Quick Hitters

I. Rotary Trumpets
It's time for a Beethoven festival in Buffalo, which means that we're all playing rotary trumpets. The rotary, just like the piston trumpet, plays horribly out of tune. Except that we're used to (mostly) correcting the pistons as they need to go, and it's like starting from scratch when we get out the rotors. The timbre on these instruments tends to be much more mellow and blend-friendly, so we fit into a small orchestra a lot better when we're playing them, except for the fact that the pitch is wildly inconsistent. The real reason we use them, however, is because of the great doubling money that we get for each service. I actually bought a rotary trumpet last year, some cheap Chinese knock-off version of a C trumpet that someone was selling for a couple hundred bucks on eBay. It never came. The FedEx driver showed me the electronic record of it being dropped off at our apartment complex, but no one could find it. I had to go through an eBay claim process to get my money back, and that was the end of my foray into rotary trumpet buying. (Except, of course, that my first piccolo had rotary valves.) Now the guys in the section are trying out new instruments, so there are seven different rotary instruments on the stage between the three of us. That's a lot of different combinations in which we can struggle to play our Ds and As out of tune.

II. iPhones
I knew that the only way J would get an iPhone would be if I just up and brought her one some day without even warning her about it. And that's exactly what I did. Her old phone was completely falling apart, and when I stopped at the Verizon store on the way back from teaching I didn't even ask her what she wanted. She got an iPhone 5c (Just in case she didn't like it and wanted to return it) and I got an iPhone 6. As one of my colleagues observed while I hunched over it in rehearsal the other day "You don't realize how clunky your old one was until you have the shiny new model."
It's so true. The new phone is fast, big, sleek, and fun. It counts how many times I go up and down the steps holding James or Owen. (Many times per day) It downloads Bills free agency news way quicker during tacet movements or extended passages of rests. It takes amazing pictures and is generally the most fun I've had with a shiny toy since I bought my C trumpet.
And J loves hers too. For the past week or two I've looked down at my phone periodically to see that she's sent me a message to the effect of "Have I told you how much I LOVE this phone?"
And I'll text her back, since it's free now (how did we ever get by when we weren't both on iMessage?) and ask her to send me a picture of herself in semi-undress.
But even better than that, the absolute best part of having both of us on iPhones--shared calendars. We still haven't quite sorted out all the bugs to get my phone to talk to her phone and to her iPad, but now we can both look at each other's schedules with the tap of an icon. And then we can both look away, because it's pretty gruesome.

III. Podcasts
Lots of commuting to Buffalo means lots of podcasts in the car. I haven't had much time for Dostoevsky, but I've been able to listen to all of Hamlet in the last few days, the first few chapters of George MacDonald's Phantastes, bits of Hillaire Belloc's book on the French Revolution, and my personal favorite, a large collection of English Fairy Tales collected by Joseph Jacobs. The English Fairy Tales would be excellent anyway, but they are all narrated by a single reader, and she's a great story teller. (I don't know where they get some of the readers for the Librivox recordings--they sound like they're trying to learn the English language by practicing on public domain podcasts.) If anyone has any recommendations for new podcasts, please let me know!

IV. The Boys
Owen stayed up way too late last night, but makes up for any of his faults by giggling adorably whenever J asks him if he is a cucumber. James and I have both tried to get him to laugh by the same method, but it has to be Mommy. Last night I discovered a fail-safe way to get him to fall asleep when he is tired or hungry, which will be both good and bad news to all of the relatives who watch him on a regular basis--if you run while holding him, he passes out within 90 seconds. Last night between 7:30 and 8:30 pm I basically ran one continuous loop in the downstairs, and he only made a peep when I stopped. How far did I run? Thanks to my sweet new iPhone I can tell you that I covered over 6 mile yesterday. (Although that was the total number of steps for the whole day.
James is slowly turning back into himself again after a weekend of strange beds, lots of birthday sugar, and Hayden. He was pretty much in tears for all of Monday and Tuesday morning, and then once he ate an enormous breakfast on Tuesday mid-morning (after refusing his previous night's supper and breakfast that morning) he started to come out of his funk. He's been checking every day to see whether it is Spring outside yet or not, and we even went to the playground yesterday for an hour or so. Just like last year, he finds it necessary to collect any and every stone, pinecone, and woodchip that catches his eye, and then to have me carry it around until I can find a place to discreetly drop it. He is also very concerned about the length of our grass.