Christmas
December 31st, 2006
Christmas, birthdays, rehearsals, concerts and a lot of Catan-settling. A busy visit to New Brunswick!
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Sari in the Dark
December 21st, 2006
Interesting lighting coming from a laptop in a dark room.
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New Year’s cards
December 18th, 2006
Sari’s handmade cards for New Year’s. Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!
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fluffy
December 3rd, 2006
Well golly. Would ya look at what happened here:
We had a few flurries over the past week, and one dump of slush in October, but this is the first real snowfall that looks like it will stay for a few days. Wednesday might be too warm, unfortunately, so we might get some rain then, but the rest of the coming week looks like it will be cold and snowy! YAY!
(thanks for the pics, Sari!)
FOOD
November 30th, 2006
I haven’t done a whole lot in the past month. However, I have eaten some food. More than once, even!
First was a big chicken that Sari and I roasted with some veggies:
Then she (Sari, not the chicken) ran off to Japan and had many adventures, some of which also involved food. (Raw whale meat, anyone?)
Upon her return, inspired by yummy Japanese food, we had a feast or two:
(follow the link to see what all the stuff actually is)
And finally, now that it’s getting a bit colder out (no significant snowfall yet though…), I’ve started making bread again!
I managed to get a nice texture with lots of holes in it, which is nice. I’ve been trying to do that for ages, but it didn’t usually work. Not sure why it did this time though! Maybe because I put in more olive oil than usual? Or did most of the second rise in the oven while it baked? (with interesting side effects).
Recordings
November 6th, 2006
Last week I recorded a few tracks to use as a demo for Jeunesses Musicales.
I’d like to start recording more often, and posting more tunes here. Now that I have some slightly better equipment for recording, and don’t have to deal with the minidisc, it might actually happen. Can anyone recommend some good cheap microphones though? The one I have isn’t really up to the task. It’s a little minidisc stereo microphone, Sony ECM-MS908C (basically an older version of this one). It actually works surprisingly well for being a tiny little simple microphone, but the level it puts out is way too low. For some reason, I didn’t have that problem so much when I used it with my minidisc, but it might just have a higher recording level than just about everything else I’ve tried.
I’ve had Oktava mics recommended to me. They’re apparently very cheap for what you get, though it’s still expensive. With all the cables, stands shipping and all the rest, I think I’d be looking at no less than $600 to get a pair of them, and possibly quite a bit more. This isn’t a ridiculous amount, and for microphones, it’s not much at all, really, but for something that I’m not really serious about, it’s a little much!
New pictures
October 27th, 2006
For the latest concert with the Seasons Baroque Ensemble, Sari and I decided to rent a car and drive there and back. It was fun to have a road trip together, and to not have to worry about schedules or anything like that. It was exhausting though… and somewhat more expensive than the bus (since we were there for a whole week).
The concert was also exhausting. Katherine and Graham only got back to town two days before the show, so we put together a very challenging programme, including F. Couperin’s L’apothéose de Lully on very short notice. The end result was very good though – many people commented that it was our best yet. We certainly had a good turnout, too. The Cathedral is a very nice place to play.
