Locks of Love

Many of you have probably heard of Locks of Love, a charity which provides human-hair wigs for "financially disadvantaged children 18 years and younger suffering from long-term medical hair loss." They accept monetary donations, of course, but also donations of hair (at least 10" long). Go to the website, check out the before & after pictures, read the letters from some of the kids who've benefitted, and tell me this isn't a worthy cause!

I've known a few friends who've donated (I went to a wedding a few years ago where a friend and one of the groom's cousins were comparing notes on their donation experiences), so I've been thinking about this for a few years. Well, I finally took the plunge - this afternoon I had the hairdresser whack off 12" of my hair, which I'll mail off in the morning. How much difference does 12" make? This morning my hair fell to about my hipline; now it barely covers my shoulders, partly because, with so much less weight, my hair's natural wave can pull my hair up more.

And boy, is this going to take some getting used to! My hair has been waist-length or longer for 15 or 20 years; now, while I can still get it into a (much smaller) bun, I have all kinds of little ends to corral. It's much easier to french-braid; a ponytail now falls barely to my shoulders instead of to my waist. Maybe I'll be able to do a french twist now, too; before, all that hair weighed so much, it wouldn't stay put. And the first time I wash this much-shorter hair is gonna feel very strange indeed - it stops a lot sooner than I'm used to, weighs a lot less, and will thus need less shampoo & conditioner and dry much more quickly.

The Chief has only known me with long hair; he's been having a lot of fun getting oh, so melodramatic, clutching his breast, putting his hand to his forehead, and pretending to swoon at the mere thought of my cutting my hair. When I got home this afternoon, he made a big show of opening the door s-l-o-w-l-y, with one hand over his eyes, peeking between his fingers. What a ham! So far, he hasn't really said much, but I can tell by the way he looks at my hair that this is going to be an adjustment for him.

Can you say "price gouging"?

Noticed yesterday that a local gas station, a no-name chain, had jumped the price for regular unleaded from $2.89 in the morning to $3.29 that evening!!! A 40-cents-a-gallon jump! This makes them 20 cents a gallon more expensive than the Exxon just down the road, and the no-name station doesn't even take credit cards!

Now out on DVD...

Finally got my Mikado DVD last night, watched it tonight. The Act I disc is a mess; about 1/3 of the way through the sound gets out of synch with the picture and never gets back on track. I'll have to find out if anyone else had this problem. The Act II disc is better; no synching problems! I ordered copies for my parents and a couple of out-of-town friends; I'll have to check those copies to see whether they have problems, or if it's just that one disc.

After watching through the show once, I've decided two things about my vocal performance - I'd better continue my voice lessons, and my voice is better suited to Katisha than to Pitti-Sing. But I'm still glad I pushed for Pitti - I may never get that chance again! Dramatically, I'm not at all unhappy with how I did. Considering how painful it can be to watch oneself on video, that's pretty darn good!

It's nice to have a record of our Ko-Ko's lovely lyric baritone, our other principals' comic turns, the lush costumes, pretty stage pictures, and all the other things that made this fun to do. It's also nice to be able to hear how the ensemble numbers sounded - it's impossible to tell when you're in the ensemble how it comes across to the audience. The sound balance was such that I could usually hear myself and Yum-Yum in the full-ensemble numbers, thanks to our mics. I don't know that anyone else would notice, particularly, but it's an odd feeling to be watching this DVD and be able to pick out my own voice.

Also on DVD... My sister K's company has been putting on an arts festival every June for the past several years and this year they did a cut-down version of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, in which she played Lucy. Being partial, I was pleased and proud to see that she was the best thing on that stage both vocally and dramatically.

When the Chief & I were in town for the christening last weekend, K let me sing with her when she cantored at church. I enjoyed singing harmony to her melody on the Mass parts; I only wish the hymns had included some for which I knew harmonies. A pity we live so far apart; I'd love to sing with her more often.

The moral of the story is...

Read the online merchant reviews before ordering! I ordered a digital camera two weeks ago from WaWaDigital. I suppose the name should have sent me to the reviews, but no, I was a cheapskate and their price was the lowest. And I never got an e-mail order confirmation, which is highly unusual for an online merchant these days. But they did call me the next day to confirm my order, to be shipped in 7-10 working days, so I wasn't really concerned.

