Author: zingblog

And All That Jazz

The big news here is that this weekend was the ICS cabaret show. This is a big fundraiser for the kids school and I volunteered to play in the band. And I must say it was a smashing success and alot of fun!

It’s a pretty big group, with about 20 singers and 4 in the band, plus a chorus of a dozen or so high school kids who are alumni of the ICS middle school. It’s largely parents and faculty of the school. The core of the group have been together for a long time, and used to do a similar thing at their old church. Lizzy’s math teacher, Michelle, is the show director, and also has 2 kids at the school. She has a powerful, brassy voice like Streisand. Her husband Mike is musical director and plays piano. He’s excellent at that style music. Another couple, Kristen and Brian, are stage manager and artistic director, and both excellent singers too. And yet another couple, Dean and Susan are two more outstanding singers, although I don’t think they have anything to do with the school. In fact there are alot of really good singers in the group, and the general level is quite high. It’s really interesting too, hearing how different everyone’s individual voice and sound and style are, yet how they all blend.

For me it’s totally worked out. I got to dust off my horn and play in a live show, which I haven’t done in years. I got to meet a bunch of parents at the school, and a bunch of local musicians. The band was made up entirely of guys named Mike and John. The drummer (John) and guitar player (Mike), who also plays bass, are both very good, and cool, and want to get together and jam. So I may have found my rhythm section for my rock project with Erik.

Everyone seemed to agree that having a horn in the band raised the whole level of the music, so I’m very happy about that. I made plenty of mistakes to be sure, but mostly they weren’t obvious, and I nailed all my solos. Not bad considering I had to learn 40 tunes in a month, and pretty much put it together all on the stand, and this after having barely played my horn at in ages. Some of the songs I only played for the first time at dress rehearsal. I had a CD and some of the sheet music ahead of time, but the two often didn’t match, and then when I got to rehearsal Mike was doing something altogether different. Keys were changed, parts were skipped or repeated, all the usual stuff. They were all to worried about getting their own parts together to pay much attention to me. Everything I was reading was in concert key, so I had to transpose +2 in addition to whatever transposition Mike did for the singer. I played tenor and soprano sax, and some keyboards too, mainly organ, accordion, and some brass and string sounds. In rehearsals the hall was cold so keeping the horns in tune was an issue too.

The week of the shows we had rehearsals every night. The dress rehearsal on Thursday was the first full run thru with everybody. I took Friday off work to be well rested for the show, but then Thursday I caught a cold walking to work in the rain, so I pretty much stayed in bed the whole day Friday. I was actually pretty under the weather most of the weekend, but I’d take a few Sudafed and a shot of whiskey before showtime and was able to keep my energy up, um, in classic jazz musician style.

Friday was opening night. It went really well. In fact I’m amazed given how rough the dress rehearsal was. I got a standing ovation for my solo on Scenes From and Italian Restaurant. I’m the hero of the hour of Eastchester housewives, who it seems are all big Billy Joel fans. We did another show Friday night and a third Sunday afternoon. In the middle of the first set on Saturday a key on my horn broke, but I was able to fix it with some tape at intermission. Now that it’s all over, it feels like it came and went really fast. It was a great time, but I’m still recovering from my cold. The house full of the sound of the kids singing show tunes, particularly Anything You Can Do and The Song That Goes Like This.

Set 1:

The Nicest Kids in Town (Hairspray) – Brian and Company
Key -1, tenor sax. Lots of key changes and page turning. Brian has a great, booming voice and energy.

Anything You Can Do (Annie Get Your Gun) – Janet and Phil
Tenor sax. Followed the melody and added some extra flourishes.

Goodnight, My Someone (The Music Man) – Jen and Francesca
Ballad, laid out. Francesca is a girl at the school who is a talented pianist.

Seventy-Six Trombones (The Music Man) – Roy
Tenor sax. Followed the melody and added some extra flourishes. Turns out Roy is my neighbor, and my kids know his, but I only got to know him in the course of doing this show. His daughter Jacklyn was part of the Alumni chorus.

Somewhere (West Side Story) – Corrine
Key -2, soprano sax. There was a violin line in the score that I was able to pick up.

New York, New York – Brian, Dean, and Mike D.
Tenor sax. This is Leonard Bernstein song. A challenging part, great fun to play, but lot of page turning and faking it, um, improvising. The three best male singers.

