Mike Ball

As I said in the last post, we’ve just acquired a house in Southern Oregon. At the moment we have a contractor doing some repairs before we move in. We’re planning on moving sometime during the first couple of weeks in June.

We set out to buy a house in Ashland, which is a small university town famous for its Shakespeare Festival. We’ve visited it often, and last summer we decided to retire there. We looked at quite a few houses in Ashland, which is built along the side of a mountain, but all of the nice houses had lots of stairs, which our bodies don’t like much anymore. Also, They all seemed to be really close together compared to what we’ve become used to. We expanded our search, and found a house on two acres in rolling hills that seem to fit well. It’s also only 5 miles from downtown Ashland, and the trip is a fast one.

I think we are going to like it there. The house has great views, but of a different kind than we found in Ashland. The area is a mix of farming, mostly pear orchards, and residents on bits carved out of farms.

Just a quick note to brag about Andy’s work at UCI, where he’s majoring in music. You can see and hear his end-of-class project online

The November issue of PassageMaker magazine has a very nice article on the Roseate. It even made it onto the cover. If somebody (Charlie?) can get permission from the magazine, I’ll post the article online. Otherwise, I’ll put it on ballfam.net as soon as I get the current bug in my installation worked out so I can make it available to family only.

In the mean time, go buy the magazine, they deserve support.

It’s the end of the year at UC Irvine, and we made a couple of trips up there to see and hear Andy perform. I missed a couple of them when I was in the Bahamas, so I had to go to these, even if one of them seemed awfully short for a lot of driving.

The first was Wednesday night, and was a wind ensemble concert. No pictures, it looked a lot like the other concerts. It sure sounded better than the earlier concerts, though. A year of work made a lot of difference.

The second was Sunday, and we heard two back-to-back concerts by the Campus Band and the Stage Band. Since these had pretty much the same players and conductor, I wasn’t real clear on the distinction. The first half, the Campus Band played show tunes, from the William Tell Overture to selections from The Phantom of the Opera. It was fun, though I’ve never really cared a whole lot about Andrew LLoyd Webber. The second half was the Stage Band with a selection of popular songs from questionable sources. The best was I Wanna Be Like You, which is evidently from the Disney Jungle Book, but didn’t show it. I’d subtitle it “Fun with sound”.

After the concerts we got invited to watch a Clown Show. It seems that one of the upper level drama courses is in clowning, and they were going to show what they had learned. The performances were very short, ranging from very good to nothing much, but the enthusiasm of the performers let them carry off even the weak skits. I wish I’d had the camera for that one, but (see above). All in all, very much worth the travel.

I just got a call from my brother’s house. The whole family (except for those of us unlucky enough to be too far away) went on a trip on our new boat. They went to Egmont Key, which is in the mouth of Tampa Bay, and evidently got a wonderful tour. I really wish I could have been there rather than in Palo Alto. There are a few pictures on our website.