8 December 2012

I'm still having trouble with chest congestion. It's not that serious, but it continues to cause problems, mostly at night. Overall, I slept pretty well last night, but I still didn't feel like getting out this morning.

This morning, I continued listening to demos of one of the virtual organs that I am thinking of buying. This is an organ built by Marcussen and Sons in 1973 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. It's a large and very capable instrument. If you're interested, here's a link to the page of demos (you may have to click on the "Demos" rectangle near the top if it opens to a different tab). Alternatively, here's a link to just ONE of the demos (it's a WAV file and will begin playing shortly after you click on it), the one that I think is the most impressive. It's a little long, but it begins very quietly and gradually builds up to nearly the full organ. It's also a very beautiful, Romantic-style piece written by a young Dutch composer, Jan Mulder, who now live in the U.S.

David and I ate lunch at Greg again today. We both tried something new, though. David had their tortellini, but the new part was that he ordered the tomato sauce and had them put it on the side. I had their sabich salad, which was very delicious. Underneath, it's a regular Israeli chopped salad, but on the top are grilled eggplant, garbanzos, hummus, and a sliced hard-boiled egg.

This afternoon, I was able to complete the purchase of the Synful Orchestra and did a little editing of my "Folk Song for Strings". I will need to do a lot more to make the piece sound beautiful, but already there's no mistaking the amazing realism of the strings!

This evening, I posted another entry to my political blog. This one discusses several articles relating to the liberal reality of Israel, the history and goals of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and the huge ado about nothing regarding the recent announcement of approval for construction of housing in the so-called E1 area. The whole post is a little long, but I encourage you to read it and some of the articles it links to for a better understanding of the issues that Israel must deal with.