Category: Creativity

Creating something every day for 365 days

Setting goals (Day 304/365)

Posted on by Dale

Enough whining. Having packed up my life for the next seven weeks, it’s time to move through this gateway and get back to creating.

Herewith are my goals for the summer:

  • Write at least three songs for Day in the Moonlight. I know I’ve got 15 or more to write, but given the realities of time at GHP, I’ll be lucky to get three done.
  • Learn how to use Logic Express. I’ve had this program since January and have yet to discover how it works. I bought a book, but haven’t had time to read it. I’ll do that this summer.
  • Contribute at least twenty-five items to the 100 Things to Do Before You’re 60 blog.

This doesn’t sound like a lot, but I’ll be lucky to do this much. Time is our enemy at GHP, and I’m usually lucky to get two hours a day to call my own. Evenings are devoted to activities or working with faculty, and that’s my usual time for working. Sunday mornings are free, and I have been productive in the past during this time. Mostly, I have to get my brain trained to work during the afternoons, between 1:30 and 4:00, minors time, when everyone is in class and I’m not usually out observing.

61 days to go.

Beginning the shift (Day 303/365

Posted on by Dale

Other than waiting around for Brett Smith to come and discuss how we were going to solve the stove problem, I had time this morning to start making the shift to GHP.

In years past, I would be making this shift weeks in advance, but this year, I haven’t been able to give a lot of thought to the fact that on Monday I descend into the maelstrom that is the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program and won’t emerge until July 23. How I’m going to hold to my vow of creating every day remains to be seen.

But I have to prepare, to begin unlocking those parts of my brain that I keep stored away all year because they’d be an impediment in everyday life. Part of the process is welcoming all the new staff members, which I have done, although not all of them have acknowledged being welcomed.

Another part is going through my document files and changing the year in the headers of memos, handouts, etc. I haven’t done that yet.

And yet another part is cleaning out the van and packing. Years ago I began a database of all the stuff I needed to be sure to take. I have opened that up a couple of times in the last few weeks to double-check it, to add items to it, to delete some items. When it’s time to pack, I print it out, sorted by location. This makes it very easy to pull what I need from the kitchen, the closet, the study, etc., without worrying about backtracking or forgetting something.

So this morning I began that process as much as I could. The whole kitchen dining room are in disarray because of the appliance move-in, which of course won’t be finished until I’m gone. That means I don’t have as much staging room as I usually do, and I may be apt to forget something in the clutter. I must be especially vigilant.

Still, I managed to pull together all my kitchen and, more importantly, all my bar stuff.

The rest of the day was spent going to a graduation party down past Moreland that didn’t exist, then an engagement party in Marietta that did. In between we passed through Fayetteville to return the elliptical, which was still making grinding noises, and got a new one. So yet another source of stress: I have to spend part of tomorrow, my packing day, putting together another &%$*#! machine.

Is it any wonder that my brain is not ready for GHP?

Stress (Day 302/365)

Posted on by Dale

It’s beginning to get to me that I haven’t committed a creative act in a week. I know, I’ve been shutting down school, and today was given over to trying to get the new appliances installed and the cats to the vet, but still. My goal was to create something every day.

I don’t like failing in my commitments, so this is an underlying stress that is exacerbated by the very things that are keeping me from creating.

For example, the installation of the appliances. The guys from Sears showed up at about 11:30, and that was fine. It was no problem at all emptying the refrigerator quickly, I had already emptied the freezer and culled the contents of the refrigerator itself, and moving the old appliances out was a snap.

Moving the new ones in was a snap as well. Hooking them up was not a problem. But then the stove wouldn’t fit correctly in the cutout in the island. We looked it over and decided that however the old stove (with the same dimensions) had fit in there, the new one had to slide further back and was being stopped from doing that by the gas pipe. We decided that the gas pipe had to be dropped back down into the basement and the stove hooked up down there, thus allowing the whole thing to fit firmly into the island.

Only the Sears guys couldn’t do that. Were they telling me that all they did was bring the appliance into the house and plug them in, I asked incredulously? That was exactly what they were telling me. A call to Sears confirmed that when I paid for installation, what they actually meant was plugging in, something which I was quite capable of doing for myself, a fact I pointed out to the manager. Abashed, he volunteered to take the installation charge off the bill.

That did not solve my problem, which was that I wanted to have these appliances completely installed by the end of the day so that Ginny wouldn’t have to deal with it on Monday after I was gone. (The water line to the icemaker in the refrigerator was also nonfunctional.)

I did track down a contractor who could do the job, but he couldn’t come until tomorrow morning. I had to be satisfied with that.

On a more positive note, both appliances functioned beautifully. The refrigerator is quiet and the stove works like a charm.

