jklGoDuke's Journal

9:07pm: Our little politician
Big-B has been interestedly watching the crop of campaign signs that has recently sprouted all over town. After spotting some "...Neal" signs in the back of a car this afternoon, he tells me, "I'm for Obracka Bama." I asked him why, and he said, "I'm for the ones who don't have too many signs, but put them in smart places, so I'm for Obracka." Frankly, that seems like a better criteria than who wears a flag pin!

5:35pm: CTTDOTP (been a while!)
We, especially Big-B totally would not have survived Yeoman week if my mom had not come and spent six days with us, getting some serious babysitting time in. HUGE thanks to Grandmum!

Big-B is studying fruits and vegetables at school, and is trying to eat at least five different fruits & vegetables every day. He and Grandmum were comparing notes at dinner one night, and she realized that due to a mixed fruit salad for lunch and skillet veggies for supper, she had eaten TWELVE different fruits and vegetables that day.

Big-B's reaction (wide-eyed): "You're gonna ... gonna ... you're just gonna die of GOOD!"

8:35am: Opening Night
Last night was our first performance in front of an audience, and it rocked! It's exciting to do the things we've been practicing for so long, and have people applaud, and laugh... generally when we expected them to, and even a few times when we didn't. The energy was great!

With the lights in my eyes, I have trouble seeing folks in the audience, but by the end of the first time I'm on stage (for two numbers) I'd found my mom in the audience. The next time I was on stage, I spotted tilos on the front row with her husband. I'm not sure, but I think I saw him mouthing the words along with one of the songs later in the show. I wasn't in a position to see if he was singing along with "Hail Poetry" in our curtain call, but several in the audience were.

This is so much fun! Things felt very sharp and energized, and I made very few mistakes, and didn't notice anybody else making any (although I heard later there was accidentally a loud bang from backstage several minutes before a gunshot was *supposed* to be heard from there). The orchestra sounded great (yay clubjuggler) and so did the singing.

Now we get to do it three more times. With any luck, it will just keep getting better as we smooth out the tiny bobbles. I'm excited because I'll have a bunch of people I know in the audience tonight. If you're one of them, I'll be out in the lobby as quickly as I can after the show - hook right when you enter the lobby, and look for me to pop out of the door marked "backstage entrance." See you there, and enjoy the show!!

10:13pm: Home away from home - the Tower of London?
Yay! I'm in The Yeomen of the Guard! OK, I mentioned this a while back, but it bears repeating, if only because it is taking over more and more of my life.

The show opens on Thursday for a "preview performance," followed by shows on Friday, Saturday (all 8pm) and Sunday (2pm). It's gonna be great! I really have been having a lot of fun at all of the rehearsals. Speaking of all of the rehearsals... I calculated that from Monday - Sunday, I'm scheduled to spend approximately 38 hours at the theater. So, for the next 8 days, my home away from home is the Tower of London, as recreated onstage at the Carolina Theater in downtown Durham. Well, first, I get to help recreate it - we move the (pre-assembled, then disassembled) set onto the stage Monday morning.

Come see us... it has everything you could possibly want:
- mysterious allusions to fire, alchemy, and sorcery
- ladies with brooms being kicked in the rear
- rampant innuendo and occasional entendre
- song and dance, too
- yours truly (I has a bukkit!)
- yours truly's beloved husband, clubjuggler, on string bass

Contact me quickly and I can even save you box office fees (and get you a discount on reserved seats).

11:49pm: Best double-header ever
My dad went to Kansas, and so I've been talking to him quite a lot about basketball recently (surprise, surprise). I said I was amused when the commentators said that "Kansas has experience with overtimes in an NCAA final, because they had a triple-overtime game back in 1957." We agreed that that really didn't give the current team much experience in such a situation, however...

In 1957, my dad was a senior at KU. Oddly, the night before the NCAA final he went to a basketball game at his High School alma mater, Wyandotte, which went to four overtimes!

The night of the NCAA final, the students all gathered (somewhere on campus) where a number of TVs had been set up, and watched the game together. My dad was there ... things were different then, as this was before the shot clock, so UNC sat on the ball much of the game to keep KU's Wilt Chamberlain from scoring like they knew he was capable of ... still, it's considered one of the best NCAA finals ever, going to three overtimes before UNC won.

Louis Armstrong happened to be performing on campus that evening, and he came to watch the end of the game with the students ... and afterwards, gave an impromptu ~2 hour performance during what my dad called the "muted celebration" that followed their loss in the final.