Try To Remember – Bob
Soprano sax, just on the “follow follow” bit.

Tradition (Fiddler on the Roof) – The Papas, Mamas, Sons and Daughters
Soprano sax, mainly Klezmerirific noodling and picking up riffs from the score. Reminded me of the scene in the movie Bird where Charlie Parker was playing at a Jewish wedding. This was a big, fun production number.

If My Friends Could See Me Now (Sweet Charity) – Linda
Key +5, tenor sax. Mainly double the melody, plus an intro part. A nice jazzy number. Linda is a really good singer for this kind of song.

Happiness (You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown) – Alumni
Ballad, laid out.

I’ll Never Fall In Love Again – Julieann
Key -2, soprano sax. There’s a nice intro. Burt Bacharach was a philosopher.

Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat (Guys and Dolls) – Brian and Company
Key -5, tenor sax. Another big fun production number.

Standing on The Corner – Phil and Men
Key +4. This is a great song with a jazzy feel and interesting chord changes and cool counterpoint horn riffs. Unfortunately, the key they picked was for me a tritone away from where the sheet music had it, and it was really awkward to transpose so I ended up basically improvising a new part on the stand. It worked out pretty well.

Morning Glow – Vinny and Company
Ballad, laid out.

Corner of the Sky – Mike D.
Ballad, laid out.

Get Happy/Happy Days – Michelle and Susan
Tenor sax. These are two of the best singers and they really made this slow bluesy duet sizzle. I played on the intro and in the last chorus.

Phantom / Les Miz Medley – Company
I played keyboards on this one. I did the organ for Phantom while Mike held down the piano part. Later on I did some string pads and brass fanfare. This number was long and had alot cuts, and we didn’t rehearse it until near the very end.

Set Two:

Every Story Is a Love Story / Fortune Favors the Brave (Aida) – Susan and Mike
Soprano and Tenor sax. I took a nice intro on ESIALS. That song really grew on me. With FFtB, it turns out Mike can sing as well as play piano.

Belle (Beauty and the Beast) – Kristen and Townsfolk
Key -1, soprano sax. This was another big production number. I thought I might play some keys on this but I mainly laid out again because we didn’t rehearse it until late.

Poor Unfortunate Souls (The Little Mermaid) – Janet
Tenor sax. Janet more preformed than sang the part. I played in a sort of Tim Burton/Danny Elfman style. Worked out really well.

Day By Day (Godspell) – Lisa and Company
Tenor sax. Big ol’ jam at the end.

They Can’t Take That Away From Me – Christina and Roy
Key -2, tenor sax. Jazz standard. Smooth and smokey.

Once Upon a Dream – Jennifer.
Ballad, laid out.

Elaborate Lives (Aida) – Dean and Susan
Played keys in the middle section, not enough time to work out more than a basic comping part. Dean can really sing the hell out of this song.

The Song That Goes Like This (Spamalot) – Brian and Kristen
I played some brass fanfare stuff on keys. Could have used more rehearsal time on this one. It didn’t matter much, though, because Brian and Kristen did an amazing job.

Someone Like You – Corrine
Ballad, laid out.

Age of Aquarius (Hair) – Julianne
Tenor sax – big jam at the end.

I Don’t Know How To Love Him (Jesus Christ Superstar) – Linda
Ballad, played a bit of soprano sax. Not sure why Linda does all the songs where the character is a prostitute.

All That Jazz (Chicago) – Susan
Key -2, tenor sax. This was great fun to play, but it had alot of key changes and page turning, and I’m afraid I messed up somewhere every night. Still the energy was good and Susan brought the house down.

This Is The Moment – Mike D.
Ballad, laid out. It seems like there were alot of ballads in the set, but they were all sung very well and Mike is great at playing them, so I can’t say I’d want to cut any of them. This song in fact I thought was a bit of clunker when I heard the CD, but Mike D. did just such a great job singing it he really won me over.

We Need a Little Christmas (Mame) – Alumni
Key ???, soprano sax. A late substitution, figured this one out by ear.

For Good (Wicked) Michelle and Kristen
Ballad, laid out. Key changed from night to night. Michelle was worried about her voice going, but they did such a great job on this, really moving.

