Frederick's Rubber Band Snowman

(If you click on the photo you can see his features clearly.)

Thomas Always Doing Something

Thomas and I were leaving the FIM Wednesday night after his bassoon duet practice with his intrepid piano accompanist to ready for yesterday's state audition (more about that in a separate post) and a parent came up to me and asked (while looking curiously at Thomas's bassoon case), "Does your son play percussion?"  I answered that  he did.  And then she said that the reason she was asking was that she thought that she "had recognized his hair."  It seems that she had spent ages and ages putting together a film piece for the Mott Foundation which highlighted a recent Music Day at the FIM, one that brought together an ungodly number of high schoolers from all over the state.  Those kids spent the day in the classrooms at the FIM, learning various aspects of music theory, performance,  and such and then, at the end of the day, they put on a massive concert directed by 5 different conductors (one of whom is the conductor from Limonest France, the dramatic conductor we have mentioned before--the guy who two years ago instructed Thomas to "smash!! smash the chimes with feeling!" instructions that caused Rob, Thomas's percussion teacher, to cringe).  Here is a link to a news article and a short video.  Anytime you see them cut to the percussionists, you can see Thomas in his tux in the back with Omid (of course, the two are like conjoined twins these days, together in three ensembles, performing in concerts every week) with Thomas on snare drum (see 3:27).

http://www.mott.org/news/news/2013/20130314-Flint-Institute-of-Music-Band-and-Orchestra-Day

The concert at the end of the day really was something else: they could hardly fit all 280 kids onto the stage at The Whiting.  Thomas's schedule these past few months has been non-stop performance.  He has another concert this upcoming Wednesday, then will have a percussion recital.  Soon after that will be a Wind Ensemble concert and then everything will be full-sail rehearsals to gear up for the concert to end all concerts, the Showcase Concert which is the Grand Finale at the end of April.

Care package

As the miserable weather drags on and our chimney gets more and more clogged, causing thick clouds of smoke to pour out every time I try to stoke up the fire, it warms the heart to get a care package like this:

 Thanks Granny!  What's inside, you ask.  THIS:

The teapot was a gift from her last visit, and it got me (re-)hooked on loose leaf tea, which turns out to be incredibly difficult/expensive to get here.  This should keep me going into the warmer weather...

All packed for work

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Thomas has been gigging up a storm recently, as part of the music exchange the Flint Institute of Music does with a conservatory in Limonest, France. This year they were visiting (with their stereotypically overexcited Gallic conductor) rather than the other way round. Last week he was in back to back concerts on Friday and Saturday. On Friday, he performed percussion at the Whiting. Jami went to that one. Then on Saturday, a lot of the same kids played a concert at a local high school (Goodrich), only with Thomas Bassooning this time, and it was me manning the video camera. Sadly, the battery ran out before his bassoon solo as part of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, but I captured MY favourite moment of the concert, selections from Ennio Morricone's magnificent score for Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. Chills down the spine, I tell ya. I don't know about music, but I know what I like...

New Bread Machine!

After several years and literally hundreds of loaves, our beloved Zojiruchi twin-paddle bread machine finally died (or at least, one of the paddles stopped working, so we were getting half a loaf and half a big lump of flour) so I ordered one just like it! Here it is:

I should probably try to keep track of exactly how many loaves this one manages. Maybe I will...
UPDATE: here's the first loaf - looks good:

Frozen Lake Frolics

Deer

Lovely bright clear day at For Mar today, and the deer were out in force.

They didn't hang around when they saw us, though:

(For the uninitiated, the thing I shouted at the end is a reference to this world-famous Youtube video and not to the nearby town. [We learned about the video when Jimmy visited us and snorted on seeing a sign for said town.])