The Slab and other Stuff

Standpipes Waiting
The calendar says that spring begins today and there is a little bit of spring in the air this week, but it isn’t June yet.

I am trying not to write about the weather, but this time of the year living in New England IS about the weather. Though spring be around the corner it is never too late to snow, and we have had two snowstorms in the last week or so. Two weeks ado Sunday we had an overnight storm that dumped close to a foot of snow on the ground. That shut down the city for a day, by midweek it warmed into the 50’s and melted most of the snow. But come Monday, it was cold again and we got another 2 inches or wet sloppy snow. And then once more we re back to warm weather, currently it is in the low 40’s and rain.

But that isn’t really what I wanted to write about. More it is the secondary phenomenon related to all this snow that I call ‘the slab’. This is when a given car owner is too neglects to sweep the snow off the roof of their car. On the day of a fresh snow, this isn’t really a problem if one goes driving around it generally blows of the roof of the car creating a mini blizzard behind the car as one goes down the road. It is when the vehicle has been sitting for a few days and the weather has been through a couple of freeze / thaw cycles that it really turns into what I call The Slab. The layer of fluffy snow has turned into a solid slab of frozen crystallized snow, and if you are lucky and the thaw cycle was warm enough, there may be a couple of inches of solid iced on the bottom. At this point it can weight hundreds of pounds if it is on a large car or SUV.
A Mini-Slab

The fun part comes when one drives down the road with the Slab on the roof. If the roof of the car is smooth, that mass of snow and ice can let loose at almost any time; favorite points are on curves or at stops. A sudden stop can send the slab sliding down in front of the front windshield, sometimes taking out the wipers as it slides. A sudden start can leave it in a pile on the road forcing the car behind to drive over or around it. More spectacular is for one to take a curve fast and dump the load on into the oncoming lane. Hopefully the mass doesn’t hit another car but merely crashes to the road. He most terrifying version of the slab is found on the roof of semi trailers going 70 miles per hour when it suddenly catches the wind, flies into the air, breaks into chunks and then scatters about the highway. It is kind of the cluster bomb effect if you happen to be following closely.

Ah, life in the fast lane. I am not sure why I went into all of that – it has just been in the back of my min for some time.

Beyond that, life ha been following it’s own rhythm. The day-to-day routine has been the theme. Work for me has been pretty busy with multiple events most every week. There was a brief pause this past week with spring break upon the university where I work. At the same time it is the boy’s spring break as well. I have been able to take a couple days off and work from home, which means emails and telephone calls, but with things slow at work that is pretty easy to do. The trick has been to keep the boy busy, other wise he will spend most of his waking hours at his computer in Second Life, where he has a 2nd and 3rd and possibly 4th life acting out fantasies related to Star Trek, Dr. Who and Stargate. It is fine in moderation, but we know how members of the family can be about certain things. The concern is next week, which he also has off, but I am back to work being busy with multiple events. Mrs. is planning to take a couple of days off to tend to him next week; we will see what they have planned.

Speaking of the boy, we got his mid term grades a few weeks ago, and he was crashing and burning in math and science. About the same time we got an email from his math teacher telling us that he had only gotten a 29 on his most recent test, and she wanted to set up a conference with his advisor and us to see what we needed to do about his falling grades. We knew what to do: no drama next term, it was going to be study hall in the afternoons and we were going to sit over him while he did his home work to make sure that he was doing it all and doing it correctly. He protested mightily saying such things as, ‘I am going to be an actor, what do I need algebra for?’ you can guess how far that argument went. After several arguments over several days, we agreed that we would not restrict him from doing the spring play if he got it together and got his grade back up before the end of the term. He was satisfied with that compromise. A few weeks pass, and his grades arrived the other day. Miracle of miracles, he did manage to get his grades in science and math back up. It was up to a C, but it was passing grade. His teachers in both subjects commented on his sudden turnaround. For now he has earned the right to participate in the spring show, and we are still going to meet with his teachers, and formulate a plan to make sure that he doesn’t backslide.

By the way, my counter argument about actors not needing math went something like this, when I was about his age, I wanted to be an actor too, I went to college and studied theatre and acted, but to make money to go to school I started working in the scene shop at my college. I found out that I was much better at technical theatre that I was at acting, which in turn lead mea to career as a technical director, production manager and theatre manager, and without decent match skill, I never would have accomplished that.

