Isn't it weird that you can go in the kitchen and open three cabinet doors looking for a glass. You do know where the glasses are. They have been there for years. Why do you open the wrong doors? It's going to be chaos in the new house because the glasses will actually be in the wrong place!

Back to places I have lived.

Welbron Drive. Though I started in the big bedroom, it went to my sister after a few years and I took the small bedroom. About 11 feet square with a large walk-in closet. My room was pine paneled and I loved the room. I stayed in it with the door shut often. One year we decorated it just for my taste and it stayed that way while I was living there. Black and white chest of drawers, black and white desk (with a map of the United States on top), Red bedspread and curtains on the one window to the back yard. Eventually I had a rocking chair, black with red cushions of course. I spent a lot of time in that room, reading, studying at the desk (adjustable desk lamp, philco clock radio), or talking on the phone. The closet was so big that when I was little I played in there like it was a room.

The house was small. I was acutely aware that my friends had larger houses, nicer houses. But it was a warm place and safe. My friends were welcome and came over to play. There was always sweet tea in the refrigerator. We loved sitting in the kitchen where Mama would deliver up whatever you wanted to eat any time of the day or night. We washed dishes in the kitchen and stacked them on the drainboard. The house had all hardwood floors. They were beautiful. Always a piano in the living room and often someone was playing and singing. The yard was big enough to play in, flat in the back and fenced, with lots of pine trees. Sometimes the yard held a dog. Sometimes not. Dash was a Cocker, Happy a Dalmation, and Stanley part Cocker and part Harrier. He looked like a harrier. He was the smart one. My Dad taught him a million tricks. I don't know if he could read or write, but he could definitely spell. I wrecked my bike on Welbron drive. I got in fights. I played games in peoples basements, helped build tree forts in the woods out of scraps of lumber, and ran on trails through the undeveloped land behind the other side of the street. I was a boyscout there. We played in the creek (part of Snapfinger creek), catching tadpoles and crawfish. We loved to make dams and create pools of water. Adults left us alone and I don't remember ever getting into trouble. We didn't break things or steal things. We did snoop around and find out things we weren't supposed to know. Imagine that. I grew up there mostly, from 5 to 21, with a brief excursion to Florida from 12 to 15. Every place was important to my development. I would have never become who I am today without the 3 years in Florida. It seems like the drive to excellence came from the trip to Jacksonville. When I returned to Atlanta many of my old school chums were not doing so well in school. I went on and left them behind.

The dogwoods in the front yard were wonderful. I visited recently and they are really big. It's in a bad neighborhood now, but the house still is being kept up well and looks nice.

A little about our apartment in Chamblee where I lived when I was little. Dad says that I remember these things about right. There was a grassy area behind the houses where we hung out clothes. I remember being on the ground floor. We started out living upstairs, but I don't remember that. Our doorway was to the left off an opening hallway. A living room with a window to the front, dining area to the back, kitchen behind that. Tile floor. A hallway off the living room to a furnace room or storage on the right. I had a robot that walked and had red flashing eyes and looked cool in the storage room in the dark. Two bedrooms. Yvonne and I both were in the back bedroom. I have no concept of my room. I remember the sidewalk, my tricycle, a stroller, a boxer dog that scared me who lived down the street, the ice cream man, a parking area or street behind our place, a big tree at the top of the street. I remember a trolley line coming by. The buses sparked as they moved along. And a hill up to an open area where we flew kites once and mine got away from me. Such a sad day. I remember skating on the sidewalk and finding a fifty cent piece in the parking lot. I got hit with a brick when some boys were throwing rocks. Philip and I both got a black eye when we ducked together and got hit with the same brick. The thrower must have felt mighty. He killed two with one blow. There is a picture of us with our matching shiners.

I've been thinking about all the places I ever lived and I can't remember that place very well. It was a little bigger than our seminary village apartment years later, our first home as a married couple.

It's all just a journey from place to place. Where are we going anyway? If I were a Baggins though, I'd feel like I was taking contract to a nearly new place up on Bag End, near Bilbo's place for sure. The ball has been in motion for some time. We first looked at a St. Andrews plan last year. We looked at dozens of houses last year. I wrote a contract last month. Today we refinance this place to pull out money to buy the new place next Monday. Then on March 3, we can start moving our things over to the new place. Not that we will do much because it is a busy week at work. But we'll have a key.

