Catching up...

Wow... I last blogged over a month and a half ago. Since then, I've done a full run of "Annie Get Your Get Your Gun," which was loads of fun... I discovered that Hastings in Kerrville has a nice new coffee cafe, and was able to not only get myself a quad before every performance, but also hook us up with a stash of Republic of Tea's Good Hope Vanilla Red Tea. That tea is like dessert for me. Yum! I miss my orchestra friends, now that it's over. Looking forward to doing South Pacific this winter.

Immediately following the closing of the show, we went to camp at Highland Lakes camp out in Spicewood. We took 9 students and had a blast. I got sick the very first night and ended up feeling miserable the whole time, but we still had fun. It was a great time of bonding with the students and also a time of refreshing for me. Food wasn't bad, either.

Since then, we've spent the summer being kids... going to Schlitterbahn, Malibu, bowling, and this past Sunday, we had all the students over to our pool for swimming and fish volleyball, which is just basically volleyball with a dead fish instead of a ball. It was hilariously gross, and the kids loved it (the grosser, the better, right?). Pictures will follow.

And so then, last week, David and Punky and I went to South Padre Island for a much needed vacation. It was great, except for the first day. We were all out in the ocean boogieboarding, and I had just caught a fabulous wave and rode it forever, and as I stepped down off of my board, I felt a very sharp jab -- what actually felt like very sharp teeth -- on my ankle. Now, when one feels very sharp teeth on one's ankle in the ocean, one immediately thinks, "Shark!" Yeah. All I knew was that I had to get out of the ocean now. And do you know how hard it is to get out of waist-deep ocean water with a very strong undertow, not knowing how much of your foot is left? And to top things off, I was scrambling to get away from whatever has just bitten me, and I saw 2-3 jellyfish, so I was also dodging them in my quest for freedom. It was like a bizarro version of Super Mario Bros, and I'm Luigi! Anyway, finally making it out of the water, I looked down to see that my ankle was bleeding profusely, and I was in terrible pain, so I just sort of collapsed onto the beach. Fortunately, a lady came up and said, "Oh, yeah, you got stung by a stingray. That happened to me a couple of years ago. It hurts like crap and then you might start having trouble breathing, so we'd better call EMS." So 4 guys carried me (no comments, please, on how many guys it took, okay?) to a chair and then like 8 paramedics, firefighters, policemen, park rangers, national guard, Air Force, Marines, and a few doctors ended up looking at my foot, said they didn't think the barb got stuck, and to go up and soak my foot in very hot water, which neutralizes the poison. Problem was, I couldn't walk, because the poison had paralyzed my foot. So the EMS dudes had to carry me up to my room on a stretcher...... Yeah. I just wanted attention.

Thing is, my foot is still hurting, almost 2 weeks later. But I have become one with the stingray, and now I have stingray powers. Mwahahahahahaha........

Oh, we went to the Schlitterbahn Beach Park while we were there... that was awesome. It's one big lazy river and you float around until you find a ride, and then you just float right onto the ride. Punky was great... he was nervous about the rides, but he was very brave and went on them anyway and had a blast. Oh, and there were 117 people there the whole time we were there, so we essentially had the place to ourselves! Hooray, school!

David got a very cool camera and has been practicing his photography skills, so I will now post all his very cool pictures from our trip and such.

It's good to be back online. I have missed blogging. I have missed our website. I have missed our music. Hooray, music.