Enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at Green Forest Restaurant with a friend. More painting done in the house and the dishwasher is sanitized, disinfected and operating acceptably. Got some research done on a new garbage disposal and ordered that with points on my credit card from Amazon. Also made a couple of healthy meals I can can have later in the week.
Grateful for a fantastic evening of friends, food, and music.
We got together for some food and libations at Weary Traveler. Food was great as always and was also pleasantly surprised by the tasty little Rhinelander shorties for $1.25. From there we headed over to the Barrymore to watch Steely Dane and meet up with some more friends. What a blast! Twenty-two great musicians from local bands got together to play a night of Steely Dan covers. The sound production was a bit spotty at times but the performance was GREAT! Afterwards Laurel and Norm hosted dessert and creme brulee. Awesome!
Steely Dane at the Barrymore
Continuing to be assertive with my career path at work. My boss is working on a new position description (PD) for me and a couple others in my department. With our old department dissolving last July, our PD’s are out of date. Mine has been out of date for much longer. Thank fully I have a great working relationship with my boss and I’ve been pretty candid about wanting to take on more responsibility and to eventually become a VP there. I have been casually looking at other positions to prepare myself in the event that things don’t move forward for me by Spring. I found a great Market Research Analyst posting that was exactly what I’d like to do. I forwarded it to her in hopes that it may be helpful in my new PD or at least giving her a better understanding of what direction I’d like to continue heading toward.
This evening a friend and I attended the opening ceremony of the Houdini: Art and Magic exhibit at MMoCA. I have been a Houdini fan since childhood and my mom saw him perform when she was a very small child. The talk presented by the exhibit’s curator was packed; we sat on the floor. While it was somewhat interesting, I was generally disappointed. The exhibit left me wanting more as well. The point of it all was to demonstrate Houdini’s influence in popular culture and it art – both past and currently. Somewhat unfairly, I expected the exhibit to include more props. There were only two – the milk can and a replica of the water torture cell. The exhibit consisted primarily of photographs and some artwork. There were a handful of video screens showing him perform as well. The highlight of the evening was catching a brief impromptu barbershop quartet performance in the rotunda. They were really good.
Met up for dinner with a good friend at Dexter’s Pub. We caught up over a couple of beers and a burger. Had an excellent massage afterwards with Crystal at The Spa. Wonderfully relaxing evening.
Productive LLTAM recording session this evening with Norm. Moved into a new cube at work today. While the cube itself is smaller, the window view is much awesomer. Its in a converted conference room with floor to ceiling windows and its significantly more quiet. Even though getting used to new digs is a bit of a pain, I’m pretty fortunate that this is only my third move in 6 years.
Old Cube:
Here's the View From My Old Cube
New Cube:
The View From the New Cube
Grateful to be able to take care of a good friend today. Ate great Thai food this evening and watched an excellent movie. Hadn’t been to Sa-Bai Thong for quite a while and had forgotten just how good it is. They’ve re-decorated the one on University Ave since I was there last. Significant upgrade.
Alex and Erik helped me make waffles for breakfast; my first attempt. Turned out ok, but plenty of room for improvement. The GDFB’s and I played Ticket To Ride afterwards. Later we did a lunch excursion to Bison Jack’s. We all generally liked it but agreed we probably wouldn’t go out of our way to come back. Had a great time watching the Superbowl with some friends this evening.
I spent most of the day taking care of the GDFB’s. Ian has been playing orchestra bells in sixth-grade band this year. When he finished practice for the day he was very excited for me to hear a short piece he’d recently written. This is the second original work of his on the bells, and their both good.
I love watching him develop his skills and confidence as well as seeing him take pride in his accomplishments. After he’d played a few things he asked me to pick some things at random out of his book for him to play with he did without much trouble. We he finished with Mary Had a Little Lamb, I challenged him to start it on an ‘E‘ instead of the ‘D’ in his book. After barely a moment of hesitation, he started right in and played it all the way through with only one wrong note. He immediately recognized the wrong note by ear and then we worked out the correct one. I was very impressed and proud of him.
