A message from a dream

The alarm on Mr. Valentine’s clock radio starts out quietly and gradually swells in volume. I never hear the alarm at first; it crescendos up to ‘LOUD’ before I hear it.  And then, of course, the radio has to hop over and hit me on the head a few times before I get up.  🙂

The other day, in that grey stretch between the alarm starting and me hearing it, I had a dream in which my laptop flashed the following message:

This message has been flagged as unfair!

Goes to show what my subconscious thinks of alarm clocks!

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month is nearly over, and once again Mr. Valentine is a ‘winner’, with 64,000 words.  Nothing like an external deadline to squeeze those creative juices out a stone.

And Finally, the Dreamy Music

As some of you know, Mr. Valentine moonlights as a symphonic oboist.  I’m one of the few non-waiters you’ll meet who owns a tuxedo.

That’s why, in The Trial of Tompa Lee, aliens give earth the secret to interstellar travel in exchange for a symphony orchestra. Not just any orchestra, either–a group I played with for ten years, the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra.

I recently learned that my current group, the Civic Orchestra of Tucson, is playing Bizet’s Symphony in C in March, 2014.  Cool, cool, cool!

You see, the second movement features a long, spectacularly gorgeous oboe solo that recurs several times during the piece. When you listen to the Adagio below, imagine my face instead of the guy playing the oboe.  (Hint:  I have more hair, but it’s white.)

The famous solo starts at the 1:00 mark and comes back several times. (If you’re unsure what an oboe is, the still picture prefacing the movie shows this orchestra’s oboist.)