Week 13: November 17

Americans don’t wear poppies for Remembrance Day, which they call Veteran’s Day. This was a problem, as I am not American but Canadian, and therefore obliged to wear a poppy. Luckily there are a few limited craft supplies at GGH. In Flanders Fields, may we never forget.

DIY poppy

We have finally started playing real music in viol class! Our teacher brought us a 4-voice fantasia by Purcell, with *GASP* Sharps and flats in it!!! My part requires me to read treble clef an octave down. This is a new challenge. It is no problem to read alto clef on my tenor viol, and I am getting a handle on bass clef and treble clef at pitch, but treble an octave down keeps mixing me up. I shall, in the end, prevail.

SF weather is really weird. There is no snow or rain. At the beginning of November the air became slightly colder, so that I began wearing a jacket outside, and the sun sets early. These are my only two indices that time is passing. It is very strange – like another world. This is the country of perpetual summer, which has its pros and cons. On the bright side, you get nice green grass and flowers all year long. On the off side, it’s just…..really……boring. I hope you are all keeping warm in the blizzards, and staying safe.

Yesterday I went to Mountain Lake for a multi-stage cache which marks my 550^th find. The lake was undergoing restoration, but it was still pretty, and I spent some time poking around the dry creek bed.

Mountain Lake, w/o mountains

Appropriate for the weekend after Remembrance Day

Where the cemetery used to be

Is this a geocache I see before me?

Mural in progress

This afternoon was my first Baroque Ensemble concert. It could not have gone better. We played three concerti grossi by Geminiani, Locatelli and Hellendaal (I had a concertino part in Hellendaal), and also the Telemann Don Quixote Suite.

Finally, a nod to everyone who went to Banff with CYO. My thoughts were with you all weekend, and I very much wish I could have been there with you. I hope the concert went awesome and that you blew the roof off once again, and that there weren’t any last-minute emergencies with broken strings (although seeing as I wasn’t there to cause them, I probably don’t have to worry). Don’t let those Edmontonians get the better of us! 

Banff 2011. Long live the CYO!

- Antisocial Violinist