Wow, it's been awhile.

Things are starting to settle down here. I'm feeling good about work--there are clearly lots of things that we can do better, and doing them better will lead to improved results (I think it's every manager's worst nightmare to imagine taking over an organization and discover that they're already doing everything perfectly well, and yet still not making things work. Today is the last day of our fiscal year, and at last count we were within $30,000 of being balanced for the year.

My wife has been struggling quite a bit with the move, and we have mot yet really felt a whole lot of that famous Southern Hospitality (although my Board President took the whole family out for a very nice dinner last night). I'm hoping that things will pick up as school begins (August 11 for Sarah and Daniel) and we get into the fall arts season. We are heading out for a weekend at my Board President's Lake House tomorrow afternoon.

I understand that the DPO has reached an agreement with a candidate to become its new President and that an announcement is imminent. And I got a warming phone call today from one of my former employees telling me that our efforts to secure some much needed reconstructive dental work for one of the DPO musicians are finally bearing fruit.

On the reading front, I've been kind of rotating genres recently:

53. On the Run by John D. MacDonald - was a much needed change of pace. Predictable, but with interesting characters.

54. Bachelors Get Lonely by A.A. Fair - I had very fond memories of the Cool and Lamb series from 30 years ago. This was as satisfying and fun as I had remembered.

55. The Deep Blue Good-By by John D. MacDonald {reread} - Another book that has held up better than I might have expected.

56. The Palace of Love by Jack Vance - this was the worst Demon Princes book to date... Maybe I should go back off genre for awhile.

57. The Bigger They Come by A.A. Fair - This one tells about the birth of the Donald Lam-Bertha Cool partnership. It's perhaps not the best of the series, but it's still fun.

I gave up on John D MacDonald's April Evil after about 100 pages.

58. The Big Time by Fritz Leiber - was refreshingly different from your typical sf yarn, but a bit of a disappointing ending.

59. One Fearful Yellow Eye by John D. MacDonald - was decent enough, but not up there with the best of the Travis McGee series.

60. Pass the Gravy by A.A. Fair - another reasonably entertaining Donald Lam/Bertha Cool mystery.

61. The Best from Galaxy Volume 1 - a collection of short stories from the late 60s and early 70s, all but two of which were new to me. An enjoyable collection, even if none of these will go on my all time favorites list.

I'm up to something like 54 review thumbs ups at LibraryThing. I'll try to post some thoughts soon about what I like and what I'm not crazy about with my "new" book site.

Well, I made it down to Birmingham in good shape, bought the house, painted four rooms, and was joined by wife and kids. The furniture was about 48 hours late arriving, so we were sick and tired of hotels by the time we got to sleep back in our own beds Thursday night (we thought about sacking it out in sleeping bags, but the master bedroom closet is the only carpeted space in our new home.

No major disasters so far, although there have been plenty of minor challenges. The new house is 500 square feet smaller than our old one, so we are having to be much more creative (and we got rid of a bunch of stuff as well). All in all, a decent start in Alabama.

On the reading front:

50. The Downstairs Room by Kate Wilhelm - I liked this collection of short stories, few of which were truly science fiction.

51. Star Short Novels edited by Frederik Pohl - a rather strange, but ultimately satisfying novella from Theodore Sturgeon, a decent novella from Lester del Ray, and a novella from Jessamyn West that did nothing for me.

52. The Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov - I consider myself an Asimov fan, but I found this both contrived and bloated. Cut out all of the references to the design and use of "personals" (i.e., bathrooms), as well as the almost comically bad sex and clueless ruminations thereon, and you would have a significantly shorter and moderately better novel. At least there were a couple of scenes that left me chuckling thinking about a Daneel/Elijah slash treatment. As I was reading the second half of this book I couldn't get out of my head the notion that Asimov had written an 84 point outline of the plot, and then turned the project over to a robot with the assignment to write a chapter on each. This is my 27th science fiction book read to date this year; maybe a little break would be in order?

I'm shutting down the computer to pack it for the drive to Birmingham, so I'll be offline for a couple of days.

In the meantime, I finished

48. Tripoint by C.J. Cherryh - effective storytelling, if not as strong as the first two books I read by this author.

49. The Vor Game - another winner from Bujold, who once again seemlessly combines funny, touching, and pulse pounding.

Things have been moving along here. Our house in Dayton has been on the market for three weeks and we've had eleven showings (but no offers yet). Today we have an open house, before the movers come in at the end of this week to clear out all our furniture.

Last Thursday was my last day in the office for the DPO. One of the last things that I did before I left was performance reviews for the six people who reported directly to me. One of these people has been battling some serious depression issues and I'm afraid that his review only made things worse. Friday was technically my last day as an employee of the DPO - we had our annual staff/musician outing, which this year was at Kings Island. I took our three kids; my wife stayed home to work on cleaning out and cleaning up the house.

I'll be driving down to Birmingham on Thursday, closing on the house there on Friday. Then I'll have a little time to paint (the kitchen and our oldest daughter's room, at the very least) before Elizabeth and the kids and the movers come in with our stuff early following week.

