She shoots, she scores!

Tonight was my first night away for rehearsal and here you see a picture of the biggest problem. A very kind guy named Wayne in the Camas Union High auditorium parking lot changed this thing for me. I was even on time (by a hair) for the downbeat. It's a charmed life I lead.

Best news of the week: Primrose didn't cry a single tear with her dad leading her team of assistants tonight. He made me wait until I drove all the way home to give me this report, because he is spicy just like his daughter. It was so nice to be relieved of the stress of putting all the nighttime duties on J alone. As I was driving to the gig (but before my tire started going whoooosh whoooosh whoooosh), I realized that it was the first night for either of us to fly solo. Single parents of the world, you should know I think of you often. It's just so much harder to go it alone for a night or two, I can hardly fathom being a sole caretaker.

We were given a meal today (hot dang, that is a fantastic thing to do for somebody!) and I'll give you three guesses who ate every bite of hers. Primrose loves lots of complex flavors and as it turns out, kindhearted tortilla soup is definitely on her menu. I have my fingers crossed that her diet won't be limited when we go through all the medical checks and get the full picture of her digestive health. She sure seems to plow through just about everything. We're using her to push the boys' mild food pickiness a bit. Good thing they're too young to harbor resentment (much).

Tonight we played some of Bloch's Concerto Grosso No. 2 and it was a lovely re-entry to work. There are moments when it sounds so much like Vaughn Williams, and others where it's totally "Baroque-ish" as our conductor would say. Bloch lived in Oregon for a while and liked the viola, so I'm required by law to like his music, don't you think? It felt wonderful to sink into that kind of rich texture after such an unusually long (3 week!) hiatus.

Here's a video of a smaller group playing the piece in a space with the exact acoustic of my freshman dorm stairwell. I used to love to practice long slow passages there, because I was just that annoying.