Following in friend’s path.
I spent the weekend ‘up north’ in Michigan, visiting a friend up at the tip of Michigan’s little finger.
It was a wonderful weekend full of good talk and good food and lots of snow.
Chasing the snow front.
Snow is a good thing when you get to play in it rather than try to commute in it.
Peaceful.
Sure is pretty too.
Snowy orchard.
Enough now….maybe more later. I’m settling back into my real life.
Climbing the mountain of real life.
Sigh.
Good memories.
Wait! I know it’s Wordless Wednesday…but I have words I want to say. And you know I never quite know what day it is anyway. So let me tell you about community band rehearsal last night. Thanks to Ricky’s Mom I practiced at least 30 minutes every day this past week. Even when I didn’t want to. Some days it was an hour because I just got caught up in the music. Well. Only a couple times did it go beyond 30 minutes. But still.
Just a moment. A certain sheltie who will remain anonymous seems to need my attention….
There’s something OUT THERE Mama!
What? Be quiet??? Really?
Pouting.
ZZZZ z z z..z…z…
…so anyway…I was telling you about last night. We’re a community band and we use a public school to get together every Tuesday night and practice. We have a concert in a few weeks and the music is difficult. So when I woke up to the news the public schools were closed due to icy back roads I just knew the director who is a public school band director would get us in the closed building. I was right and she did, and more than that the school superintendent sent a custodian to open the building for us. We are so grateful to have the support of the school administration.
We had a wonderful rehearsal. Everyone showed up! And you could tell people spent some time on the music since last week; things fell together and there were some nice sounds. Some not so nice as well, but we have 3 more rehearsals so we can pound those out.
So thanks Ricky’s Mom! For making me accountable to practice every single night. I need to do that this week too, but I’m heading out of town this weekend. That means I need to spend time with the music tonight and Thursday night for sure.
OK Katie. Let’s go check out the scary rain before I head off to work. Silly girl.
It’s noisy Mama!
I thought you might like to see a local farmer’s field. Really. It’s the prettiest field, with a gentle set of hills and a fringe of trees. I look at it each time I drive by, and it’s a little different every day. So a year or so ago I decided to stop and photograph it once during each season. Click on the photos to see the detail…and enjoy the seasons in Michigan.
Spring
Summer
Autumn
Winter
Car on the wall.
Scott has challenged us to show what winter means to us. Since I live in Michigan I suppose you are expecting snowy photos. But we don’t always have snow where I live near Detroit. Maybe you expect to see wide expanses of frozen lake. But our lakes don’t always freeze either. So what does happen each year at the height of winter here? Well, the North American International Auto Show happens in January, here in Detroit, every single year. Even in the bad years the show went on. but you can tell the auto industry is on its way back by the size of the show this year. (Click on the photos to see the detail.)
Especially beautiful were some of the concept cars…
Concept cars stretch our imagination.
…and the extraordinarily expensive cars…
This Bentley was only $135,000.
…and today’s version of muscle cars.
Life size hot wheel car.
So many cars, so many choices. It’s hard to choose! How about one of each?!
Katie here. Mama says she is just too exhausted to explain everything that happened when I got my new title yesterday. So I guess it’s up to me. Geeze. I have to do everything around here! Besides, my view is the accurate version of the day. No matter what anyone else says. Because I’m the princess.
So anyway, Mama never got anything in the mail about what time stuff started, or how many dogs were entered, so we didn’t know when to get to the big event. It was a HUGE show, about an hour away, where they had conformation dogs, and people in fancy clothes running around in circles with dogs who had their fur poofed up and hair sprayed. Huh. How silly is that!? I mean, Mama didn’t even poof me up and everyone said I was beautiful. Except for those people over on the other side of the building with their fancy shelties who were too busy spraying their dogs to notice me wandering around.
We go the the venue at 8 a.m. because that’s when the website said stuff started. Turns out they were doing stuff already! But our class wasn’t schedule to run until 1 p.m.! Mama was a bit peeved, but there was another person from our school already there, so we set up camp next to her and Dad and Mama and I hung out for 5 hours together. We went on lots of walks, and sometimes I stayed in my crate, but mostly I was content to lay in my Dad’s lap. That surprised Mama a lot because I’m not a lap dog at all.
Sitting with my Dad
Finally it was our turn. By then I wasn’t sure what we were doing there at all. I figured I was there to judge all the other dogs as they came and went. Sure were a lot of beautiful dogs and their crazy owners there! I was getting really sleepy and was all warm and snuggly when suddenly Mama plucked me off of my Dad’s lap and said we were on! On what Mama?
So we’re hanging out at the gate waiting for our classmate to finish her run, and the registration table is right there and there’s this really big lady sitting there, right next to me, and suddenly she laughed really loud and hysterically and that scares me a lot! And I jump up and try to get away from her and my Mama is telling me to sit, and the floor is slippery and I can’t sit and that lady is making a bunch of noise and my Mama is talking to me and the whole thing is just too much and then Mama tells me to heel and we’re inside the ring and I don’t want to be there, and the judge lady must be really tired because she asks Mama if we’re ready and I’m still looking over my shoulder and Mama doesn’t even get to ask me if we’re ready to work, and the judge lady says forward before we’re ready and Mama sighs and starts to move.
So. I figure when Mama moves, I move so I come along too…and that’s when I see it…a lovely jump about half way down the ring! Well. You all know how much I love to jump so I start moving faster, fixated on that jump. I just know Mama wants me to fly over it, to show off all my fur and how beautiful I am. But then my Mama is sort of pushing into me with her leg and saying Katie…KATIE! and back BACK!, and then she herds me! Can you believe it? Mama is herding ME the herding princess! She sort of pushes mes into this big circle left and right then I realize….we’re WORKING! OH! OK then Mama, why didn’t you say so? I thought we were just having fun, I didn’t realize we were working!