On a still more positive note, we watched a lovely movie called Malèna which we highly recommend you add to your Netflix list. It had lain around the house for months, and we were never “in the mood” to watch it. Foolish, indeed. I can’t remember now why I had added it to the list, but it’s a wonderful movie. And Monica Belucci is stunningly gorgeous.

Concert (Day 301/365)

Posted on by Dale

Tonight was the Masterworks Chorale concert, so that’s my creativity for the day.

We sang An Evening with Rodgers & Hammerstein, a packaged thing from the R&H conglomerate. Great tunes, for the most part, and some very interesting, lush harmonies. I was very intrigued by their “waywardness” in harmonizing what I remembered as very simple melodies. Of course, this may not have been Rodgers’ original scoring but some later hired hand’s work. Nevertheless, it was instructive.

One way in which it was instructive was that it brought to mind the comments of some “real” musician who had graciously agreed to look over one of the movements of my Mass in C, many years ago. There was one passage in particular that he furrowed his eyebrows over and made some comment about my having gone from one key to another in five or six consecutive measures.

My only possible reply at the time was, “That’s what I heard.” That is, of course, the correct answer to any such sniffing. But I might just as well have said, “It’s something I picked up from studying Richard Rodgers.” That might not have reduced the sniffing in the least, but at least it would have clued me in on exactly what direction the snobbery was coming from.

Still in limbo (Day 300/365)

Posted on by Dale

You would think that on this day I would have made an effort to create something, but I’m still in that shutting-down-school mode, only with a Promethean board to play with, only it won’t respond to the laptop’s Bluetooth. And I still have to manage the county’s elementary school MARC records conversion with Follett.

And at some point I have to start getting into getting-ready-for-GHP mode, which I haven’t yet, and I leave on Monday.

And my van was in the shop, ostensibly to get a couple of lights replaced but eventually having brake work done on front and back, and postponing the “seepages” around the manifold intake until I get back. That took until 5:30.

So did I get any actual creative work done? Nope.

It’s a Monday, only on Tuesday (Day 299/365)

Posted on by Dale

[The blog has been down for two days, so this is late.]

We had dress rehearsal with Masterworks Chorale tonight, so that has to count as my creativity.

In other news, after three appointments and one session of uncomfortable tests, the neurologist Dr. Ni (no, I’m not making that up) has confirmed what I originally proposed to Dr. Smith two weeks ago: mild carpal tunnel. He wanted to do an MRI to make sure it wasn’t a stroke, but I suggested that unless I could walk out of that patient room and lie down in the machine at that very moment (“It only takes 30 minutes”) he would not be able to accommodate my schedule, especially since at each appointment I had had to wait for an hour. He had to settle for a CT scan, which was more or less my driving to PAPP clinic downtown and walking into the lab and lying down.

Pain (Day 298/365)

Posted on by Dale

A holiday. In this case, it means that I had a full day to clean house and to tackle the grinding noise of the new elliptical.

I had hoped that when we inserted batteries into the console, which thanks to the designers involves inserting D cell batteries up into the bottom of the console, that suddenly the magical magnets which create the resistance that will eventually turn my stomach flat and my chest into pure brawn, that those magnets would release their grip on the flywheel and we’d have no more grinding noise.

And of course that’s exactly what did not happen. By this time, I had vacuumed the house, and I had become aware that my lower back was not functioning. Probably something to do with all the bending over that goes along with assembling an elliptical on a previous occasion. Probably nothing to do with the mysterious numbness in my right arm spreading to my spine because it’s a dread disease that not even the estimable Dr. Ni suspects. Yet.

So now I was faced with kneeling, leaning, dismantling the heaviest bits of the machine, all with a lower back that refused to do anything but want to remain stationary. Not. A. Problem. I grabbed a footstool from one of the many pieces of furniture that for some reason have migrated to our basement from one or other in-law’s household (“It belonged to the Aunts” is the usual reason it is not sitting at Goodwill instead) and sat to my task.

After removing the hubcap, the pedal, and the flywheel cover, the problem was clear: the stanchion holding the flywheel was ever so slightly not upright. Bent, if you will. If I pushed against it with my foot, and somehow turned the wheel, the noise was gone.

So clearly what I needed to do was to provide enough pressure to bend a steel stanchion an eighth of an inch away from me without breaking anything it was attached to. With a nonfunctional lower back. Not. A. Problem.

I must confess that I also gave it a whack with a hammer. This was probably not a good idea, and I hope that in the future I am not startled by the entire flywheel assembly flying apart as I, buff and joyous, am charging along the path of most resistance.

But, hey, it worked. It whirs along with no noise at all now, other than the odd beeps from the console trying to give me information about something or other. If only my lower back were functioning; I might start getting buff.

Grumbling (Day 297/365)

Posted on by Dale

The saga continues.

