Musings of a rural(ish) geek

- Last fall outreach gig is done. It went pretty well, although we were in the sun -- there was some miscommunication about setup, and the place where we were supposed to be had a pavilion in it because somebody didn't ask before they set up "where we always (aka last year) do". Went out for dinner after with jebra and mrs_sweetpeach and MW after, which is always fun. Now we gear up for the Spooktacular on Oct 29. We will be using some of the music from the outreach gigs, and adding a few bits and pieces.

- The Spooktacular concert is the 29th. I have a costume (jacket only) to do for me. DB has requested a costume as well. His is trickier, although the hardest part will be finding the colors he wants - the quilt store in A2 should have a decent selection of Kona solids, so I'm heading there later today.

- it is fall, and the gardens are in desperate need of cutting back, but see first notes about outreach gigs and costumes with deadlines. After errands today, I'll get out there and cut something back, probably the front garden by the forsythia. One garden per day should get me done sometime in the next two weeks, barring rain or cold. Wish me decent weather.

Yesterday (Sunday) was the Cemetery Walk at church -- the cemetery associated with the church has graves in it from the 1830s, and the church historical society writes skits involving some of the people there (it's somewhat interesting to get comments on an early 1900's character from people who actually knew her...). In conjunction with that, the service was "Old Fashion". I was song leader, and the first note I got asked only if I could wear old-fashioned cloths(sic), I was soooo tempted to wear the grey plaid 1953 dress (Mum bought it off the rack), but then I realised that I didn't have the proper undergarments for it. The last time I wore it (25 years ago!) it was still a bit big for me, and the lack of a girdle wasn't a problem. Now, I need something under it. Instead, I added some trim to last year's 1900s jacket, "de-steampunked" the skirt, and found the straw boater. There are now notes on the jacket and blouse for things I need to fix before next year.

I fixed the leaks in the rill -- no holes in the liner, just water finding 'down' where J hadn't expected it. I also planted strawberries, including the pair of runners that were 'doing a runner' and escaping from the old strawberry bed. That was Friday, and yesterday there were deer tracks through the new bed -- they hadn't stopped to nibble anything, but there were hoof prints!

There are many birds bathing in the birdbath and the pools in the rill -- I refill the birdbath twice a day, and the rocks next to the bathing pools in the rill are usually splashed. Crows and jays fling a lot of water around. :)

Anna-cat was parading around with a mouse in her mouth late Saturday evening, and Sunday we found where she had left it -- under the kitchen table, where it would be safe. (Ji doesn't eat stuff that he doesn't catch). DB took it out to the pyre, aka the brush pile. The pyre already has a bunch of dead bird & mice in it, so what's one more?

for the most part. We reached 90% cloud cover just as the moon started to block the sun, and got a thunderstorm just about the same time as we got to max coverage. It got dark there for a while --much darker than the usual August storm -- but there wasn't anything to see.

DB's friends explained that the reason you shouldn't look at the sun during an eclipse is that the Sun gets a +10 Backstabbing multiplier. kids these days. They're not wrong, though.

You'd think I was in a band or something.

Four gigs in 12 days, the last three in the space of 5 days, with no additional rehearsals. I've seen jebra almost as much as I've seen J. :) (J is working overtime, trying to get up to speed on new things that need to be done RSN at work.) The gigs went pretty well, in general. No major trainwrecks, although there were a couple of places where the track got a little squirrelly, and both J and Nana said that everything seemed a little laid-back at Heritage Park. (Not surprising, as we hadn't played for a week, and Damien is likely to take things a click down in that situation. We were down three percussionists, it was hot, and the FCB has a comfortable 'groove' that we settle into unless prodded out of it.) One more gig at the end of the month, then we get August off. (A bunch of us are going up to Interlochen for Adult Band Camp, though. More music!)