The downside - his team lost the game. The upside - the best double-header I've ever heard of - a triple-overtime NCAA final game, followed by a live Louis Armstrong performance. Wow.

And I'd never heard that story from my dad before.

10:21pm: Rivalry
March Madness is upon us, and I'm in Durham, NC. There are people who don't understand the depth and breadth of the rivalry between Duke & Carolina. To these people, I offer the following picture, with the reminder that "Carolina" is really UNC - Chapel Hill.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58687370@N00/2347082361/sizes/o/

10:41pm: Things they don't tell you in the coaches' manual...
This year I've coached Big-B and an assortment of K-2nd grade teammates in Odyssey of the Mind. The tournament was Saturday, and given the fact that the team had never actually run through their long term presentation (basically, the 8-minute skit they were supposed to have worked on all school year), they did a wonderful job. They also had to do a "spontaneous" problem - walk into a room and something is thrown at you to solve - and the practice we've done on that paid off with their best success all year coming at the tournament. Now that I've had a couple of days to think about it, here are a few things they don't mention in the manual they hand out to prospective coaches (probably for good reason):

- What to do when you remember to throw in snacks at the last minute, but forget that one of the team members is vegan (what? goldfish crackers aren't vegan?)
- How to handle it when half the team wants to work on their skit, and half the team just wants to play around.
- How to regain control when the team decides to paint their cardboard background -- with their feet!
- How to handle it when a team member had her best friend's mom die the night before, and spends about half of the team meeting "just wanting to feel sad."
- What to do when they're supposed to be using the tape recorder to tape their narration, and instead are joking about poopy diapers and related toilet humor.

Did I mention that once they stopped hiding behind their (occasionally collapsing) backdrops, their skit turned into an 11+minute improv that the head judge finally stopped by starting a round of applause? Go team!! And yay for supportive parents - they were really great and I felt very appreciated for the work I put into it this year. Not that that's why I do it, but it's still nice to hear.

(p.s. Unrelated, but also nice to hear - I got carded this evening. w00t!)

8:26am: Amazing pictures
This link came from the Tri-Trogs, or Triangle Troglodytes, the local caving organization. Take a second to click on the link and look at the picture. Then realize that's a man standing there. Then the scale of the crystals pictured will probably blow your mind like it did mine. All of a sudden, I want to go to Mexico. ;)

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/photogalleries/giant-crystals-cave/index.html

11:26am: New Kitty
Two days before we were to leave on our ski trip, I went out in the evening and heard an insistent miaowing. There was an initially skittish but then very cuddly kitty on our front sidewalk. We gave it food and water that day. The next day, it was around the house, pawing at Isis through the glass door in back, napping in an old cat bed we put out on the porch. I determined that it was a female, and was worried about how round it was.

While we were gone, the family that was taking care of Isis came by several times a day to cuddle new kitty (her fur is SO soft, and she loves to purr). They fussed over her, got her to overcome her skittishness enough to sleep in the cat bed in a box to get shelter from the wind and cold, and completely fell for her. Unfortunately, they already have 2 cats and a dog and don't want more.

When we got home from the ski trip, we brought her into our master suite. Yesterday I checked the local library and community bulletin boards - no lost cat ads. I took her to the vet, found out that she is not chipped, not reported missing, but that she has been spayed, so is not pregnant - yay! She got her first round of shots and never stopped purring. She does meow any time she's near someone and they're not petting her - so the whole way to and from the vet in the cat carrier, or when I'm trying to go to sleep, for example.

So, I guess we have a new cat. We are in the early stages of introducing her to Isis; wish us luck with that. She's short and round, but only weighs about a half a pound more than Isis. She's also a tortiseshell, but gray and soft orange to Isis' black and brownish-orange. The vet estimates her at 2-4 years of age, and defintiely domesticated (and litterbox trained). She's a real sweetheart! I think we're going to call her Cleo(patra).

9:13am: Vacation - all I ever wanted!
Today is the last full day of our ski vacation. I'm out in Breckenridge, CO with clubjuggler (hubby), Big-B (son), my parents, and thebroomecloset. My folks started going to the Rockies for a week of skiing in Jan '82, I joined them for the first time the following year, thebroomecloset first came with us in '89, clubjuggler joined the ski trip in '96, and Big-B first tried it two years ago. We've had fun this week reminiscing over all the years of fun.

