Tagged!

I was tagged by The Darwin Report. Luckily it didn't hurt very much. Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random (or arbitrary) things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Six random things about me:

1. I just flew in from England, and boy are my arms....[shift forward in time 14 hours] actually my brain was too tired to think of 6 random things last night. Hopefully it's better this morning.

2. I have a concert tonight to which I'm driving the truck, although I'm a little out of practice with both the bassoon and driving on the right side.

This is one we do at a local retirement community on Veteran's Day every year, and makes me cry every time. For the first few years, they had WWII veterans in uniform carrying the flags (very slowly) down the aisle. Last year, I think they were replaced by Korean War veterans. I get all choked up when we play the Armed Forces Salute and veterans of each branch stand as we play their respective songs. Seeing the music through tears and playing with a lump in your throat isn't easy, I can tell you.

3. While in England, apart from attending my Grandad's 100th birthday party and getting to know some of my many relatives a little better, we went to the Dartmoor Zoological Park. I highly recommend going if you're in the neighbourhood. And even if you're not.

4. I didn't know until recently that Alcoholics Anonymous is a load of religious crap.

5. My son appears to be becoming a gay rights activist. He's really pissed off about how the passing of Proposition 8 could affect David and Pete (his Dad and Step-dad). I have more than one reason to be proud of him! Oh, all right. Lots, actually.

6. After 33 years in this country, I got my U.S. Citizenship eight years ago because I was tired of not being able to vote. Finally it's going the way I voted...

Hmm. Six people I can tag? I had a hard enough time coming up with 6 arbitrary things about me...

1. Kia at A Blog About Everything, who is definitely still alive.
2. Mr Farty at Better Oot Than In
3. Barry at Staring at Empty Pages
4. Andrew at Artificial Habitat, even though he hasn't posted anything for months, and may, in fact, be dead.
5. David at Musings by the Hairslave. Welcome to the blogging world!
6. The King of Ferrets at Ferret's Cage

You're it!

But it's not even Halloween yet!

UPDATE: Hey! PZ stole the title of this post! At least his wasn't about band.

Last night I missed most of the VP debate because I had band rehearsal. Yes, I know. That's dedication. A few years ago, our Holiday^[1] concert was not up to our usual standard pretty darn awful sucked because for various reasons we only rehearsed for it twice. Since then, our Director has started inserting holiday music into rehearsals earlier and earlier, which is how we ended up playing White Christmas,^[2] The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire), Silent Night (the Mannheim Steamroller version), and Greensleeves^[3] on the second of October. I'm already getting in the spirit! I feel the urge to run out and buy presents right now! What does everyone want? Unfortunately, we've never played my favourite Christmas song - Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.^[4] My mother has never liked that song for some reason, even before she became a grandma...

Thank God the FSM our Director we also rehearsed the un-Christmassy Gustav Holst's Second Suite in F for Military Band,^[5] and Richard Rogers' Victory at Sea.

[1] It may be called a Holiday Concert, but the vast majority of music is Christmas music. We did play The Dradle Song one year, but I don't think that makes up for it. Lucky Christmas is now a secular holiday.
[2] Written by that famous agnostic, Irving Berlin
[3] Since when did a traditional 16th Century English folk song supposedly (but not likely) written by Henry VIII for Anne Boleyn become a Christmas favourite? What's next? O Tannembaum becoming the state song of Maryland?
[4] Actually, my favourite is really Sleighride by Leroy Anderson, which we do play.
[5] I love Holst. Maybe I'll get a bumper sticker to that effect to go with my Darwinfish, COEXIST with NASA images rather than religious symbols, Charlie Brown for Congress, and Obama/Biden ones.

Easy meme

The reason I changed the name on this blog from Aquatic Ecologist, Bright, Atheist, so many labels.. to Chimaera Contemplations was because I wanted to indicate that it is about a variety of subjects, and my friend Kia had already taken the name that says it all. That and the old name was just to darn long.

