Cloud pee, summer strawberries, and high school band concerts

If the weather forecast is correct, this morning will be the last top-down blue-sky drive for a while. NOAA's iPad weather app tells me that today's blue skies will give way to clouds that bring a 50-60% chance of rain by mid-day. Thirty percent chance of cloud pee tomorrow, then several days of sun/cloud/maybe a little rain here and there.

The moon continues to intrigue me.  For the past three days it has been very prominent on my drive in.  But each day has seen it shrink in visible size (not by crescent slices so much as just appearing farther and smaller each day) and I find it located much higher in the sky (at roughly the same time of day) with each passing day. I don't think I've previously noticed just how much movement there is day to day. I know this has to do with the fact the earth rotates (eastward) faster than the moon, causing the moon to appear to shift west over time, and there is the elliptic nature of the orbit, apogee, perigee, aspect, and a number of other factors that make my head spin (probably elliptically, in the other sense of the word), but laying those facts over the sky dome doesn't click for me in terms of what I see in the morning sky.

For better or worse, the iPod cares not a whit for these fascinating ponderables. It served up a nice little mix of tunes today, with a lot of variety in terms of tempo, sound, and style. I can't recall the last time I heard I'll Play For You" but for whatever reason it always takes me back to summer picking strawberries, one of my first summer jobs. I didn't like that job, but can still recall the long school bus rides out to the berry fields, the hot stooping work, the dust, the smell of warm ripe strawberries, and the AM-band soundtrack coming from a handful of transistor radios a few kids would bring with them each day. Seals & Croft must have been part of that soundtrack.

The last tune is from an award-winning local high school band that a colleague's son has played in (heading off to university this year). A great band program that produces consistently professional results.  Melissa and I have enjoyed attending the concerts and events, and I wonder if we will continue now that the colleague's son has graduated.  Life, like the moon, does pass through its phases and each day finds us in a slightly different spot. I haven't picked summer strawberries for pocket money in many years, and now maybe I won't go to high school band concerts.  Well, maybe just the winter Ellington Nutcracker concert.  Good stuff.

• Common Market: Spits
• Seals & Croft: I'll Play For You
• Bill Frisell: My Man's Gone Now
• Big Head Todd & the Monsters: Cruel Fate
• The Roosevelt Jazz Band: Fantazm