It has been quite cold this week, with windchills going into negative values, but we've in general been able to dress appropriately, and the skiing conditions have been great! There's a good base of packed powder, and weve had a few inches of fresh powder to play in. Big-B took one day of lessons and is progressing very nicely. I got a couple of half-days to ski just with thebroomecloset, and we had some fabulous fast runs down some blue, blue/black, and black trails.

In the evenings, we've had some yummy home-cooked meals, and one night we went out to Fatty's in Breckenridge, and had what was likely the best pizza I've ever eaten, along with a local brewery (Dillon Dam)'s brown ale. We played games of Uno, Yatzee, Apples to Apples, and Trivial Pursuit, and put together a puzzle. We also did our best to get 8 hours of sleep a night so that we could fully enjoy everything.

p.s. Forgot to hit "post" this morning - so I'll add that today was sunny and beautiful, conditions were perfect, hardly anybody was on the slopes, and we had a great day, give or take a few run-ins with "snow chickens." That's what makes for the good stories, though! We also got to check out a little bit of the international snow sculpture competition which is going on in town this week. Wowza!

10:28pm: Question for those familiar with Durham
Our balloon-making friend from D.C. and her mom are coming down this weekend (yay!) to attend our Saturday performance of Messiah. After the performance, they want to take me out to dinner. Big-B will be along, clubjuggler may or may not be able to join us. So - where should I suggest? Somewhere nice but not overly pricey, at least child-tolerant if not child-friendly, and ideally somewhere "local," i.e. somewhere they couldn't go to in D.C. Also, somewhere we could get seated fairly quickly around 5:30-6pm on a Saturday. Suggestions?

7:54pm: Homework that goes Boom
Since Big-B's school doesn't assign homework, we've been filling in that void with 10 minutes a day of "homework" on subjects including Spanish, Math, Reading, Music (Recorder & Piano), and Big-B's favorite, Science. clubjuggler got a great book called something like "742 Easy Science Experiments" and we've been more or less working our way through them.

Yesterday we got to the one where you take a cork, make sure it fits into a bottle, then tape two streamers (paper towel strips) to it and set it aside. Then you take the bottle, put some lemon juice & water in it, wrap a teaspoon of baking soda in a small square of paper towel, drop it in, lightly pop on the cork, and step back.

And wait.

And nothing happens.

So you try again, using less paper towel around the baking soda, and ...

nothing happens.

So then you (er, I) decide to try it with Big-B standing behind me, while I actually hold the bottle tilted away from me towards the front yard. That close, I can tell that it's fizzing back up ... THROUGH the cork. A rubber cork, which has been removed from its original bottle with a corkscrew, so has a hole all the way through it. D'oh! Back inside, stick a toothpick in the hole, break it off, more toothpick in the other end, ditto. Then back outside.

Start the experiment again (good thing we had lots of lemon juice & baking soda!)...

Wait for it...

Boom! The cork goes flying across the yard, trailing streamers in the dusk.

Homework that goes Boom is fun. :)

7:13pm: Busy social people
echoweaver posted today about what she called "The Busy Social People's Dilemma" - folks like us are busy doing interesting things, so we meet interesting people, and we'd like to get together with them again, except we're so busy doing interesting things we don't have time.

So true!!

motley_muse and snorklewacker immediately come to mind. And then the Viles, and culfinreal, whom at least I see regularly. And we never see as much of thebroomecloset and ovrclokd as I'd like to. And then we go to DC, and maybe see gjacknow or thad_delaplane, but not D&S, or reBecky, and it's been *ages* since we've seen Aelfgar...

I had lunch today with J.P. from choir, which was really nice. I'd like to do that sort of thing more often. But then I don't have enough time for housework, and callicrates and willowisp are visiting later this week (yay!) so I'd like the place to look decent.

And I seriously need to call bunches of people, like aardvarklf and Rob, not to mention a babysitter! Speaking of, time to put Big-B to bed.

Well, there are worse things to be cursed with than having too many spiffy friends!

2:30pm: Comic books and barbarians
As many of you know, I've been working from home for a few years now for ScifiGenre.com, which is owned by some friends of mine. This fall, I started working in the store on Wednesdays and Thursdays while Big-B is in school. On Wednesdays, the big weekly shipment of comic books arrives, and on Thursday rather a lot of variously-sized comic book subscription packages ship out. So on both days we spend a lot of time counting, sorting, alphabetizing, pulling, picking, and double-checking comics. It's rather a fun gang of folks (even if most of them are about 21 years old) and I have to say I'm having a blast.

