The curse of a daily blog is that life sometimes gets in the way. I STILL haven’t written about the rest of the July vacation, which I will eventually do, not for your sake, but for my own. So as a blog cheat, I’m going to note the week that was, now a couple weeks ago.
Before that: Heck, I haven’t mentioned the TWO plays I saw the FIRST weekend in August. The first was All Shook Up at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady, featuring one of my teenage nieces. It was a mix of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Elvis Presley and worked surprisingly well.
The other was Into the Woods at the Mac-Hadyn Theatre. With our front-row seats, sometimes the action was over our left shoulders, and sometimes (Little Red Riding Hood being devoured), it was so close we could almost touch it. But what we decided, after having the movie and this production, is that the story isn’t compelling enough to see again any time soon.
As for this past week, a few months ago, parents-in-law had arranged all of the families of their three surviving children to a timeshare in western Massachusetts. You make plans in May for the end of August, and they don’t always work out. One brother-in-law couldn’t make it for work reasons.
We delayed our departure on Saturday so we could attend a rededication of the marriage of Rosaline and David in our church. It had elements of a Cameroonian service, and it fun, but unfortunately, we couldn’t stay for the reception, as we went out to Hancock, MA.
We had been there nine years ago, and there wasn’t much to do. The highlight then was watching trucks bring parts of the first of what are now several wind towers. Now, there’s tennis and other amenities. But I never used any of them.
The next morning, the Wife and I went back to Albany. The choir, heavy on sopranos, but light on men, sang at the funeral service of our friend Margaret Hannay. We sang Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace by John Rutter. I had difficulty singing:
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
My spouse then went BACK to Hancock, but I stayed in town, and attended a party our friend Jon threw, where the guests gave our host unsolicited, contradictory, but brilliant advice on romance.
Monday, I took off from work, but I had a professional development project to work on. I had a Friends of the Library meeting at 5 pm, followed by a meeting to give some expert feedback on the operations of the library. That evening, I needed to write a letter to an organization requesting speakers that HAD to be done THAT NIGHT.
Tuesday, work, then slog through professional development project until 9 pm.
Wednesday, work. The Wife and Daughter had just gotten home, but we needed to leave immediately for junior high orientation, which I had totally forgotten about. The school district is now engaging CDTA to provide bus service for the morning, and first afternoon routes, instead of the oft-unreliable bus company used in the past. The greatest challenge was the combination locker, which none of us could open with any regularity.
Thursday, work. I got a desperate request from my old boss to transcribe an interview with a friend of mine. The link didn’t work in Google Chrome, though I discovered by trial and error, it did operate in Firefox and Internet explorer. The interview turned out to be 90 minutes long, and with the time I wasted figuring out how to hear the piece, needed and fortunately found some help.
Friday, work. Transcription, interrupted by the Daughter not feeling well.
Saturday, transcription, edit transcript, tend to daughter still feeling poorly. You can tell she’s off when she pulls out her large unicorn to cuddle and asks Oscar the monkey to talk with her.
The only blogging I did was to write the intro for ABC Wednesday.
That was the week that was.
I totally understand that actual life, beautiful and sometimes sad, gets in the way.
I love singing Rutter in choir. His songs are beautiful and simple to sing. That’s a particularly lovely Rutter song. Prayers for your loss. <3