Summertime

Well once again I find an eternity has passed since I've written a blog post. Not my fault! Well, actually it is. But life does tend to keep you busy, what with work and raising a kid and doing the odd musical here and there. But it's summertime here now, which means peaceful times in the Department of Music and time to catch up on a lot of things. Including writing.

I was struck today by the thought of how things change as I was driving to work up J Street. There's still the old decaying storefronts from another era: Copenhagen's, the Pfaff Sewing Machine store, and so on. And more recent changes, such as The Beat record store on 17th and J that is now a BevMo. I used to shop at that record store when I was in high school, in fact before it moved to the downtown location from 33rd and Folsom. I guess the inclusion of DVD and BluRay movies to their arsenal of products wasn't enough to save them. I think by the time Connor becomes a teenager, no one will buy CD's anymore. Why would they? They can already hear anything they want on demand with a few pushes of buttons on their smartphones or tablets or what not.

Not that I'm much different. I used to buy and collect CD's, and I still have a pretty impressive collection. But when was the last time I popped one in a player and listened? I can't even remember. Even driving in my car I hardly use the CD player. I just plug in my iPhone and play music from that.

It's a sign of the times I guess. Things change. Times move on. The "good ol' days" are gone and but a distant memory. My kid will never know the joy of searching through a used CD bin and coming across a rare gem that you've been looking for.

Well, anyways, enough nostalgia. Today is Friday, and it's the third weekend of the musical Catch Me If You Can, which I'm directing the onstage orchestra for. I say orchestra, but really it's a modified big band. The show is pretty hot, that is to say the music cooks along and brings a lot of energy to it. And tonight I'm debuting my new white tuxedo jacket, as previously I've just been wearing a tux shirt with bow tie and cummerbund. And yes, that's the right spelling of cummerbund. Who knew? Not me. I just found out this second.

Meanwhile, music writing is going well as I've completed the first part of the fall marching band show, and we've met to go over ideas for the second part just this week. I'm also writing some charts for River City High School, and just in the last week I've had my compositions start popping up for sale on martianmusic.net. A new endeavor, hopefully that will help spread my music beyond the confines of this college music department.

So things are looking up, Connor is growing up fast and developing a personality. Boy, he loves life. He's the most energetic and happy kid I've ever seen. Except of course when he doesn't get what he wants...welcome to the terrible 2's! And at only 19 months old, he's quite the overachiever! Next trip for us will be to Hawaii in July. I've never been, and of course neither has Connor, so we're all looking forward to that!

Now if I can make a point to write on this more frequently...

Is It Fall Yet?

I always say it, but I should really write more often on this thing….it's been about four months now. We're still in the heat-end of summer, looking forward to the cooler time of fall. Which I have to hope is just around the corner. We've been in a serious drought now for awhile, and cooler temperatures and some rain would certainly be welcome right about now.

Anyhoo, a new school year has started and here we are on week three already. This is shaping up to be a really light semester actually; the number of concerts we normally do is way down, most particularly in the student recital area. I guess I'm kind of looking forward to having a little bit of a break, more or less. Maybe I can catch up on some other things that have fallen to the wayside. Like writing music…

It's hard to believe it's been over a month now since our Mickey passed away. He was such a good kitty. He had been diagnosed with a heart condition last November (read the blog about that). It was tough seeing him go, but at least we all got to say goodbye. And he fortunately went peacefully, more or less, on his own. Which is about the most I could have hoped for. I certainly don't miss force feeding him pills twice a day. But his company and personality are sorely missed. There will never be another one quite like him.

I just finished conducting the Preview Show for RSP. What a trip that was! After arranging half of the tunes and trying to figure out how to run the other half, and correcting problems in parts and finding out there were whole songs the cast were doing that we knew nothing about, I was pretty burnt out on the whole project. But the show itself went really well in the end, and people seemed to really enjoy. Still, I don't think I'll be doing that again next year; I just don't have the time, and apparently nor do I have the patience, to do something thrown together like this.

Playing 'A Light in the Piazza' with Green Valley Theatre was far more rewarding. What a neat show! At least musically, anyway. It's the first time I've played a musical without amping the bass. And it didn't really need it. An amazing score with a flare for the operatic, it was a delight to play. Certainly one of the most musically rewarding experiences I've had in a long time. And hey, I've been around for awhile!

Well, I suppose I should get back to the Defensive Driver Training which I'm supposed to be completing online to continue driving state vehicles. I've been letting it just run in the background, and every once in awhile I go to it and press the forward button so it goes to the next slide. I have no idea what it's talking about, but the little quizzes at the end of each section are easy enough that you can just guess on them. So, back to it I suppose!

...It's still 90 degrees outside…come on Fall! I'm waiting!