This Night (Movin’ Out) – Dean
Tenor Sax. This was another late substitution, I think cuz they liked my playing on Italian Restaurant. Dean is such a fantastic singer. The sax solo is really hard, mainly cuz it’s very high (I think it was originally done on alto) and in a weird key, and I didn’t have enough time to memorize it. But still I pulled it off.

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant (Movin’ Out) – Mike
All instruments. This was Mike’s big number, singing and playing piano on Billy Joel’s one-and-only long format, multi-part song. It was also a good number for me. And we actually rehearsed it twice and ran down the parts! I played the accordion part behind the vocals, and then there were no less then four sax solos. The second was the dixieland bit, which I did on soprano. The others I did on tenor. The fist and last ones were slow, the interlude and the outro, and they were probably my favorite parts. John the drummer did a really good job too, capturing all the parts from the record. This number went over really well.

You Can’t Stop the Beat – Company
Key -1, tenor sax. A high-energy production number to close the show. Again lots of page turning and key changes, and I blew at least one cue every night. But it still was fantastic.

…

Now, back to the rock band, which had been on the back burner since Hallowe’en.

Game On

This last weekend we started our D&D campaign in earnest, with actual adventuring. Still a lot of backstory to fill and NPC’s and world to flesh out, but I think we can do that as we go. This session we did our first actual combat, with our part of two witches and a rogue being waylaid by four goblins on the road. It turned out to be a pretty exciting and well-matched melee, with our heroes killing three of their foes in the end and chasing of the last one. I’m reading the player handbook on the train these days, and only after the session did I review the section on combat, so I see there are a few things I didn’t do correctly, but I’ll get there next time. I kinda winged it thru Lizzy’s Summon Monster I spell, and I forgot that a character can run to double-double their movement rate. Ah well.

My other train reading these days is The Hobbit. I reread LotR a few years back just before the movies came out, but I don’t think I’ve read the Hobbit since high school. I’m happy to say it still holds up, and even thought I remember the story, the telling is full of surprises. The writing style is just great. Witty, gripping and evocative all at once. The nature of magic is much more subtle and nuanced than say Harry Potter. Plus it’s given me a lot of ideas for little things to work into my campaign. I’m also surprised at what a quick read it is because I remember LotR being, well, epic. I started it on Thursday and will finish it tomorrow. My last book before this was a biography of Thelonious Monk, which took over a month.

The Saga Begins

Things are progressing nicely these days. We’ve settled into a good routine with the new school year. It’s a whole different bag now with the kids being older. Looks like Jeannie and I made it thru the baby and little kid phase, and now we have a bit of a breather before the teenage thing starts. Everyone has been telling me how difficult middle school can be, but to me it’s great. I can leave the kids home alone for a few hours, or have them go with their friends and not worry about it. I can pick the kids up from school on the days I work at home, and they do their homework and make dinner. We’ve started checking out high schools for Lizzy the last few weekends. Sort of a mind-blowing experience. How the time flies!

I’ve been working alot on music. In alternation to practicing piano for the rock thing with Blick, I’ve been playing tenor sax every other day for a good hour or more, getting back into shape for the show tunes show. It’s going quite well and feels good, however working the music out is not that easy. I’ve been working off of recordings, but we’re doing different arrangements in different keys. I finally got the charts to most of the songs on Friday, and some are more detailed than others. Hopefully it’ll all come together when there’s a rehearsal.

Meanwhile, Michelle has been good at getting me to spend quality time with her lately, mainly by figuring out what I like to do and then asking to do it with me. Michelle and Lizzy have also been getting into chess again lately and I’ve been playing again too. I guess they’ve been playing at school, and they’ve been playing each other at home too. I’m still giving them lots of pointers about tactics. They’re both good enough now that they have a sense of strategy, and can beat me now and then if I’m not paying enough attention and make a careless mistakes. Good fun.

A couple weeks ago Michelle had me sit down and work out a piano accompaniment for a song she wrote called “Now and Forever”. She wrote it for Jeannie, just a lyric and melody, and it’s very sweet. The song is basically a ballad, and I gave it some structure and cool jazz chords. Last weekend we recorded a demo, just piano and vocals. I’m tempted to mix it down and share it, but I think I’ll wait. My thing now is to really play the song rather than using proTools as a word processor for audio, so I’m just gonna put together the real version and let you hear it when its ready. I’m going to build it around a live performance on the piano, which means playing rubato over a click track. I’ll probably program tempo changes in to the click track, practice along and adjust it until it feels right. This means Michelle will have to sing all the vocals over again, but that’s okay. I’ll round out the arrangement with drums and bass, and Michelle asked Lizzy to do a flute solo.