We bought a house with about 15% less square feet than the one we've been living in, so we've been getting rid of things that are worn out and/or never used. I think we'll find it fairly easy to fit everything in, because we're ridiculously inefficient in how we use the space we have available now. My wife thinks that we can't possibly fit in everything we're planning to take (and suggested that perhaps I could get rid of some of my books, which suggestion was not well received). We'll see.

On the reading front:

45. When True Night Falls by C.S. Friedman was pretty disappointing.
46. The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin was thought provoking.
47. The Explorers by C.M. Kornbluth was really quite good.

I'm currently working on Tripoint by C.J. Cherryh.

Another short trip to Birmingham on Tuesday, just enough time (1) to announce a reorganization of the marketing side the the ASO and (2) to buy a house. When the realtor picked us up at the hotel she told us that the house I had liked had just gone under contract and was no longer available. However, by the end of the day, we'd found one that we liked just fine. We made an offer on our way out of town and by the end of the day yesterday we had a deal, closing on June 27 (which presumably means that the whole family will move down with me in three weeks).

So now we just need to sell our house in Dayton (we've had four showings in the first week, which seems pretty good to me, but no one yet jumping up and down saying that our house is the one).

On the reading front:

44. Stalking the Unicorn by Mike Resnick - an entertaining if cliched read from Resnick.

and I'm almost finished with When True Night Falls, which is better than Terry Goodkind (if that's not damning with faint praise, I don't know what would be).

After four weeks, our house goes on the market today. Yay! Of course, it's not exactly a great time to be selling a house. But it is a good time to be buying a house, and Elizabeth and I are heading back to Birmingham next Tuesday to look at the house I liked during my last visit. And were doing the loan prequalification thing. And worrying about what happens if we buy a house down there but can't sell our house up here.

The ASO Executive Committee approved in concept some restructuring I want to do to improve results in a couple of key areas. Now it's up to me to make the changes happen quickly and start having an impact on revenues ASAP.

On the reading front:

41. Brasyl by Ian McDonald - I liked a few things about this novel, but overall I found it a mixed bag.

42. The Case Against Tomorrow by Frederik Pohl - Pohl is often hit or miss for me, and this collection was no exception.

43. Taltos by Steven Brust - a decent read offering the same black humor that marked Jhereg though in a less interesting story with little or no mystery.

Well, I just spent five days in Birmingham, meeting the staff, the orchestra, donors, etc., getting a sense for organizational issues, and hearing the final classical concerts of the season (they launch right into their "summer" season which runs for four consecutive weeks and then is over by mid-June, before things start getting really hot). I expect to make my first new hire there by the end of this week. There are clearly lots of challenges that are going to require lots of hard and smart work, but at least there is reason to expect a big payoff as a result.

I saw a house that I really liked, but I'm not sure that we're ready to buy a new house before we even have our old house on the market (it's more or less ready to go, EXCEPT that we decided to replace the vinyl floor in our kitchen, and that's taking longer than we might have reasonably expected). I'm reasonably optimistic about selling our house in Dayton--the market is picking up a bit down here, and we'll be listed $30,000 cheaper than other comparably sized (but newer) homes in our development. I need to get my wife down to Birmingham for a day to see this house, if she likes it as much as I did maybe we'll go ahead and make an offer.

I was very pleased with my farewell address (from the stage at the orchestra's 75th anniversary gala). Speaking from stage to 2000 people has always been the one part of my job that I really dread. But by now I've done it enough that it's fairly routine. The Dayton paper ran a very nice profile on me (which never made it into the online version).

Reading-wise, I've read Starshine a short story collection from the always reliable Theodore Sturgeon (only two of the stories were new to me), Beaker's Dozen, a collection of short fiction from Nancy Kress (which left me rather disappointed), and I'm about halfway through Brasyl by Ian McDonald.

looks like I've fallen a bit behind on my reading progress reporting. . .

30. The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection edited by Garder Dozois had several very good stories (my favorites were from Walter Jon Williams, Kage Baker, David Marusek and Stephen Baxter).

31. It's a Dog's Life by John Erickson wasn't as good as the first two Hank the Cowdog books (in fact, my son lost interest half way through, although my oldest daughter hung in to the end).

32. Murder in the Middle Pasture with my son and daughter. It was quite a bit better than book 3.

33. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami - I can see why so many people like this book, but I was just a little disappointed.

34. Dinotopia: The World Beneath by James Gurney - My six year old son is really hooked on the Dinotopia books, which offer reasonably interesting stories coupled with great illustrations.

35. The Dog Said Bow-Wow by Michael Swanwick - A very strong collection of astonishing variety.

36. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane had moments that felt heavy-handed and manipulative (but not enough to seriously detract).

37. Nova Swing by M. John Harrison - was a bit less unconventional than other books from this author.

38. Search the Sky by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth - proved disappointing

OK, we're now well into "get your house ready to go on the market in the worst real estate slump in memory" mode. Painting, yardwork, about $4500 in repairs by a contractor. At least we've gotten enough rain that our lawn is starting to make a bit of a recovery.

All of this has once again reminded me how clueless I am about even simple household repairs. Note to self: avoid buying a "fixer upper.' Ever.

We're announcing today that I am leaving the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra to become the Executive Director of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra in Birmingham.

Here's the story in the Dayton Daily News. The Birmingam News story should be up shortly.