Turns out our granddaughter won’t be in Nutcracker this year. She’s decided to try tap and apparently is liking it more than ballet. I’ve always been curious to see if she will stick with dance as she is literally growing up in the studio. She began to mimic movements about as soon as she could walk and quickly took to things as she could actually understand what they were. Even though three was the official age for kinder ballet, she was “playing at it” even before. With that said, her advantage won’t necessarily translate into a continued interest. Any parent who is realistic understands this although there is often a fine line between acknowledging a child should move on from an interest versus “don’t be a quitter”.

Our son was not a team sport player other than a couple of years in Little League. He was an okay player and it just wasn’t a good fit for him. Soccer was never much of an interest.Karate was where he did well from when we moved to Virginia all the way through high school. He did achieve his second degree brown belt, has a batch of trophies from tournaments and wasn’t far from black belt when he went to college (for that period), discovered dance, and utterly embraced that as I have discussed in numerous posts. I think the kids are philosophically prepared for granddaughter to not continue with dance if that is her choice, but it’s too early to try and project if that will be the case. I don’t know much about tap   even though they do always include it in the Spring and Fall shows.

As with many fans of “Game of Thrones”, (not one who follows the blogs or whatever though), I’d heard there was to be either a prequel or a sequel featuring the character of Arya Stark, who at the end of the series was sailing away to discover what lay beyond the well-known lands. The last of the dragons had disappeared with thoughts he would never be seen again.

It turned out they decided to go with a prequel instead, “The House of Dragon”, to show House Targaryen, the primary house with dragons, in power and set 200 years before the events that began in Game of Thrones when everyone thought the dragons were no more. Notwithstanding this series definitely has more dragons and we have seen them from egg hatching to training to mighty beasts and some interesting bits about how riders are selected. However, there are two specific issues most of us are commenting on. No one knows how many seasons are planned (Game of Thrones went for eight I think) and okay, 200 years have to be covered. They keep skipping chunks of years between episodes with no lead-in narrative to explain what has happened. There’s usually something in the written description, but as the episode opens you suddenly see things that have apparently occurred and in conversation a character might say, “Well, it’s been three years since you were here”. Ah okay, a lot can happen in three years. One episode had a ten-year gap and that one took a while to work through. The other point for a lot of us is the characters don’t seem to be as developed. Granted, characters in “Game of Thrones” were generally complex, yet several were more good than flawed and so far, there’s only really one that can be said of in “The House of Dragon”. Of course, as in “Thrones”, it’s not wise to get attached to a character as he or she may very well get killed. Anyway, Season 1 has ended with a couple of bloody deaths and the question as to if war for the true succession of the throne is inevitable. We shall see what the future brings.

Even if you aren’t a race fan, NASCAR has an interesting format now for their playoffs. Like other racing circuits they had a points system for a long time and changed it a few years back. In the old system, as the final race of the season occurred, if there was a wide point gap, then the Championship was already determined because it was mathematically impossible for anyone to make enough points in the last race to overcome the leader. As a reminder, all drivers continue to race and a driver who is not eligible to win the Championship can still win the final race of the season and count that as a career win (which is always a good thing). Anyway, NASCAR went to a combination of points and elimination to narrow the field of what is 40-43 drivers in regular season to sixteen in the playoffs. The reason for points is because even though a win automatically puts a driver into the sixteen, there will rarely be sixteen different winners in a season. So, throughout the season, drivers get points for how well they finish each race or for example, leading laps during the race. Those points accumulate and let’s say at the time to designate the playoff sixteen, only eight drivers have won races. That means the eight drivers with the highest number of point accumulated round out the sixteen.

During the playoffs – and I don’t remember how many races there are – once again, a win makes you “safe” for the first round of elimination which will narrow the number to twelve. Today’s race was the second elimination to narrow the field to eight. The team we root for is Stewart-Haas and only two of those drivers made it to the sixteen. Only one made it after the first elimination race. He had a slight margin with points and throughout the race Sunday, he lost and gained points. It came down to the last minutes as a late wreck caused typical havoc on the track and in the closing laps our guy managed to cling to the playoffs by two points. That makes him vulnerable going forward, so we’ll see how next week goes. A win would of course be the best answer to allow him to move into the “Final Four”, but strong runs and good finishes will help some.

