Had a nice morning. It was a lovely early fall day. As a friend said to me today, "I took a walk - and it smelled like summer- and it smelled like fall!"
Since it was so gorgeous, we ate breakfast out on the deck this morning. And we had to open up some windows because inside the house was colder than it was outside the house!
And then I had to go to work. But no day can be perfect.
Had a nice day and evening today. Spent the day with the kids. We made plans to go down to Ball State University for the weekend of my birthday. We might even see a football game while we're down there and go to a tailgate, courtesy of the admissions office. While we're down there, we might also visit the campus of Purdue.
Then I spent a very pleasant evening in the company of Dan. We went out to eat at a very nice sea food restaurant called the Gandy Dancer, went to hear the great Sonny Rollins play a concert at the acoustically perfect Hill Auditorium, then soaked for an hour at the hot tub gardens.
The Sonny Rollins concert was interesting. He was showing every one of his 75 years and then some. He has a slender man, with a bit if a hunch, and a white beard. He seemed either reserved or perhaps shy. Often he played with his back to the audience. Sometimes when he played he was completely hunchbacked. He reminded me of the Southwestern god Kokopelli (other than Rollins playing a saxophone rather than a flute). His quintet consisted of very talented musicians, and he was often content to let them play while he got a bit of rest. So there was this little old man -- and when he played he was breathtaking in his power and talent! Holy cow! 
The amazement begins when you open up the CD jewel case. There is a reproduction of the playbill for a concert:
Friday Evening November 29
8:30PM and Midnight
At Carnegie Hall for the Morningside Community Center
Thanksgiving Jazz
Miss Billie Holliday
Dizzy Gillespie with orchestra with Austin Cromer
Special Attraction: Ray Charles
Chet Baker with Zoot Sims Quartet
Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane
Introducing in Concert the brilliant Sonny Rollins
The tickets were only $2, $3, $3.50, and $3.95 and were tax exempt because the concert was a benefit for charity!
In 1957, the great Johnny Coltrane was fired from the Miles Davis quintet because of his substance abuse problems. In response to that, he fought and managed to win his way free from the twin demons of alcohol and heroin addiction. He was given another chance by the great jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. In the few months that he worked in Monk's quartet during that year, Coltrane had to learn how to play Monk's challenging music with Monk. Coltrane learned how to fly via the power and passion of his own music, and through his new-found love for God. It was to be the turning point of both his life and his music.
The music itself was long considered to be lost -- until earlier this year when someone found the tape of a charity concert where Monk and Coltrane performed in a quartet together in an unmarked box at the Library of Congress. It was immediately recognized for being a priceless treasure, and the next few months it was prepared for release as a CD.
The result is breathtaking. Monk, playing on the concert grand at Carnegie Hall, gave a performance filled with fire and joy. He and Coltrane traded off solos and pushed each other into the stratosphere. And in Coltrane, you hear a man who has found his way to freedom - a man who has learnt that no matter how much you might have previously messed up your life -- you can still come back from any sort of hell and learn how to soar across the sky to the music of the angels.
The sheer joy and energy and exuberance of this music made me cry the first time I listened to it this afternoon.
Believe any and all hype you might hear from your jazz fan friends. This is the real deal. This is an immediate classic.
Last night it was really rainy. Today it is clear as a bell, just absolutely gorgeous. But it's pretty chilly. I opened the windows for the cats a few minutes ago, and I am already ready to make some hot chocolate or hot cider and put on a sweater or a hoodie. 
Still no word on being deployed. Maybe I can relax a bit and make some plans for the long weekends I will have off of work in the next two months. Bill does need to visit some college campuses, and if we could squeeze in a couple of campus visits in those long weekends, that would be great. Obviously, he won't need visits to the universities he's applying to which are within ten miles of home, but one of the ones he's interested in (because of its architecture school) is down in Indiana, and that one if definately worth a visit. So I will probably sit down and try to figure that out this Saturday. I think there's a nice state park in Indiana, just under the Michigan border with a lodge to stay at, and that might be a great place to stay, given the leaves will be at peak color.
Tomorrow is supposed to be as glorious a day as today. I should be able to plant lots of bulbs and fall flowers. 
The week is moving on. Three nights down, two to go. Tonight was better than last night, though we were short shifted on both. Last night I was feeling pretty tired out (at one point when walking down the hall at work I actually nearly fell down because I hadn't lifted one of my feet while walking! ). Today my cold seemed to be a bit better, and I wasn't as bone-jarringly exhausted tonight.
Sometimes other people freak me out. Last night someone was commenting on my nasty wheezy cough, and this guy I've worked with for about ten years told the commentor that "Yeah. She gets sick like this every year in March, in September, and at the Holidays." After thinking a few minutes, I realized he was right. But I thought it was very weird that someone who isn't even a family member knows my health history better than I do!
Am looking forward to the weekend. Hopefully I will even be healthy! 
Meh. Sill fighting the stupid cold. Will be glad when it is gone.
Talked to the one of the cops who went to New Orleans last night, and also to a lady whose husband has been down in Louisiana and Mississippi since Katrina hit, and will probably be down there for about two more months. He is a lineman for the big electric company in Detroit, and they sent down a lot of people and equipment to help get the power grid back up and running. Some amazing stories. The suffering of both people and their pets (the lineman has spent more time with the stray dogs than the people, since the people have been evacuated from the areas where he's been working) are just heartbreaking.
Watched Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood this morning. It was OK, but the book was way way better (as is usually the case). The book got much more into the intricacies of the tangled love and horror and anger and pain in the three generations of abuse and cruelty. The movie only hints at the cruelty of the grandmother, which so strongly affected the mother and which helped turn her into a abuser herself.
Hurricane Rita looks as if it might not have done as much damage as everyone had worried it might. Thank God. New Orleans is being flooded again, but so few people were there that it will not have the same horrific death toll as Katrina. And no one will be trapped for days in the hells that were the Convention Center and the Superdome. Houses can be rebuilt, but people cannot be replaced in this lifetime. And the citizens of New Orleans have suffered enough for any lifetime.
Had a quiet day at home with Bill. He took a practice college prep test (the ACT) this morning, and I went over the things he answered wrong with him. Dan worked. Steven met his best friend at the library in Ann Arbor and they entered a Nintendo tournament. They had a great time!
Tonight we went to a Detroit Tigers game at Comerica Park.Autumn has definately arrived, and I was worried it would be chilly (since I am still trying to rid myself of the stupid cold), but it was a perfect early fall evening. The Tigers even won!!
I sat by the friend whose father recently passed away from cancer. It was good seeing her, and she seems to be holding up well.
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