However, two weeks later my camera has yet to arrive, so I called earlier today to check on my order. The man on the phone told me it was "completely sold out for 3 weeks". Never mind that the website claimed at the time of my order and still claims that the item is in stock. Never mind that when the company called to confirm my mailing address (apparently just a thinly veiled attempt to get me to buy accessories in addition to the camera), they never said anything about its being sold out. Oh, and I notice that the website price today is $55 higher than when I ordered. Not that it matters, if the thing is unavailable, of course.

The reviews I read this morning included several people accusing them of bait-and-switch tactics - items that never arrived, pressure to buy additional items, etc. So I found it interesting that when I called today to check on my camera and they apologetically told me it wouldn't be available for at least 3 weeks and I asked to cancel my order, the man on the phone just said "yes, ma'am, we'll cancel that for you" and hung up. Didn't ask my name, address, or any other info that might help him identify the order I wanted to cancel, which makes me suspect it was never placed to begin with, perhaps because I politely declined to order anything but the camera.

Do you smell fish? I sure do!

Do you feel safer now?

One of the nice things about work is that sometimes they offer classes that, while not directly work-related, are generically useful and we actually get to go take them. I spent today in a sort of emergency/trauma first aid class (post-9/11 mentality driving the curriculum, I suppose). We did not cover CPR - that's a separate class, which I have yet to manage to get into. Instead we covered some basics, including definitions of terms like "communicable disease" and what they classed as "directional terms" (anterior/posterior, midclavicular line, proximal/distal, etc.), in case the real medical folks use those terms when they respond to the 911 call. We also learned about the signs of shock and what to do for someone suffering from same, dressing wounds, splinting and otherwise immobilizing broken bones, and how to treat burns.

Then things got interesting when the instructors trotted out some military-issue first aid kits (both are former military who now work for an emergency preparedness training company). They had us do dressings, pressure bandages, and even tourniquets on each other, practice a couple of two-person carries (out of several one- and two-person carries they showed us), and even do a little litter-bearing. God grant we never need the information, but given that I know at least one person who helped load people into medevac helicopters on September 11th, well, it never hurts to know how to make yourself useful.

I think I've finally learned how to find a radial pulse (I've never had trouble finding the carotid pulse but the radial one, in the wrist, always eluded me) and a brachial pulse (the one that runs under your arm). I also feel a little more confident that I could splint a broken bone without doing my "patient" an injury. Do you feel safer around me now? ;)

Hail to the Chief!

Since I'll be sitting out this theater season, thereby reprieving my husband from Theater Widower status for the time being, I've been trying to think of a new nickname for him. He retired from the military as a Chief Master Sergeant, so maybe I'll refer to him as Chief, especially as I occasionally call him that anyway...

The down side of vacation homes

After spending 10 or 11 days straight out at the cabin, I've realized there's a down side to a vacation place:
- no maid service to change the sheets, do the laundry, scrub bathrooms or chase the cobwebs;
- you gotta do your own grocery shopping
- no room service or restaurant to cook meals and do the dishes
- no maintenance workers to keep things running

However, we had gorgeous weather the entire time we were there. Having the windows open to the breezes and birdsong and being able to see nothing but trees (and a fawn that was snacking on the bushes just a few feet from our door one afternoon) was still good for the soul.

Ah, the marvels of the Internet!

J called us the same evening they got a christening date for our newest niece, the soon-to-be-former pagan baby, so I immediately jumped on the computer (it was cooperating for a change, hallelujah!) and was able to get us non-stop flights both directions, and a rental car for the weekend, for less than I thought we'd have to pay for the plane tix alone! Heck, even with airport parking the whole transportation bill won't come to $400, considerably less than I thought we'd have to spend, especially given fuel prices! =:o

Cooperative computer, Southwest's lowest fares still available on the dates we needed, airfares not yet reflecting near-European fuel prices, decent rental car rates - God obviously wants us to attend this christening!

The reviews are in.

Hey, it's my blog, started because people wanted to know how I felt about performing my first lead. (And no, I won't tell you who they are or where they live.) This is still new enough to me that the novelty has yet to wear off. A few folks who "reviewed" the Summer Sing I attended had this to say about my performance (extracted from their comments on the day as a whole):

"I finally had the chance to listen to Maureen, as a well-meaning Melissa with a round and mellow voice."

