Elizabeth, Jeremy and Alex got up early with me yesterday so I could say good-by before driving away to Grand Rapids for a day of Solo and Ensemble.

It was great having them. Alex’s personality is starting to show and it’s a delight to be with her.

I managed several wrong turns on the way to the Solo and Ensemble Festival but arrived in time to juggle my first two simultaneously scheduled accompaniments. In the first one, I quickly learned that using a tablet for an accompaniment in this situation is not a good idea.

Nearing the end of the simple clarinet accompaniment, I reached out to the tablet to scroll by hand. Something I did enlarged the page and flipped it back a page or two. I madly tried to get in the right spot, but had to improvise (badly) the ending. Sheesh.

Besides the eleven scheduled appointments I ran into several people from my past. First, the Roman Catholic Cathedral musician, Nick Palmer. It was good to see him in person. We connect tenuously through Facebooger. We used to see each other much more when I worked for the RCs. Now, not so much. Hugs in the hall.

As I was finishing my lunch in the school cafeteria, a woman from my past work with the National Pastoral Musicians sat down with me. She told me some sad stories including how her husband was dying and how badly her priest had handled her retirement. But she seemed upbeat.

Later another Nick (Nick Hahn) and I ran into each other. He sang in my choir at Our Lady of the Lake . Most of the time I knew him he was single. I played for his wedding. Now he and his wife are down to two kids in High School and several in college.

Besides these moments the day was a whirlwind of trying to help the Holland High Band director and his students. This was the director’s first Solo and Ensemble in Michigan. Several of the kids were missing judge’s copies for their event. Judge’s copies must be originals (non photocopies) with the numbers measured. He and I were madly flying around making sure this happened.

Also after my first bad experience I tried to make photocopies for myself of accompaniments I had planned to play from the tablet. I was able to do this with all of them but one which didn’t go as badly as the morning one did.

I was sipping my martini and relaxing at home when the phone rang. It was my Mother’s place of residence informing me she had fallen and hit her head. Would I like to come take her to ER or should they send her by ambulance? I opted for the latter. This morning I got up and called her caretakers and determined that she was back in her room after having spent a couple of hours on this little adventure and was okay. Eileen and I will make sure she is okay later today.

Also, I inadvertently noticed my boss had emailed me. She was having trouble getting the pics of progress on our organ sent to us by the builder to download. Could I put them on a USB drive for her? I decided to deal with this the next day. Which I did this morning. I didn’t have a thumb drive handy, so I downloaded the pics, re-sized them smaller, emailed them to her, uploaded them to a google directory and shared it with her.

I have interspersed some of these throughout this post. Whew. Hopefully today will be a bit less crazy than yesterday.