Had a lovely evening with Shannon Page and Mark Ferrari at Rimsky-Korsakoffee House, Portland’s hidden gem. We sat at the table that rotates slowly, enjoyed delicious coffees and desserts, investigated the intriguing bathroom, and discussed bizarre occurrences in our lives (Mark: first experience of fireflies, while visiting a haunted house; Kate and David: cremated radioactive baboons).

Just as we were leaving, a dramatic fanfare from the classical background music caught my ear. I knew that tune but could not place it. Spent the whole drive home trying to remember what symphony it was.

We both poked around at a variety of websites that claimed to identify tunes by humming or tapping them, but got nowhere. Googling on “da, da da DA da da, da da da-da da” didn’t help. Finally we nailed it through a combination of me remembering the tune, Kate picking it out on a virtual piano keyboard, finding a site that identified classical tunes by typing the notes as letters — but only in the key of C — and Kate remembering how to transpose it. Turns out it was Dvorak’s Symphony #5 in E Minor, 4th movement.

Sometimes the future works.