Well, this has been an amazingly wonderful weekend . . .

It started out perfectly on Friday night when Diane and I and some of our book club friends went out to see the Paul Taylor dancers in town here at the Power Center. For one thing, I got to ride my bike there and back - a rare and not unappreciated treat.

And the dancers themselves were really wonderful. They did three dances, the first of which was Corelli interspersed with some highly syncopated modern thing, in very abrupt fashion. You'd get about eight bars of Corelli and then a bunch of drums and sticks and things. The women were wearing these sort of pastel gowns . . . they fit tight through the bodice and had full skirts, like some sort of LL Bean Weekend Dress, or something. The men were in tuxedos. Oh - and then, about halfway through, a couple of women appeared with these weird headdresses composed of mirrors of various shapes (oval or rectangular - and one was spherical). Dunno what that was all about, but it was a nice effect.

It was mostly the men dancing during the syncopated bits, and they did lots of amazing stuff - climbing on each other's backs upside down, and such like that . . . quite a weird tangle of bodies at points; you couldn't tell which parts belonged to which person. I really liked that piece.

The second piece seemed to be a tribute to love . . . the women stayed in the same dresses and the men changed into pastel-colored pants and shirts with suspenders, looking like they'd stepped out of Oklahoma! or Our Town . . . There was a dreamy forest scene on the scrim at the back of the stage, and the music was by Vaughn Williams . . . who I know some of you like a lot . . . but I find him, well, a tad on the dreamy end for my tastes.

The third dance was called Prometheus, and was set to a Bach organ piece whose number eludes me - Toccata and Fugue in ?? - but it's extremely famous. Very dark and gothic; the opening bars are very dramatic. (Somebody take some guesses. I'll recognize it if I "hear" it.) The dancers were wearing black body suits, with red, shiny piping wound around them like a loosely-bound cord . . . hard to describe, but very effective. I don't remember many of the details of this dance, but I liked it.

So that was a wonderful bit of entertainment, followed by dinner at Zanzibar, where I was feted with a chocolate mousse birthday creation, and a round of "Happy Birthday" . . . very nice indeed!

And we got the kids' report cards this weekend. They've both brought home better grades this first five weeks than they ever have before in high school. We're still not talking stellar - what I mean, here, is that Charlie's only flunking one class at this point - but nonetheless, he also has his first A in a non-gym class, and his report card was sprinkled with "a pleasure to have in class" comments, which is what I really like to see . . . And same with Em. Her lowest grade was a C+, which she assured us would rise when she made up a test. She's really catching fire. Some of her friends have gone to college, and she is really starting to think about what she wants to do. So far, she wants to go out east looking for schools . . . yikes. This could get expensive! We're planning a road trip for next summer - we're going to work our way out to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and back (undoubtedly via Fredericton and Montreal and Toronto, so I can catch up with lots of friends . . . )

Yesterday Kathy and Richard came over and we had a wonderful time. I got to show Richard my new keyboard for my phone/PDA. He was suitably impressed . . . Kathy has this idea that we should buy a timeshare down in the area of North Carolina where Jackie's family lived; while she was sick, Jackie mentioned to both Kathy and me that she really regretted not buying property down there when she wanted to in the early 70s - she wished that we'd had a place all to go on vacation together.

So Kathy saw a timeshare in that area on eBay for less than a thousand dollars, and asked us yesterday if we wanted to split the cost, which we thought sounded like a good idea. Unhappily, we missed the end of that auction, but we're going to keep looking. It occurred to me that in a few years, neither they nor we will have kids at home, and it would actually be possible for us to spend a week together at a place like that. And, it started to sound like it might be fun, too. That was a very nice feeling.

And today I had a Pedal Across Lower Michigan board meeting. I really like that group of people, and it's fun to carpool to the meeting (in Lansing, ironically enough) with the other Ann Arborites. It's pleasant to think ahead to next summer, when we'll be riding PALM again . . .

And I found out that I will be accepted to CIWIC - Computers in Writing-Intensive Classrooms, a two-week seminar held by my friends Dickie and Cindy Selfe at Michigan Tech during the first two weeks in June. So I'll be in the north country for a while this summer . . . (smack in the middle of black fly season, one of the PALM people reminded me today . . . ) Nonetheless, I have warned Dickie that I am bringing my mountain bike.

So basically, it's not even the middle of October yet and already I've planned trips for five weeks of the summer next year . . . :) (Now this is why I got a PhD!!)

All in all, it's hard to imagine how things could get much better . . .