What's been goin' on

Ok, random giveaway this week - there's apparently some new Flatbread product DiGiorno is coming out with, because there's a huge truck out in front of our building with a bunch of little ovens, and everything says, "Lunch is on us Chicago!" all over it. This ought to be interesting around lunchtime...

Anyway, back to the blog. You think life should calm down, and usually it does for me by this point. I just didn't realize that some of the things that were stopping for the summer or taking a break were being replaced by other things. Here's what's been happening...

Week of 5/11-17 - Monday night I got to see a Rock n' Roll at the Goodman with Laura. The show was cool (I appreciated Tom Stoppard using U2's "With or without you" to open the second act), but the evening was better because I hadn't seen Laura in so long. Tuesday night was my Viki night/laundry night, Wednesday night was Wicker Park rehearsal, but Thursday was a special night, too. Trey debuted as the assistant conductor for the Wind Symphony at Harper College. I guess I didn't realize before the concert that he was conducting so much, but he did almost half of the program. One of the pieces he conducted was incredibly complicated, too - one of those that didn't necessarily sound difficult, just cool, but if you knew what to look/listen for, you could tell it was a bitch. :-)

The weekend started with Kindergruppe Friday night, and on my way home I swung by to see Mark at the firehouse as I needed to pick up his painting stuff we're borrowing. I'm always so proud of Mark. Saturday morning slept late (10:45!) - something I haven't been able to do in over a month! The plan was to start painting our bedroom, but when a) Trey realized his Sunday evening wine tasting was actually a Saturday evening wine tasting, and b) we realized that next weekend is a 3-day weekend and we don't have much planned, we decided to postpone that project rather than risk killing each other trying to get it done in 4 or 5 hours. The end result was a much more relaxed weekend, and a slightly cleaner apartment!

Oh, and one more thing on Saturday - I'm not really into horse racing, but I do try to watch the big 3 races each year. Obviously, Saturday was the Preakness, and I did get caught up because of the philly in the race. I cheered her on so loudly that I think I freaked Siggy out a little, but she won! It might be silly, but I really get a sense of satisfaction when a girl beats all of the boys. :-)

Sunday I had the normal church stuff and Trey had a Harper Symphony concert, and then we got to have dinner together. We did our quick, easy & very delicious pasta carbonara recipe. Love it.

What else is new?

• The past few weeks have been crazy at work, although I don't know when it's not crazy around here - that is actually a good thing, by the way. After an official year and a half in, and an unofficial 6 months or so prior to that, I think HR is really a good field for me to stick in. I think I'm going to give it another 6 months to a year of evaluation, and if I feel the same way, I'll begin looking at masters or certification programs. A hazy long-term goal for me at the point I think would be to go back to true not-for-profit, the arts community specifically, and do HR or personnel management there.
• Last weekend was the Mother's Day program at Donau, so I'd been helping prepare the kids' singing for that. This year didn't go so well, but there were fewer kids for the performance. We also added a new song, but probably didn't start the kids on it soon enough. "Der Mai ist Gekommen" is a standard that the kids haven't done in years, but I felt that it was definitely time to add it, especially now that one of the dances the Jugendgruppe does at Rosenball has a bit of the melody in its music.

That's probably plenty long for now. If I have a few extra minutes at home tomorrow night I'll download the pictures I took, both when the Olympic committee was in town a couple of months ago, and some of the tulip shots I took last week.

Happy Monday!