Saturday 03/15/2025
The big activity today was to give an informal concert to an audience of four. Joanne, Mary R, Kay, and Jerry (Jeraldine). The point of this was to expose my bedroom practice sessions to a real audience and get comments, especially whether I am competent enough, and entertaining enough, to do a full concert for a “Sunday@Home” event.
Mary directed the Channing House chorus until she retired last year, and is the producer for two annual music events. She and I sang duets twice, “An Old Fashioned Wedding” (day 5.196) and “You’ve Got a Friend” at the Folk Festival (day 5.294). Kay was the music director for the Palo Alto school system and Jerry taught music in Palo Alto schools, so both are very knowledgeable about music performance as well as CH events. And Joanne just has solid good taste and an ear for music.
I set up our 6th floor lounge nicely, with a couple of bowls of nuts to nibble, and a song list and a writing pad for each to take notes on. They all arrived right on time at 3:30. So I ran through a dozen songs and we talked. They had some comments on improvements, and on particular song choices, but generally it went pretty well. I didn’t flub too much and everybody said they were entertained. I have to rethink the order and selection of songs, and they particularly stressed I need to have a few sentences to introduce each song.
So, glad that’s over and went ok. Then for fun I got out my super pro joystick and attached it to the Mini, and downloaded and installed Vendetta Online. I played this space game for quite a few hours a decade ago, and I’m glad it’s still around. Not only still around, but free to play on any platform. The new high-powered Mini, with the new 5K monitor and good stereo speakers, should make a good gaming system. Of course I will have to relearn all my spacecraft skills, but it should be fun.
Codgerville 