"Maureen as Melissa (with gilded toy axe!) deftly managed her mood shift in 'Death to the Invader/PleaseYou, Do Not Hurt Us' "

"I thought you did a great job with Melissa all the way! I especially loved the way you handled my favorite part, the "please, sir, do not hurt us" section, into that transition for the reprise of Death to the Invader. And good on you, as the Aussies say, for going for the high G--it was solid and sounded great!!"

I'm particularly chuffed, as the British might say, about that comment about my high G; nice to know the note I was so worried about came off so well.

Let's see, where was I...

Ah yes, singing G&S with a roomful of G&S fans. Did I mention yet how much fun it was? Our hostess did an impressive job - even had binders for each of us with copies of the individual choruses and finales from the shows we weren't singing in toto, so that no one had to schlep a dozen vocal scores. She even let us keep them. A also had nametags, a "program" listing who was singing the principal lines for the various shows and excerpts, a separate listing of participants, their points of origin, even their home company or companies where applicable (e.g., WS Gilbert, London, The Savoy Company). A. really did a bang-up job of organizing the whole thing; I hope I can do half as well when I manage to try putting one of these together!

Anyway, back to the singing: After Princess Ida we sang the Act I and II finales from HMS Pinafore, then our next full show: Trial by Jury. Trial was a great deal of fun, in large part due to the unabashed mugging of the Learned Judge, who flirted with any female within range, and the way V literally threw herself into the role of the Plaintiff, flinging herself quite literally at the Defendant, clinging to his leg as he dragged her across the floor in his attempts to escape her importuning. Oh, and everyone sang well, too. :)

We sang two more Act I finales, from Yeomen of the Guard and Iolanthe. More exhilarating Sullivan choruses to sing, though I was disappointed in myself at how much I'd forgotten since doing these shows. ("Ah, but recently?" "Oh no, years and years ago.") Guess I'll just have to get into more of these productions to remind myself of the music. ;)

On to our last "full" show (all the music but none of the dialogue) of the day: Utopia, Ltd., the 13th of Gilbert & Sullivan's 14 collaborations. I've done a cut-and-doctored production of this show about 5 years ago. While I feel it's deservedly obscure, it does have its moments. In this case, some of those moments came from the performers. Most of the soloists had done solo turns earlier in the day, a few were reprising roles they'd performed when Savoynet put together a production of Utopia for the Int'l G&S Festival in England a few years ago. But far and away the delightful surprise of the day for me was the young lady singing Nekaya (w/ the newly-returned-from-Buxton R as her twin sister Kalyba). S is a 10-year-old with a beautifully clear soprano who's going to be a show-stopper when her voice develops. She was also a charming performer, working beautifully with her "sister" R on their duets. Their bits of "business" were largely ad-libbed and almost completely stage-worthy.

We closed, an hour late (but is it really possible to have too much music?), with the Act II finale from The Gondoliers. We were all fading by then, 8 hours after the first note, but the day still managed to "leave [us] with feelings of pleasure".

Seeing familiar faces and meeting new folks are as important a part of these events as the singing, and I was glad of the opportunity to match faces with names I knew only from Savoynet (http://www.cris.com/~oakapple/savoynet/), to hear them sing and watch them perform at last, and in some cases to work with them. These events seem to be proliferating - I think there have been 7 or 8 up and down the East Coast (from Maine to Florida) this year - so if this sounds like your idea of fun, keep an eye on Savoynet for the announcement of the next one. I know there's one on Nantucket the weekend after Labor Day, though I don't know whether it's full.

It's a girl!

I've been waiting and worrying for several months about my sister's first little one. J was safely delivered of a beautiful baby girl last Tuesday. It was a C-section, so no conehead baby, but mother & daughter are both doing well. Little Girl is our parents' 9th surviving grandchild but a first grandbaby for her daddy's parents, who I'm told are absolutely over the moon about their new status as grandparents.

My oldest niece is thrilled to have another girl cousin and apparently also delighted to learn that she & her new cousin share a middle name.