Last night I went over to the house of the couple who owns ScifiGenre.com for their weekly movie night, and watched "Conan the Barbarian" for what I think is the first time (although I've clearly seen at least bits and still shots of it before). It was a nice chance to catch up with an old friend (even if we were talking about such things as mortgages and biological clocks) and drink just a little bit too much and watch a.... classic? movie. Hopefully, I'll get to do it again when we don't have other things going on Saturday nights.

Maybe the reason this all seems to be working out is because inside, I'm still..





Take the What Type of Friend Are You? quiz.

3:27pm: Concert manager ... blues? chaos? woes?
Normally, setting up for a small ensemble on Sunday takes the Duke Chapel Choir concert managers (including yours truly) about 15-20 minutes. Today, for a variety of reasons, it took almost exactly an hour. The most amusing part was when the assistant conductor showed up (about 40 minutes into the hour, after the ensemble had started practicing on borrowed music stands, but before the choir practice started) and let us know that the music stands we'd been frantically searching for had been moved into the electrical room off the men's robing room. The one with the big sign on the door saying "DANGER! High voltage! Do not open."

D'oh - of course! Why hadn't we thought to look there?!?!?

1:46pm: Weekend in Charlotte
To celebrate the fact that clubjuggler and I have been married for 12 years, we spent labor day weekend in Charlotte this year. Big-B came with us, and I think a good time was had by all. We wanted a suite so that we could be together but in separate rooms with a door that closed, and decided the easiest way to do that was to stay at an Embassy Suites where that's the standard, rather than staying in the most expensive room at some other not-quite-as-nice place. Perqs - nice swimming pool (Big-B actually swam - underwater even - for the first time!), beautiful atrium with fake ruins and waterfalls and such, made to order hot breakfasts, nice room, free drinks at "manager's reception," etc.

Saturday - left home around 10, lunch at Applebee's in Concord, toured James K. Polk's birthplace / historic site, then to the hotel for a swim. Dinner at a Spanish-American restaurant. Billed itself as Spanish, but what Spaniard would put red and green peppers in tortilla espanola? Yuck! Meal in general was good, though, if not authentic.

Sunday - morning swim, then visited Discovery Place (free admission because we're a member of our local ASTC museum) for several hours, including lunch. Then spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to drive to the Aviation museum (took 13 full minutes *after* the first time we spotted it to actually get to it). Enjoyed the planes, bought Blue Angels poster for Big-B's room. Then a brief visit to the small Natural History museum (free again, yay ASTC!) and a lovely walk through Freedom Park. Dinner was (unfortunately) mediocre Mexican.

Monday - morning swim again, then a round of mini-golf. Lunch at a Greek cafe across from UNC-C, followed by a walk through their arboretum/gardens. Then home in time to pick up mooneysmith and his wife at the UNC airport (they flew in "to return a book"). Dinner at Souper Salad, then watch the Mooney fly off into the sunset, and back home.

Happy Anniversary to Us. :)

1:32pm: Home again
OK, so I've finished reading Harry Potter, so it's time to admit to my friends in the Triangle ... I'm BAAAAAACK! Oh, and I've kinda got bits of my hair that are varying shades of purple. So, there, you've been warned. Er, and currently my fingernails are a bright Duke blue. Right, then, camp has an interesting effect on me. :)

8:07am:

jklGoDuke's LJ stalker is babysuehle!

babysuehle is stalking you because you got better results for the 'acronym' thing than them. They are also slowly poisoning you!

( craft meme )

9:25am: For my friends in Albuquerque
I wanted to invite y'all (especially echoweaver, knowing her interest in music) to a musical event featuring a friend that I greatly admire:

Sunday, May 20, 2007, at 11:15 AM
The Cathedral Church of Saint John at the corner of 4th Street and Silver Avenue, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Premier of a New Choral Work by David Arcus, Duke Divinity School

David is not only a personal friend and the accompanist of my beloved Duke Chapel Choir, but he is one of two people I've meet that I would call a genius (fyi Studentbane, the other is Zoon). His particular field of genius is organ improvisation, but he's also excellent in the related fields of composition and performance.

If you can make it, please do, and I'd encourage you to spread the word to others in town. Feel free to tell David I sent you if you get the chance. ;)

9:37pm: That's Our Boy (CTTDOTP)
A couple of nights ago at dinner, Big-B randomly started singing:

"There was a farmer who had an igneous rock and Bingo was his name-o!"

The second verse logically followed...

"There was a farmer who had some limestone and Bingo was his name-o!"