I was tagged by Mr Farty with this meme. Well, he tagged somebody named 'you' so I'm considering it to mean 'me.' And it is easier to do than the other post I am working on about the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

1. The rules of the game get posted on the beginning.
2. Each player answers the rules about him or herself.
3. At the end of the post, the player tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they’ve been tagged and asking them to read his [or her] blog.

NOTE: I don't know why the numbers are showing up as cutesy little flowers when I post this. They are numbers in edit mode. Woo Hoo! I figured it out. The creator of this template, Todd Dominey, liked cutesy flowers instead of numbers for some reason.

What I was doing ten years ago:
Er...I was living in David and Pete's (yes, my ex-husband and his life partner) remodeled garage while I was getting my MBA the University of California, Davis Graduate School of Management. It is a very nice garage with its own bathroom.

About six months earlier, I was living in my parent's basement while I was getting my M.S. degree at Purdue University. A very nice basement it is, too.

Five things on my To-Do list today:

1. Not much. Did it all yesterday. Went to gym, rented a truck, played in band concert, potted plants, etc.
2. Working on the post about the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (note #2 on my bad habits, though)
3. Cleaning Twister's paddock, and bandaging his legs if needed.
4. Maybe going to see my friend M's (I have three friends M), new baby goats.
5. Sitting around reading other people's blogs. Maybe trying to figure out how to do a "behind the fold" on my blog. I've found two different ways so far, and neither work the way I want them to.

Update: I actually washed my car today, and it wasn't even on the list. Anything to get out of doing housework.

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Not likely to happen, so why bother thinking about it? Millionaire, maybe....:-p

Three of my bad habits:

1. I don't do housework. Ever. Or at least until I can't see the floor. Then I make a path.
   
2. Procrastinating.
3. I tend to get a little obsessive about things. For instance, I'll read constantly for months and then switch to crossword puzzles for months. According to my family my current obsession is blogging. I never get obsessive about housework, funnily enough.
   

Five places I’ve lived:

1. Crowborough, England
2. Earlville, New York
3. Lake Jackson, Texas
4. Benicia, California
5. Indianapolis area, Indiana

There are several more towns. I once added it up, and until this house, I've never lived in one house more than four years. Going on 4 1/2 years here with Bill. I keep telling him it's time to sell the house and move.

Five jobs I’ve had:

1. Weekend greenhouse waterer - keeping experimental plants alive at Dow Chemical
   
2. Receptionist at a ballroom dance studio - worked for dance lessons.
   
3. Clerk/manager of a small parcel shipping company.
4. Field biologist for a consulting firm.
5. Scientist with the State of California.

Five books I’ve recently read:
Hmm...define recently...See above post regarding obsessive blogging.

1. Science Friction - Michael Shermer. Currently reading, but keep getting interrupted by blogs.
   
2. The Ancestor's Tale - Richard Dawkins. I bought it for my parents and brother, too.
   
3. My Boyfriend is a Twat - Zoe McCarthy
   
4. The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - Bobby Henderson.
   
5. Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) - Jerome K. Jerome. I can read it over and over, although I probably haven't read it as often as the Tolkien trilogy (note how I sneaked my favorite books onto the list?)
   

Five people or communities I’m going to tag:
Anybody who feels like it. As was evident in my last meme, musicians don't follow directions very well. Directors, yes, but not directions.

Actually, I think that most of the people who occasionally read this blog (my family) don't have blogs.

Concert tonight

Band concert tonight. I don't mean to sound conceited or anything, but they really can't start without me. It's not because the band absolutely HAS to have a bassoon. We have another bassoonist, even if bassoons WERE indispensable. We could possibly even start without the director, because we have an assistant director (FSM forbid anything happen to our director, though. We're all very fond of him). It's not because I am the chairperson of the Band Board of Directors. It's because.......


I drive the truck.

