26 December 2012

I got up early enough this morning to go for a walk, but when I got out there, I saw some dark clouds (even though it was still too dark to see well), and I worried that I could end up getting rained on some distance from home and get very wet. So, I decided to drive over to feed Moshe and Bob's cats. As it turned out, though, the clouds cleared very quickly, and there was no rain at all.

I did quite a bit of editing on my piece for string orchestra, and it's sounding pretty good now. I think I'll now set it aside for a week or two, and then come back to it and see how it sounds with some perspective. In the mean time, I've started working on Bach's 3rd Brandenburg Concerto (my favorite). I got a MIDI file with all the notes, but that's it, and it will require a LOT of editing to make it sound musical and anything even CLOSE to a realistic performance. It will be interesting, though. There's still the problem of the continuo, too. There are some possibilities I can think of, but there could be technical complications, and, in any case, actually realizing the continuo would be quite a bit of work in itself. I'll have to think about what I want to do.

We ate lunch at Greg today. David had papparadelle, and I had their salat toast. After that, we drove over to the bird sanctuary, which is located near the border crossing to Jordan. There weren't many birds, and we didn't stay long, but it IS a beautiful spot, so we'll no doubt return another time.

I had no Berlitz classes at all today.

I began working on loading the organ that I bought and received a day or two ago. It turns out that there are quite a few problems with errors in the files, even on the DVDs. According to the company's website, they have experienced these errors quite frequently. I can also download the files, but there are TEN of them, and each one is about 4 gigabytes. Still, I seem to get more error-free files that way so far. It will be quite a process. If worst comes to worst, they will send me more DVDs, but that, of course, takes a week or two, and they, too, could be bad!

This evening, we went over to Ice Park again and tried out the new café that just recently opened. It's located on the roof of the building where they rent out the skates. We sat right at the edge, just above the ice rink, so we had a great view of the 7:00 ice show! We split a snack of crispy cauliflower on a bed of salsa and tehina, which was quite delicious and nearly calorie-free. After that, we took a drive up nearly to Yotvata and back, just to be out of the house a bit more.