Dog Days of Winter

It took us a couple of days to get back on schedule after almost two weeks on holiday. It was a particular problem for the boy who we had been letting sleep in until 8 or 9 in the morning when we normally give him first call at about 6:30am. He is definitely not a morning person, and it can take him a half hour or more with repeated calls for him to actually get his feet on the floor. Wednesday morning when I went in to call him for the 3rd or 4th time I found him asleep, head in his pillow but on his knees with his butt in the air. It was a tempting target to swat him to wake him but I resisted. It wasn’t so hard for me and the Mrs. to get up early again but I think more to the question was whether we were ready to go back to work. I have been frequently waking at 4am for some reason and I am not sure why. There is no burning issue that has me tense or preoccupied. I think I am just getting over heated. I guess I just have to quit cuddling so close with Mrs. under the flannel sheets and down comforter. Anyhow when that happens I get up use the bathroom, check my e-mail and settle back in bed, turning my light on low and reading for a while. Inevitably Mrs. alarm goes off just about the time I am falling back to sleep. Like the boy she needs multiple reminders t hat it is morning, so the alarm starts ringing about an hour before she actually needs to be up. The result is that when I wake early, I seldom really get back to sleep soundly for the rest of the night.

The New Year brought a round of bad news. I heard that a good friend from high school passed away from cancer on Christmas Eve. My all-seeing mother spotted the obit in the local paper and forward it to me. I had nor been in touch with George in a number of years, both distance and time had sent our paths in different directions, but we had been very close in high school, participating in drama together, and we both shared similar tastes in music, art and politics. On top of that I also received word from another old high school friend that she had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that affects the blood vessels. While her spirits are good and she is confident that she can beat it, the diagnosis is not good. The two incidents have brought home that sense of mortality that is becoming all too common for me. At this age, I wonder if every ache and pain is the sign of something more serious than just an ache or pain of aging.

More bad news; I got the annual report for my retirement account. It seems that I have lost $60,0000 last year without even trying. That takes into account the contribution that I have made as well as the university’s contribution as well, otherwise the number would have been worse. I was feeling like my account had begun to recover from the last down turn, but it was nothing like this. I wasn’t planning on retiring in the next few years, at least until the boy is out of school, but even that looks like it is in question now. Given everything, our financial situation is pretty good. I’d like to think that our jobs are pretty secure, but in these times, you just never know. We have been trying to refinance our house for several months without much success, perhaps with the interest rates dropping and some of the federal programs coming around, we might have better luck.

Given all the bad news, there is a little life around the house. We were given an Aero-Garden for Christmas. They are a little mini hydroponic garden that you put on your counter. The plants come in little pods that you insert in holes in the top. After that you basically add water, plug it in and hit the go button, and nature takes over the rest. After 2 weeks we have seven budding herb plants. We have been watching them grow like they were little kittens or something. It just goes to show how desperate we are for something green as we head into the dog days of winter.

This time of the year always seems endless. After the holidays, there really isn’t anything to break up the monotony of the winter except, ah .. March. The local news reports that December had a heavier that usual snowfall, and that we should expect more of the same until ah .. March. I purchased a 50lbs bag of sidewalk salt two weeks ago, and have already gone through nearly half of it. In a normal winter that is usually enough to make the entire winter with a little left over for that first early snowfall in November.

I am tired of shoveling snow already. We just got the latest batch on Saturday night, another 4 inches. The difficulty with snow in a city like Boston is that there is nowhere to put it when you shovel. Our house is on a corner and set right at the sidewalk with no front or side yard. Additionally there is no parking strip between the street and the side walks. To shovel a path on the sidewalk one has to either pile it against the house (not a good idea) or pile it along the outer edge of the sidewalk. Then there is the matter of getting ones car dug out, but now there is a pile of snow between the cleared path and the car. But you need to be able to get to the car, and where are you going to put the snow that is on the car? You could put it in the street, but the plows are just going to come along and plow the car back in. So what happens is that the snow gets piled at front and back of each car, creating individual cleared parking spaces. Having spent possibly hours digging ones car out, residents become protective of their parking spaces, using any variety of items to mark their spaces while unoccupied to prevent others from usurping them. The most popular marker is a traffic cone purloined from a construction site; second most is an ancient chair of some sort, and usually well past its useful life. Followed by milk crates, trashcans or large plastic child’s toys, much of which will be left out after the snow has melted and become just so much more trash on the street.

