Bill Roper's Journal

We had about 89% coverage of the sun here in the Chicago area which is, well, not really all that exciting. But with the eclipse falling on the first day of school, I had finally decided that we should just let this one go. Maybe in seven years or so...

Having seen totality once before, it wasn't as big a deal to miss it. :)

In the meantime, the girls had a good first day, so that made staying home more worthwhile.

It has been extraordinarily busy here for the last few months. It was thus that we found ourselves coming up on the end of the school year and having not yet written a song for Katie's teacher, Mrs. Sharko. We knew what we wanted to write, but actually putting pen to paper was being challenging. We had had discussion on the subject with Katie and Julie. We had nothing actually written down.

And then on Thursday night, I started my vacation.

And at 3 AM I woke up Gretchen and rapped out a verse to her.

"Can I go back to sleep now?"

"Yes. Yes, you can."

Not much later, but much more awake, we managed to finish pulling everything together. While performing the song as a rap was a possibility, setting a tune to it was going to be a better choice. :)

And today, Katie was able to take the recording of the song to Mrs. Sharko, who likes it.

It is only deadline that would get me to record something with this case of bronchitis... :)

Anyway, here are the lyrics:
( Lyrics inside... )

The Terrace Talent Show went off well tonight. All of the participants did well, including Katie and Julie, which made everyone happy.

Yay!

Really cold. According to Weather Bug, the wind chill at the girls' school is already at -16 degrees F.

I'm thinking that it's a coin flip at best as to whether we're going to wake up in the morning and find that classes have been canceled for the day.

I suppose we'll see in the morning.

When I got my Behringer X-Touch control surface, one of the first things I did was to make little tiny labels for the buttons so I could remap it for use with Cubase. This was easy to do with my Brother P-touch label maker.

Of course, all I had was white tape. The white labels stood out. Like a sore thumb.

Earlier this week, I was poking around on Amazon and found a source for black tape with white lettering, which -- even on the gray parts of the background! -- was likely to look a lot better than the white labels. So I ordered the tape, which arrived earlier this week.

There was then the question of finding the time to do the relabeling. But after today's early morning softball game was rained out (finally, while we were on the way there after getting up earlier than usual -- not the coach's fault in any sense, but the local park district taking their sweet time reaching a decision), we were able to go to the pancake breakfast at the girls' school. Then I came home and paid the bills, after which we took Katie to Glenview for a birthday party. And after we got lunch and picked her back up, we came home and a bit later, I got to relabel the control surface.

Nice looking bunch of labels there. Shame you haven't actually mixed anything...

My sister and some of my friends asked if they could hear Reader's Waltz which we wrote for Katie's teacher.

If this link works then, yes, you can. :)

We're up a bit early this morning, trying to get everything packed and get little girls off to school in advance of our flight to Balticon.

Chaos? Well, just a bit. :)

Today was the first day of Katie and Julie's spring break. I, of course, had to work...

On the other hand, I did finally finish the large round of changes I've been working on for several weeks, so that was good.

The Terrace Talent Show was tonight and all of the kids in the show acquitted themselves nicely. Katie and Julie got a lot of nice compliments on their performances. Julie managed to get all the way through to the end of the song before getting a bit lost going into the coda, which had been the bit least practiced, since I hadn't reworked the karaoke track until last week so that it would be included -- they'd been fading it down before the extra chorus repeat to save time. And although Katie and her dance partner managed to line up on the opposite sides of the stage from what they'd done in rehearsal, that actually seemed to improve the performance. :)

Gretchen also got a lot of compliments on the costumes she'd put together for the dance bit.

Overall, a very successful evening!

Gretchen and I went over to the school this evening while Katie and Julie were rehearsing for the upcoming talent show there. Both girls did well, although I need to get an improved version of the karaoke track for "Juicy Details" for Julie to work with. Another project for the weekend. :)