The news would have you believe that the entirety of southern California is in flames. It's not quite true. Yes, a quarter of a million people have been urged to evacuate in the San Diego area and there was smoke on the horizon almost everywhere I looked this morning. But life here in the Valley pretty much is going on as usual. Don't worry about us -- we aren't rich enough to live in the hills or near any natural brush or forest. So we're safe.
We were mostly unaware of the conflagration until yesterday afternoon. This is because we were in Bloomington, Indiana, over the weekend witnessing the wedding of our friends David and Anne. They tied the knot on Sunday at St. Thomas Lutheran (the church where David was the organist and where he and I became friends) amidst marvelous music: we were part of a small choir that performed four pieces and the wedding favors were kazoos -- the attendees were encouraged to play along with the recessional. We always enjoy any excuse to visit our old stomping grounds there. We stayed with Mari and Tony, enjoyed two visits to our favorite bar, saw some of Samantha's fencing buddies (and their adorable cats!) and generally enjoyed being in a place where you can walk around easily and where seasons occur.
Music has been taking over my life of late. The Los Angeles Master Chorale had their opening concert of the season a little over a week ago -- one of the four LAMC events I'll be taking part in. It's pretty wild to be a member of a professional music ensemble -- it's very different from most of my choral experience up to this point (the topic of a planned future post). But it is neat to see the concert reviewed in the newspaper and even to see myself in a photo (middle row, on the right)! Anyway, the rehearsals for this came on hard and heavy for the two weeks leading up. Add those on to my usual twice-a-week rehearsals for the Oxy Chorale and my church gig and Andrew was a busy singer for a while there.
This coming weekend, Samantha's brother Ben will be visiting along with his friend Austin. This visit has been preordained for about six months, ever since Samantha saw an announcement that Ian McKellan would be playing King Lear when the Royal Shakespeare Company came to town in October. Samantha told Ben (Shakespeare nerd-ery runs in the family apparently), who promptly made plans to fly out to visit and see it. Ben bought tickets hours after they went on sale about three months ago. Good thing, too, since the prices have jumped considerably since then. We've been reading these news stories with interest, and pondering what we would buy if we could sell our tickets at such prices. But I think this is the sort of thing we'd regret missing.
Other news of late:
- We went to see They Might Be Giants when they played in Anaheim a few weeks ago. Andy Kasper got us off our butts and across the southland and we're glad he did. It might have been the best of the six shows I've seen of theirs. The guys can still rock. The show has set off a mini TMBG obsession in Samantha, who subsequently added Linnell to her Top 5 guys list.
- The planning continues for the big move. Mostly what that means is that there are lots of boxes in the apartment. but it's less than three weeks away, which makes it a little more real.
- Did I ever update you on my fantasy baseball leagues? I came in first in Aaron Steele's league and in third in Soren's league. I'm pretty happy with both results, though I got lucky in the playoffs in the former after Aaron smoked everyone else during the regular season.
- On a related note, the Twins finished their season under .500 for the first time in six years. They turned in a pretty disappointing season all told as their offensive woes came back big time. But the eternal refrain of the loyal baseball fan rings true -- there's always next year. In the meantime: go Rockies!