Winter Gardening

Over Thanksgiving weekend, Hal built two raised vegetable beds in the only place in our yard that gets full sun. It's not a big spot, but it should do nicely. Today I went to the nursery and bought some instant gratification of lettuces, spinach and snap peas. I also transplanted the eggplant from the shady garden to see what it might do this time of year in the sun.

Now, if I can find the packets of seeds.....

An Afternoon with Gustavo

The day finally arrived when I used my birthday money! I bought tickets to the LA Philharmonic to see Gustavo Dudamel conduct. We started the afternoon with lunch at Philippe's, home of the French Dip Sandwich.

We caught the end of the pre-performance talk given by John Adams, the creative chair of the LA Phil and the composer of City Noir, the final piece of the concert today. Preceding the Adams was LA Variations by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Lou Harrison's Piano Concerto. The orchestra was in full complement with more percussion than you could shake a stick at, two harps, piano, celesta and saxophone. The music was exciting and worth the price of admission.

Here is a photo from atop the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The Housekeeper and the Professor

I found this book, The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa to be poignant and charming. The professor taught mathematics until an accident took away his short term memory. He can remember anything before 1975 and only what has happened in the past 80 minutes. The housekeeper and her son come into his life and develop a friendship with him, strange as it is when they have to reintroduce themselves to him every day.

Google Wave

A few weeks ago, Liesl told me about Google Wave. It's an email/IM/conferencing hybrid that is still under development. As with the early days of gmail, one needs an invitation to get an account. Hal was given an invite a few days ago, and he passed one along to me. Liesl, Chris and Claire are all on, so we've all had one wave just to see some of the basic things we can do on this.

No ideas of what this all means? Watch this short video on youtube for an introduction to the future.

Thanksgiving 2009

Last year Dick and Kathy came to our house for Thanksgiving. This year we went to their house where they were brave enough to invite 10 people over. We had a delightful time with all the guests - so many interesting conversations taking place all at once. It was hard to know which ones to listen to (especially since I placed myself right in the middle of the table).

Happy Birthday, Hal!

Because we both had a full day of teaching today, we had to celebrate Hal's birthday this evening. We started out with a dance class where we learned some salsa. For dinner we tried out a new Italian cafe called Charlie's Cafe Bistro in LaVerne which has a nice ambiance and good pasta. The portions were huge, so we have some leftovers in the frig. At home Hal opened some gifts, including this little toy from Liesl with the amusing name of Mxykikker. It looks like a grasshopper is going across our floor.

Hal's birthday will continue tomorrow morning when we get to sleep in!

Sweet Children

Today I went over to one of the upper grade classrooms at school to look at the projects that the students are working on. They are doing small reports on the composers that I have been teaching them about. Not only was I impressed with their work, but I was extremely touched that four of the students had made me Get Well Cards and they rushed to hand them to me. Inside their notes were sweet thoughts about how they missed having me teach music for the days I was gone.

So, yeah, I'll keep teaching!

Honnold Cafe

Yesterday we ventured over to the library of the Claremont Colleges - Honnold. I'd heard that there was a cafe there, recently opened. I was amazed at the space and the offerings. The plentiful seating options were filled with students studying, chatting, working on computers, reading magazines, etc.

Trying out iMovie

Today I made peppernut dough, an annual event celebrating my Mennonite culinary roots. Last November I chronicled the three-day progress in this blog. This year I decided to make a little movie about making the dough, mostly because I wanted to try out a newer version of iMovie. Here's my endeavor. And yes, I realize I spelled Karo wrong. I'm not going to spend 20 minutes fixing it this time.

New Blog to Follow

My friend, Pat, has started a blog which I have added to my "Blogs I Follow" list on the left side of this page. Check it out!