Answer (or How I Spent My Day)

And how did I spend my day with an extra hour? Well, I know you didn’t ask, but hey, let me tell you anyway. After all, it shouldn’t take you more than a couple of minutes to read and you’ll still have 58 free minutes!

1.     Woke up at 6, which was now really 5. Morning routine finished by 6—the new time.

Things were looking promising.

2.     Ye ole e-mail and computer work, with fresh morning energy, got a lot done by 7:30 including getting the new Summer Orff brochure up and running on the Website—and the day was still young!

3.  Went to Trader Joes at 8:00 am, the new time, right when it opened. For the first time

     ever, drove straight into the parking lot without waiting. But surprisingly, the lot was

     just about filled. I guess others had the same idea.

4.     Couldn’t find something in its usual spot, so asked a store worker. She looked at me   

funny for a moment and then said, “You know, I went to The San Francisco School.”

It was a student, Cat (as in Catherine) who I taught 14-years ago. But indeed, I did recognize her and exclaimed, “Cat! Of course I remember you!” I asked if she still kept in touch with some classmates and she said, “Mostly Nora.”

5.     Finished shopping, quickly unpacked, hopped on my bike and rode to the Legion of

Honor to see the Klimt/ Rodin exhibit with my wife and nephew. Went up to the Membership Desk to get tickets and the person who served us was…Nora!!! I kid you not.

6.     Walking out of the exhibit, I bumped into two other SF School alum parents, whose

older son was in the same class as… you guessed it. Cat and Nora. What’s going on here?!!!

7.     On to Green Apple books to continue a lifetime of browsing that has so often rewarded

me with serendipitous moments. And did so again. My life can be summarized as:

a)     Problem  b) Incubation  c) A-ha!!!

My Problem was that now that Halloween was finished and the Orff Conference is this week, the music department needs to turn its sights to our annual December Holiday Plays. But as of now, we neither had a theme nor a story in mind.

So this dilemma was incubating inside of me and needed a kick-start by a browse through the bookstore. And “A-ha!!!”—there it was, the Emerald City at the end of my yellow brick road—The Wizard of Oz!!! We’ve done the Odyssesy, Demeter and Persephone, The Ramayana, Sundiata, Don Quixote, The Christmas Carol, Alice in Wonderland and other classic tales. But never the Wizard of Oz.

8.     Back home to a few hours of glorious piano, memorizing jazz tunes, discovering

intriguing new ones —Comes Love; Count Every Star; Applecore and others. One of those rare, precious times when the music just rolls off the fingers, a good time to fly through a few Bach Partitas and fill the air with such glorious sound.

9.     Dark by 5:30, but still a latish dinner and a 8:15, ready to treat myself to the second

season of The Good Wife.

It has been a fine, fine day and I believe that extra hour was both savored and useful.

Tomorrow, back to a mere 24 hours.