Once a band geek always a band geek

I know you'll find it hard to believe, but I was a band geek in high school. Some things never change. I currently play the bassoon in a local community band.

"What is a bassoon?," you may ask. I know you may ask this because I am asked it fairly regularly. Bassoons are a double reed low woodwind instrument. Here is my bassoon:It is a Fox 220, made in South Whitley, Indiana.

Not only do I play in the band...somehow I became chairman of the board of directors, and have been for three years now. I am "termed out" next September, thank goodness.

I started out on the alto saxophone in intermediate school, and when I got to high school, my band director, Mr. Williams, said, "We have plenty of alto saxes. How would you like to play the bassoon?"

"What's a bassoon?" I asked.

He brought out a case and opened it, and it was love at first sight.

My bassoon. The frog was given to me by the Queen of the Fairies when I played in the pit for a local production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe
He gave me a fingering chart and threw me in the deep end. I played the sax during marching season and bassoon during concert season. Since the school only owned one bassoon, I was the only bassoonist all four years.

I also played sax in the high school Jazz Band. I loved that enough to get up and go to school an hour early for four years. We played everything from Big Band, to Mainstream to Earth, Wind and Fire.

I used to walk a mile home up the steepest hill in Benicia, California with a huge backpack full of books, and a bassoon and alto sax balancing each other on each side. I'm pretty sure it's why I have bad knees now. Did I ever practice them, though? Of course not.

I met my first husband, David, in that band. Well, actually it was in Mrs. Hutchinson's biology class, but I really got to know him over the years in band. He played the French horn. My brother, three years behind me in school, was also in the band and Jazz Band. He played the oboe. And trombone. And flute. He always has to one-up me. Oh, wait. I have two more degrees than he does...um...maybe it's the other way around.

After high school I played for a short while at the University of California at Davis, and then David and I played for a while in the now defunct Yolo County Concert Band, but then I stopped playing altogether for about five years.

About ten years ago, David's partner Pete needed a bassoonist for a wind ensemble at UC Davis he was putting together. After about a year of pestering, he finally lured me in with promises of playing the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro. I owe him big time, even though I eventually ended up buying a VERY expensive instrument. I would have a hard time giving it up again.

The band I'm in now is a "Pops" band. We play everything I liked from both bands in high school. Big Band; John Phillip Sousa marches; Broadway Musical numbers; Rock and Roll medleys (The Beatles, Queen, The Village People, etc.); the best of Frank Sinatra; with a bit of classical and ragtime thrown in occasionally. I love it! So do our audiences.Note that my red fuzzy blanket serves multiple purposes. Isis is also sitting on it in the "herding cats" photo.
Concert band vs. Orchestra tutorial

An orchestra has a few wind instruments and percussion and a lot of stringed instruments (violins, violas, cellos, etc.). A band is made up of mostly wind instruments and percussion with maybe a couple of stringed ones. We have a string bass and a harp at the moment, although we have had a few band members complain that a harp does not belong in a band.

Wind instruments are made up of woodwinds - flutes, clarinets, saxes, oboes, English horns, and bassoons, and brass - French horns, trumpets, trombones, euphoniums, and tubas.

And remember: a bassoon is NOT an oboe. People are always getting them mixed up. Bassoon BIG. Oboe small. Oboe sticks out like a sore thumb. Bassoon virtually inaudible in a band (darn brass instruments and saxes drown us out).

I'm a hypocrite

I'm a hypocrite. So sue me. I love Christmas. I love the lights, the colors, the festive decorations, the fact that I have an excuse to give presents to people (although I always feel a little uncomfortable receiving them), the colder temperatures (in the temperate regions of this hemisphere, anyway), the cheeriness of people; I even like that my birthday is just a few days before Christmas.

Christmas music is some of my favorite music. My band just had a "Holiday" concert, in which most of the repertoir had the word Christmas in the title (at least we worked in the Dradle Song last year). We always play a couple of my favourites including The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) by Mel Torme and my favourite seasonal song of all time--Sleigh Ride by Leroy Anderson. We don't do it quite as well as Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, but we do it pretty darn well for a community band.

