Cherry trees, recordings, little adventures

First, the big news around here: my Kwanzan cherry trees are blooming! I’d been watching the progression of the buds since coming back from Japan. Over the weekend a few blossoms started opening. Then, yesterday, they were almost all out. Because we saw this house for the first time in late June (2020), and bought it in Aug (with a November contract signing) I had no idea about the flowering trees. But they are amazing. There are several old Kwanzans, and they all bloom together in one giant pink swoop in mid-April. I try to take pictures, but the pictures don’t really do it justice.

Anyway, yesterday I had blocked time to go back downtown to the recording studio for “pick ups” on the audio book of Big Time (corrections of things I did wrong the first time). When I confirmed the time, I got an email from the recording engineer noting that it would be fairly quick. Well, when I got there, there were half a dozen changes, and they were tiny things like I didn’t say the word “so” when I’d written the word “so.” In other words, not really changing the meaning! I was done in 10 minutes — having driven half an hour, parked, etc. But I am a positive person, so I’m adopting the mindset that isn’t it nice there weren’t huge changes…I decided to use the found time to take a quick walk through Rittenhouse Square, where the tulips are blooming beautifully. I got an oat draft latte from La Colombe, and then shopped for rustic breads at the farmers’ market that was going in the square. So that was a nice little adventure in this found time. Then I drove home and sat under my cherry trees for a few minutes.

Another feature of this house — the garage is separate from the house (it’s basically just for storage as it is not convenient to keep cars in there). This wound up being useful yesterday because of some scheduling fun that happens in this circus. For various reasons, we’ve needed to switch to the 6-year-old getting picked up at school, rather than taking the bus. Generally our nanny picks him up, but that means she can’t drive other kids places between about 3:30-4 p.m. Tuesdays, my 11-year-old has a 3:45 pottery class that he adores (I would not have necessarily anticipated that, but we’re running with it). I had been working with a podcast about when I could record and they offered 3 and 6. I would have automatically taken 3, but then I remembered that wouldn’t work on Tuesdays. So I took 6, but of course then remembered that we have an alto sax lesson running from 5:45-6:30 and trombone from 6:30-7. In other words, the house would not be quiet! Fortunately, the garage was available, so I made up a little cocoon over there with blankets and moved my laptop and mic and headphones over and it seemed to work OK!