Thanks to modern electronics, we already have at least a dozen photos of the newest addition to the family. Now to start lobbying my other siblings for current pictures of the rest of my nieces & nephews for the multi-photo frame I have at work...

All but perfection

Ah yes, spending a day singing Sullivan's gratifying music with about 70 like-minded individuals - what could be better? Well, if TW were similarly inclined, and therefore willing to go with me, that would have been better. As it was, he stayed home and puttered - house cleaning, second-coating the front door, etc. It also would have been better if I'd had more time to go over the choruses; I found far too many places I didn't remember. Ah well, I still got to sing myself silly, which is why I went.

We were gathered in an empty office space. The low acoustic ceiling and commercial carpet weren't great for the acoustics, but there was plenty of room for all of us, our semi-circle of chairs, tables at one end for food and drink, and a space in the semi-circle for the keyboard and soloists, who were occasionally rather numerous (as many as 7 or 8).

"And how did the singing go?" I'm glad you asked! (Relax: I won't attempt a full review because this entry would be three times as long as it already is and, more importantly, I'd be sure to overlook someone.) We opened with 2 choruses from The Mikado: "If you want to know who we are" and "Comes a train of little ladies". Having just done Mikado, these were very easy and a great way to dive into the day's vast, inviting pool of G&S.

We then went on to the double chorus "In a doleful train" from Patience. "What's a double chorus?" That's when Gilbert has the men's and women's choruses singing different things - in this case, the women mooning about over a romantic poet and the men upset at being neglected by their onetime ladyfriends - and Sullivan sets the texts to different melodies and - here's what makes these so difficult and rewarding to sing - at different tempos or meters (in this case, the women are singing solemn half notes while the men are expostulating in outraged eighth notes). You know you're in a room of folks experienced in G&S when you can run through such a number without rehearsal and the group as a whole manages to finish together without a train wreck or even a near miss.

Perhaps in tribute to Savoynet's August 9th production of Iolanthe at the International G&S festival, our gracious hostess then let us all sing the March of the Peers (women could sing along if we behaved ourselves and sang in the men's register; easy for the altos & mezzos, not really an option for the sopranos, poor things). I've always loved that one - another exhilarating Sullivan chorus! (The man really wrote some of the most gratifying-to-the-singer choruses it's ever been my pleasure to sing.)

Next up: the first full (musically - no dialogue) work of the day - The Pirates of Penzance. This one has long been one of my favorites, and my friend D (she & her husband were my traveling companions for the weekend) was singing Kate. She was nervous, not having attended these things before nor sung the role before, but she did just fine. Being familiar with the show, she was also able to do a bit of acting. D and I became friends while singing together in the alto section of many a chorus, so I'm just a bit biased, but I thought she did a fine job. Also in Pirates, I got to hear W's lovely, lyric mezzo as Ruth. I knew her only from Savoynet, so I was glad of the chance to hear her in person, as well as to see her in action. E was a delightfully over-the-top Mabel, mugging fit to beat the band and popping out shamelessly high cadenzas with wild abandon. Her interplay with the tenor playing Frederic was great fun to watch, and they were both obviously having a great deal of fun. Yet they were completely capable of being serious; their "Ah, leave me not to pine" was probably the most moving piece of the day, all the more remarkable for the fact that they'd never laid eyes on each other before that morning. The Sergeant of Police was a true bass, with wonderfully rumbly low notes; the first time he hit one, Mabel abandoned Fred and fluttered at the Sergeant! :) My only problem w/ Pirates was that, in my eagerness, I had foolishly oversung and my throat was already feeling the strain. Not at all good, given that Princess Ida, up next after the lunch break, was the one with "my" music in it, and of course there was still plenty and plenty of singing to follow that!