I very much doubt that a man who may or may not have existed was born that day, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy the season. I also like the fact that the winter solstice is very close to Christmas (coincidence? I think not), and the days start getting longer from then out.

New at this

Hmm. This is a test of the blogger system. This is only a test.

I'm not sure why I'm doing this. I don't think anybody would really be interested in what I have to say and I've never been one to write a diary. I think I'm just getting very tired of being pushed steadily more and more into the closet. My ex-husband came out of the "gay" closet years ago, and I greatly admire him for it. I've been an atheist all my life, and it has never really been a problem for me until recently. I don't think I have ever really been "in your face" about it, but have had more of a live-and-let-live attitude. I will tell people if they ask, but don't generally volunteer the information. All of my close friends know, and just accept that I cannot understand any religious feelings they have.

Not that I haven't had problems before. When I was a young teen living deep in the heart of Texas, aka the Bible Belt, I learned very quickly to call myself an agnostic (note I said call myself, not become one) as that seemed more acceptable to the other kids.

While getting my Masters degree at Purdue University-again in the Bible Belt-I had not dated in several years and was told by one of the other grad students that without "God" telling me what I could and could not do, I could have no morals. He then went on to tell (tell me, not ask me) that I must be having sex with my dog since I wasn't sleeping with a man. My response was that gee, I guess I shouldn't have had the dog neutered then, and if I HAD been sleeping with a man out of wedlock, I assume he would have accused me of adultery! I never did quite understand why it was inconceivable to him that I might go for five years without sleeping with any other animal, human or otherwise.

The reason I feel I'm being pushed into the closet is that I am recently seemingly surrounded by religious people I feel I have to tiptoe around. I have had a Darwin Fish on the back of my cars since 1991, most of that time in California, but even when I went to Purdue it was never a problem. I have now replaced the plastic icon with a vinyl cutout without the word Darwin (granted, my car was rear-ended, and the bumper replaced, so I didn't actually go out and physically remove the plastic Darwin Fish). I have a very hard time finding a place to keep my blind horse. The stable I have him in now is owned by a very religious couple. I have actually been taking my husband's car in case they see the Darwin Fish and confront me about it. I can't risk being asked to move him. Two of the last three places I've had him have been sold and converted into housing developments, and the elderly couple that ran the third retired. There are fewer and fewer places he can safely go that I can afford. He is getting older and has a few health problems other than his lack of vision which also cost a lot of money, and several people have suggested I put him down. I will not do that while he is still enjoying life, and if any of these people saw him while he was rolling, bucking, rearing and prancing around his paddock they would understand why. He may be a swaybacked, one-eyed, giant ball of fuzz (in his winter coat) but he is absolutely beautiful to me. To kill him when he enjoys life so much would be criminal.

I am the chairperson of a local band (that will give it away if anyone reads this), and all of the other council members at the moment are very religious. I feel that they would have trouble trusting me for my supposed lack of morals if they knew. I could be wrong, and hope I am, but it would make my job just that much harder if I had to deal with that on top of all the other problems we've had this year (that would be a whole 'nother blog!). I had one council member ask me what church I go to, and I evaded by saying I don't go to church (the truth, but I didn't tell her why). We have had a difficult year for various reasons-enough that I get physically ill after council meetings-and I have wondered why I haven't just told them. It might be an easy way to get off the council, and better for my health. The fact that I am very much an introvert, and don't like any sort of confrontation is also a big part of it. I feel responsible to do the best that I can for the band, and unfortunately that means that staying in the closet is probably the best way. As I said, I could be wrong, but I'm not willing to risk it while I'm still chairperson of the council. I sometimes even park my car backward so that the Darwin Fish silhouette isn't as visible.

Then there is work, which I don't really want to get into right now. I have never before been in the closet at work, though.