They’re Baaaaaack!
Mom and Dad have been in Africa for three weeks. They’ll be recounting their trip over on 1 Boring old Man (Dad in words, mom in pictures). First post is up now. Welcome home, Mom and Dad!
Local and Classical
It’s a big classical music weekend in Abby’s world. Forget Stars and Annuals, how about Carmina Burana and the WCPE Pledge Drive?!
Last night, Carmina Burana opened at Memorial Auditorium at the Progress Energy Center downtown. If you don’t know this piece, then you’re confused. I first heard it in the movie Excalibur, and it’s remained a popular piece for movies ever since. The North Carolina Master Chorale (including Yours Truly) is singing, and the Carolina Ballet are dancing. I am really enjoying the clever choreography, although truth be told, that guy dancing the role of the devil wandering around without a shirt has caused the soprano section to be a little fuzzy on some of our entrances. It’s REALLY distracting! The man is a machine. Muscles on top of muscles, as the kids say. Overall, the dancing is really good, and I’m so excited I get to see it so many times this weekend. It seems far from selling out. If you’re looking for something perfect to do on a rainy day or night, there are still performances Friday and Saturday nights and Saturday and Sunday matinees. Tickets.
This morning, I drove up to WCPE in Wake Forest and spent 2.5 hours answering phones for their annual pledge drive. My friend Tara is a DJ there, and I have been promising to come help for weeks. I FINALLY got around to it this morning. Very exciting stuff. If you ever listen to WCPE, do please call in and make a donation. It’s how they broadcast 24 hours a day. Even $10 is good. Online pledge form.
David Ballantyne and Terry Marcellin-Little ran from the studio out to the phones when the music began in order to check how we were doing on our hourly goal. There was a lot of leaping up and down and high-fiving when lots of calls were coming in!
Tristan and Lesley
There’s really just too much to say about my high school reunion. It was overwhelming and wonderful in countless ways. As my friend Lesley kept saying, “We went to high school at a really special place.” I couldn’t agree with her more. Northside was part of the Atlanta Public Schools. It was the magnet for Performing Arts (yes, like “Fame”!), yet it was located in one of the richest parts of the city. We also had the only German and Russian classes in the school system so some kids came for that. As a result, we had kids from every part of the city. Some were in the performing arts program. Some weren’t. When kids got kicked out of the fancy private schools of Northwest Atlanta, they went to their home school, which was my school. We had extreme diversity in every way you can imagine. We had people from every part of the city, every income bracket, and racially, I recall that we were around 50/50 black/white. I’ve heard other figures, but for all intents and purposes, that’s about how it felt. At the time, there wasn’t much conflict between black and white, but there was division. The football team was mostly black, as were the cheerleaders. The Latin club and the soccer teams were more white. These are just examples, but it was true in many ways. The only exception to this was the School of Performing Arts. I think that because we were engaged in cooperative activities, we knew each other better there. Still, at both this reunion and the one I went to 10 years ago, we all talked about how that kind of diversity changed us. Pretty Kumbaya experiences, and I mean that in the best way.
One thing that was really special about this weekend was that I had a chance to spend a lot of time with both Lesley (my best friend in high school, even though she didn’t arrive until senior year) and Tristan (my high school boyfriend). While I have been in touch with Lesley since high school, Tristan reminded me that we hadn’t seen each other since early 1991! I couldn’t believe it had been that long. In retrospect, looking back at both my high school experience and at the weekend, I think that my relationships with these two people made me who I am today. First love is expected to do that, and Tristan and I were together for about three and a half years. We had some turbulence at the end of that relationship and got a chance to talk about some of those things. I wouldn’t have guessed I needed it, but now that it’s happened, I’m so glad it did.
There were some things I learned about Lesley that I never knew, even though we’ve always been close. She said that before she moved to Atlanta, she hardly ever went out. She didn’t have many friends because she was expected to babysit for her much younger brother, and she had an after-school job. For her, moving to Atlanta was a real blossoming period for her. That time was the same for me. She assumed I’d always been one to have lots of adventures. I assumed she always had. I think at the time there was some perception among others that we were being party girls, but knowing what was actually going on, that wasn’t true at all. I still got straight A’s that year. I probably smoked more cigarettes than before, but I wasn’t drinking or doing drugs or getting into any real trouble. I was just having a whole lot of fun. I also think people didn’t know how bright Lesley was. She was never as into academics as me (although I’m sure her grades were fine), but she is smart as a tack. Ask her anything. ANYTHING! If she doesn’t know, she will be an expert by the end of the day. I’m so glad she’s moving back to Atlanta, because that means I will see her more. Excellent news for me!