I woke up this morning thinking about all the places I've lived in my life. I don't remember some of them very well. I'm going to have to ask my Dad about the first place I lived. Oglethorpe apartments in Chamblee, GA. What was my room like there? Here are the places I have lived.

Oglethorpe Apartments, Chamblee, GA 4.5 yrs
Welbron Drive, Decatur, GA 7 yrs
Cesery Boulevard, Arlington (Jacksonville), FLA 6 mo.
Gaillardia Court, Arlington, FLA 2.5 yrs
Cindy Drive, Decatur, GA 6 mo.
back to Welbron Drive, Decatur, GA 2 yrs.
303 Payne Hall, UGA, Athens, GA 1 yr.
103 Payne Hall, UGA, Athens, GA, 1 yr.
Lipscomb Hall, UGA, Athens, GA, 1 yr.
Sussex Club Apartments, Athens, GA, 1 yr.
S-6 Seminary Village, Louisville, KY, 1 yr.
Colorado State University dorm, Ft. Collins, CO, summer
S-8 Seminary Village, Louisville, Ky, 1.6 yrs.
Guest house on the Forrest Baum farm, Battlefield Blvd, Chesapeake, VA 1.5 yrs
Buxton Drive, Ablemarle Acres, Chesapeake, VA 5 yrs.
Ponce de Leon Place, Decatur, GA 6 mo.
Lakeshore Drive, Avondale Estates, GA 15 yrs.
Cobblestone Cove, Sharpsburg, GA 7 yrs.
and next week:
Collierstown Way, Peachtree City, GA

I wonder how many more addresses I will have? Several? or is this the last one? I don't think I'd be too disappointed if this was the last one, but who can predict the future?

I watched Garrison Keillor's 30th Anniversary Prairie Home Companion on DVD. What a magnificent sense of producing a show he has. And he does it live. No chances to go back. Most people watching miss the production aspects. Every detail has to be worked out prior to performance. The location of every instrument, headsets, charts, texts, stands, seating and standing arrangements, microphones, set dressing, and on and on. People have to know when to move so they are in the right place at the right time. Sound men are turning microphones on and off and balancing them up and down, light cues change the lighting. There are no mistakes so there is an exquisitely made plan. No time is lost. Each piece becomes the next. And at the end of two hours it is over. Keillor does it every week. It's a big job for a lot of people.

Well pooh! I guess I've caught a second cold for the winter. That seems like one more than my quota. Not too bad so far, but annoying. And just in time for my "winter break." We have 9 days off, except for music teachers who have to travel to Savannah, in some cases (like me) with 24 students in tow for All-State Chorus. I like All-State less as the years go by. Then the next week I have my own version of a grand chorus with my own students doing a choral workshop with outside conductors. It will be an eye-opener for the parents, a grand event.

Our house is back on the market and showing some: 6 times in about 2 weeks. You would think we'd get some offers before long. It would save me some money if we did. The new house closes on Feb. 28, at which point I'll own way too much real estate. February has been cold. Not brutal, but no one likes going out to get the paper and it being 24 or 39 even. And cold and rainy is especially annoying.

Thanks to Sarah for the advice on saving blogs from extinction. I guess I'll do that from now on.

Had an ego building conversation with a colleague last evening. (Like I needed an ego boost, I know). I don't really know him, but he was calling me for the second time (I hadn't returned his call, oops!) to talk about my girls. He has a great choir himself, nationally recognized in a couple of ways this year alone, and I must say he is more highly recognized than we have been. Nevertheless, after hearing my girls, he told me, he went home and told his choir that he had just heard another high school chorus in Georgia and he hoped he never had to share a stage with them (because his choir would be humiliated). Truthfully, that just ain't so. His students are good. But that was a very gracious compliment for the work we do at our place. We haven't ever really had a conversation before, but plan to sit down and talk next weekend at all-state. It is nice to have a nationally recognized conductor say that you a great choir. I should try to remember that next time I'm mad about something. Dr. Snow did say during the conference, "You know they just look like little girls, but they are monsters."

