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| Native Flowers to Plant--from my senior Solomon |
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| Closest Thing to Texas |
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| Weeds. . be gone with thee |
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| A Fancy Peony from My Neighbor Down the Street in the House without a roof |
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| These remind me of Beaver Creek |
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| After threat of removal she did bloom this year |
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| And. . . these are from some birds or something as I never had this kind before on the property |
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| Busy Bee |
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| Bonica? Maybe. . . or Hansa? I have no idea. |
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| The other kind. Bonica or Hansa. This one from my grandma's farm |
We made it through May.
I've been sneaking out to the garden and showing up for recitals with dirt under my fingernails and I can't wear sandals because my feet are dirty and I have no pedicure.
There are highlights I could talk about.
This was a biggy. . . Calvin with the Eastview High School Wind Ensemble. . . Click for Link
This was a biggy. . . Mary's Recital. . . . Click for Link
I may not have been my very best self a few times in the last eight weeks. Shhhh. Sleep deprivation.
Highs and lows. . . note that I'm barely speaking in complete sentences.
Having Caroline Fraser visit my studio for master classes, teacher training, group classes and a parent lecture was an absolute dream come true. It's been on my list for years. The planets aligned between Peru and Minneapolis. We went straight from there to the conference. Six days of conference. About enough to kill a large horse.
Our session was on the last day. Adrianna, Conor and I presented "From Twinkles to Concertos, Developing a Chamber Music Program in Your Suzuki Piano Studio."
I've been to every conference since the dawn of conferences. I've seen a lot of presentations. I've seen a lot of failed AV. So when I started compiling videos and photos for our power point this was foremost on my mind. Will it work? Will I have the right cables?
Bill assured me that I had all the right adapters.
Grey stripe shirt AV man assured me that I had all the right adapters. Five days ahead.
Can you see this coming from a mile away?
There is a purpose to the story of my almost failed power point presentation to a conference room of piano teachers whom I idolize from around the country. Also my local friends were there.
The purpose of the story is to proclaim that I witnessed a miracle from God on Monday morning at 8:26 a.m.
Here's the timeline. . . in case the Catholic church needs it to grant sainthood to grey stripe shirt AV man.
Sunday Night
10:00 p.m. Test power point and hook it up to every TV in the house just to check different scenarios.
Yeah! It's perfect. All the little children are playing chamber music on all the videos. . . from, well, as the title suggests, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star right up to Bach concerti.
Monday Morning
7:30 a.m. I arrive at the conference room and fire up computer
7:35 Power point will not play the slide show--option to play the slide show is greyed out. . . gremlins came in the night. Computer gremlins.
7:40 Eat a banana to reduce heart rate and try not to panic
7:45 O'Briens show up and begin to set up and warm up for their performance
7:55 Power point has crashed 35 times and still will not play the slide show
8:00 Grey stripe shirt man and also the AV expert from the Hilton, forever labeled as AV gal, take over my computer
8:01 I wake up Bill at the cabin, he tries to guess what could be wrong from 200 miles away
8:03 The projector is randomly showing a picture of my family at Christmas time in front of the cabin, presumably from the bowels of my computer.
8:10 A black box is on my screen where power point should be.
8:15 Grey stripe shirt man is sweating. I lay hands on him, on his shoulders, and say a silent prayer. I ask God, in all three forms, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to please let him press the right buttons on my computer and make the power point, which I spent upwards of 50 hours putting together. . . appear on the big screen in front of the people who are starting to gather. Amen. Let it be so.
8:20 Grey shirt man ping pongs back and forth between system preferences and power point hoopla. He does things to my computer that I will never understand. AV gal works from the projector side. My computer is increasingly goofed up, though I imagine more specific language at the moment. . . it looks like a computer from 1970. Everything is all big.
8:22 I start to wonder what we will talk about for an hour since I have no notes, and no outline and Conor and Adrianna also gave me all their notes and well, all the notes are in the power point. It's a high wire with no net.
8:26 Grey shirt man presses something and the power point COMES UP ON THE SCREEN in front my esteemed colleagues who have gathered in the room. We do not touch anything. Or breathe.
8:30 The host introduces us and we give our sessions to the lovely people. The sessions goes pretty well I think, we run out of time and there are many questions and people stay after to look at our collection of music and hopefully some of the teachers will go home and have some fresh ideas for their own chamber music programs.
11:00 We load up the car and head to Hell's Kitchen for a glass of champagne and lunch. Can you eat at Hell's Kitchen after experiencing divine intervention? Well. Heart rate returns to safe level.
Tuesday Night
9:00 p.m. I haven't been able to look at my computer all day. I hate it. I want to throw it in the dumpster. I have no love left for the machine who betrayed me. Bill, however is curious about what went wrong. He wants to load up power point and SEE. . .
9:10 It won't load. Completely mixed up. Note my nice language. My restraint. It's completely KAPUT.
So, I'm calling it a miracle. Grey striped shirt man resurrected "From Twinkles to Concertos" from the dead. Power point rallied for one last slide show and then my 2009 version crashed into an abyss of resolution errors coupled with mirroring failures and an inability to ever repair.
At that moment, four minutes before our presentation, I hugged grey striped shirt man. He wiped his brow and went on to fix someone else's AV problem and I never saw him again. God bless him, his family and their future generations. Also bless AV gal, though I'm not sure of her role, she may have just been a supportive angel.
Are there miracles I would rather have? Of course. But, I'm taking this one for today.
Things are still tough between my computer and me--this blog is the first step--it's gonna take some time.
Thanks for reading.
Happy June to you.
Sara