May the 5th

Yesterday was May 4, a quasi-religious functional "holiday" celebrated by geeks around the world as Star Wars day. Nothing wrong with a little fun I suppose, though every time I read "May the 4th be with you" on Facebook, my gut reaction was to respond with "And also with you". Amen. I didn't do it however; every once in awhile I'm actually able to curtail my smart aleck persona. But it reminds me of a church service! I guess everyone takes what they will from things they hear and see.

Anyway, it's May now and Connor has passed the 6 month mark. He's still an unusually happy baby (for the most part), and we've been able to successfully take him to a multitude of restaurants and even a couple of River Cats games already this year. And yesterday he went to Cal Fit for the first time, and had his first time in a day care setting as well as getting spend some time in a pool for the first time. He really enjoyed it! It's a good thing he doesn't mind being with strangers or being away from his parents...

This is the busiest time of the season for me; I performed my annual concert countdown and discovered that the first 16 days of May hold 29 concerts (and two festivals). We've already downed a festival and 8 of those concerts. so it's winding down! I spent a bit of time at school this weekend, which always makes the weekends fly by. Can't believe it's another Monday already!

This summer will be Connor's first, and our summer vacations the first chance we've had to really spend time doing things with him since our maternity and paternity leaves expired. Not sure what all we'll do; perhaps go camping or maybe even take a cruise to Alaska (if the fares come down…). Not that I'll be idle and bored with nothing to do this summer - I'm conducting for the musical The Producers at Runaway Stage from May 30-June 22, and I have a whole load of composing and arranging I've committed to. So it has the makings for being an intensely busy summer, despite my secret inner resolution to take a break from it all and vegetate for awhile.

Well, what see what comes of it all. Two more weeks till finals!

12 Weeks!

Well it's hard to believe that Connor passed his 12 week milestone last night. It's been a whirlwind of time, and it seems like only yesterday we were leaving the hospital with him. I have to look at his first pictures to realize just how much he's grown in that time. You don't notice these things so much on a day to day basis, but comparing photos from last Halloween certainly paints a picture! He's now pushing at 13 pounds and seems quite tall when he's standing up (with a little help of course…he's not THAT advanced!)

So my days are spent at work now while Connor stays with his various grandparents. Nights are spend trying to squeeze in a few hours of sleep here or there until he wakes up demanding milk or attention. Or both. Of course sometimes he's just annoyed that he has gas. And boy does he have a lot of that!

He's not quite crawling yet, but he does seem to enjoy "tummy time" more, and he holds his head up high, and you can tell that he's certainly trying to struggle and move himself. He'll get there, but in the meantime he has to rely on us to schlep him around.

Meanwhile, today is the last day of break before school starts on Monday. Over the winter break I was able to re-input the score of my transcription to Shostakovitch's 2nd piano concerto. I'd had written it many years ago for a friend to play with a local professional wind ensemble, and now another group wishes to use it in performance. Thankfully I had enough time to input everything and create new parts, as it allowed me to correct several mistakes from the original, as well as to add in rehearsal numbers and a few limited cures to help the players in rehearsal. The performance should be in May, so I look forward to hearing it again!

Connor's first Christmas was fun, albeit rather low-key. We did the normal Christmas morning at my parents house and Christmas afternoon and dinner and Whitney's mom's house, followed by the annual post-Christmas trek to Reno to see Whitney's dad. Fortunately there was no snow on the road. Or rather unfortunately for California, as we're currently in a record breaking drought which promises a bleak year here if things don't turn around. But last year it was snowing so bad that we barely made it through the Sierra Nevada. What a difference a year makes!

So now it's on to work for the day, and the last chance to prepare for the spring semester at Sac State. Eh, I think I'm ready. For summer vacation that is!

Thanksgiving...and Halloween

Well Thanksgiving is finally here, meaning there's only one more month of 2013. Today is also the day our first child, Connor, turns 4 weeks old, having been born this past Halloween. That was a Halloween to remember.

I was awoken at 1:30am by Whitney, who said she was bleeding and had called the advice nurse who advised her to come in. Turns out her mucous plug had come out, an early indicator that labor is imminent. So we drove to the hospital in Roseville, after loading the cats up with ample food since we suspected that we'd be gone for some time.

At the check-in station in Labor and Delivery they determined that Whitney was having contractions 3-4 minutes apart. Though she was not feeling them at the time (lucky her I suppose). She was dilated enough to admit her at that point, though it was right on the cusp of that so we were given the choice to be admitted straight away or to wait two hours and see if anything was progressing. We chose the former.

Most of the day was uneventful as we sat in our room and watched the contractions come and go on the monitor. Around 11:00am she finally started to feel them - and then they progressively got more painful until the point where we decided it was time for the epidural at 12:30pm. That thing is a godsend - amazing how it changes the course of labor. She was also on Pitocin at that point, and actually had been for a few hours, but still things appeared to be moving a bit slowly. At 1:00pm we were calling the nurses station to notify them that her water had broke. When they checked her again a couple of hours later, they discovered that her dilation had rapidly increased.

