Harrison Bay & Vespers

This afternoon us three Q. kids were invited to Harrison Bay for a potluck supper. We'd never been there before and thought it was an awesome place. We took a bunch of pictures, walked on fallen-down trees, participated in double-high kendo fighting, got muddy feet walking by the shore and swam (well Ty and his friend Josh swam while Bryn, Jonathan and I watched since we had to be on stage with orchestra at vespers). The only bad thing about the outing was that we had to leave earlier than we wanted to since orchestra played for alumni vespers. I wish we could have stayed out there a lot longer, but if we had I wouldn't have been able to tell you the next story.

The most amusing part of playing for vespers tonight was offering. We were only supposed to play for prelude, song service, special music and postlude, but all of a sudden just after offering was announced, Mrs. Minner jumped to her conductor's stand and whispered frantically, "we're doing the third movement for offertory!" We all immediately started rearranging our music and then we were off. Except for that the woodwinds and brass started playing the second movement with so much gusto that I was all of a sudden convinced that Mrs. Minner had really said for us to play the second movement. Then I saw Mrs. Minner's quite astonished face and realized that she was just as confused as I was. The flautists saw her face too and faltered for a few seconds. Then Mrs. Minner motioned and mouthed for them to just keep playing and we carried on normally and finished in fine form. I just thought that was totally hilarious. (Ammendment: Now that I've written that whole thing, I'm not quite sure it's all true. It is true to the best of my knowledge, but no one else in orchestra that I've talked to so far remembers the senario quite that way. My sister said that Mrs. Minner did in fact say we should play the second movement, but the flutes faltering happened because they did the first repeat even though Mrs. Minner had whispered "no repeats" just before she started conducting. Bryn said she thought Mrs. Minner made the astonished face because of the unexpected repeat. So now I'm not sure what's actually correct and factual although I feel like my story is much more interesting. So therefore, I give you leeway to believe whatever you wish about this whole paragraph.)

Now onto my last story. Jonathan was going to give Tim and I rides home after vespers, but Tim wouldn't come out of the church. Finally Jonathan went in to find him and we drove off. As we were driving through campus Tim told us that while he was talking inside the church to some other orchestra members, this old man with a really distinctive deep voice walked by and stopped to put his hand on Tim's shoulder and say "thank-you for that lovely music." Tim responded with a "you're welcome" or a "glad you liked it" or something like that. Tim said he recognized the man's voice, but couldn't quite place where, why or how he recognized it. Then one of the orchestra/community members Tim had been talking with said "Hi, Uncle Dan." Turns out that was THE Uncle Dan. Like the Uncle Dan from Uncle Dan and Aunt Sue's Your Story Hour. You should have heard the racket I made when Tim told us that. I was soooo extremely jealous. We almost turned around and went back just to see if we could find and talk to Uncle Dan, but then we realized that (1) he'd probably already left and (2) we'd mostly likely just come off as complete lunatics. Anyway, just wanted you to know that you should keep an eye out for Uncle Dan hanging out around campus this alumni weekend. I know I'm going to. I should probably make sure to have paper and a pen on my person at all times too so I can get his autograph if I do run into him.