Lift Up Your Hearts!

I haven't read A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder—How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place.  But for the mood I'm in now, maybe I should.  I can tell from the summaries and reviews that the authors have an interesting and most likely valid point, from which those of us on the losing side of the battle with entropy can take comfort.

However, at the moment my cluttered office and decidedly disorganized desk are not making the world a better place; not my world, anyway.  So I plan to treat myself tomorrow to some personal time (i.e. I'm going to try hard to carve out a non-interruptible hour) for combing some of the tangles out of my life.  Maybe it will take my mind off the fact that the new SD card I bought for my camera isn't working and I think it's the camera's problem because it works in my computer and I have an e-mail request for help in the works with Kodak but in the meantime I can't help being a bit annoyed and consequently grumpy.  Which may be why the mess is suddenly annoying.  Then again, I'm that way in other areas:  The length of my hair can go from "no problem" to "I MUST get a haircut NOW!" overnight....

Why am I relating all this inconsequential detail?  Because Janet misses knowing about the mundane events of our lives.  The rest of you can read or ignore at your pleasure (which you do anyway).

On Monday we attended the latest concert in the Orlando Philharmonic's Focus Series:  The Great Struass Dynasty.   I love that series because it features a smaller orchestra in a more intimate venue, the 300-seat Margeson Theatre. In our seats, we feel as if we could be part of the second violin section; that the sound is not well balanced there is more than made up for by the more direct experience.

This night we heard music from four members of Vienna's great Strauss dynasty:  Johann Sr., Johann Jr., Josef, and Eduard.  I'm embarrassed to say I've never cared much for their music, especially the waltzes, but this concert was great!  For one thing, the musicians appeared to be enjoying themselves, and it was impossible not to laugh at Carl Rendek's antics.  Imagine what such a fun-loving guy could do with such titles as Fireman's Polka, On Hunting, Chinese Galop, and ClearTrack Polka, all without detracting from the music, and you'll get the picture.  Is it true percussionists have more fun (even if they're not blond)?

However, that's not the most important of what made the concert so interesting to me.  The conductor was Andy Lane, and I'm sure he deserves most of the credit; whatever the reason, for the first time, Strauss waltzes made sense to me!  I can't explain it any further than that, but Janet, at least, will understand what I experienced.

The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child.  Volume 3:  Early Modern Times, by Susan Wise Bauer (Peace Hill Press, Charles City, Virginia, 2004)

Once a homeschooler, always a homeschooler.  Sometimes I can't help checking out the curriculum explosion that has taken place since the younger days of our own home education experiences.  As one might expect, some is awful, some great, and much in between.

Based on this one sample, Susan Wise Bauer's history books are on the high end of in between.  In addition to the five-star praises, there are some harsh reviews on Amazon for the first volume of this series.  Some of them clearly have an axe to grind on issues that don't bother me; some I agree with but find minor (such as her overuse of exclamation points); others I think refer to faults that were largely corrected by the time she wrote the third volume. (More)

We spent over four hours at church this morning and heard not one word related to the Super Bowl!  I'll bet not many in this country can make the same claim.  (Janet probably can, though.)

Talking with Janet about the confusing differences between date notation in the U.S. and in Switzerland (month-day-year vs. day-month-year) led me, once again, to Wikipedia—this time for their article on date format.  There I learned that my favorite format for dating files, especially of letters and photographs, is actually the ISO 8601 standard:  yyyy-mm-dd (four digit year - two digit month - two digit day).  I chose that for the simple reason that the files sort easily into chronological order.  That's my format for files; for ordinary dates I'm not consistent, but often will use a format common to genealogists: e.g. 2 Feb 2007, which is pretty clear, except when sloppy handwriting confuses "Jun" and "Jan."

Having just received my third "are you okay???" message, I guess I'd better make a post.  We were under a tornato warning last night, with the storms expected to hit around midnight.  Somewhere around 5 a.m. I awoke to the sound of rain, and by about 6 it was pretty heavy, but it was coming straight down—no wind.  By 7 the rain had stopped and if it weren't for the news media I'd never have known that destruction was only a few miles away.  Thanks for caring, though!