… however, this might get old pretty quickly …
Of course, the weather never pans out like this. Instead, it starts out rainy, clears up a while, pours some more later, warms up, cools down, and on and on. Still, one likes to think that it builds character … when one is stuck with it, that is.
Piano
I just deleted four long paragraphs about how much I love learning how to use the pedal on the piano now. I never understood what was the deal with that right-most pedal on the piano, pressed and released at unintuitive times. I am starting to get it now and have been going crazy trying to apply it to my fourth piece, the first one with chords, you know, the exhausting one.
I will say this, just to piss off my father: the piano and drums have increasingly more in common with each other, as I introduce a third major limb into the mix, and I don't think I could have made this much progress with the pedal this quickly if I hadn't already trained my brain to handle hi-hats.
Wales
I feel it's time to mention Wales, before we head on our next trip, which is the south of France. I remember doing Marimba, meeting with VCs, and - wait a second, I already talked about my Cannes screw-up.
Wales was a ton of fun. It was great because my sister and her family made the trip out to visit us for spring break.
So, we took the train from Euston to Manchester and then rented cars there. Sue and I had the GPS system, automatic transmission and about 100 miles of left side of the road driving experience; my sister Gill and her husband Greg had maps, a manual tranmission and each other ;-) The thing that impressed me the most was Greg didn't show any signs of stress about the whole driving thing. I realized at that moment that I am in fact a complete pussy and he is not.
The GPS was great, but, Sue and I "used it as a crutch" too much, according to my sister. And it's true that we lost confidence in it when it directed us down a long, winding road, a single lane wide with grass growing in the middle just to remind you how lost you are. We turned around in front of a local who must have been amazed, but perhaps not, and eventually found our way to our destination. The GPS had in fact been correct and was just trying to give us a nice, scenic short-cut, and it was just that didn't have confidence in our little device.
Meanwhile, just to prove how hip they were with the maps, we let my sister override the GPS on the way back to Manchester. We ended up going in exactly the wrong directory for about 10 miles, and I was immediately suspicious when the GPS never once said, "OK, you missed that road, go another 5 miles and you can hook back up then …" but instead said, "TURN AROUND YOU IDIOT!" at every possible exit on the highway. Still, they had their maps and their confidence so we let it continue for about 5 miles, which is about the time they figured it out as well. (But then it was 5 miles before the next exit to turn around, don't ya know?)
Anyway, back to Wales … Wales was very green:
Wales had some impressive looking mountains. I was amazed what 3500 feet can look and feel like!
The kids took their surroundings very seriously indeed:
We hiked to the edge of the precipice:
(The ground was there a second ago, I swear it was!)
… and we ate, drank and played pool at pubs by night:
(Ah - the old double-chin pose - my favorite!)
We saw a very old and very awesome castle where Prince Charles was … whatever it is they do to princes when they're ready:
Saw low tide in action:
Here is the obligatory self-timer shot. I was going to say "Everyone Shot" but this was the day Aiden had a fever of 103 and his Mom kept him company back at the B&B:
I have been putting off this blog entry for a while, because it is too hard to explain how much fun it was. It was just aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, sisters and brothers and cousins. We didn't have too much of it growing up, it is precious when we have it now…