Apparently the lunch break was sufficiently restful, as I wasn't noticing any vocal problems when we resumed. My first, very brief solo line as Melissa ("Pray, what authors should she read who in classics would succeed?" - that's the whole thing) may have been a bit shaky from nerves, and the fact that the personwho was supposed to sing Psyche, who was supposed to answer my sung question, wasn't there. F jumped in to cover Psyche, which helped immensely thereafter, as Psyche has a lot of music to sing. F either knows Ida well or is an excellent sightreader, as this seemed to give her no trouble. My next set involved a quintet and a duet back to back. The quintet, which A had warned me about because it was so easy to accelerate during the refrain, went well. A told me later that the 3 of us originally scheduled to be singing it did a good job of "anchoring" it for F and one of the men, who were last-minute substitutions and therefore hadn't had time to prepare. At any rate, while I had my nose in my score far more than I would have liked, I was able to interact with the men on either side of me when I wasn't singing, which was fun. I had taken my hair out of its ponytail for Ida (long hair just seemed to suit Melissa) and J, who was singing Melissa's mother, Lady Blanche, decided to let down her own, which is about as long, to heighten the "family" resemblance. The funny thing about that is that "my mother" is only a year older than I am. The duet, which I'd had fun singing w/ K in my voice lessons, went well, though both of us agreed later that we wished we'd had time to practice a bit together. The one piece I was worried about was "Death to the invader". The chorus sings, then Melissa has a verse (with chorus response), then the chorus finishes. Melissa's verse is written with both a high and a low option. I wanted to take the high road, so to speak, but having oversung by lunchtime, I was not exactly optimistic. However. By the time we got to that song, I was re-warmed up after lunch, and by the end of the verse I had enough of a running start that I decided to go for it. Never underestimate the power of adrenaline! :) It felt good, not screechy or strained, and I'm told it sounded "great"! This was the one number I knew well enough to do without my score (I'd sung it in the chorus several times), so I was able to "perform" it, not just sing it. At the end of my last voice lesson, K had dug thru her props collection and come up with a squishy plastic battleaxe, which I used to (I hope) good effect. If nothing else, it helped me with the switch when Melissa shifts from "Death to the invader!" to "Please you, do not hurt us!" Along with F singing Psyche on the fly, special kudos to R, barely off the plane from the Int'l G&S festival in England, where she'd sung Phyllis in Savoynet's Iolanthe less than 48 hours before, who sang the eponymous Princess Ida, and did it beautifully - wonderful voice, excellent emotion, not a trace of jetlag!

And K's battleaxe saw more action than I'd expected. I almost didn't pack it, thinking it silly to pack it for one number, but I'm glad I put it back in the suitcase. When Ruth and the Pirate King were trying to threaten Frederic empty-handed, I handed the weapon to Ruth. In Ida, one of Ida's three brothers used it for one or two of their songs, and of course I used it for "Death to the invader". Thanks, K!

To be continued...

"Adventures in Babysitting"

From one of the blogs I follow: http://www.livejournal.com/users/thirdbase/

Before you go to the link, you need to know that the children's parents are both theatrical people, as is the babysitter. I'd've paid good money to see that show!

Bad news travels in packs.

Last night wasn't one of the better ones. I got home from a wonderful time singing myself silly in NJ and started checking e-mail, from which I learned that:

• R's mom had been moved into the ICU because her breathing problems were getting worse;
• L wouldn't be able to have lunch w/ TW after all because he had to make an emergency trip to NJ to take care of an elderly aunt who'd had a bad fall.

But wait, there's more. Called my parents and Dad noted that his back (on which he had two major corrective surgeries last year) was hurting like (expletive deleted) and he was thinking about having the doc up his pain meds. Dad has a very high pain threshold, so he must really have been hurting!

Then TW talked to his brother and learned that he thinks their mom might be having some mini-strokes, as she seemed to think she was back teaching again, so P was going to take her to the doctor today. When we talked to her later last night she sounded OK, but I'll feel better when we know what the doctor said.

The dust has settled.

Or perhaps I should say the trench has been filled back in, the daylilies replanted (not where they were before, but no matter), and grass seed laid down and covered with a generous bed of straw. I had to water the stuff Friday so it wouldn't completely dry out in the summer heat, but we've had enough rain since then that I haven't needed to water it again. They warned us it could take upwards of four months for the dirt to settle back in, so we probably won't replace that torn-up section of walk until spring. TW's already talking about going with paving stones instead of concrete, which sounds good to me.

