A Rainy August Day....

So we were supposed to have an air-conditioner delivered yesterday. We're certainly not in a hurry for it now that it has cooled off to a very Seattle-like 60 degrees. Oh well. It's a rainy, gray Saturday and I think that both myself and the husband are enjoying it very much. I'm in my music room playing with my computer and my flutes, and he is in the living room playing video games. We're going to an art opening later tonight. Can't say that I'm all stoked up about that either. Just had a second cup of coffee for the day and thought I would use the added energy to blog while I waited for the sugar to get rinsed out of my mouth so I can pick up one or more of my flutes. I've already put in two hours practice today but plan to do at least another hour. The weekend is time for me to get caught up on the practice I missed during the work week because I was too fried from the office-day to come home and put the lips on the plate.

So, let's see... on my last entry, I was putting up pics from the Seattle Flute Festival back in April - so I guess I will continue with that. In fact, the one at the top of the post is a bunch of flute players stretching under the direction of Lea Pearson who gave a very cool seminar on Body Mapping for Flutists.

So I think I already have a picture of Greg Patillo, the beat-boxing flutist with his ensemble Project, but here's another one anyway - he's cute. You'll get over it. And I'm sure that Eric Stephson and Peter Seymour will appreciate me calling them "Greg's Ensemble". Sorry guys. You are both bad-ass on your instruments and rocked that concert here in Seattle, but I'm a flute-nut, so I'm all about Patillo.



And second we have Project on stage for the main event:



And third, we have the stage after Project has gone into the wings. I thought it was a nice touch to leave the cello there.


So that's about it for the flute festival. I was too busy having fun to take too many pictures. One of the scenes I really wound up wishing I'd gotten was a shot of the vendors room. Good God....there was no way to capture the feeling of that room without having audio. What a crazy cacophony! Hundreds and hundreds of flutes being tested and pawed by hundreds of people. It was really something else.

And then there was a fun bike ride last weekend with me, Kristopher and a friend of ours, Lisa Lake. She works with Kristopher, but I claim her too. We had a deal where we said that whenever we went out riding together and took photos, we would crop from the waist up. So here are a few photos of our little 23-mile bike ride on on the Sammamish River and Burke-Gilman trails from last Sunday:

And here's one with my favorite sculpture on the trail. From one side it is a crescent moon, and from the other it is a salmon. Very cool indeed. We all had our picture done by it. (probably a stalling tactic as this is about 8 miles from the entrance where we started). Of coures, I'm a complete dumbass and didn't get a picture of the salmon side. Next ride.



And then here's the three of us taken from Kristopher's long arm.



So I'm tired of this post now. This is about all the blogging I want to do for the moment. Ug. Happy Saturday everyone!

Woo Hoo! Claire de Lune Sounds Decent!

Yay! I've been working on friggin' Claire de Lune for about six weeks, and it's finally starting to not sound like complete ass.

I've got an .mp3 of it, but I don't see a way to upload .mp3s to blogger. Bummer. I wouldn't have minded sharing this one. Even though I don't know how to use my recorder very well yet, and there's no piano accomp...accomp...accompaniest. **grin** You'd know what the hell I was talking about if you saw "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou" about 20 times. I can't make a video for shit. I did about ten of them and none of them would upload to youtube. I can't believe it. I guess I'll have to buy my own digital movie camera to make that happen. Or get my buddy who's in feeeelm school to come over and record me.

I'm starting to get my sound back though - yay! I'm so glad. I was worried there for a while. I've been practicing pretty heavily for the past 4 months, and wasn't noticing what I thought was a reasonable amount of improvement until very lately. Past couple of weeks. I've been getting good, encouraging comments from my teacher, and that's good. I LOVE playin' the flute. I enjoy looking at them on their stands too. I put in about 90 minutes this evening and that was on top of my 45 minute lesson, so I don't feel bad that I'm just looking at them and not playing them. I was telling Kristopher that I need to buy a third flute stand because I can't get all three of them out at once. I'm really hoping I can figure out how I'm going to play while I'm out after my foot surgery. The biggest hurdle has been cleared in that my instructor has agreed to come to the house for my August and September lessons. So at least I get to continue.

It occurred to me that I never put up any pictures of my adventures at the Seattle Flute Festival back in April. Just wasn't doing much blogging in that month - anyway, no time like the present.

The Seattle Flute Festival was held a the Town Hall in Seattle, and they couldn't have picked a better place. I love the Town Hall. I saw a historical actor protray Thomas Jefferson there once and the atmosphere really made the thing. But I digress. Might as well start off with a little Greg Patillo. He was the featured artist for the Festival. OMG! Look at the time....I'm gonna have to continue this tomorrow. But here's Greg anyway.


Greg's an amazing flutist and he does quite a bit more than just play stright, melodious flute. He's a beat-boxing flutist, and his stuff's all over youtube.

Anyway, we will continue this later. It's almost midnight and it's a worknight!