Ketchup n stuph

C & V are here! They got here way earlier than we expected - we got home from lunch, I unlocked the door, and these voices go "Surprise!" Took me a few seconds to catch my breath there. C says "we thought you'd notice the car out front" and I point out that the neighbors *always* park in front of our house, so we're used to ignoring cars there. Probably neighbors are peeved this evening that they have to park in front of their own house. Anyway, tomorrow we're going to the Aquarium. And Camden Yards, I am given to understand.

Bel Air band rehearsal was Monday evening for the 4th of July parade. On our way to rehearsal, there were a couple of bikes taking an exit ramp. The rider in front was waving his arm over his head vigourously, pointing to the right. Since they were already in a right exit only lane, I figured that was a bit more than needed. However, as they were going around the cloverleaf ramp to the right, the guy in front stuck out his left leg, straight sideways, and waggled his foot. And that's when we understood. He wasn't giving signals to the rider behind him. He was listening to the Hokey Pokey on his helmet stereo.

When I got my bari sax back from the shop, the octave key and the G# key were indeed fixed - but now every time I play an E (top space in treble clef E), it squeals like a dying parakeet. I can work around that in the 4th of July stuff, but then it's back to the shop. There are no dying parakeet parts written in most band music.

I have two more chapters of rodent fiction in my head; you are forewarned.

Rodent fiction

Jikka frequently sent notes to her "Uncle Keek'k." If someone had told him 10 years ago that he would have a Guinea Pig calling him Uncle, he wouldn't have believed it. But that was space for you. Keek'k had met Iepip and Piri, Jikka's parents, when he was on Orbital Station for 3 months, doing some required training - all the ground personnel were expected to get some experience in space. Iepip and Piri were base pilots - running people to and from Moon Base, Mars Base; towing ice and ore asteroids back to Moon Base and the Orbital Stations. Like most such pilots, they would spend 2 years out, and then one year on a station; Iepip had had her litter a few months before Keek'k was there, so he met the girls as young children. Then, a few years later when Jippa 1-1-Iepip and Jikka 2-1-Iepip had come to Earth to attend University, they had gotten in touch again; as station kits, they were knowledgeable about space enough to enjoy eating dinner a few times with Keek'k and a few of his friends from the agency. Jippa had not gone back to the station; she had gone to South Twin Continent and become a newsteller. Jikka, though, had returned to Station 3 and was now a teacher in the same school she had gone to, teaching a fourth generation of station kits.

Keek'k wondered whether, with nearly a thousand people, a school, and growing most of its own food, Orbital 3 should be called a colony rather than a Station. There were many families there; most of the kits took station jobs themselves. The school, itself, was great PR for the station, showing how all the Families lived together, far more comfortably than in cities - a Beaver kit holding a Squirrel on his shoulder to better see the top of the model of the moon in their classroom; a Chinchilla kit and a Nutria kit tending a classroom herb garden, with a huge map of Earth on the wall in the background, and perhaps the most famous photo, a school field trip to one of the weightless areas of the station, with a teacher at each end of a string of floating students with their breathing masks and food tubes in hand, Marmot holding the hand of Porcupine, Chinchilla and Squirrel, Guinea Pig and Beaver. Even teachers over in the eastern Myo countries had ordered copies of that poster for their classrooms, although the Myo Families weren't participating in space.

But no, calling it a colony might help attract more people to space, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. Right now, the people on the station were people who wanted to be in space, who had an idea of what work they wanted to do and were willing to train for it. People coming to a "colony" on the other paw might be people who were just discontented where they were and wanted to try something else, without thinking through the commitment to a lifestyle in space - safety, smaller families, etc. - that they would need. (Raising kits who played on metal tubing arrays rather than in trees required some adjustment; that was part of why most station personnel sent their young to University on Earth. Even if the career the kit planned did not require University, it was good for the kits to get some experience of Earth. Most came back to the station.)