It was decided to start active pushing at 5:30pm, which we did, and for the next two hours it was like riding the waves of the ocean; with each swell on the monitor she began pushing to try and get him further down. It seemed like a horrifically slow process, but in reality the whole thing was over in two hours - a mere wink of time compared to some of the labor horror stories you hear about - and Connor was born at 7:37pm.

It was quite an amazing thing to watch; surreal really, to see this human child come out of its mother. He actually got a little stuck at the shoulders and they had to twist and pry and prod him a little to get him to come out. But then he was here! The doctor's first words were, "Wow, I didn't expect him to be that big". They had guesstimated 7-8 pounds earlier, but he came out at 8 pounds, 15 ounces. The first thing they did was to put him on Whitney for some skin to skin bonding time, where he stayed for several minutes before I cut the cord. He must have liked it because he pooped all over Whitney and himself. And the bed. And the sheets. And the floor.

Cutting the cord, incidentally, feels just like they described it - like cutting through a deflated balloon.

So now, four weeks later, we have a healthy (and large) baby boy, who spends his days eating, sleeping, and pooping. And yet he still finds time to complain about that by crying his head off. Fortunately he's not colicky, and in reality, as babies go, and actually pretty mild mannered. And what a personality! It's amazing the facial expressions and body movements he's capable of at such a young age.

So here's to four weeks, which have flown by really, and to many more to come. Maybe next year we can actually be home to hand out candy on Halloween...

Kitty Trouble

Well yesterday was an emotionally draining day. One of our kitties, little Mickey, had been having some wheezing coughing the last few days, as well as labored breathing. We thought he had ingested something that was making him sick. If only we could have been so lucky. The night before last we noted that he didn't quite have the appetite or energy he normally had. So Tuesday morning I decided to take him into our vet and get him looked over.

They were immediately concerned by his breathing, although he really didn't appear to be in any distress if you just looked at him. Blood work seemed fine, but the X-rays were quite alarming. Mickey had fluid surrounding his lungs. The most common causes for this are all pretty bleak in their prognosis for his long term survival.

We were referred to the VCA hospital, which is essentially a 24-hour emergency hospital for animals. Its lobby even resembles a regular hospital waiting room, although somehow bleaker and less sterile looking. It's not a fun place to hang out, since it's not the kind of vet you take your pet to for a regular checkup. People in the lobby are invariably withdrawn into their own thoughts as they await what will likely be unpleasant news.

I spent a total of six hours there, while Mickey was somewhere in the bowels of the building being examined and treated. First on the agenda was to sedate him and drain as much fluid as possible from around his lungs. They had to consult with me first, since everything they do there is a pretty expensive endeavor. But you have to do what you have to do. And you have to treat the immediate symptoms before you can get to the underlying cause.

Apparently the type of fluid they drain can determine the likely prognosis all by itself. Milky fluid means one thing. Pussy fluid means an infection. And so forth. His fluid was clear, which usually means one thing: congestive heart failure. So the next step was to see a cardiologist, a specialist who doesn't come in large quantities apparently. Fortunately, this was Tuesday, and Tuesday is a day the VCA does have a cardiologist on site.

So I sat and waited for him to have an opening between appointments so he could do an ultrasound on Mickey's heart. If you think that sounds expensive, well, it is. The bottom line was - and here my memory of details is a bit sketchy due to grief and shock - he had clear indicators of heart failure in one of his chambers, which was enlarged and tending to flutter as opposed to pumping normally. Mickey's heart isn't pumping enough blood to support his body.

I don't really need to go into much more detail here. I was setup with several medications in the form of pills which have to be administered orally at different intervals throughout the day. He is home now and doing okay; the first night he didn't seem like himself at all, and simply sat hovering over his water dish and growling at his sister whenever she came near. Completely uncharacteristic behavior for him. Today he is a little better, though he prefers to sit by himself under the bed away from everyone. He came out a couple of times to eat, and even came downstairs once. So I guess that's an improvement. He still loves to be petted and immediately begins purring and brushing up against your hand, and even rolls over to let you rub his belly. So today is a better day.

Apparently this is not the sort of disease where you can get a very exact prognosis. No one can say how long he will have, only that this is a disease that will ultimately be the cause of his early demise. They said that with meds they hope he can go another year in relative comfort and mostly normal life. But the reality is, he may have a few weeks or a few years, no one really knows. My last cat had to be euthanized, because she was clearly suffering from a sudden onset of renal failure. It was better to see her go peacefully than to watch her struggle just to stay (barely) alive. I might have to make that same decision for Mickey someday soon.

Yes, yesterday was a sad day.