I've been doing auditions for next year. They come in with fear and trembling. Some are able to summon up courage for heroic efforts though. I have heard some good ones, a number that will go on to A choirs next year, but today I heard a total surprise, a full-throated, open and dynamic soprano voice in a little wide-eyed ninth grader. It will be the best voice I hear this year in any grade and I didn't even know she was the one driving that end of the room with sound. She'll be "the" soloist in her age group all the rest of the way through. I heard her at the beginning of the year and she didn't make any kind of sound that I can remember. She has figured it out though. A star is born. And no one knows it but me.

Can you believe this planted whitehouse reporter scandal? There is nothing to which the current whitehouse will not stoop to spread their loathsome evil. Maureen Dowd of the NY Times says "Someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem, and internet pictures where he posed like 'Barberini Faun' is credentialed to cover a whitehouse that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values." "What kind of secret service background check did James Guckert get so he could saunter into the west wing everyday under an assumed name, while he was doing full frontal advertising for stud services for twelve hundred dollars a weekend."

When do we hold them accountable?

Even more mysteriously, now that I've published my blog from the 12th, the lost blog has re-appeared from the mist of the 9th. Where has it been for 3 days?

Blogging can be frustrating. I wrote a long blog about my Los Angeles trip only to have it vanish into the internet fog when I pushed the button to publish. It is hard to get the enthusiasm to publish it a second time so several days have elapsed.

We had a fine trip to Los Angeles. Our clinicians were reasonable, charming, and had a grip on their material. The girls sang their shoes off and audiences were gracious and wondering at their sound. A wise fellow came up and said, "How many of those girls take private lessons?" Of course in a way they all take from me. But I actually had taught 23 of the 45 privately.

Los Angeles is a "Starwars" - like environment, with everything from space age buildings, trees, plants and flowers, to actual storm troopers walking around on the street. Movie magic everywhere. We kept riding by movies being shot over here and over there. The back lot at Universal was very interesting. The weather was charming except for one day that was cool. And most amazingly, my sinuses cleared up while we were out there. Upon return however, sinus problems were back in a day. Ugh.

I took lots of photos. I've got to figure out how to post photos on the blog or somewhere. We heard some fine choirs from other places. I heard from other conventioneers that the venues were too spread out and you spent your time racing from place to place, or walking a million blocks if you missed the bus. My chaperones were stellar and took care of details in the best fashion ever. So I got time to go to my room at night and rest. Next year's choir trip is to New York City and people are getting excited about it already. Probably take about 100 next time.

I have to talk about Los Angeles plant life. Such Palm trees. So tall, so old, so beautiful. Nothing like Florida. Florida has pygmy palms. And the bird of paradise flowers in L.A. are amazing. There were trees along the ways that were laden with red flowers, that I never was introduced to. And Ficus trees with smooth white trunks and leafy green canopies were everywhere. Beverly Hills only allows one particular tree per each street, so when you look down her avenues every tree is the same, until the next street where every tree is the same but different from the last street.

The beach at Santa Monica was amazing. So much sand. Easily 200 yards or more from the beach road to the water. Sand, sand, sand. And the mountains and cliffs running out into the sea on the northside. What a vista. No wonder everyone wants to live there. And when Sissy and I were out wading in the water on a Monday morning in February (it was over 70 degrees on the beach), it seemed that we had the whole place to ourselves. Okay there were 10 other people out there on a beach that could easily handle 100,000.

And it takes only a morning to get back and forth. What would Lewis and Clark say?

Los Angeles, California is certainly a lot different from Atlanta, Georgia. The buildings were more "modern" in style. The trees and shrubs were amazing. Ficus trees, giant palms, flowering trees, and on and on. Some of the people were noticable too. Bums, lots of bums, but not on Rodeo drive. Bums at the beach by the boo coo.

Never seen a beach like the Santa Monica beach. You could have a party for your 100,000 closest friends on that public beach and it wouldn't be crowded. And the mountains riding right into the ocean. Isn't that something?

The food was good, fruits and juices were terrific. There were a lot of Spanish people and about as many Japanese. I thought there were about 25% caucasians at the amusement park.

My girls sing like angels.