One More Detour on the Writing Road

A few months ago, I bought tickets for several Ravinia shows, three of which fell within a week. This week. I'm not used to all this social.

Friday, Pinchas Zukerman conducted the CSO, and his daughter Arianna sang. An all Mozart show. It was nice, but the pavilion was about half empty. I don't believe the full orchestra was there, those who were there were dressed kinda orchestra-casual, and all in all, it felt very much like a middle of the week show.

Last night's show, which really was middle of the week, was 2/3 great. It began with Mahler, and I am not a Mahler fan. It could just be my ear, but once music edges into the mid-1800s, it sounds like the stuff I hear in 30s/40s Hollywood melodramas. The Mahler work that was played was the Adagio from Symphony No. 10, and as I listened, I could imagine Ingrid Bergman searching through her husband's sock drawer and finding proof he was a murderer/escaped Nazi/criminal mastermind, then realizing that said husband had come home early, was on his way up the stairs, and would kill her when he found her.

After intermission came Barber's Adagio for Strings, which is one of my favorite pieces of music even though it was composed well past the mid-1800s. Go figure. Then came Joshua Bell, and Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64. 2-3 minutes standing O, followed by three curtain calls. Not bad for an outdoor venue where altogether too many people head for the exits as soon as the last note sounds. This is the second time I've seen Bell--he's just plain good. He stays after the show and signs CDs and such. I should take advantage one of these times because I do like him.

Saturday, a friend and I are going to Ravinia to see Sting and the Royal Philharmonic. The show sold out months ago--we're going to get down to the Ravinia area early to beat the worst of the traffic, have dinner, then bash around the grounds. Should be a good show.

Funnest thing of all was Monday, when I saw alfreda89 for the first time since the late 90s. A college friend of hers had arranged and organized, and a gang of us hooked up after work, jabbered, ate really good Chinese, and jabbered some more. A good time. Not going to wait 12 years to do it again.

The weather continues hot and muggy. The tomato plants have some decent-sized greenies. The pups are good. I'm tired, busy, and tired.

Long day. Up around 6ish. Breakfast with e_moon60 and Webmistress Ruta, then upstairs to pack. Loaded the car, and was on the road around 815a, which was a little later than I wanted but oh well. Fairly uneventful drive. Took a detour to Oregon/Byron and drove along the Rock River to take in the scenery. Home at 345pm.

My wireless is out again, so the good MacBook is now tethered to the office via the Ethernet cable. The iBook, which can't be connected via cable or wireless no matter how I try, is now the roaming laptop. No more websurfing in the comfort of my living room for the foreseeable future. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

I will let matters stay as they are, and see whether the connection conks out. If it does, the issue is the cable modem. If it doesn't, the problem is with my base station...although the internal network still works in that the external hard drive is connected to the base station and I can still communicate with it with both laptops. So who the hell knows? I may simply need to do a hard reset of the base station. But not right now.

This all may take a few weeks to shake out. In the meantime, I won't be online as much, and may actually get other things done.

Pick up my babies tomorrow morning. It's very quiet here now. I miss those two hooligans, but getting a chance to settle in, unpack, and decompress is kinda nice.

The conference was good. I learned some things, and had a chance to talk through some story issues with e_moon60 and Elaine Isaak. Tweaked the website with Ruta. Ate more fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies than could have possibly been good for me.

Back to reality...