Friday saw me off-line all day -- the power went out early in the morning, and by the time we got power back I was into the rest of my day and never even turned the computer on. Then the power went out three more times between Friday afternoon and Saturday evening. The back yard is much quieter without the rill running.

well, that was a lost week. CB brought a cold to rehearsal a couple of weeks ago, and gave me some of the germs. :(

Saturday was OneAct Regionals (competitive theater), hosted at CHS. DB got offered an emcee job, rather than the backstage/sound he was expecting(*). I emailed early in the week, asking if KA (who was running the site) needed any help, and zie did -- zie needed a non-Theater Guild/Theater Booster adult to tabulate scores. KA couldn't do it, as zie had a team in the competition, and it looks sketchy to have a parent do it. KA said zie was wracking her brain trying to figure something out until I emailed. (MSBOA gets around this by supplying a tabulator, but MIFA either hasn't thought of that or doesn't have the money.) It was a pretty easy gig -- show up around noon, tabulate four flights of scores and awards, then go home. I snuck out during a show, and came home to get some actual food for KA, my reading glasses, and to feed the fish.

KA is vegetarian, and whoever set up the volunteer/worker menu either neglected to request vegetarian food, or whoever was supposed to bring it didn't, so zie was eating plain bagels and popcorn. I was a little annoyed that there wasn't any food for zir -- it's not a secret or new (KA's been at CHS for four years now), and it's really a bad idea to let the site boss get hungry. I had a bowl of rice/beans/corn in the fridge, and another bowl of green salad, which solved the problem of a hungry KA very well.

After making MIFA change the rules a couple of years ago, CHS is going to State competition! (They really should have gone a couple of years ago, but didn't make it out of Regionals, and the other teams at Regionals raised a stink about *that*, hence the rules change.) It's been 10 years since a CHS team made it to State, so that's very exciting.

I'd go and see them at State (didn't get to see them at Regionals because the room was small and I got there late), but it's next weekend, and I'm planning on being at Capricon. It's one thing to miss Capricon because I've got a kid in competition....

DB may or may not come to Chicago -- he's contemplating going to State and seeing the other shows. (State is in Charlotte, which is the closest it's been other than when Chelsea hosts.)

* he says he just does his impression of jebra as "Mr FCB Announcer Guy"; his boss says that he's got lots of people to run sound, but only a couple who can emcee OneAct, and with two stage tracks running.....

Another Christmas done. Christmas Eve service was candles and congregational carols with just an anthem (One Small Child) by the choir. The church was almost entirely full for both services, but we didn't need the overflow space. Which was good, because it wasn't really set up. There were a surprising number of people at service on Christmas Day.

Tuesday we went to lunch with Nana, and did Xmas with her. She has a favorite restaurant in Saline, so we went there -- J is back to work because release is approaching quickly, and the new building is practically in Saline.

The snow is just about all melted -- there are still piles where it got shoveled/plowed to, and the field where the woods shade it is still snowcovered.

A number of DB's friends got inexpensive drones for Xmas, and he seemed a little bummed that he didn't, until I said "we don't buy you toys anymore. If we're going to buy a drone, it's going to be a decent one." And, tbh, given a choice between good boots (leather wellington/harness style) and a drone, the boots win every time.

(huh. another weirdity with LJ today - can't change the userpic. ah well.)

Stunning development, I know. It's Michigan, it's mid-December. Snow happens. However, this fall/winter has been fairly warm and almost entirely snowfree until Sunday; and then J & I shoveled 9" at 6pm and we got another 3" overnight. Snow days all around on Monday. So the FCB concert next Sunday will be even less rehearsed than usual. OTOH, it's not supposed to snow very much between now and then, so we may have a decent audience.

Saturday was busy -- a funeral meal to host in the late afternoon and a keyboard dedication concert in the evening. I had time to come home and change in between!

DB is done with working The Nutcracker at the HS auditorium, but now he's working a church Christmas pageant at the old HS auditorium -- they have crew that does most of the sound work, but they need someone (with keys) to open the building and turn on the house and run the stage lights.

