Well, it's been quite a week. Started out sorta
hectic and ended up with Ralph Carmichael's fax
number. Long story. Nearly went nuts 
preparing for last Sunday (Easter) with both of 
us being on the "praise team" (band) for the day 
and Kathy cooking stuff for the Easter breakfast 
and cleaning house because several people came 
for Easter dinner. We have been quite busy with 
end-of-school stuff. They had an immunization 
thing at the student health center so Kathy 
worked one evening, then they had blood drawing 
for cholesterol tests and such (faculty, staff, 
students) and she had to be at work by 6:30 AM. 
Also, she's still getting therapy for her 
tendonitis, which has improved some but not 
very much.

I've been working on end-of-term stuff and also
arranging some tunes, staying away from the TV
except for the weather channel. (If you watch
CNN you'd think we lost the war. Depressing.)
Talked to some prospective students, got some
current students kind of put out with me 
(assignments too hard), creating final exams,
trying to get balky software to work both at
home and at school. (At least with hardware you
can beat it into submission!)

For the second time in about as many months, 
a student was taken ill quite suddenly, this
one involving some kind of "scopic" surgery,
and the mother flew in from Washington State,
near Everett. Anyway, the student is out of
the hospital and sort of creeping around 
slowly, with finals and graduation upon us
(she's a senior), and we're putting up her
mom for the week. The rest of the family had
planned on coming for graduation anyway, so
they have motel rooms lined up for next 
weekend, which is good because we have at 
least one family "reserved" for graduation.
Keeps us from getting too set in our ways.
Also, this is why y'all need to let us know
before you come by; we may have a house 
full already.

Anyhow, we took a break and went to hear Ralph
Carmichael & orchestra this afternoon. Kathy
had to sit where she could watch the guy on bass,
of course. She talked to him afterward, and he
told her to talk to the boss, and Ralph himself
will see to it that Kathy gets bass parts for a
couple of their songs on CD. Some of them are
next to impossible, of course, but some of them
she can do. We'll listen first.

Got a coupon book ($20.00 fund raiser for the 
local Christian school) so we took advantage of
it after the concert down at the Great Wall. 
Several restaurant coupons in there. Might get
our money back so to speak if we have folks 
come by and we take them out (hint, hint).

Been having fits with my CD "ripper" software.
Ties up the machine something fierce and quality
is really bad. Think I figured it out; you have
to be on-line while it's running. (That's dumb!)
Anyway, I'm trying to make an MP3 album of about
11 hours of jazz. (MP3 players are all the rage 
lately, in case you hadn't heard.) Even ordered 
some Erroll Garner and Thelonius Monk albums. I'm
not into Napster; I actually pay for the music,
but these reissues of old albums on CD run about
$10.00 or less, cheap, brand new from Amazon.
And Erroll and Thelonius are still my inspiration
(along with Floyd Cramer) for the piano. Dave
Brubeck is in there somewhere.

Kathy turns up the bass on all our jazz albums;
I'm looking into getting a coffee-table sized 
subwoofer for the living room.