first day of school vacation (46/365g)

Everyone was so lazy and lazing around, and i guess that's a good thing when you have time off. Only Theodore made an effort to really do things - went to record his organ composition, and worked on some other computer project. I also did a lot of prepping for tomorrow's rehearsal, which will be here, rehearsal prep included both practicing and cleaning. I also read most of a kind of silly novel (new genre: trivial holocaust literature) by Natasha Solomons (whose Mr. Rosenblum's List I really loved), which I had taken from the free books in klagenfurt on friday.

valentine's day (45/365g)

Dropped Jackie off at the train station and borrowed her car to get rid of the horrible ugly and also long broken sofa. Picked Brian up from park run with the couch in the car, and first drove around like idiots to see if we could donate it, but it wasn't nice enough, and finally we got rid of it. It made me feel bad to throw it away, but it also felt nice to have it gone!

While Brian brought the car back to the Foersters, I went on to the Oriental Music workshop, where we learned a song called "La Rosa Enflorence" with which I got a bit obsessed. 

I ate alone at a cafe wearing earplugs because I didn't want to listen to people chatting around me, then went to work. Catalogued books, which is work I love.

Recorded a little mini song for Danielle's birthday which I sent her a whole year after i wrote it. Theodore played the chords, and it turned out quite well, I thought.

end of semester (44/365g)

Brian and I headed to Klagenfurt for no real reason today, just to try out the new koralmbahn that gets us from graz to klagenfurt in 41 minutes. our ears popped in the tunnel and we went 225kmh. The official reason we gave was to sell our little 1/8 size cello over willhaben, but there would have been more efficient and reasonable ways to do that. Figured we could just consider this our Valentine's day date. We had coffee lazing in the sun, visited the Musil Museum and headed right back, where we arrived at home before the children had returned from school with their report cards.

I was in charge of the kids' quartet today, I taught them some Shostakovich, then dropped them at the movie theater, where you can pay with whatever math grade is on your zeugnis plus 60 cents. So if you have a 1 (equivalent of an A) in Math, you pay 1,60 for a movie ticket. Felix went to one film with a friend, Theodore and Henry went with Julia from Quartet, and Brian and I headed home by way of dropping a ton of stuff off at the free store. Felt much lighter coming back.

loooooooooong (43/365g)

Wow today was a long day

Starting with a dream about naked sumo wrestlers serving dim sum and noodles at a fancy party and some dude that-wasn't-but-looked-like trump giving a speech about "finally putting an end to sexualizing fat middle-aged men"

Henry stayed home from school today to get ready for his performance. didn't matter anyways, most of his class is on a ski-trip today.

He was annoyed with me the whole time - I think he was nervous

At work I just did stuff with receipts and spreadsheets and was relatively happy to head out to go tune henry for his competition and watch him play. He got a second prize - not bad for 3 days of practice.

After Henry's strings on stage was baroque lesson and chamber music. - I got to play around with sight reading the solo violin part of bach's bwv1041, which was a party. It was gabrieles last day teaching us in dario's stead.

Then I headed to the opera to see "on Zhe tong" (how austrians pronounce "On the Town") with michi. it was the last night playing and she had promised me that for my birthday. actually i payed for the tickets which were standing room only. i only realized later that the great film is based on a berstein original that is less than stellar and hadn't fixed any of the plot holes but kept a lot of the more boring songs. I was plus or minus begeistert.

We had prosecco afterwards and I felt it instantly. Oof.

on the mend (42/365g)

feeling much much better today 

called the akm and fussed around for an hour trying to figure our their rules and their websites - austria still leads the world for worst websites ever. the akm posits themselves as protecting musicians and composers, but as far as i can tell they do more paid antagonizing.

rehearsed with eva j at her place again, where we did lots of new pieces and i realized im starting to understand her composition style a lot better

got henry to finally practice for tomorrows competition (he tends to cram)

brian and and i did 10 minutes of very efficient clean-up with felix while the other two were at choir. 

even sick days can be used well (41/365g) (photo of me sleeping at brunos from 2023)

Sick day - Feeling better but still miserable. i finally got the presse photos together for bruno and my concert in june - found a photo for kg which didn't get used, but i love this photo so much. Wrote a tune, "raggle taggle" inspired by henry's sight reading of the entertainer, and theodore did not like it at all.

practiced a lot of music with henry and theodore. read a lot. saw a nice episode of bewitched, sitting on the floor in front of the gas stove with felix.

cheese please (40/365g)

got up super early to take a photo of a chair that i had seen yesterday. got there just in time before they continued their demolition efforts - they were just in the process of refueling the bagger.

henry finished 24 hours of not eating cheese - a challenge he told me about only after he finished. 

- and how did you feel during that time? 

-"annoyed" 

....yup, we noticed.

had ysop, and one of the older ladies in the ensemble, claudia, had bought a new cello on my recommendation. philipp also showed up with his recorder, and we went back here and he accompanied henry on his practicing.