Now the man point of this post: Michelle said to me the other day “Remember when you used to play Dungeons and Dragons?” I’m amazed she remembers this because we stopped maybe two or three years ago. We used to play on Friday nights, ostensibly after the kids were in bed, with a party of friends on Long Island and in Carolina. We would use our computers to run an audio conference and have software for maps and dice. The campaign eventually died when the DM and half the players got turned on to Warcraft.

Anyway, Michelle asked me to teach her how to play D&D. Lizzy and Jeannie are on board too. So I dusted off my old dice and books. The girls both want to be witches. Jeannie is going to be a rogue with a heart of gold. I’m DMing, so I’m putting together a world for them. I haven’t DM’d since middle school, but I have a lot of good ideas for a scenario and specific things for this campaign and these characters. I’ve been having fun working out the backstory and settings. The first module will be Keep on the Borderlands. This is a very old module I know, but one of the few I have around. Friday we rolled up our characters, but we still need to complete their skills, spells and starting equipment. And I need to flesh out some NPC’s. Still it was good fun. Next week the adventure begins in earnest. Watch this space for future updates.

Lastly, the kids have been clamoring to go apple picking and pumpkin picking this fall. Michelle even used it as a topic for a paper at school. We’ve been so busy it’s been hard to make the time. But today was the day, and we had a blast. Best of all we up with met Martin, Kathleen and Charlie.

Something for Lovers, Liars and Clowns

My kids’ school is doing a cabaret night in November as a fundraiser. It’s being put on by parents and faculty (no kids), and I volunteered to play sax and keyboards in the orchestra pit. I played orchestra pit for the school musical way back in high school and college, and I gotta tell you, show tunes are some of the most demanding and fun music out there. So this show is two sets of Broadway show tunes – classic and contemporary. The vocal director is my daughter’s math teacher and also has two kids in the school. Her husband is the piano player and music director. They’re both really excellent, and have a core of singers that they’ve been doing this with them for a few years.

Meanwhile, my project with Erik is coming along. We have enough covers for a set, and have six originals in the semi- to mostly-worked-out phase, so soon it’s be time to start setting up gigs.

So I’m getting back into practicing sax regularly again, and learning the songs. I’ve mainly been playing soprano sax the last few years, but now I’ve dusted of the tenor. It takes alot more wind power and lower back strength, so I’m working up to it. The good news is I can still get that really, really awesome sound out of it. The music is a pretty wide mixture, so I’ll be playing sax on about half the tunes, keyboards on about a third (mainly to provide orchestral fill), and laying out on the rest. Should be a lot of fun.

They asked me if I wanted to sing a number too. My first though was “39 Lashes” from Jesus Christ Superstar because I once worked up a heavy metal jazz fusion version of that song. But somehow it didn’t seem like the best choice. Then I thought of the musical Tommy, and the finale We’re Not Gonna Take It. But when I listened to the lyrics that didn’t seem appropriate either. Tonight I listened to “I’m Free” and banged it out on piano easily enough, so I’ll see if they’re into that.

Any Jobber Got the Sack

The recent death of Steve Jobs has put me in a surprisingly contemplative mood, thinking about how Apple has affected my life and career since 1982 or ’83 when I first programmed on an Apple II. In particular I’ve been thinking about the fall of 1996, when I first arrived in Silicon Valley, just as Mr. Jobs was engineering his prodigal return to Apple. Here’s an article I read last week, an interview from Playboy magazine back in 1985. Might’ve been the Madonna issue. I feel like I read it back in the day, because some parts ring familiar. It’s amazing how on he was about the future of the industry, and also how much everything has changed.

http://www.txtpost.com/playboy-interview-steven-jobs/

Livin’ on Spongecake

Yeah I’ve remained lazy about updating my blog. But I’ve been on vacation, enjoying time in the real world away from the screen. And then yesterday was the first day of school for the kids. How quickly the vibe changes from relaxing to demanding. So here’s a LIFO recap for all y’all.

The good news is the kids think the new school is great. Jeannie for some reason has was really uptight and upset about the whole thing.