I had been vaguely contemplating going to the Chippewas bowl game, and then they got invited to the Miami Beach Bowl. That would be a fun game to go to, but the timing is horrid. The game is Monday afternoon, and I have a concert Sunday afternoon & rehearsal Monday evening. While I could skip rehearsal (although that's kind of a bad idea, as we'll be getting new music), getting in at 2am for a 2:30pm game is not my idea of fun.

There is at least one hawk hunting the backyard. There may be two, as J saw one this afternoon that seemed smaller than the one we'd seen in the morning. This probably explains why the birdseed in the feeders isn't going down as fast as it often does.

The cranes are still hanging around in the backyard. They're usually pretty quiet (not much to worry about if you're a 3.5 foot tall bird), but today they were answering the civil alert siren test.

I have mostly finished cutting back things in the garden -- the larger daisies still need to be done, as does the blanket flower, but leaving them uncut all winter doesn't do them any harm, it just looks ragged.

The tree is up but undecorated. We may get to it next weekend, we may not. DB will be working a show Fri & Sat, and I may be working the recount. That depends on the outcome of the suit filed against the recount petition. If it's on, I go in at 8am Wed and we work 10 hour days until the count is done. Including weekends, because we need to be done by 14 Dec. Training is Monday afternoon, and we find out then whether we're actually doing the count.

My back has been being variably cranky for the last month -- I think it will get better if the weather ever stabilises.

So that happened. But life goes on. (I suspect it helped that I was locked away until 11pm, and then I came home and went to bed without turning radio/TV/internet on.)

Last weekend, J and I ran off to Chicago for WindyCon; where I saw people I don't see often enough (which is unlikely to change, unless we move, and then it will be a different set of people we don't see often enough).

In band news, I have had to transcribe yet another BariSax part, this time from the score. mutter.

We still have not had a night cold enough that there's been ice on the pond -- there've been a couple of days when I've had to break ice out of the birdbath, but not enough to even warrant getting out the heated birdbath. I spent an hour pulling grass and cutting back the Russian Sage in the northwest flowerbed in preparation for the snow we may or may not get. (If I leave it up, we get a lovely drift across the end of the driveway; if I cut it back, the drift is less than halfway across the driveway.) They tell us we may have snow this weekend. We shall see. The larkspur plants that are blooming will be dismayed by snow, but everything else seems to be settling in for chilly weather.

Thanksgiving is next week. I have no idea what we're going to have for dinner. DB says ham, so I guess that's what we'll do. It will be SR's birthday on Thursday, and I haven't gotten her care package in the mail yet, so it will not be there in time. BadMom moment. I have gotten her presents, though (most will not be sent to her because she'd have to bring them back). so there's that.

There was a skin of ice on the birdbath this morning, although the pond was unfrozen. I brought in the hummingbird feeders, as I haven't seen a hummingbird in two or three weeks. The farmer came through to harvest the soybeans in the field early this week, and since then has been through with a disk and a spray rig that I've seen -- he probably came through with a planting rig while I was gone one day, planting winter wheat or rye. I won't know which until it comes up.

There was a last flush of blooms on the hardy hibiscus in the east garden -- some of the stems that came up very early this summer set buds in mid-September, and a few bloomed before the frost got them. I spent about 90 minutes out in that garden, pulling grass and weeds, and there's probably that much more work out there. I still have to finish the NE garden, but between the ants and whatever weed I'm allergic to out there, I'm a bit leery of it right now. I'll wait for the next frost.

I've been going in to file books in the K-2 library. Thursday I spent 3 hours there, and could probably do that every day if I wanted to.

I have gotten as far as pondering a costume. I really need to get started on that -- I'm going to be gone much of next week, as Mum and I are heading south on Wednesday (I'm going as far as western NC and driving back, she'll be going on to FL with her sister, then flying back to MI).