I am a Country and Western fan and while I appreciate many of the really old pieces and musicians, I generally prefer the changes that came about around the 1980s. I do also appreciate the pioneers of the genre and there is no denying Loretta Lynn was of a special stature. And like so many of the few that actually made it to super stardom, she came from impoverished beginnings and a hard early life. “The Coal Miner’s Daughter” released her first song in 1960 and when I checked on a couple of the sites announcing her death they summed up her major awards. “Lynn was the first woman ever named entertainer of the year at the genre’s two major awards shows, first by the Country Music Association in 1972 and then by the Academy of Country Music three years later.”

“Throughout her career, Loretta won three Grammy Awards of 18 nominations, scored 24 number-one hit single and 11 number-one albums, and was named the Academy of Country Music’s Artist of the Decade. Four years before her death, Loretta was presented with the Artist of a Lifetime award at CMT Artists of the Year ceremony in 2018.”

She did have a stroke a few years ago and passed at home in Tennessee peacefully this week at age 90. She influenced stars like Dolly Parton, Reba McIntire, and the newer generation of Carrie Underwood. Aside from her musical talent, she was known for the lovely dresses she always wore, good works she did within different communities, and bringing her life into focus with the autobiography of, “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, later made into an Oscar-winning movie. We lifted a toast to her at a luncheon yesterday and I’m sure that has already been repeated millions of times around the world.

We’ve been to several of these over the years and last night was a fundraiser one so they did things a little differently. It was a Kentucky Derby one and they had like 24 or 25 characters. Instead of handing out descriptions of them, they had one set posted on the wall. Some folks did take photos on their phone. There really were too many to mess with and the building where it was held is incredibly noisy. I decided early on not to bother with trying to figure this one out and just socialize. Tickets of course were not inexpensive since it was a fundraiser and the two things they did differently for extra funds was “sell” 2 and 3 of clues. By sell, that ,means each set was $250 so the lady taking the cash walked around and collected whatever people contributed until the total reached at least $250. The other thing was to have a paper bag marked with each character name and you could buy tickets to then place into the bag of the character you thought was the murderer. Oh yes, then they bid off the opportunity for you to be the first person to say who you thought the murderer was with a prize to be had if you were right. As it turns out, one of the guys at our table had the highest bid, but didn’t get the correct character. He “won” the basket anyway for some reason I don’t exactly recall.

The dinner would have been good as the food – choice of prime rib or chicken was tasty. Unfortunately, most of the meals were not hot and some were said to be cold. The salad was excellent and they did have key lime pie. Although large crowds are always tricky, I’m really not sure why this seemed to be a problem across the board.

Anyway, we have a completely different event tonight and dinner after at a nearby restaurant. That should work better.

It’s been extra hectic, although that shouldn’t come as a big surprise.

Anyway, the passing of Queen Elizabeth II does bring an era to a close.May she rest in peace.  Aside from the fact my middle name is Elizabeth, her coronation took place in Jun 1953, only a couple of months before my birthday. I am not what one can call an Anglophile, however, the constitutional monarchy has served the UK well and she has reigned through many changes. It is a different time now and I have no idea how King Charles III will be. At the risk of incurring shocked comments, I was never a big fan of Princess Diana’s handling of their divorce and haven’t paid much attention to Camilla although I think she has probably been long preparing for this day. There will no doubt be a great deal of pageantry over the coming days and while I won’t watch any of that either, I do appreciate the traditions that will be followed. And unlike some of what has happened recently in this country,I doubt they will permit politics to enter into the multiple events.

My husband of course thinks the entire monarchy is long past when it should go away. I don’t have any firm feelings other than I see the functionality of it until such time as the culture might change and there be a referendum. For those who have read or might read, “To Play on Grass Fields”, I chose the intent for the King of Malathos to transition to a constitutional monarchy because it does have a workable structure as seen in a number of countries.