And of course the return of the usual pressure from work. Put up a new release of or app today. Completed lots of refactoring to smooth the road forward. The boss always wants me to get more done in less time while making my code look more deeply thought out despite the time pressure.

Before that, on the weekend between our vacation and the return to the world of working for the man, I finally organized my studio and cleaned up the garage, so those jobs got crossed off my summer todo list before the start of fall. I took apart my old lawnmower and put the engine in storage, added to the collection of future robot parts.

Before that we got back from a road trip to Washington DC and Ocean City. It was a great time. In DC we visited John Montroll and he and I had some good origami time. He has some great new models, and I showed him my work-in-progress book, which he wants to help me get published. I’m up to sixteen models diagrammed and formatted for the print page.

We also went to a few of the Smithsonians. The museum of American History, where we saw Eddie Van Halen’s (heavily modified Strat) guitar, Bill Clinton’s (completely unmodified, not even a rubber band to stand in for a bad spring, Conn) saxophone, and Farrah Fawcett’s (I have no idea) orange swimsuit and Catwoman’s original Catwoman costume, among other attractions.

The National Museum of Natural History is much smaller than the NYC counterpart, but the exhibits are more focused and less run-down. Better lighting and signage mainly; the taxidermy and rocks are pretty much the same. There’s a major Hall of Skeletons that goes on and on, going from every order of mammals thru birds and down to reptiles. Plus all the usual taxodermy and minerals, and a bit of outer space, and a focus on Elephants. Couldn’t do the mall without visiting the Air and Space museum, with Wright and Curtis fliers, and spaceships that have been to the moon and back. At this point it feels like America’s former glory. Saw an awesome newsreel of Teddy Roosevelt flying a Wright Bros. plane

Also toured the Capital. It’s changed alot since we were kids and you could circumnavigate the place running up and down all the steps. Now all the step are guarded like Grand Central Station by Homeland Security cops with dour faces and machine guns. To take the tour you have to go in thru this new underground compound on the East side, and then after a movie you’re shuttled up thru some escalators to the Rotunda. The tour guide was friendly and knowledgeable, and there was alot to learn about the paintings and friezes in the rotunda. The painting of Balboa was unrealistic, since he was supposed to be 24 years old but had a beard like a 12th level Dwarven warrior.

We also saw the Canadian Embassy. We took the train in to DC to avoid parking hassles. When I visited D.C. as a kid my Dad parked at the Capital in the space reserved for our NY representative, uh, claiming he was representing New York. Well that’s no longer possible without suffering severe tire damage or worse.

The last three day of the trip were spent on the beach and in the hot tub and in the water park and at Asseteague National Seashore. The waves were pretty intense, which made for good body surfing and boogie boarding, but it took alot of energy just to get out past the breakers. You got pretty beat up or at least thrown around every time, so you could only stay in the ocean an hour or so. The rest of that stint was total relaxation, boardwalk, and yummy seafood dinners. Scallops and crabs. This has gotten to be a habit with us. 5th year in a row I think for Labor day. Just so awesome. The days go by too fast. You should consider joining us one year.

Before that, rewinding a week and a half now, was the hurricane. Lots and lots of wind and rain. Jim Cantore of the Weather Channel was broadcasting from NYC, which was enough to fill us with dread. Luckily in the end we were unharmed, although we lit out for our vacation a day and half late because we needed to ride the storm out and then clean up the yard and clear the street. We had been planning on going to colonial Williamsburg and Busch gardens, but ended up punting on all that b/c in VA they lost power and didn’t know when it would come back on.

The main storm was Saturday night, and I stayed up late listening to the wind howl, but we all went to bed not knowing the end of the story. Sunday morning it was pretty calm and we went for a walk down to the creek, which had overflowed its banks and flooded the adjacent street. Sunday afternoon we got heavy wind from the backside of the hurricane. It downed a tree across the street from us, the last of a stand that have fallen in storms the last five years or so. Luckily for us it fell away from our house. Unluckily for our neighbors across the street, it took out their power line and they didn’t get it back for five days.

In other news, Lou came home from the hospital the Friday before the storm. He’s basically okay and glad to be home, but there’s some major lifestyle adjustments, particularly around diet. He has to eat soft foods for a while, and ease his way back into normal food. Heaven knows when he’ll be able to have a drink. When the storm hit, their whole neighborhood lost power, but their house didn’t flood. Denis and Sylvia took KVAP for a few days and brought over ice and food daily, so Lou could get some rest and Mary could deal with the emergency. The power came back on sometime when we were away, and things are more-or-less back to normal now. KVAP started school today and Lou is home convalescing for a few more weeks at least. Luckily (for 21st century America) his health insurance covered everything and he can take as long as he needs to get back to work and his job will be there for him. Still the situation sounds pretty rough.

