Changes

Tonight "Mozart" and "Salieri" are rehearsing their lines in the living room, which they plan to continue doing until they have to go to school for an extra rehearsal in the morning, and Paddy's friend Vedad is supervising. I think Vedad is probably the most patient human being I have ever met.
In the meantime, I'm hiding in the computer room, and since I just switched to the new blog software this evening (not that I had a choice, not that I'm particularly happy about it), this seems like a good time to check that it is working, so ...

Speaking of changes: here are two pictures taken about ten years apart. Notice the differences?



Only in the quality, right?

Busy days ahead

After going through the calendar with the boys the other day and marking fixed dates on both the online calendar and the one hanging on the wall in the hall, and we now have some impressively large blocks coming up.

February: Paddy plays Mozart in the school production of Amadeus, then Paddy turns 15, then we have semester break, but I have not yet been informed of any major traveling plans at that time.

March: Apart from my birthday and Peter's birthday (although I think I might just skip mine this year), Christopher is going to Potsdam as one of the Austrian representatives at the European Youth Parliament. This could be interesting, he just found out that he is expected to wear a suit there. We need to check that his still fits him, and he says he will take Grandpa's Irish tie with him and just make sure it doesn't come untied. Fortunately, one of the girls going too from his school knows how to tie a tie, just in case. And I like to imagine that Grandpa would have been delighted to hear about it.

Christopher returns from Potsdam just in time for Easter break and a little over a week before our exchange student from Bangkok arrives. Less than a week after that I leave for a workshop in Naples for week, during which Patrick will be in Berlin for three days with his class. I trust Christopher will do a good job looking after the exchange student from Bangkok. I return from Naples just in time to for the opening night of The Tempest (on Shakespeare's birthday) with Christopher as Caliban. Then we have a week of film festival in Linz.

May is not looking too full yet. We just have Christopher's birthday and three public holidays. Christopher probably has gigs coming up, but those aren't on any calendars I see yet.

Then in June Patrick goes to Bangkok (not with his class, but with a small group picked from several classes), returning only just in time for the last week of school the beginning of July. And presumably some time in early June, Peter will be in Boston. In addition, for at least part of the time when Patrick is in Bangkok, we are supposed to have at least one, probably two South African exchange students staying with us. Despite the difficult experiences Paddy and his classmates had in South Africa, we were all very happy to hear that the school there is getting organized to be able to send the kids here. I told Paddy to assure his teacher of our full support in looking after them, even though Paddy will be gone most of the time. Christopher is good at looking after people.

As soon as school ends in July, my three men will all be busy with a theater production until the beginning of August (I think), but we are hoping that Daniel and his family might come in late July/early August.

Somehow I have the feeling this year is going to go very, very quickly.

A New Year

As arbitrary as our current time-keeping systems are, the new year is off to a good start for us. I am feeling quite optimistic, as I am convinced that things can only get better.

On New Year's Eve Peter and I celebrated our 20th (!) wedding anniversary. We had a wonderful party with a delightful group of people, but the odd thing was that afterward everyone was convinced that there were ten of us there, when in fact there were only nine people (physically and identifiably) present. Who was the tenth person? Someone was obviously very strongly there with us "in spirit", but we don't know who it was. Trying to guess, though, has pleasantly reminded me of all the wonderful people who have been a part of our life over the past twenty years.

Since Patrick has a new camera and is obviously a much better photographer, I asked him to take a picture of one of our wedding pictures that I dug out in the morning and to attempt to take a reasonable picture of his parents together that evening. That didn't work out, however. He said he might take more pictures of his family, if his family would volunteer to be more interesting, but as it is ...

But he did take a nice picture of the table.




Happy New Year to everyone!