Are you ready for a change? Am I?

I don’t mean a lifestyle or financial or paradigm change (although I’m ready for those, too), but rather, a more important one. Indeed, a deeper, more introspective question has chased me around for the last few days: Should I change the site design?

Yes, fiends. Heavy stuff. Should I ditch the kooky masthead, calming ocean colors and stately medieval background pattern? Should I go more…

1. Wild/bold?
2. Girly?
3. Introspective?
4. Businesslike?
5. Goth?
6. Cartoonish?
7. Plain?
8. Pastel?

Or should I do nothing at all? You know, don’t fix what ain’t broke to begin with? Leave well enough alone? I mean, don’t I have enough projects?

What would you have me do? Please cast your vote, for I covet your articulate and compendious thoughts. But respond soon; tempus fugit and all that.

We’re off to Kay & Bob’s today. The Thriller and Bob will put in a fence while Kay and I chat the afternoon away and make a picnic. Sounds like fair division of labor to me.

FO

…in the spring concert derby.

Two things happened last night: one really nice, and one really great.

1. My middle school kids tore it up onstage.
2. I became a Grammie for the second time.

Justin was born at around 10 last night. Jakey, Grammie, and Grandpa Thriller are going to the hospital today to see new little brother. The rest of my day, as I told someone in email this morning, will be spent in my gardens, at the park, having coffee with a friend (while Jake naps), and basically doing anything else we want to do.

What’s THAT all about???

Photos tomorrow…have a good Thursday, fiends.

Grammie Fink

OK, so it’s A) redundant, and I hope Paul Simon meant it that way, and B) wrong, since it’s Tuesday morning. But I really have been up since 3 a.m. Sometimes my brain’s kill switch moves around and I can’t find it.

My high school concert was last night. The choir did quite well — it was ghastly hot (the A/C was on the fritz) but no one fainted (or feinted to faint) or barfed or otherwise looked sickly, at least that I could see. I was proud of them all.

And as usual, our audience was very kind. They always make me (and the kids, I hope) feel like what we’re doing is worthwhile. They are a constant and dependable validation source, and that’s a good thing because I am infuriatingly cynical about my endless search for “success” in music ed. It’s just part of life in my universe, I guess. You know, like the sun coming up, the waves rushing the shore, rappers shooting each other…c’est la vie. Anyway, it’s good to hear nice comments when I know for a fact that my v-jazz group and my male quartet kinda choked in a couple places. But it’s all good, and I’m still proud of — and grateful to — my students, who willingly subject themselves to my lunacy for years on end. There was good music last night, and they should feel good about it.

Middle school concert tomorrow night. Then graduation on the 31st, then it’s in the books for another year. And glad tidings this day: I’m giving up my room so my principal and AD can have a coaches’ meeting there, since I have the largest classroom on campus. They’re grilling out for lunch, and guess who gets a wonderful medium-rare steak out of the deal. Oh, yeah.

Just another day of girlfriend livin’ la vida loca.

Fink (upside, inside) out.