MuseScore - an open-source music editor

Messing around today with trying to re-arrange 'Til the Storm Passes By (Mosie Lister) for a male quartet. Came across the MuseScore software and was pretty impressed with its capabilities for an open-source project. It looks like it may be a real option in order to edit music on Windows, Linux, or Mac. My only complain right now is that it seems to crash before I've gotten very far, but I'm using a nightly build so that doesn't give me a lot of room to complain.  I don't have a MIDI keyboard and MIDI input is not supported in Windows at this time - no big deal.  The general note entry seemed easy enough.  Just trying to figure out how to do a Barbershop-style arrangement.  After that, it's time to tweak the voicing a little so it sounds better and is still singable by our group.

• MuseScore | Free music composition & notation software

School Spirit

Eliana's school is going through their "Spirit Week" and one of the main colors is red. Eliana said that she needs to wear the most red, or all red this week so she can out-do the principal. She then asked if she could dye her hair red. (With the obvious "no" response.) Realizing the flaw in her question, she asked if her mom could dye her hair red. I can only imagine what it's like seeing life through the eyes of a young child.

My Weekly Thoughts: Fresh Out

• Fresh Out

  So what do you do if your church is "fresh out" of Jesus, anyway? And why is it that we seem to miss the mark so often when we're needed the most? Of course, this doesn't just apply to Christians. My wife got interested in that superhero reality show and the "heroes" in the show did the same thing when they were needed the most.  Of course, I've heard seminary students relate how they were heading to a class to learn more about the parable of the good Samaritan who walked right past someone who needed their help/time without a second glance.  Same for those who had just come from the class.  This is a pretty good reminder that we really need to be open to the times God wants us to help and not just assume someone else is handling it.
  

  tags: church-life, evangelism, christian, christian-life

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72 in 60

I'm impressed - Eliana just did 72 math problems (addition w/ totals up to 20) in about 60 minutes. We worked on using the abacus for some of the addition and also did the basic "count the dots" method. That worked well as long as she didn't lose track of the dots or put down the wrong number of dots. It was a pretty good time and I'm glad she enjoyed it.