes it that way. We then called it a day, leaving via the library and picking up a pile of free comic books as we passed, and taking Sarah to the restroom in preparation for the drive home.

After we'd been home a while, I gave Sarah her bath, which seemed to take forever, and then Cathy and I proceeded to the bedroom for the major task of reorienting our bed. It took a while, but went smoothly, despite the determined help of our daughter. Cathy used the opportunity to vacuum under where we sleep. The new configuration looks a bit more normal than the old one. Sarah and I nipped over to Radio Shack to get a coaxial cable for the TV, after which I nipped back over by myself to get one that was long enough. I overlooked the vertical component in guessing at the length. "Guess twice, buy once," is good advice. After all that, Sarah dropped off to sleep fairly quickly. I was a bit too tired to listen to Excursions on KRFC, though I found time to offload and weed photos from the day. Sarah's picture of me in the sculptural chair at the Seuss garden is a good one.
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to the conductor

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If you were wondering the guy in the first row was after the Intermission, I found a better seat. In my car. But let me back up a bit.

I was late getting to the show because the directions to the concert hall apparently assumed I knew how to get there without the directions. I got off at the specified exit, and in the absence of other signage, I guessed that the community college would be in the direction of the community it was in. Arriving at almost the stroke of three, there were no spaces in the lot I was directed to. I miraculously pulled into one of two spaces that had a car smack in the middle of both, about four feet forward. If not for that, I doubt I would have found a space, so I guess I'm grateful to her for parking that way. I hastened to the concert hall, figuring I might have to miss the first piece, which was an orchestrated version of Gershwin's Lullaby for string quartet -- I'd have minded more if it had been the quartet version -- but amazingly made it before the event got under way. The front-row seat was the best I could hope for. I did try one foray up into the auditorium, but the two empty seats I saw had a program draped across them, which is the universal language for "I sneezed on my program and it's sitting here to dry." I'm not messing with that.

So I sat in what perverts would probably call the Upskirt section, looking up at the orchestra members. I mean, the musicians. Preparatory speeches were given, applause was dispensed, and you, the maestro, gathered the players in with your eyes and gave the upbeat. A moment later, I had my first misgivings as the first violin -- the First Violin! -- began to scratch out Gershwin's sweet figurations in a tone I'd call "breathy" coming from a flute. Then she was joined by the rest of the combo, and my heart sank ever farther. Lines were fluffed, entrances missed, and unisons were a poor jest. At the end of the first number, I had respect for the First Violist, whose tone was rich and sweet, and who never seemed to miss a note. He's a keeper.

Then you brought out the soloist for Gershwin's Concerto, and I began to hope that I'd get more out of that. He looked a little like an old friend of mine, which made me somewhat kindly disposed toward him. His first notes after the orchestral intro (which reminded me of many orchestras playing behind high school musicals I've seen and been in) were crisp and authoritative. Before long, though, I saw that he, too, knows Mister F***up, the imp of the perverse who sabotages me when I'm playing piano. About 80% of the way through any run, his fingers would let him down, and he'd just sort of get to the end and go on with his life. I guess Mr. F. has to be somewhere when I'm not playing. There were good moments in that first movement. My favorite was looking over and seeing a little girl, maybe four years old, enthusiastically waving her arms during the exciting part. She was really enjoying it! The percussion section seemed to have their act together, too.

In the second movement, my hopes for a fresh start were put back down when the trumpet player bobbled his first note, and most of the rest of his notes. This very audible part is crucial to the success of the movement. Oh, well. I probably winced more over the trumpet player than even over the first violinist. I didn't know where to look most of the time. In the last movement, things failed to improve. You were probably right to stop the piece altogether when the pianist wandered completely off the score. Your only mistake was starting it back up again. Then it was Intermission time, and I headed out into the clean air of the parking lot.

As I was locating "Concerto in F" on my iPod, the owner of the adjacent car came along, and expressed consternation over the position of her car. I was glad to see that somebody could feel shame over a job badly done. Perhaps it was as she suggested, and it had rolled after she parked it. I headed to the bookstore and bought a CD of Gershwin pieces that I've been dithering over for a long time, with Slatkin and the St. Louis -- I've had the LPs of these for years. I plan to listen to them a couple of times now.

I hope the Rhapsody went well. I thought of staying, as you would be playing the piano instead of the other fellow, but decided it was still the same orchestra, the same violinist, the same trumpeter, the same plaintive diminished unisons and disunited starts and stops. I did miss that violist, though.
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