I should be packing. My friends are coming to collect me around 2 p.m. tomorrow to head off to to NJ to spend most of Saturday singing to our hearts' content. I just pulled a double batch of brownies out of the oven; that's going as my "contribution to the cause". It won't feed all of us, but it'll add to the festive air. (Hershey's Triple Chocolate brownie mix, bought at Sam's - awesome stuff, much better than the Ghirardelli's brownie mix, which I found rather disappointing.) My scores are already in my suitcase, along with my Savoynet T-shirt, but I still have to pack the boring stuff - toiletries, PJs, etc. I also need to set aside the provisions for the drive: a bottle of wine for tomorrow night, bottles of water, munchies, etc.

This is going to be fun. I always enjoy singing Sullivan's music, and I love singing in groups, the bigger the better. Singing G&S with 70 or 80 people is going to be quite a thrill! We'll get to cut up, renew old acquaintances and make new ones, wish our gracious hostess a happy birthday - this is gonna be one heck of an all-day party!

It could have been worse...

Yesterday was a bad news/good news day with the plumber. The bad news: the estimate did not include the cost (think 3 or 4 car payments) of replacing the original, galvanized-steel water service pipe from the house out to the street. The good news: they were able to do everything from outside. In other words, they didn't have to break up any of the concrete basement floor, so no concrete dust all over the house - hooray!

I got lots of pictures of the trench. Interestingly, they dug up the two huge clumps of daylilies that were in the line of fire and placed them out of harm's way and also were careful to pile up the dirt so it didn't engulf one of the little boxwoods in the front yard. I had offered some of the daylilies to our next-door neighbor because that double clump has so very many, but admitted that I didn't know what time of year you're supposed to separate them. When we were talking this evening, we joked that "well, I guess we're separating 'em now!" Another side benefit of all this trenching is that the stump of the tree the daylilies surrounded is now history, as is the stump of another, smaller tree we had to cut down last year.

The guys were very careful about the daylilies but those impatiens I planted back in June are a lost cause. The guys who installed the neighbors' fence didn't exactly work around them, and the plumbing work pretty much finished them off. This was obviously not the year to plant anything in that bed!

After two days' work, the job is nearly done. All that remains is to cement the hole through the foundation where the pipes leave the house, have the inspectors give their approval, and fill in the trench. Oh, and pay for the whole mess. Which didn't quite come to 5 figures, but still would have paid for a very nice vacation indeed!

Starting to get excited...

When I mentioned to my voice teacher at my lesson yesterday that I'd decided not to audition for Company, along with the reasons, she commented that it was very "self-aware" of me to make such a decision, "And I mean that in a good way, of course." :) And since I'm not prepping audition pieces, we were able to spend the whole lesson working on my music for A's Summer Sing in NJ just 11 days from now.

I'm really starting to get excited about the Summer Sing. The other day I pulled out all the vocal scores I'll need to take with me. Although we're doing the complete music from only 4 G&S shows, we're also doing selections from 7 others. I had thought I'd just xerox the excerpts and put them into a single binder, but when I realized how much that would end up costing and how long it would take (the Iolanthe Act I finale alone runs 55 pages!), I decided lugging the scores around wouldn't be so bad after all. We'll be singing from late morning until evening, after which many of us will descend on a local eatery and likely subject the unsuspecting staff and customers to a bit more singing. Boy, will we be warmed up by then!

This will be only the third one of these I've ever attended; the last was 5 or 6 years ago. It will also be my first solo outing at such an event. I tried singing Pitti-Sing (IIRC) at the first one I attended, 8 years ago, but not being much of a sightreader, that didn't really work too well. This time will be better: I've now worked "my" music in 3 lessons, and have several years of voice lessons under my belt, so I'm in much better vocal shape now.

In such informal settings, it's perfectly OK for the women to sing along w/ the men's chorus and vice versa, to make all the punny, silly or smart-alecky comments you could never get away with in a performance situation, to mug and make melodramatic gestures; in short, to have a grand time in a room full of people of a similar bent. This is gonna be so much fun!

I'll be traveling with a fellow mezzo & her husband and won't be the least bit surprised if she and I end up singing all the way up, reviewing our respective solo turns and reminding each other of the alto lines in the choruses. Good thing her husband likes to sing along; that'll make it easier for him to put up with the two of us. TW, on the other hand, is completely and utterly not interested in any of these proceedings, so he'll be spending that weekend at the cabin, or working on the shed, or perhaps drooling over his woodworking books and magazines, designing and redesigning the workshop of his dreams.

