He's Baaaack!

Well, not quite yet.  As you can see from my Uter widget on the right, Chuck is flying home tomorrow.  I will be happy to see him, though I'm not sure Lenny will be as thrilled when it's time to go to sleep, and he gets expelled from the "big bed."

Somehow, I don't think Chuck will find Bloomington as exciting as Salzburg.  As hard as that is to imagine...  That's one of his photos he's taken.  If you want to see more, email him for his Salzburg blog address!

You may have noticed that my Nike Plus running widget has been the same for several weeks.  This, unfortunately, is not a computer glitch.  I have forsaken running (and cleaning the house, for that matter) for practicing piccolo. I have had two auditions, and one more coming up on Saturday.  The first one was for the sub list for the Terre Haute Symphony, and I CHOKED!  It was terrible.  I got so nervous and I flubbed my piccolo solo piece (Vivaldi).  I was having a Bad Tone Day - the flute equivalent of a Bad Hair Day.  :)  The excerpts went fine, though.  Chuck's boss was listening behind the screen, and I think that made me nervous.

But I had to play for him again last night, for the Columbus 3rd flute/piccolo audition!  I really got my nerves under control this time, and I played a decent audition.  It certainly wasn't perfect, and there were some things that SHOULD have gone better but didn't.  I don't think it was good enough to win, but I felt like I had redeemed myself from my embarrassingly terrible audition LAST year.  So I am relieved to have that over - I've been working hard for that for about 5 weeks.  And it turns out that I made the sub list for the Terre Haute orchestra, anyway.  (Probably the very last line at the very bottom of the sub list!)

Lenny has been my "coach" the past few weeks.  When I would go over to school at night to practice, he'd sit in the practice room with me and eat his chewy bone, and occasionally chime in with the high notes.  So last night, before I left for Columbus, I patted him on the head and thanked him for being my practice buddy.  In my other hand, I was holding my piccolo, and he leaned over and "kissed" the end of it.  I'm sure it just smelled tasty to him, but at the moment it seemed like a very sweet gesture!

And as you can see, he's been very helpful with the housework while Chuck's been gone.

Lenny Sleeping

New Office

Big news!

Wedding bells will be ringing soon! Congratulations to John and Annie - they are engaged!

Off to the Races

In the spirit of the Games, Chuck and I wore Team Latshaw t-shirts.

As our team captain, Lenny wore his Team Latshaw handkerchief to match us.

We decided to wear them on the first day of competition. The two Russell teams competing that day got extremely intimidated and immediately had to go change their outfits. So everyone came up with matching team t-shirts.

Mom and Dad came up with matching Red Sox shirts.

Gary and Marlene had Washington & Lee football shirts (the team that Scott plays for).


The first event was relay kayak racing. The goal was to paddle out to and around the buoy, back to the dock where you jumped out, your partner jumped in, and did the same trip around the buoy. First team back to the dock won.

Some athletes competed more earnestly than others. (And may I add, some CHEATED and splashed more than others!)

It was a little unclear - this was the "Slow" Olympics, but this was a time-trial kind of race. How would the winner be determined?

Chuck won the honor. In the course of trying to cut to the inside past the buoy, he capsized, and thus proved himself worthy of the gold medal.

If you click on the picture below, you will get a slide-show of some more pictures from the kayak racing day.

Tommy Makem

Dover, New Hampshire's own celebrity, Irish musician Tommy Makem, died this week. He used to go to our church.