Young man, recently kicked out of a Buddhist convent, is looking for a family to love him.

Young man, recently kicked out of a Buddhist convent, is looking for a family to love him.

Many of you know the Estradas, and know that they're a great family. Will and Jordan are well-known at PHC as great guys, good-natured and friendly and welcoming. I'm hoping their reputation is true, because my currently-fragile emotional state depends on them right now.

I recently joined a Buddhist convent because I liked the people there. Bad idea. I was ignored for a few weeks, and then they found out I was there and kicked me out on my ear - while Lauren laughed at me. ouch.

here's a copy of my application to join the (crucial edit: the -Estradas Only!-) blogring:

About You
it's Derby, you know me (will and jordan do, anyway)

Why You'd Like to Join
I was recently kicked out of the Buddhist Convent by Lauren, (I think at the behest of Naomi, because Lauren isn't mean like she is , even though I love her in the fashion of a Christian brother) because I was not a girl. The blogring specifically said that the Buddhist Convent was "for girls", and I am definitely for girls, but they made it clear that they are not for me. So now I am feeling very left out, and just need a family to welcome me again. All you have to do is let me into this blogring. I'm not asking you, I'm begging that you let me feel loved again. *tears*



If they reject this, I am holding Jordan and Will personally responsible for gleefully confirming my status as an outcast from society. I know my brother already "hates me," and I "haven't seen my parents" in a few months. It's getting pretty bad.

In other news, I plan on visiting my second home, NoVA, Wed. evening through Monday. I hope that you, my reader, will be there too.

pic credits to zoneonepress, used under their Creative Commons license

I'm taking comments on xanga for once.

Majestic music

I just returned from a night of beautiful music. Most of my family went to the Whiting Auditorium to hear the Flint Symphony Orchestra's first concert of the season. The year's theme is Russian music, in honor of which my family bought a few season tickets - the cheap ones in the top row. The rest of us got cheap student tickets. Some of my siblings, as students, took advantage of Whiting's opportunity to upgrade their tickets to some unsold main floor tickets.

The FSO is a decent professional orchestra - no Atlanta Symphony, but clearly quality. Our 17-year director and conductor, Maestro Enrique Diemecke, also directs music for the National Symphony of Mexico and Long Beach Symphony, and is principal conductor for the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, and has guest conducted the Royal Philharmonic, National Symphony, Paris Orchestra, and many others.


The concert was amazing - as a friend said, one of the best of the many times she has been there.

The first piece was Glinka's Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila. It's a moderately nice piece, but only a warmup compared to what followed.

The next piece was Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. The symphony welcomed a guest violinist to perform the solos: Vadim Gluzman. He played on a 1690 Stradivarius, and produced everything he and it held inside themselves, with excellent backup by the orchestra. Gluzman's playing was exquisite. His interpretation of the already beautiful solos make the playing on my mp3s of the concerto sound boring in comparison. One of the solos in the middle of the concerto was a bit long; it seems that all instruments, even the most beautiful like the violin, become tiresome after a few minutes because virtually every instrument has a characteristic sound. The conductor did well, but it seems that most conductors have a yearning to lead themselves, rather than following a soloist.

At the end of the second movement, the audience assumed the piece was finished, and we gave Gluzman, Diemecke and the orchestra a standing ovation. We had to repeat it, for much longer, after the final movement continued a good thing.

After this piece, during intermission, Mr. Gluzman graciously signed my ticket. "I don't know how I can listen to my Tchaikovsky CDs anymore," I told him.

"I will tell you how," he began.

"No, it won't be the same," I insisted, misunderstanding the great violinist.

"get the Tchaikovsky CDs with David Oistrakh. He's far better than me." Receiving listening advice from such a man is far more of an honor, and more useful, than a signature.

The conductor treated us to one of his own pieces, his Two-Sun Tango. The piece, like its writer, was a bit ostentatious and short, and impossible to not enjoy. It was more of a brief standard orchestral piece, whatever that would be called, than a tango. The tango occurred in the middle, during which Enrique danced on his platform, something I believe the audience had never seen.

The fourth piece was Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture. Though not one of the two Tchaikovsky pieces that were the climaxes of the performance, this was the most purely beautiful piece and my favorite of the evening. It was possibly the orchestra's best performance, and the talented flutists were especially nice. The piece wonderfully captures the sorrow, glory, beauty, and trepidation of Christ's resurrection, and it might even correspond to the chronological sequence of events.

All but the virtuoso violin performance were swept away by the last piece, sounding muted in comparison to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. This grand composition is a challenge for a mere orchestra to do by itself, and the FSO acquitted itself well though not stunningly. The composition is powerful enough recorded, but of course it's a piece that is only truly realized in a live performance.



The cannons at the end, of course, were recorded. The bells were performed on pipe bells - I don't know the real name - but some deeper ones might have been recorded. The orchestra's 17 small strings (including violist Beverly Austin, my sisters' grandmotherly violin teacher), 9 cellos, 7 bass, 5 French horns, 3 trumpets, 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 trombones, tuba, 2 oboes, harp, triangle, tympani, cymbals and a handful of miscellaneous woodwinds, brass and percussion did admirably, and received a 3-minute standing ovation.

Interestingly, Tchaikovsky himself was never able to perform this the piece as he wrote it, with bells and 16 cannon. Richard Freed tells us in the program notes that the czar he wrote it for was killed before it could be performed, and though the piece became extremely popular throughout Europe, Tchaikovsky never again got the right combination of funds and an outdoor performance for this commissioned piece that he really did not care for. It wasn't until 1967, 87 years after its composition, that Erich Kunzel and the Boston Pops gave the 1812 Overture the full stunning performance it deserved.

After the concert, bits of the rolling sounds of the end of the overture kept rolling uncalled through my head for most of the next hour, with no recall of any of the lesser works, but a few breaks for pieces of Aerosmith's worthy "Dream On" also presented themselves without asking, for some variety.

The amazing thing is: in heaven, far more beautiful music is played even more skillfully and majestically before God.

"Take one"

Take One is a multi-player, speed variation of Scrabble.

Materials needed
Letters from one or more Scrabble games (more if you have quite a few players), or suitable substitute.
Optional for obsessive-compulsive dictionary checkers: Scrabble Dictionary

Players
Two to at least a dozen

Directions
Turn the letter tiles upside down on a table, mix.
Each player takes seven letters.

On a signal, players turn their pieces over and begin forming interlocked words with their letters. Unlike Scrabble, players do not play off of others' words, only their own.
When one player has used all of his tiles, he calls "take one" and each player takes another tile from the center pile.
Players may rearrange any and all of their tiles after they have been played.
The round ends after the center pile of tiles is gone, and one player has used all of his tiles.

Scoring
Players receive points as marked on the tiles, with tiles used in two words counted twice. Players with unused tiles must subtract those points from their score.

Try it out, it's a lot more fun than my characteristically systematic description.