artykins

Hello!

So this weekend was Memorial Day weekend, which meant that most people had a holiday of sorts.  Call them bank holidays.  Most school kids got Friday and Monday off, leaving them with a four day weekend to love.  I always loved Memorial Day weekend for that reason.  Still, some kids only got Monday off, which still left them with a long weekend.

I work in one of those places that gives just a three day weekend, but that's better than nothing!

I thoroughly enjoyed myself this past weekend.  It started Friday night.

Now, for those of you who don't remember, I wasn't feeling too chipper last week.  I had a bad cold and was getting over that, but luckily I was well enough to keep my date with my wonderful husband on Friday night.  We went to the symphony to see Brahms' requiem.  And I must confess that although I'd listened to a recording of it and quite liked it then, it didn't hold a candle to seeing the thing in person.  It was so amazingly beautiful.  So much so that I actually wept towards the end of the second movement.

I always love going to the symphony.  There's always little surprises that happen.  For example, the symphony didn't start until we actually got there.  See, we were a tad late getting going and we were worried that perhaps it would start without us and we'd have to wait until intermission to be seated, which really defeats the purpose of going at all in some ways.  So that was a nice surprise.

They also started the night with a few of Shakespeare's poems set to music.  The chorus was pretty impressive.  It was just a solid mass of people garbed in black with black binders all singing in German.  maybe impressive isn't the right word.  Maybe intimidating is more appropriate.  

Of course, in going to the symphony, I got to see my favorite part of it.  I love the tuning more than anything and I wrote about a year ago why.  I won't go into detail about it.  I have it archived somewhere in a folder on my computer.  I'll pull it out sometime.

Anyway, tuning is my favorite part of the symphony.  The moments of silence in between movements, of course, is another favorite thing.  Why?  Because those pauses always make me laugh.  Inevitably, everyone sits with bated breath until the conductor lowers his hands to his sides.  But then...oh, but then...the hilarity ensues.  In those pauses, there's always a cacophony of hacking and sneezing.  

Perhaps that noise from the audience is always there, we just never notice it because we're so enthralled with the music.  Perhaps I just notice it in those moments of silence.  Regardless of circumstance, however, I always find it amusing.

Matt and I got home late Friday night only to be awake early the next morning.  We had an appointment with the wedding photographer to put together an album after which Matt got to telling me that he wanted to do something and not just go back home.  That said, I got to thinking:

We're in Lafayette already.  We're only about ten minutes from downtown Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill.  It's only 9:30 in the morning and most people are still lounging about their houses.  Why not go catch an early showing of the new Indiana Jones film?

And that's exactly what we did!  We saw a 10:35 showing of the film in Pleasant Hill with a moderately filled theater.  The audience, I must say, was exceptionally good.  Everyone was mellow and laid back and happy to sit through the ridiculous number of previews for upcoming films.  There were no screaming or talking children, although there were kids there!  

I, personally, spent most of the movie with my feet pulled up under me or draped over Matt's lap next to me.  I was mildly creeped out, so that's the reason for that.  Still, all and all, it was an enjoyable film.  Certainly not the original ones.  Because, let's face it, the original films kick major ass.  Major.  Ass.

Sunday my family came to visit the church that Matt and I are attending.  I had a good time sitting with my brothers and then having lunch with everyone afterwards.  After lunch the family left and Matt and I stayed for the prayer meeting before heading home ourselves.  We took the 'scenic' route home, which is a way of saying we took Redwood Road home through the hills instead of catching the freeway.  It was really nice.  We had the windows down and everything.

That, of course, was after the pie incident.  I made a pie for dessert to take to church, as well as some salads to share with the family.  On our way to church, however, I went to go move the pie and it exacted its revenge on me by spilling sweet sugary juice all over my clean brown jumper.  That said, we had to pull over so I could clean some and stick the pie into a plastic bag.

When I called Jeff to tell him that we'd be a little late, he just laughed at me over the phone.  The punk.

Yesterday consisted of having a much-needed lie in followed by the slowest-moving morning I've had for a very long time.  Seriously, I walked around wrapped up in my dressing gown for a good two hours before finally mustering the will to hop into the shower.  It was great!

After the shower, I went about tidying the flat, getting all the dirty clothes into a containment unit of some kind (clothes seem to mysteriously get everywhere in the flat) and doing some dishes.  After that is was a matter of getting said dirty clothes into the car along with some watermelon and heading over to the house for a barbeque.

The watermelon was tremendous.

And the boys and I ('the boys' referring to Jeff, Jeremy and Matt) laid around like third base in Uncle Arnie's room and watched The Bourne Ultimatem.  I had never seen it before, so I was busy freaking out during the film.  I was doing laundry during this showing, so it was hard to focus on the laundry.  And Jeremy can prove that with the following conversation:

Matt: The washing machine just went off, love.

Me: I heard it.

Matt: Are you gonna go take care of it.

Me: As soon as the scary music stops.

Jeremy: Oh, the scary music never stops in this movie.

Me: (screaming because an assassin just tricked Jason Bourne) I can't deal with this.

Jeremy: I'm telling you it's like this the rest of the time.

Me: (getting up) I've gotta go wash something.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable evening.  The evening ended with bell rehearsal.  We're playing a piece called 'Canticle' in a couple weeks and last night was the second to last rehearsal for it.  It's a really hard piece.  Like...uber hard, so we've been working really hard on trying to get it down.  Jeremy plays next to me and he and I are sharing bells like crazy.  He's having to play some of mine in a couple places just because I don't have enough hands to play them myself (I'm playing two parts at once on this song).

We were doing pretty well by the end of last night.  Just some more practice and a few things that need to be tweaked and polished and we'll be good to go.  You can listen to a part of the song here:

Canticle

That's the Raleigh Ringers playing it.  They're playing it insanely fast as well.  We're not going nearly that speed, but we're going pretty fast, so it's really exciting.  Jeremy and I are going nuts, whooping and hollering all over the show.  We also have a tendency so talk to each other while we're playing.  I tell Jeremy to get ready to play one of my bells and he tells me to move so he can do it.  It's actually pretty amusing.

So yeah, that was my weekend.  It was back to the grind this morning.  I'm actually not that sad about the whole thing.  It's pretty good to be back today.  It's been productive thus far and I haven't been bored yet, so everything is great here.

In other news, I'm trying to get Rubio's to build a location in Larkspur for Matt.  It's a plan I have in the works.  We'll see how much ground I can cover with that.  I have a feeling I'd be the best wife ever if they put a location in Larkspur.  I'd get serious points for that.

Mike is in the office at the moment heckling Linda.

And I really should end this blog and do something else.  I'll write again soon.

Later Days
Arty