A Day(s) in the Life

Gosh here it is almost Tuesday! Had a couple of interesting and rewarding things since then…
Friday Fun
  I zipped down to St. Mary’s College to hear a short concert of a string trio with piano accompaniment. Alert and musically inclined readers may know them: Jose Cueto (violin); Jennifer Rende (viola); Suzanne Orban (cello), all from the college. The guest pianist was Simone Sarno, who is visiting from Italy and is involved with the college’s musical activities in Alba. The strings presented a Divertimento by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (kind of an odd name methought). It was lively performance and nice to watch. Mr. Sarno then joined on the second piece, a Klavier Quartet in E flat Major. It’s interesting to watch them pass phrases around and echo each other (venturing into engineer music appreciation again).

During the latter number I kind of thought that the piano didn’t have the punch and crispness that I have become accustomed to when listening to Brian Ganz. This then got me to wondering about the old problem of association. It comes up in wine and has some parallels. Does this bottle of wine taste great because you see the label of Screaming Eagle and of course any wine from them HAS to be good. Does Mr. Sarno not sound as good to me because he is NOT Brian Ganz? They get around it in the wine world by doing the blind tastings occasionally, so maybe we could organize a blind piano playing (well that doesn’t sound exactly right, but you get my drift). Play the piece twice with a curtain concealing the pianist kind of thing. Pre-conceived notions are nasty and tyrannical things.. Anyway it was a pleasant hour.
Saturday Soirees
MFO and I attended a program at our (Lexington Park) library. It was part of the celebration of Black History Month, and was a presentation by “Frederick Douglas” who is interpreted by Walter Jones Jr. Mr. Jones recounts the story of Frederick from the time he was a young slave on the Eastern Shore until he escaped to freedom. He is a talented actor who portrays the story through storytelling and punctuates it with playing guitar and singing (also talented). He is African American as was the majority of the audience, with a lot of school children. The theme of the story was that Frederick gained freedom through learning to read and becoming educated. It was a fascinating performance. If you ever hear of him doing it again, attend.
Sunday Swervings and Swats
My leisurely morning started out with my normal trip to Starbucks, and on the way there (over the treatd roads in anticipation of Snowmageddon) I noticed the fluttermobile wanted to swerve off to the right. I had noticed the tendency the previous day, but put it down to crowns in the road, etc. I didn’t think too much of it until I came out with my Latte and approached the car from the right hand side. Guess what? The right front tire was “squished”, almost flat. Scenarios started flashing through my brain (probably aided by the caffeine) but, as the car seemed drivable, I headed for home. Wait a minute, stupid!! (thank you chemicals) you’re only a quarter of a mile from Mr. Tire!! Why get stranded at home? So I gingerly herded the flutter mobile to their parking lot and was relieved to see they were indeed open on Sunday, in fact within a few minutes. A call to MFO resulted in being picked up in the MOMSTER. So, a couple of hours and twenty five bucks later, the car does seem to track straighter. No reason for the flat was given by Mr. Tire. It’s always something.

(the swat part):
And I hope the sporting contingent had a chance to see the finish of the LA Open (oh, excuse me the Northern Trust Open) at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades. Phil Mickelson had managed to kick it around for three rounds and stay in the lead and had a couple of strokes going into yesterday’s final round. He was paired with Keegan Bradley, who by the end of the round had me distinctly rooting against him. Talk about Mr. Fuss and Fidget! Address the ball, waggle, back off, go behind the ball, recheck the line, tap the ground with the driver about twenty times, go back to address, whiff a couple of practice swings, settle into stance, backswing to twenty degrees and back to ball, repeat for thirty, forty, and FINALLY strike the shot. By this time I’m screaming: “Just HIT THE DAMN BALL!”. Anyway of course Phil being Phil squandered the lead, allowing young Bill Haas to pass them both and hold a one shot lead in the club house over Phil and Twitchy who were coming up the 18th fairway. Both needed Birdie to tie for a playoff. Phil (amazingly) hit a good drive, but a relatively poor (for him) shot to the green ending up some twenty feet behind the pin in the fringe. Twitchy hit a pretty good shot maybe 16 feet hole high. As Phil got ready to putt, all the announcers (Faldo, Feherty, McCord, Nance) were going on about how he had to make it, and what a low probability putt it was, downhill, breaking, out of the fringe, etc. The last word from McCord was: “But, it’s Phil”. Guess what? Center cup. The place went nuts. And then amazingly enough Bradley rolled his ball in right on top of Phil’s. Three way playoff ended on the second hole when Haas rolled in an eighty footer. Great stuff.

Monday Motoring

So finally today we took the MOMSTER up the road (along with the other thousands of holiday shoppers) to Annapolis and Nordstrom’s to punch up the wardrobe for our upcoming trip to San Diego. I think I have mentioned this before, but I always find the clerks in Nordstrom’s (at least in gentleman’s clothing) to be extremely nice and helpful. Service takes on its intended meaning there. “We’re interested in looking at some dress shirts, probably in ecru”. Answer is not ‘they’re over there”, rather it is “sure come on, let’s go take a look at some”. Do you like these? Or I think there are more over here, let’s go see. Between slacks and shirts (sweaters were a bust, who wears those things?) we must have spent over an hour going here, going there, trying them on, alterations, everything. Of course last minute us waited until today to address the need, and nominally we would like to take them with us on Friday. Okay, no problem, we’ll put a rush on the alterations, and give the address of where you’ll be in California, we’ll ship them and they’ll be there for you to wear. Sigh.
And when they are I can be nicely

DFD