The trial is almost upon us

This is the week the plumbers come to dig up our original sewer line and replace it with a new one, one that isn't corroded and which has the correct slope. I'm taking off work today and tomorrow, TW is taking Thursday & Friday. Naturally, the company called to say they didn't think they'd need all four days, so they won't start until tomorrow. Since I was already scheduled to be off work, I'm using the time for "fun" stuff like grocery shopping and laundry. Especially laundry, since we need to get the clean stuff out of the laundry "room". After all, that's where the sewer main comes into the house and therefore where they'll have to break up the concrete basement floor to replace it. I've experienced the "joys" of concrete dust before, when my parents added a bathroom basement (there's nothing quite like being awakened early on a Saturday morning by the sound of a saw ripping through 6" of concrete!) - I'm not looking forward to this.

Two small mercies: they won't be showing up until 8 tomorrow so I'll have time to sleep in a little and still finish breakfast before they start tearing things up, and they assured me they'll be turning the water back on after they finish each day's work, so we will be able to do dishes and take care of personal hygiene between Wednesday morning and Friday afternoon.

"The pie sisters"

Speaking of pies... The first Thanksgiving after my sister #2 was married, she & her new husband were going to Thanksgiving dinner with his relatives and were to bring a pumpkin pie. S#2 has our grandmother's recipe but had never made it before. It's a custard-style pie, using more half-and-half than pumpkin, and hers turned out kinda pied (pun very much intended!) because she didn't stir the mixture when she added the half-and-half to the pumpkin and spices. As she pointed out in her defense, the recipe doesn't say anything about mixing it! She also excused herself to her new relatives with the explanation that she always did the vegetables in our house: "Maureen and Sister #3 were the pie sisters!"

I love that; makes us sound like an act on Lawrence Welk. "Thankhyew, Bobby & Sissy. And now the Pie Sisters will entertain hyew with ..."

Kitchen goddess

This was one of those days that seem to happen every now and then, when I spend all afternoon in the kitchen on one thing or another. First it was the blueberries we bought last weekend. I decided to make the blueberry crisp recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook. It's a quick, easy recipe, and called for almost exactly the amount of blueberries we had on hand. It's nothing fancy, but it sure did taste good, even out of the microwave instead of a "real" oven. Unfortunately, it doesn't make much at all; one serving for each of us, with just enough left over for TW's lunch tomorrow.

Next up: salmon spread. Lotsa calcium, what with the salmon & (light) cream cheese, low fat, no sugar, so it "tastes good and is good for you!" - what's not to love? That and some crackers and you're set. (Mom always served it as a party hors d'oeuvre as a salmon ball, rolled in ground parsley and nuts, but we like it straight.)

Then the big project - peeling and cutting up my "seconds" peaches to see how much fruit I'd get. My first surprise was that they were all white peaches. I'd never bought any or even tasted any; these had almost a floral aroma. I got almost as much from my "seconds" as I would have expected to get from the same amount of regular peaches, and for little more than half the price; not a bad deal at all. I ended up with enough fruit for a 9" deep-dish pie, which came out as one of the nicest-looking pies I've ever done. The juice only leaked in one place (I'm so glad I remembered to slide a cookie sheet on a lower shelf!), the edges didn't overbrown, and because I rather overstuffed the pie to begin with, the middle didn't collapse. I actually considered taking a picture, but what on earth would I do with it? Baby brag books are bad enough. Can't you just see 'em all running when I tell people I have pictures of my pie?!? :D This time I added some flour to the filling, which cured the runniness. I think I cut the sugar too much, though (from 1 c. to 1/2 c.), or maybe the white peaches just aren't as sweet as the yellow ones I've always bought.

OK, so much for dessert. Next up - dinner. I always save the drippings when we have chicken or turkey, so I pulled the drippings out of the fridge and started some gravy, then added some of the turkey left over from dinner the other night. Home-made mashed potatoes (TW won't acknowledge anything that came from a box or packet as mashed potatoes) and some asparagus, and I had finally finished cooking for the day.

If we ever invite you over for dinner, you'll probably be the beneficiary of another such cooking jag. Better make sure you're hungry when you arrive!