Having left the elliptical machine in the back of my van overnight, I considered myself rested and completely up to the task of getting it out and hooking up the two or three main pieces of this thing. Ginny was going to go shopping for clothes, and I was going to get this thing together, maybe give it a whirl, and then spend some time actually taking a whack at a song or two for Moonlight.

Two or three main pieces: that’s what our very nice salesperson at Sports Authority, coincidentally named Dale, suggested we might find in the box. He was completely wrong.

There were a hundred pieces. The damned thing had to be completely assembled. Ginny apologized, then went shopping.

Understand that assembly holds no terror for me. My mechanical aptitude is higher than you might think, and the instructions were actually very clear, with life-size pictures of the screws and bolts, the most helpful thing ever. In fact, all the hardware came in a little egg-crate package, along with a piece of paper which told me exactly what was in which little compartment. Very nice.

All in all, it wasn’t bad. I did it outside so I could work in bright light and fresh air (rather than the dark corner where it will live, next to the litter box), and other than one tiny over-tightened bolt at the very end which prevented me from going back and putting on the pretty plastic piece which was supposed to be under that bolt, everything fit exactly as it should on a piece of precision equipment.

Still, it was four and a half hours of my time, time I had not intended to spend getting a piece of exercise equipment together. So you may imagine my feelings when I stepped on it and was greeted by a truly horrific grinding noise coming from the flywheel inside the plastic casing (the one part of the thing that came pre-assembled.)

I took a shower and made a vodka and tonic. Tomorrow is another day.

Shopping (Day 296/365)

Posted on by Dale

Today was an all-day shopping spree. We did it for my grandmother.

Some background: when we were married 29 years ago, my grandmother in her wisdom gave us the money to buy a washer and dryer. These were the first of the appliances that have saved our marriage. Without them, we would have had to do the whole laundromat thing, and I don’t think either of our temperaments would have permitted our relationship to survive the constant planning of when we could go, finding quarters, lugging laundry to and fro, and then the awful tedium and Darwinian atmosphere of the laundromat!

As I said, these were the first. Others have included a refrigerator with an icemaker, a dishwasher, a microwave, a new microwave, a VCR, an even newer microwave/convection oven combo. When one sublimates one’s agressions and frustrations into innocent machines, it’s best to have them aplenty, and in working order.

My grandmother died last year, age 99, and not a sentient molecule in her head, bless her. Recently my mother, who was her executor, finally cleared everything out of the estate. My share of the inheritance was enough to start thinking about replacing some appliances.

Our refrigerator’s icemaker finally gave up the ghost a few months ago. Personally, I like the ice trays and the cubes they make, but others in the house do not. I think inertia could have kept us from moving on this one, but the interior shell in the freezer is cracked. That can’t be good, can it?

The oven, on the other hand, is just not working. Ginny has complained for years that it won’t bake like it’s supposed to, but I have always poohpoohed that. It baked my stuff just fine. But again, a couple of months ago, it really just stopped altogether. It will put out heat, but it doesn’t put out the right amount of heat. I’ve been using it as a platewarmer and doing all my baking in the microwave/convection oven.

The tipping point for the oven, like the refrigerator’s cracked case, was the fact that recently while I’ve been warming plates, the oven will occasionally go “WHOOMPH” and the door will burp open. I’m thinking this is probably not a good thing.

So, in honor of my grandmother, we set out to find replacements. Mirabile dictu, we found both at Sears, first stop of the day. Great deal on the refrigerator, although I’m still unconvinced that I will like the bottom freezer, and it makes those damnable half-moon ice chunks. We splurged on the stove, springing for a gas range (which is my preference for cooking, and since I do the cooking, my preference is the standard) and a convection oven. Both will be delivered and installed next Friday. My one day off before having to pack and head to Valdosta.

Rather than savor our triumph, however, we pressed on in search of a sofa and some porch furniture. We found neither. But in looking for a nonexistent patio furniture store in Fayetteville, we somehow ended up with an elliptical exercise machine in the back of my van. Ginny likes these machines, and she is convinced that if we have one in our basement, then I will be more likely to exercise and avoid dropping dead before 60, as is the wont of the men in my family.

That was it. That was all the shopping I could stand, so home we came. Fixed a nice supper, and then we watched Borat, an appalling work of genius.

Nothing, really (Day 295/365)

Posted on by Dale

Last day of school, and on top of that I had a doctor’s appointment, continuing circulation database woes, and the installation of my Promethean board. I got one or two more ideas jotted down for Thurgood’s song (and emailed Mike a suggestion for a gag in the first scene), but other than that, I didn’t really create.

We went to see Shrek the Third. Lots of good will, but it didn’t really click. Unless they can come up with a really rousing plot, they ought to retire the franchise.

70 days to go.