Beautiful Evening

Thursday was day 35 of summer. It started out as a routine, ho-hum kind of day. I exercised, mowed the lawn, did some reading. Meghan went to work and I wasn’t expecting her home for dinner. Work ended earlier than she expected and she was home in the late afternoon. Around 6pm, I stepped inside from being out reading, starting to think about preparing dinner. I flipped through the mail on the counter, including the copy of the free local paper, the Wilbraham Times. As I flipped, I remembered it was Thursday night. On Thursday nights in the summer, there is a free series of concerts in Fountain Park. I quickly looked up who was playing on the internet, and it turned out to be a band called the Tom Ingram Band which covers all kinds of rock music from the ’60’s forward. The concerts start at 6:30 and it was now 6:15, but I asked the girls if they wanted to go and they said sure!

I abandoned cooking dinner and we ran to Subway and grabbed sandwiches to eat in the park.

I have no idea what Sarah is doing in this shot; it is rare that she ever lets me get a simple little candid!

It was a gorgeous night. Not buggy or humid, perfectly comfortable temperature. And the music was good!

I ran into a good friend enjoying the show with her parents, so we moved our seat and sat with them for the night. The local photographer came by and took our picture. I hope I’ll get to see that shot either online or in a future edition of the Wilbraham Times.

So nice when a spontaneous idea works out so well!
Here’s a little sample of the music, cover of “Sir Duke” by Stevie Wonder:

Summertime and the living is easy…

Today’s post is a flashback post brought to you via Scott Thomas’s current photo assignment, “Vacation”. I told Scott I didn’t know if I’d participate because I wasn’t sure I could show you my vacation in a way I already hadn’t. I’ve been going to the same beach every summer for many years, and I’ve blogged about it a lot! Hills Beach has a fairly large size in my tag cloud over there on the right side of this blog.

But I really hate to miss a photo assignment, and looking back at warm days on the beach in August when a nasty chill has set in here in the northeast was kind of nice. In my last blog post, I mentioned how I respond well to music, and I’ve written plenty of posts in the past that refer to music or include music videos from youtube. So in addition to this being my contribution to Scott’s assignment, I’m including a little lyrics quiz for you! Some of the lyrics, I think, are super easy, but a couple are more challenging. See if you can figure out the song title and artist without googling them and leave your answers in the comments section. I’ll post all the answers with music videos in a couple days!

1.

“Vacation, all I ever wanted, Vacation, had to get away…”

2.

“That’s where you wanna go to get away from it all…”

3.

“Ballerina, you must have seen her, dancing in the sand…”

4.

“She had her drink in her hand, she had her toes in the sand…”

5.

“Visions of good times that brought so much pleasure, makes me want to go back again…”

6.

“Beauty in the water, angel on the beach…I would have wished in ’92 for a mermaid just like you…”

Have fun! And you still have a few days to jump in on Scott’s assignment if you’d like to – posts are due on Wednesday, December 4th by midnight your time.

Cee’s Share Your World

For quite a while now I’ve been reading Carol’s answers to Cee’s Share Your World questions. I believe Week 19 is coming to an end, but if its okay with you all, I thought I’d share my answers this week, as I found the questions quite interesting.

On a vacation what you would require in any place that you would stay? Question came from Wanderings of an Elusive Mind
I’d like to say that a big, comfy bed would be a requirement, but in reality I often find myself putting up with less-than-perfect sleeping conditions in order to enjoy the place that I am. My case in point:

Tiny bedroom of the cottage we rent in Maine, with tiny bed

Tiny cabin on the cruise last year, with tiny bed

The annual camping trip, sleeping in a tent, on, you guessed it, a tiny (air) bed.
So, my real requirements of a place that I stay for a vacation? A wonderful place to visit and wonderful people to be with.

If you were or are a writer do you prefer writing short stories, poems or novels?
I’ve never really considered myself to be a writer, although when I was in high school and college, I could write a pretty damn good paper! I attribute this ability to my favorite teacher, my high school social studies teacher Ms. Brewer, who was the toughest but best teacher I ever had. She was my inspiration for wanting to be a teacher myself. I guess that blogging is sort of like writing short stories, isn’t it? They don’t have a plot or a conflict usually, but I do enjoy presenting my little stories to you.

What’s your favorite song of the moment?
I told you in my post about color that I really enjoy Pink as an artist. Her duet with Nate Ruess “Just Give me a Reason” is a current favorite.

If you were to buy a new house/apartment what is the top items on your wish list?
Cee says that we can dream and let loose on our answers to this one. If I could have anything that I wanted in a new house? Beachfront property would be my number one wish. It wouldn’t need to be huge and expansive; just large enough to be comfortable with a sandy beach that I could step out my back door on to. If I really kicked up the dream, it would have a master bedroom with an ocean view and a hot tub on the balcony!
What would your answers to Cee’s questions be? Tell me in the comments or make a post of your own!

A Week in the Life, Day 6

Ahhhh, Saturday… yawn, stretch, roll over, go back to sleep….NOT!  Day 6 of A Week in the Life was another one on the move.  I’m in the middle of a Saturday morning graduate level class that is meeting for 5 Saturdays this fall, so I had to get up anyway, but today I had to be up earlier than normal because of this:

Participants in the Fall 2011 administration of the PSAT had to be at their high school at 7:45 this morning.

Don’t all these 16-year-olds look so thrilled to be back at school early on a Saturday morning?  I found myself with a little extra time this morning since I didn’t have to be in Westfield, MA, for my class until 8:30, so I stopped to take a few photos.  I took what I thought would be a nice one of the sun coming up over the small, local mountain, but it is pretty blown out.  I also realized later today that I had left my white balance set on “tungsten” from taking pictures of dinner last night, so most of the pictures I took this morning had an odd blue cast to them.  I managed to edit the two above to look okay, I think.  Here’s one that any of my former ‘Chaug classmates who could happen to pop over here might find interesting – here’s a little glimpse at part of the new Minnechaug, currently being built:

After taking my photos, I made my way west down the Massachusetts Turnpike to Exit 3 and pulled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn Express where our class was taking place.  Five colleagues from my school are also taking this class, so that helps the time to pass more quickly during the rather dry material that we are presented.  Best part of these classes?  Going to lunch with three of the folks I work with.

Upon returning home, I got back to work on those baby quilts.

I’m feeling good about the progress I made today.  I added the borders and quilted the three layers of the “quilt sandwich” together (quilt top, batting and backing for the uninitiated) on both quilts.

I just have to make the bindings and sew them on to the raw edges of the quilts now.  While I am quilting, I always put my iPod into my Kicker speakers.  Today I  was listening to my “Pink” station on Pandora:

I consider my taste in music to be rather eclectic, so I’ve often wondered as I sit at my sewing machine if very many quilters often have the likes of AC/DC and Aerosmith and Nickelback (or Maroon 5 and Pink depending on my mood that day) to be blaring in the background of their workrooms.  In fact, my throat is feeling a little raw right now from all the singing along I’ve been doing today!  Sometimes I think I could have been a brilliant scientist if I had only been able to set my high school chemistry to music.

Tomorrow will be Day 7 of this week  in my life!  Gee, it went by kind of fast.  See you on Sunday!

(what I am singing right now as I finish up this blog post: )