jimsjournal
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Last night Nancy and I attended the annual concert at the Naragansett Town Beach. The East Providence Community Chorus and the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra performed, alternating two sets each, starting at 7:30 and lasting until around 10:00. We met some friends of Nancy's at the beach. We got there around 5:30; some of her friends had already been there for an hour, staking out a prime sectin of beach. There were already hundreds of people settled in -- by the time the concert began there were thousands. It was a picnic and party scene... some people just brought typical beach picnic food but some were sipping wine from stemmed wine glasses. (Nancy and I had planned to go out to dinner and then to the concert but then decided it might be more fun to get there early so we stopped at a Subway and bought a couple of Italian subs, but her friends had come with full picnic coolers.) The music was good -- more "Pops" than heavy -- several selections from Verdi, a Dvorjak Slavonic Dance, lots of Broadway show tunes -- and the ambiance was pleasant and relaxing, very family-friendly...
It had been a warm summer day -- upper seventies during the day, probably past eighty up in Providence (and it certainly felt like ninety degrees during the last half of the five and a half miles I ran in the sun around eleven in the morning -- whew!) -- but once the sun set most people at the concert began to pull on sweatshirts. There were a few boats just off the beach, enjoying the concert while anchored, two fair-sized cabin cruisers and a lovely sailboat. Kids splashed in the surf. Young couples walked hand-in-hand along the water's edge.
Nancy is going to be changing jobs in the fall -- Friday she got a job offer of a teaching position in a brand-new middle school, a chance to be in at the ground flour level in a school in a good school district. She's been working in a district that is torn by political budget fighting, a three-town district where one town or another is constantly threatening to withdraw, where (just to give one example of the weird attitude in that community) the over-crowded high school is on probation and will likely soon lose acreditation because the proposed new school was voted down -- the building had been built for less than half the number of students it now holds -- and the response of some "leaders" was oh well, they'd lost acreditation in the past, no big deal.... So she'll get away from that and also save twelve miles of commuting each way plus get a significantly better salary. Needless to say, she is excited and quite happy...
I'm swamped with work, deadlines approaching and the workload just increased a couple of days ago and I'm not sure how I can possibly get everything done but somehow I'll manage... so I was working a bit on Saturday and I'm probably going to be working most of today... so I'm going to post this entry and get back to work....
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