Of course it was wonderful to see Caitlin, Renee, Tatyana, Eric, Todd, and so many other great friends from back in the day, but I felt that I needed a bit of an ode to the two biggies: the two that made me me and with whom I’d somewhat fallen out of close touch. I will always be grateful to them both. There may be times I feel frustrated that I am single right now, but I never go a day where I don’t feel loved by my friends.
Soon, I’m going to write about my evening with Todd and Shannon… another complete treat that I wasn’t at all expecting.
Wonderful Weekend in Bloomington
Tailgate Menu Planning
Me and Marsha (my supervisor for three years)
Helen, Kathleen, Me, and Sunitha
I have excellent timing!
Exams and Gigs
So yesterday, I called to schedule my state licensure exam. Apparently, I had 4 months to schedule, and because I had on my national exam blinders, I forgot about the deadline. I’m really glad I learned this on the phone before receiving the letter in the mail yesterday. I’ve been waiting for the pass/fail test results from the national exam, and when I saw that letter in my box, I got really anxious. I opened and saw the word “failure”. Eep! Had a mini-panic, then realized that this was what the woman on the phone had explained – that failure to take the state exam in time results in a failure. There aren’t too many repercussions of this “failure”, only that I have to take and pass the exam within four months… Yeah, that was the plan anyway.
My state exam is now scheduled for October 9th. I’ve heard it’s pretty straightforward. The contents are all printable on about 40 sheets of paper – nothing like the reams of information included on the national exam. Soon, I will be licensed. Oh yes, I shall be licensed.
I’ve avoided blogging too much, since on Monday through Friday, I’m trying to remain focused on professional tasks. I’ve also started setting an alarm to make sure I get up at a reasonable time. Without structure, my sleep and rising times have moved later and later. The side benefit of this new plan is that I’ve bought a new alarm clock, which I keep set to WCPE. My friend Tara is a DJ there during the night shift (“Sleepers Awake”). Despite an extensive classical musical education, my listening time has primarily been devoted to non-classical music. It’s nice to revisit this music once again. The side benefit is that my cats have started sleeping near the radio when it’s on. They apparently like classical music.
I’ve seen some wonderful gigs recently. I’ve written about Andrew Bird before (The review was actually picked up on Scenestars, too). I won’t review him again here, but I will say that this was probably the best of the times I have seen him. He is talented, visionary, unique, quirky, incisive, and seeing him was an utter delight for me. I’ve never been a huge Elvis Costello fan, but seeing him with the symphony with friends on a nice night was a treat. We hit up Whole Foods and brought rosemary bread, Boursin cheese, organic grapes, spinach dip, etc. Part of the time was spent on the lawn, and part was spent in the first few rows taking some excellent pictures.
This Saturday was The Old Ceremony at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, and again, I’m limiting the length of this post since I need to be doing so many other things, but it was a wonderful show. The OTT review I wrote after the first time I saw them still applies, although I will add that I’d forgotten how much better they are live. I love their CD Our One Mistake (available on their web site) and listen to it in the car all the time (have since that first show), but I love that live, the cello and violin are turned up quite a bit more in the mix. This was the first time I’d seen them on their home turf, and the crowd was definitely appreciative. I’m very happy with my pictures from the night, and some of Brian’s pretty much blew my mind.
There’s a little bit of video from the gig. This is their fun encore song, with their string players rocking out on tambourine and cowbell, and who knows what the keyboard player was doing back there. I couldn’t really see, since I was dancing my ass off. Because I was dancing (i.e. moving around) so much, I passed my camera to Shannon to videotape the song. She misunderstood and thought I wanted her to videotape me dancing. So yeah, listen to the fun song and watch me dance around like a fool. 😀
The Old Ceremony Performing “Dumbed Down” at Cat’s Cradle, 9/20/2007 from abbyladybug on Vimeo.
Be sure to pay attention at around 2:35 when Django throws in a riff from Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. Come ON! How much do I love that?! Oh, I love it a lot!
