Bummer

Last week the music team for our Barbershop Chorus had a discussion over the internet about professionalism and practice for our chorus.  I had been gone while out west, so I really worked hard to be as good as I could for our practice last night.  I practiced all the songs and studied the words to be better.  For the first 30 minutes, I was the only Bass and not once did the director tell me to be louder or stop to re-pitch the song to put me back with the rest of the chorus.  We had a breakout session and I led the other Basses when they finally showed up.  About 9:30 the last guy showed up and he sang only two songs.  Our final song was I believe and when we did the crescendo at the end, I hit the last note pure and I swear you could hear the notes ring with an overtone.  The Director went over to the guy who showed up there at the last and thanked him for his magnificent job on the last note.   Talk about being dumb struck.  When I relayed this story to Barb she said that perhaps the Director thought the other guy needed encouragement.  Yep, I miss those little things sometimes.   Oh well, it is just a hobby and I enjoy doing it to the best of my ability.  This Saturday, we are going to sing outside the Capitol Building for a Book Fair.  We will sing the National Anthem, America the Beautiful, Barbara Ann and I believe.  Should be a lot of fun. 

Today Barbara and I will start the harvest of the apples and fruit on our trees.  A lot of it will be get t be deer feed this fall and some will get made into apple or pear butter.  I thin we will probably also cut down a couple of the trees that have some form of a blight.   They weren't really good trees from the start and a good fire will be probably the most productive thing for them.   Barb will probably want to add a tree or two to bring in some new stock.   I am still wanting to rig u some form of an irrigation system but we'll see how that works out. 

We built a new metal storage building this last year and as much as I love it, it needs a power source.  I find that there are things like the air compressor and battery chargers that I need to run out there and I find myself   taking things back to the garage.  I have a generator and am thinking that I need to run it from time to time so putting it on wheels might be the short term answer.  We'll see.

Our Daughter-in-Law came over for supper last night and it was great to see her in good health and good spirits.  I hope this is an uptick in life for her.  Dave is working nights for three weeks in Lawrence training for a new job.  Dave said that it was almost a whole week that he didn't get to see her nearly enough.  Two more weeks and life will be back to normal.  I hope that somewhere down the road he will get on with Blue Cross and Blue Shield here in Topeka doing basically the same job.  Oh well, I just hope he does well and the car lasts well into his new job.

For many of you, the life span of a car is flavored by the new cars.   Back in the day, we did a lube job every 1,000 miles, a Tune up about 10,000 miles and a valve job about 50,000 miles.  If you had a car that made 100,000 miles, it was a senior citizen and you either had to bore it way oversize to rebuild it or replace the motor.   Now at 110,000, I have barely had to replace the sparkplugs on the Crown Vic.   In fact, the car got 25 MPG over the length of the 2500 miles there and back.  I met a lady at the Oil Change Shop this past week and she had a Lincoln Continental.   She said that she had no fears at all getting in the car and driving to Seattle to visit her daughter.  It is by far the most dependable car she has ever owned.  

Old and Older

Oh well, better get moving on.

MUD