My birthday!! XD

Having my advanced group class over for a holiday recital, and hearing wonderful music played on my new piano. I enjoy listening to others play it, as much as I enjoy playing it! It was a great two hours filled with beautiful music, followed by yummy food afterwards. What more could you ask for?!

Just set up appointments with several piano dealerships with recital halls and churches to schedule a miniature recital series. I also found out I made straight A's this semester today. It was a GREAT day!

. Parents agreed to get a grand piano for home!

This was yesterday, but I must share.

I was at Costco with my aunt. It's a wholesale sort of place. It's sort of like Sam's Club if you're familiar with that. Anyways, I'm pretty bored, but I was engaging in small talk with my aunt as we walked about the store lapping up whatever samples they shook in our faces when I spotted one of those keyboards that are the real deal: weighted keys, all three pedals, nothing close to a nice acoustic piano, but I was entertained for a good ten minutes or so. It's really a shame I can hardly think of something to play when I don't have my music right in front of me.

Oh, so what are they looking at? I assume you'd be the only one playing it.

My husband, youngest son and visiting middle son went out to Pike Place Market which left me completely alone for several hours with my grand. My teacher has been trying to get me to fully understand subtle changes in volume and tone and I think I'm beginning to get it!

Yay!

A wonderful "Christmas Oratorio" at St Johns Smith Square this evening, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, and a superb set of soloists. Truly festive.

Waking up to a new day and watching swallows through
my high level gable window ... armed with a cup of tea.

Seeing the swifts dip and tumble at a huge rate of knots ... miraculously zooming hither and thither while fleetingly snapped against the backdrop of rainy white clouds.

If this is Heaven ... I’d like a piece of it.

Kind regards, btb

thanks btb,
lovely image

Thanks for that upbeat comment Dara ... while I’m watching the birds I have fun finding “pictures” amongst the fast moving clouds ... it’s amazing how the mind matches snapshot images in an instant ...
first it might be a lion ... and then goat ... which then smudges into a mischievous Troll ... however a darkening in the clouds for the two eyes is probably the most potent defining factor.

Not everybody’s cup of tea ... but then I’m a romantic.

Wonder if Canada has the same watchword in watching the clouds at dawn and sunset ... reading a weather forecast in the colouring ...

“Red skies in the morning ... shepherds warning .(rain)
Red skies at night ... shepherds delight.” (fine weather)

I'm more familiar with these similar lines:

"Red sky at night, sailor's delight.
Red sky at morning, sailor take warning"

Here's an unaltered photo for your delight, taken by me awhile back
on Booth Bay Canal, on the island I live on.

"Here's an unaltered photo for your delight, taken by me awhile back
on Booth Bay Canal, on the island I live on." (from Dara)

I guess with all that water around, a sailor would come before birds ...
magical colours to your photo ...
which paints a picture of how close you must be to the North Pole.

Well, it would be a long walk, sail or bird flight from here to the North Pole, as I live slightly below the 49th north parallel.
Hope to go out though for a bit shorter walk by the waters edge this afternoon.
Cheers !

Chopin op.25 no.6 is up to this tempo now, despite not practicing much in the previous week
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAbkSe7oz_g

2 weeks worth of work on it. Now for the Godowsky transcription...

My root canal is done.

Listening to some stuff by Boulez - Derive 1, Incises and Sur Incises are all fabulous works. The second sonata is less pleasurable to listen to.

Realizing that as of today, December 26, Santa is gone for good-- at least for several months!

Although... his cheap cousin The Wiz is coming to town. Gotta go hit those sales! I mean-- scales! Yes, need to go practice *scales*. I will keep telling myself that.

I opened this thread to announce my happiness for the same reason as yours.
And even Boxing Day is over here!

While piano shopping today I got to play a brand new 7 foot Bosendorfer....so beautiful!! Of course it's about ten times my budget, but still wonderful.

I had to replace my hard drive, and finished the whole process about an hour ago. And everything seems to be working, so I'm happy about that. There was a scary moment when the only thing on my screen was this message: "Operating system missing." Fortunately, I had the sense to check the boot sequence, and found that for some reason it was not looking at the new drive. That was easy to fix.

It amazes me how huge drive storage has become - this new one is 2T and the little external drive I used to do the transfer was 1T. My first home computer didn't even have a hard drive - you had to load the operating system and any program you wanted to use from 5 1/4 inch floppy disks (the kind that actually were flexible).

I rather miss Boxing Day.

But what made me happy:

A person who I am very close to had to fly back to the UK last week to be with his mother who is not doing well. It meant that Christmas for me was not what it could have been, but I was pleased to receive an email today indicating that Andrew's mother is doing much better, and that he went to the Midnight Eucharist at Durham Cathedral, complete with incense. (And he is agnostic!)

Wish I could have been there. Vierne's Missa Solemnelle was done, a magnificent setting.

Jason, your story makes me happy.

We had our Xmas Day lunch on Boxing Day (My son and his lady are in catering) and provided the prepared lamb leg. The tray was too big for my oven . . Today being Boxing - Boxing Day, I got out on me bike over the hills around Lancaster. Love this time o` year.