In other other news, my friend Olga from work had her house pretty much destroyed by the hurricane. She lives in central New Jersey, on a bit of county-ish land by a creek, kinda like Martin’s old place. A few years ago the dam upstream failed, and she has been involved in a lawsuit against her town, which declined to rebuild it. This last storm her whole house flooded on the lower floor, plus her cars were destroyed, and she was stranded in the top floor of her house for most of a week without power, until the flood receded. Bad situation. Not sure if her kids made it to the first day of school. Not clear when she’ll be back to work; she was out the whole week. So I’m basically picking up her work for now on top of my own.

Ah well such is life.

All Right Now

Been lazy about updating my blog the last couple weeks. But I got a good excuse: it’s summertime. Been chllaxin’. Went to the beach last weekend. Great time. Unusually calm water and dead jellyfish, but still a great hang. Next day Erik and I had rehearsal for our new duet/proto-band. It went really well and sounded really good. Learning lots of new tunes, and teaching Erik my originals. More on that whole project soon. I halfway organized my studio that night, a task which has been on my list since June. I dealt with all the music gear, music books and random sheet music. Part two will be to organize the origami. Then the weekend was over, and another work week came and went. Working for the man every night and day, along with all the other grownup concens. Then this weekend it was camping trip with the Bickers and the Blickeroonies, and Bob and Lisa. Getting ready for camping is always a lot of work, but once you’re there it’s such a great time. Once again the weather favored us. We drove up in a thunderstorm, and drove home in the same, but time we where there was great weather almost the whole time.

I’m very mellow about things right about now. Wish I could find a way to make that peace of mind last.

Origami Dual Cube

I came up with this design back in June, and it was part of my exhibit for OUSA, but I just got around to photographing it this week. The shape is two intersecting cubes. I first saw it in an M. C. Escher print many years ago. The model is folded from a single sheet of paper, a rectangle with a 2:1 ratio. I must say it was a good deal easier than my Great Dodecahedron or Rhombic Dodecahedron. Still, this is only a preliminary study. My goal is to fold it from a square and with a color change so that the two cubes are in contrasting colors. This will require six color change regions. Fortunately I have a method for this, similar to the way I affect the color change in my Stellated Ocathedron (or Inchworm for that matter). Still, the devil is in the details, so I won’t actually know how well my approach works until I try it. Hopefully I’ll get around to it soon.

Lawnmower Man

One side effect of all this travel and work was that my lawn was way overdue to be mowed. My lawnmower was kinda old and had a couple of spots in the main shell where it had rusted thru and I’d patched it over with duct tape. Last time I mowed I heard a ka-rack noise, and after that the engine seemed a bit wobbly. After I was done mowing I peeled off the duct tape to see that the rust holes had joined to form a C-shaped void that left the engine attached to the shell on only one side! I thought for a while about various ways to fix it, but they all seemed potentially unsafe, or not worth the hassle. A replacement shell would have been $110 anyway, without knowing the availability. So I decided to go shopping for a new lawmower.

The sales people at Sears were dreadful and didn’t even know the diff between a 2- and 4-stroke engine. In the end, I guess a lawnmower is a lawnmower, and I ended up getting a basic one. Even though I’m a former professional landscaper, my yard is petty small so I figured the simpler the better. It took a while to put it together and siphon the gas out of the old mower into the new one, and by the time it was ready it was almost dark. The days are getting shorter already. The new mower started up on the first pull, and it’s lighter and more maneuverable than my old one, and mows more evenly, so I’m pretty happy with it. Now to figure out what to do with the old mower. I has a perfectly good engine, which I guess I’ll save to use in a robot someday.

Saturday was all kinds of yardwork and random tasks. I finally got to doing the gutters with Lizzy helping out with the ladder. Since we cut down the trees on the north side of the house it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be, so I removed the gutter guards. Sunday I got a chance to get back to origami and music. We also had a surprise visit from my homeslice Mark, in town from the Adirondacks to try and line up new tenants for his place in Brooklyn.