I feel the need to mention once again that we're headed for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon tomorrow. This will be our 11th year. We started going when our son was in middle school and we tagged along with a group from his school. After he graduated, we bought a membership and started going on our own.
Ashland is just south of Medford, and just north of the California border on I-5. It's a small, picturesque town whose main industry is the Shakespeare festival, which runs from February to November each year. What's terrific about it, in our estimation, is that you can walk up a street, verge onto a gravel road, and be walking on Forest Service land within a mile and a half. The Pacific Crest Trail winds through the Siskiyou Mountains just outside town, and there are so many hikes in the area that we've extended our visits a little longer each year as we add them to our repertoire.
The last several years, we've also been taking a day to drive over to Crater Lake, which is a real treat, although snowpack around the lake may limit our hiking opportunities.
Oh, yeah. We're also going for the intellectual stimulation of the plays. We're seeing:
Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III
Comedy of Errors
The Visit, by Friedrich Durrenmatt
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
The Royal Family by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber
That's a pretty full week of theater. After seeing the Hanks above, we estimate that we have to see only one more Shakespeare play to "hit for the cycle".
Our plane is at 10:30 tomorrow. I'm PUMPED. More later, from the road.
I believe I wrote my last tuition check today. I've been writing them since 1987, for private elementary, middle and high schools. Now, an intensive summer quarter of Spanish is all my son, my only child, needs to graduate from the University of Washington. As well as he's done since engaging his major (English/creative writing), I don't envision him in graduate school real soon. He hasn't shown, so far, many signs of the "academic personality", preferring action-oriented recreation and employment.
It's not really that much of a fiscal relief - his private high school was much more expensive than the UW - but it will represent a sea change as we begin to disentangle our other financial interdependencies such as health insurance, car insurance and other expenses that I've paid while he's been a student. In this sense, I may be the patient, 22 years behind his mom, of post-partum issues.
Last night I bought an album from iTunes and was transferring it to my Archos Recorder 20 mp3 player when it made a couple of whimpering noises, stopped recording and displayed "HD Register Error". After repeated, unsuccessful attempts to revive it by cycling it on and off, I gave up in despair and decided to try it again in the morning after giving it a full charge.
This morning, after readjusting battery contacts and muttering imprecations I've found to be effective on electronic devices, I was able to coax it to register as a drive on my PC. I've been tiptoeing around since then as I copy its contents to a spare hard drive on the PC. I'd hate like the dickens to have to re-rip all those CDs. I feel like I'm holding an injured bird in my hand, stroking its faltering heart while it whispers its final songs in my ear.
We're leaving for a week-long trip tomorrow, and I'm not sure I can face travel of any kind without my cache of tunes. I usually shop pretty carefully for things, but I can visualize myself walking into Best Buy and making a panic purchase of whatever mp3 player they have on their shelves (probably a Creative Nomad or an iPod, paying a lot more than what I'd pay online, plus sales tax. Maybe I'll just try to string the Archos out for one more trip. Any suggestions?
Perils of Caffeine in the Evening