I should also add that we checked his height and weight recently and he's square -- 46" and 46lbs (with clothes on). Which makes him, although not yet six years old, both taller and heavier than I was at seven, and taller than my dad was at seven. So he's not a runt!! He's basically average sizewise, I think, and boy am I glad that he didn't inherit childhood runtness from me.

9:53pm: wiki meme
All we like sheep...

Go to Wikipedia.

In the search box type in the month of your birth and the date (not the year)

1) List a few events that happened on the day of your birth
1587 - Colony of Roanoke: A second group of English settlers arrive on Roanoke Island off of North Carolina to re-establish the deserted colony.
1933 - Wiley Post becomes first person to fly solo around the world traveling 15,596 miles in 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.


2) List two “people of note” also born on the day [I can't count]
1510 - Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence (d. 1537)
1844 - William Archibald Spooner, English priest and scholar (d. 1930) ["spoonerisms"]
1932 - Oscar De la Renta, Dominican-born fashion designer
1940 - Alex Trebek, Canadian-born game show host

3) List one “person of note” that died on the day
1619 - Lawrence of Brindisi, Italian monk (b. 1559)

4) List any holiday or observances
* Pi Approximation Day
* Germany- Ratcatcher's Day. [oh my]
* Swaziland - Birthday of former King Sobhuza II

7:34pm: Silly meme
Well, I used my real first name not "jklGoDuke," but ...

Ok, you google your name and the word "needs" and post some silly results:

jklGoDuke needs little magic shoes.
jklGoDuke needs a National Square Dance Competition.
jklGoDuke needs therapy.
jklGoDuke needs love or lust.
jklGoDuke needs to go on a train ride.
jklGoDuke needs gardens.

11:00am: ...just can't wait to get on the road again!
Today is the last day of Big-B's quarter at school, then he starts a three-week spring break. clubjuggler is unfortunately a working stiff who will have to stay home and guard the homefront, but Big-B and I won't be around much for the next few weeks:

Fri 3/9 Drive to Johnson City TN, stay with mooneysmith and his wife.
Sat 3/10 Breakfast with RF, drive to Charleston WV to visit Science Camp director & family (3 girls).
Mon 3/12 Drive to DC, stay with gjacknow and family (2 boys); hopefully see thad_delaplane
Wed 3/14 Drive to Philly, stay with jugglers J&C E and family (boy, girl); hopefully visit jugglers G&S K and family (boy, girl, due anytime)
Thu 3/15 Drive to Princeton NJ, stay with DIZ & famiy (2 girls)
Sat 3/17 Drive to DC, stay with RLH
Mon 3/19 Drive home.

Thu 3/22 Fly to Springfield MO, visit (grand)Mumda
Fri 3/30 Fly home.

Wheeee!! Gotta go finish packing...

1:28pm: Happy Birthday to my Sweetie!
Today is clubjuggler's birthday. Everybody please go wish him a happy one!

We've already pretty much celebrated his birthday -- on Friday night, Big-B had his first sleepover (thanks to vileone and vilejynx and the little vile-lings), and we took the opportunity to go out to the Melting Pot for some late-valentine early-birthday yumminess. Yesterday, some of the choir crowd joined us at California Pizza Kitchen for lunch, and had enough voice parts covered to sing to him in nice harmony. CPK gave him a free sundae and even put a candle in it. We gave him birthday gifts last night, since he'll be gone to a rehearsal this evening.

Happy Birthday to You-ooo!

9:53am: Food meme
Tell me about yourself in the following areas:
Food: Carnivorous, Omnivorous,Vegetarian, Vegan, Bromeliad
Cooking: Love it, necessary evil, hate it
Drink: Water, juices, milk, soft drinks, teas & coffees, beer, wine, hard liquor,
Cheese: Yes, No, Gaah!

Food - Omnivorous, married to a vegetarian, so I have fewer meat-centered meals now than I was raised on, but I tend to cook meat-centered meals when he's away for dinner, and often order them when I'm eating out.
Cooking - Towards the "love it" end of the scale, but not all the way there. I think I could be quite a good cook if I put more time into it (and perhaps had a large family with similar tastes to mine), but I doubt if that's going to happen.
Drink - Water yes, juices a little (apple, orange), milk a little (lactaid only), soft drinks yes (in small quantities, with caffeine & sugar), teas yes (black or herbal), coffee no, beer yes (the chewier the better), wine yes (not often, red preferred), hard liquor seldom (gin, rum, & flavored liqours)
Cheese - YES