Sometimes I long for the rainy winters of the Northwest, although even they have been having severe weather this winter with heavy snow at Christmas, and now heavy flooding as it melts.

I am going to go watch the little plants grow for a while and dream of spring.

Catching up

As I mentioned in my last blog entry, life has been pretty busy in the previous couple of weeks, and I hardly had time to sit and write, let alone do much else. The last event of the term was last night, another dance / variety show presented by a student organization. Classes end Monday. So now that life has calming down a little I have time again and I thought I would go back and revisit some of the things that have happened while I was too busy.

It is now a quiet Sunday afternoon, and I am sitting here watching the first snow of the season falling, the forecast if for just a light dusting up to as much as an inch. It is definitely a sign of the season to come, but as we already had a few inches on the ground at this time last year, I am not feeling too bad about it.

So let me see if I can remember a few of the significant events of the last couple weeks.

Several months ago I had posted a video on Youtube of the boy and his guitar classmates performing a piece called Tutu Tango at their spring guitar recital. It is a fun piece that they really like to play and they were dead on for the performance. I posted it mostly for a family and a few friends to see, and I think it had a total of maybe 35 hits after 5 months. A couple weeks ago, I got a Youtube email that some one had saying that I had a comment on the video, and an email in my Youtube inbox. The email and the comment were from the composer of the Tutu Tango, one Derek Hasted (fortunately I had credited him in the video when I posted it), commenting on how much he enjoyed the performance. In addition he also posted a link to the video on the website of the Hampshire Guitar Orchestra in Hampshire England for which he is the musical director. So the video of the boys went ‘viral’ and in the course of a couple of days is suddenly had over 250 hits. Not spectacular, but not bad for a classical guitar video featuring four 13 year old boys. I let their guitar teacher and the parents of the other players know what had taken place, and they were all thrilled to have been noticed by the composer.

I posted the video in my old Yahoo360 blog, but here is it again for all my new readers… (A little joke there.)



I think that I mentioned that the boy was in the school musical, Into the Woods, in which he played the Baker. I did manage to find time to see the show between all the events that I had to tend to at work. I was a ‘proud dad’ by the end of the performance. The role of the Baker is big role and a tough one to play and he did an admirable job. He had complained in the past about only getting small roles in the plays, so this was his big chance to shine, and he really stepped up to the challenge. Not only did he have to sing a couple of solos, but there is also a love song duet with the bakers wife in which they must sing to one another at the same time that they are holding hands, ending in a final embrace. I must say that both performers pulled that off well, which can be difficult for some adults, let alone 13 year olds. The two of them managed to reach a level of reality that seem to show real emotion and affection. Bravo to them both. The boy definitely knows how to find the ‘moment’ as it is called, where character and motivation come together to give a performance its reality.

Next play up is a Midsummer’s Night Dream he has his eye on several roles in that. There is Puck of course, as well as Oberon, and Bottom, he could probably have his pick of roles, I think his Puck is tops on the list followed by Bottom. We will see how it shakes out; auditions are this week.

As I mentioned, that previous couple of weeks were very busy at work with several performances each weekend, most of them are student variety / dance shows, and frankly they all start to look and sound the same. The one event that did stand out was the music department’s gospel choir concert. It is notable not only for the great music, but also for the shear size and power of the group. It has grown dramatically in the last couple years from about 90 students to over 200. Part of the rehearsal earlier in the day was spent just getting people on and off stage quickly. The theatre capacity is just over 600, and the gospel concert always sells out, with little back stage space available the singers have to enter through the aisles very quickly as to not create a safety hazard. Fortunately that all went well, and the concert was a big success.
A Packed Stage
So that is the highlights from the previous couple of weeks. We are back to normal life such as it is, and I will resume posting and pissing and moaning as before. I think I will try to do shorter entries, with single topics and see if that works better.