Thermalgal’s Temperate Mumblings

What a horrible concert!

We had a concert last night outside of a sports pavillion near a lake… and it was the worst concert I’ve ever been a part of. We butchered the first song, then started to get better… until near the end. The saxophones missed their entrance (and they were the only ones playing), so the conductor tried to get them to start again, but they weren’t looking at him, so they just came in whenever… so the clarinets didn’t know when their part was supposed to start (it was a fugue) so they guessed, and the flutes and oboes, we came in where we were supposed to based on where the clarinets were… but we all got the the end of the phrase at different times. So, the conductor actually had to stop everyone and then say we’ll start again at 56 and away we went… man was it embarassing! Not to mention that the music was flying every where and there was a storm threatening. I think the first rain drop fell about three minutes after I got to my car. And I was thinking that this concert was going to be pretty good based on last week’s practice. Of course since we are playing the same music for the next concert, we’ve had people at practice who weren’t going to be at this concert but will be at the next one. Man does that screw you up! I think half of the people from last week weren’t even there! The next one should be better because only the people who will be playing in it will be there.

What fun!

We had a blast on Saturday when we went hurling down the Shenandoah River in our rented Torrents!  It was a big group, there were 10 one-man torrents and 10 rafts (each holding up to six guests).  Each raft had a river guide and there were two guides for the kayakers.

We did class 1 rapids (any less and they wouldn’t be rapids) and we did 2 class 3 parts. The highest class for rapids is a 6. The first class 3 was actually a little waterfall followed by a hydraulic (I think that is what it was called). I got turned around going down the little waterfall and was backwards and I didn’t want to fall out (we were just sitting on top of the kayaks with little straps over our knees) and didn’t have enough time to straighten before I hit the next section, I had to go through that backwards. I thought I did a really good job. If you don’t go into the rapids straight your boat could get flipped. We were told to paddle really hard once we get to the first one and then keep continuing to paddle through the second one. Some people forget about the second one and get knocked out. I didn’t want that to happen. So, when I was turning and figured backwards was closer, I just lined myself up and then paddled backwards for all I was worth and I made it through just fine. All the rafts were sitting there watching the kayakers come through and I think everyone started to cheer and said things like, wow great job! I think one of the first kayakers through (I was near the end) fell out.

The next set of rapids was a bit crowded. The kayaks go faster since it is only one man, so when we let the rafts go first, we caught up part way through and there were all sorts of traffic jams. After that we went first. I got stuck on a rock once. I was prependicular to the current and flush up against a rock and had a really hard time getting off of it. At one point, we went through a class 1 or 2 water fall (more like a small drop) and then parked the kayaks on the big rock and then went back and swam through it. It was fun, but my butt skimmed the rock as I went over. DH said his butt hit real hard.  The last class 3 was really cool. It was bascially big waves. No rocks to get stuck on like the other parts. I didn’t fall out of my kayak once (well, accidentally that is… I did jump out at the beginning to practice getting back on).  And I did almost everything. I didn’t try surfing on the rapids (you put your kayak downstream of a big rapid and try to surf there).  DH tried it and ended up falling out of his kayak (like most everyone else who tried it). It was a real workout. It was a 3 hour trip and I think that was only the time on the river! Lots of upper body strength needed. DH was so sore he couldn’t sleep Saturday night. I’m not as bad.  I think we’ll be going back in September with my sister and her DH when they do the next level trip.

And the countdown begins…

One day to white water rafting One week to our little stitching retreat weekend in WVa 16 days until I leave for Honduras But before then, I have some things I need to do first!  Before tomorrow’s trip, I need to finish my mom’s birthday present.  Before we go to WVa, we need to finish kitting up Dragon Dream’s A Dragon Garden.  And before I go to Honduras, I need to finish knitting the three dish cloths for the family where I’m staying. Work is busy busy busy.  I’m helping with another program and they have had peer reviews all week, with the thermal peer review scheduled for next week.  I get to present my analysis… whee… Yoga is going well.  I just started my third session at the school and my first at the yoga 2 level.  It is finally starting to get a bit challenging.  Unfortunately, the class I made it into, Sue didn’t.  So she is in the earlier class that day.  My class is taught by the director of the school and is usually packed to the gills with students.  Fairly rude students too.  We’ve only had two classes this session and no one except the teacher has talked to me.  I’d even say that I’ve gotten some nasty glances by more than half of the class.  Sue’s class on the other hand has about half the students and they are all very friendly.  It is taught by the lady whose class I took last session.  I’m thinking of trying out that class next week since we can make up our classes at any of the other same level classes.

Ugh…

Well, the last couple of days have been exciting… okay not really. I worked the midnight shift on Friday night so I had the day off. So, that meant shopping! I needed to get a bunch of stuff for my Honduras trip, including two sundresses. I got almost everything on my list! Since Saturday evening was the 3rd Sat of the month, that mean dinner with grandma. It was a shorter dinner than usual because we got there about two hours later than usual since I got home from work at 6 am. I started to feel bad that evening, but really didn’t think much of it. Sunday I convinced DH that we should just stay at home and not go visit his family. I started to feel even worse. With it all reaching a high point (or is that low point) about 2:30 am Monday morning. I took yesterday off from work and still felt a bit bad. I’m not at 100% but I’m at work now… silly me. My stomach is starting to behave, but now my throat feels funny and I think my tongue is swollen. But I did find out what family I will be staying with in Honduras. And I have their phone number and email address. Yeah! There is a possibility I’ll be able to email from there! And that means, blog updates! Probably not every day. I don’t want to seem rude by hogging their computer every night. But I’m thinking maybe one or two updates might be possible. I didn’t stitch at all over the weekend, but I did do some knitting. I finished one of the three dish clothes I have planned as part of the gift for the family I’ll be staying with. And I started the second one yesterday.

Testing a new feature…

I was surfing my settings to see if I could figure out a way to fix the ping problem. It seems to be an issue with weblogs being slow to reporting to blogrolling. And while I was surfing, I found a nifty thing call Mail-to-Blogger. And since I think that would be a cool thing to enable for Honduras on the off chance I can check email (there is a slight possibility)… I thought I would test it out first…