Steve's Music This Week

I like music, too. Lately I've been listening a lot to Morton Feldman, Olivier Messiaen, and Johannes Ockeghem. The first clip is the end of Feldman's "Rothko Chapel," composed in 1971 to honor the chapel decorated by the artist Mark Rothko (the video shows some of Rothko's paintings). It is beautiful and elegaic.
The second clip is from Messiaen's final work, "Illuminations of the Beyond (Eclairs sur l'au d'ela)," which he composed shortly before his death in 1992. Messiaen was obsessed with birds as spontaneous singers of God's praise, and this work contains some of his signature bird-music. This performance is conducted by the impeccably-permed Sir Simon Rattle. Messiaen is one of my very favorite musicians.
The third clip is Ockeghem's "Deo gratias," a radiant choral work from the 15th century. I love the way it builds up slowly, like a sunrise.

Favorite Songs of Late

Not sure if anyone's interested. But here are three songs that I've been loving lately. I've been doing lots of driving lately, to airports, funeral, airports again, weddings, home again home again jiggety jog.

This music has kept me alive and awake.

My dance happy song, Ben Folds featuring Regina Spektor, You Don't Know Me:


My Zen (Eliza likes to sing along with the beginning) song Radiohead's House of Cards:


My depressing, grieving song, Beck's Guess I'm Doing Fine:

Wedding Showcase

My Uncle, Cape was married to Mary Mac this weekend. It was hands down the most gorgeous wedding I've ever attended. Great food, great family, great glamour, great dancing, and great funny drunk people. Oh, and some famous people too. But this ain't no US weekly and I'm no name dropper (but Steve is apparently), so I'll stick to my favorite part of it all which was the cake and family!

The gorgeous couple
Mom and the sisters! We missed Robby. And Dad's really good at evading pictures. (and here's a fun shot for anyone who was wondering if Katy really was pregnant)

My Mom and me.

My sisters, Kate and Abby.Mom's younger sister, Merrilee, Katy, me, Mom, and Abby.

Gorgeous Abigail Rose!

Steve and Dad conferring over how the tuxes worked or didn't work.

We thought Steve looked like the guy from Story Teller Theater

Pre-Wedding:

Kind of a Ride

Eliza and I (Steve) had a lovely trip last week. After a seemingly endless plane ride during the course of which Eliza jogged ~2 miles up and down the aisle, we arrived in my homeland of Utah. I still remembered the language for the most part, though the dry climate no longer agreed with me, which came as a surprise. It was wonderful to relax after a hectic couple of months at work, and to bask in the golden glow of doing nothing, like a tortilla fragment soaking at the bottom of a salsa bowl.

It's nice to be able to spread the magic of Eliza Mae into others' lives. She got to visit with lots of friends and family and explain to them precisely what it is that monsters say. She loved spending time with her Grandma and Grandpa, or "gaga" and "gaga" as she affectionately termed them. Eliza showed Grandma what heads are

and Grandma showed Eliza how to put things on them.
And together they learned of the customs of the noble Houyhnhnms.
Meanwhile Eliza let Grandpa audition for her band
and Grandpa was unable to pin Eliza in an intense, prolonged, multiple-day wrestling match.


She also got to meet some great-grandparents for the first time.
Don't worry; Eliza isn't punching Great-Grandpa in the face--she's just giving him an M&M!
Great-Grandma gets one too.
Eliza loved reading with her Great-Grandparents.
Eliza also got to see her Uncle Robby, a good uncle, a good friend and a good brother-in-law. It was fun to hang out with him.
We also got to meet Davey's girlfriend, Bianca. She at first refused to believe in Eliza's existence, but then there was a Christmas miracle and Eliza was awake when Bianca came over, and Bianca was forced to believe in the truth of her own senses. Eliza and I both liked and believed in Bianca.
I got to see one of my best friends--my cousin Ryan. We haven't seen much of each other for the last couple of years, but we both remembered how to string together a series of nonsensical words to make something like a sentence. We watched some of the brilliant films we made when we were kids, an experience as hilarious as it was horrifying.
We got to visit with some of our other friends, too--Norma and Brian, who were our friends in Charlottesville before they they moved to Provo. Now they are our friends in Provo.
Eliza also got to see some of her friends from the prehistoric past, including the infamous "Bambiraptor" (or "Raptor named Bambi" as the marquee helpfully explained). Eliza loved running around the dinosaur museum like a shrieking Gallimimus and also made some important discoveries involving the development of the maxillary bone while brushing at fossils in the Badlands sandbox.

Eliza almost got devoured by a giant shark, but it turned out to be a fake.

We attended a shindig at the pumpkin patch which involved a jolly hayride, a friendly horse (previously pictured), geological surveying, cozy nestling, and some Olympic-level pumpkin lifting.


As soon as we arrived at the patch, Eliza ran about two-thirds of the way across the field until she found her perfect pumpkin. She attempted to lift it, grunting with heroic effort.
I like her biceps in this one:
All in all, it was a very satisfying vacation.
Even more satisfying than eating a lemon.

I'm in love with a girl

Steve and Eliza returned safely from Utah yesterday evening. Eliza was really really really exhausted, and really didn't like being stuck in her car seat the extra 3 hours it took us to get home from DC last night when, umm, the driver that wasn't me, decided to take an inadvertent tour of DC and Alexandria, the Regan Airport, 495, the view of the Capitol building across the bay, and Kate and Aaron's apartment (but they weren't home). I didn't appreciate it too much either. I hate getting lost.

Life is kinda hard right now. Or really hard, but I guess that's where the phrase, "That's life for ya!" comes from.

When we give our clients medications for pain or anxiety, we have them rate their pain on a scale of 1-10. One being not bad and 10 being like the worst ever. I think I'd have to rate my pain right now at a 6. But that's only because I'm in good physical health. I even ran a mile in under 8 minutes this morning for part of my workout. I needed the endorphins...

Steve did get some great pictures of his and Eliza's trip to Utah. I asked him to report on the trip on here since he knows what went down. It sounds like they had a REALLY fantastic time seeing grandparents, parents, brothers, cousins, and friends. Thanks to everyone who made their trip such a blast!

It was funny for me to not have Steve and Eliza around for a whole like 6 days. But since two of those days involved me traveling to and from a funeral and burying my best friend, I had less time to sit around and think about how much I missed them.

The other days I mostly spent getting Acudetox certified at work. I now am trained to administer Auricular Accupuncture for our clients during groups. Now I just need to conduct 40 accupuncture groups to fulfill my clinical hours. I'm really excited and proud of my new skill. The class was fascinating. Hopefully I can do another post explaining Acudetox later.

Eliza is my silver lining, though. It's amazing how resilient she is. How she just hops right back into our routine. I'm excited to be back on schedule with my baby buddy. Tonight on my dinner break from work, I let Eliza out of her car seat, and she took off down the street! She made a bee-line for the trail down to the park, so I grabbed a jacket and followed her down while Steve went in to work on dinner.

In the light of the setting sun, Eliza and I headed out on our adventure that quickly became a pine cone scavenger hunt. Eliza ran just about the whole way to the playground, only looking back to hand me pine cones. She then had a blast throwing her pine cones down the slide one by one and then sliding down after then. She is hilarious.

When we came back inside, Eliza was bopping around with Steve and me in the kitchen and saw my work badge hanging off the bottom of my shirt. She reached up for it and looked at my picture on it and then went up on her tippy toes and gave my picture a kiss. And then gave it like 5 more kisses. I'm in love with that girl.