The Sounds of Summer

Downstairs, my two boys are playing a video game. One of them is supposed to be cleaning the bathroom, but I will get to him in a moment. In our bedroom (as we call it; it's really the attic until we have the time and money to finish it), my old record player is playing the "Best of Eddie Cantor" album, transferring the music to my tiny little audio recorder so that, eventually, I can enjoy this, and many other albums I have as vinyl records, on my iPod.

I actually started this process on a day a couple of months ago, but it sounded horrible. I discovered that the record player's stylus was bent at an odd angle, distorting the music from the turntable. I tried to fix it, and it snapped. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a stylus for a JC Penney-branded turntable that's at least 35 years old? I finally got it (thank you, Amazon.com) when I was too busy to use it. Now I'm enjoying listening to my favorite old music while it digitizes itself.

Outside I hear the sounds of traffic on wet pavement. We don't get a lot of cars along our little road most of the time, but this is a holiday weekend and we live close to America's Oldest Resort, Wolfeboro, and so this weekend we have a lot of visitors in town.

The boys saw their first professional baseball game during the last week of my employment. William won free tickets to a New Hampshire Fisher Cats game. I think I enjoyed the game more than the boys; I haven't seen a pro game since we left LA.

Some of the activities we had planned for the boys this summer have gotten off to a slow start because my job lasted longer than I expected it to. We are working on a couple of cookbooks, one by each boy. We're going to try out self-publishing the new-fashioned way, with Print-On-Demand publishing. That means that it costs us nothing up front to publish the book; a book is printed only when it is ordered. The printer/binder keeps a portion, and sends the rest to us. Who know, maybe if the boys come up with something good, they can put themselves through college.

The boys also expressed interest in making movies. Of course, everything they come up with is an effects-laden spectacular, so we'll see if they come up with anything I can actually shoot. Meanwhile, to give them a little taste, Dad came up with a quick little scene and shot it in the back yard. With a few Photoshop effects, the boys did a little magic. Once I get the soundtrack done, the video will show up on YouTube.

Karen and the boys also have a lot of gardening going. We're trying to keep the slugs away from out wild strawberries which have, well, gone wild. And the boys each plated a giant pumpkin seed taken from a giant pumpkin at the Keene Pumpkin Festival last October. We don't know if the huge seed will produce huge fruit, but the plants are certainly starting out big!

Of course, there is summer reading. William reads regularly. We have to push Danny a little, but once he gets started he enjoys it. And there's also math practice; the schools have subscribed to an online program called IXL that seems to make the practice enjoyable. How effective it will be at helping them retain what they've learned over the summer remains to be seen.

I have my own summer projects. One, of course, is play. I'm directing John Cariani's Almost Maine, a quirky little set of vignettes that I've very much fallen in love with, which is only appropriate because the play is about love. As soon as we close that one, I'm appearing in Little Shop of Horrors. I'm just one of the skid-row bums, but I'm glad to be any part of it, since it was authored by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, whose work on The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast at DIsney contributed so much to the success of Karen's early career at Disney.

I'm also working on a movie, even quirkier than Cariani's play, a short called I Dream In Color. I'm planning to shoot during this month (have to before the end of the summer because one of my cast members is going back to college), but I don't know if it will get through post until after the boys are back in school.

So, lots to say about what's coming. Next I need to talk a bit about what's already been. WIth pictures.

Until then....