You all know I take my work very seriously, so from that point on I watched my Mama very carefully and did almost everything she wanted. OK. I sat crooked on one part but whatever. Everybody said I looked beautiful and I don’t think anyone else besides my Mama knows that I was going to take that jump early. We got either a 94 or a 97, Mama forgot to go read the scores after, she was too happy that the whole thing was over. We got first place too! Well…there were only two of us, and the other doggie walked out of the ring in the middle of his run…but still!
I stayed awake all the way home. Mama says my eyes were closed and my head was bobbing, but I was just resting my eyes. No sleep allowed for the princess. Cause I’ve got to do everything around here.
Mama says there will be video once she figures out how to upload it. Geeze. Mamas are so slow to learn stuff. I could probably do it myself, but I don’t want to upstage her.
A princess is always polite.
Resting my eyes at home.
Hello everybody!
Hey you guys! I bet you’ve been missing ME. ME ME ME ME ME ME…oh wait. I get carried away sometimes but you know it’s all about me. My Mama has been soooooo busy that I hardly ever see her. And when she comes home from work she’s usually too tired to play. But I make her play anyway. She can’t ignore me….not me! I don’t give up either. I have an endless supply of toys to drop at her feet. And while she’s at work I practice the BIG EYES and sharp whine so that I can make her crazy when she finally shows up.
Guess what? It works! And for the small fee of a few dog biscuits I can teach all of you doggies the skill set. Oh wait. You say you already have that down? Well! Doggies rule!
So anyway….Mama and I are going to do a big dog show this weekend. On Sunday we’re going to try to get our Advanced Rally title! Mama says she’s stressed again. Sigh. I don’t know why she gets like this. It’s just another day to spend watching people and doggies do stuff. I like to go to these, and when we’re in the ring I watch my Mama very carefully. If she can just read all those crazy signs correctly I promise to do what she asks. So it’s all up to her.
Me? I’m just having a good time with my Dad while my Mama is at work. And I’ve been dreaming about Mama and me going camping next spring. It’s almost spring, right? Well it should be. After all I’m the princess…and I decree it’s almost spring!
Cause it’s all about me. Yes it is.
Play time!
Karma challenged us to photograph our meals for a week. You’d think that would be easy, but it turned out to be quite the challenge. Who remembers to photo dinner before shoveling it in after a day at work? So I have, over the course of two weeks, taken photos of some of my more favorite meals. And, because I had a huge family meal right in the middle of the two weeks, you’ll get to see some food that only shows itself once a year. Enjoy!
At the beginning of the challenge we had just cooked a ham, and I was looking for something to do with the leftovers. My cousin suggested escaloped potatoes and they turned out wonderful! I didn’t get a photo of the finished product, but I did them in the crock pot and they were spectacular.
The wine didn’t go into the potatoes…but it was good.
Then later that week I did crock pot stew. See a theme here?
Good on a cold night after a long day.
Then it was time to get ready for the big dinner. Two of my favorite things to make are do ahead mashed potatoes….
Yukon gold, cream cheese & sour cream.
…and orange cranberry sweet potatoes that can also be done the day before. Both just get heated up the day of the meal, leaving you less stressed and more available to your guests.
You’ve got to try this one. Easy and amazing.
But the star of our big meal was the rib roast.
Yummy!
We had a wonderful time, and ate leftovers for a couple of days.
No we don’t eat like this every day!
After that we settled down to more normal meals. I forgot to take pictures of the night we ate hamburgers….or the night we went out to eat at a local eatery and I had chicken with dried Michigan cherries. Or the night we wolfed down a frozen pizza. After I heated it up.
I did remember to document the night we had scrambled eggs…which I thought would be boring, so I added sauteed onions, leftover ham, and cheese. Filling and quick.
Who says eggs are only for breakfast?
And Saturday night we had marinated chicken (you can buy it already marinated or marinate it yourself in Italian dressing for an hour or so), more onions (you can never go wrong with onions!), stuffing bought already prepared from the grocery store (Bob Evans) and peas. Pretty darn good and fast.
No leftovers.
So there you go….a week or so of meals. Oh. What did we have for desert? Well. We definitely didn’t take time to photograph that before we ate it. But it involved chocolate.
Thanks Karma, for making me think more about what we eat. AND for picking a perfect couple of weeks when I was really cooking. Versus any other two week period of the year when you’d see a lot more of this.
Healthy and fast. Perfect.
If anyone wants to recipes to any of this let me know. It’s all easy. Trust me on that.
Tuesday night was our first band practice since our Christmas concert mid-December. Though it was nice to have the time off, we were all eager to get back to playing again. We are getting ready for a community band festival held at the end of February. This of course makes us more nervous because the audience will be filled with our peers – other community bands, people that know music and will be listening with more critical ears than our family and friends. So we want to have our stuff together. We have six weeks.
On of the pieces we will be playing is “Danzon #2” by Marquez. I had never heard it before, but our director sent an email out during the break letting us know, and telling us that we should go find it online and listen. You can hear it here. It’s almost 10 minutes long but worth the listen/watch. This particular version is done by an orchestra, but we’ll be doing a version for a concert band. I followed along in my music and our version is almost exactly like this one, with a few minor orchestration differences.
Tuesday night it took us 45 minutes to get from the beginning to the end of the piece. We stopped and started a lot but some sections sounded pretty good even on the first attempt. And there was a long duet between our first chair clarinet and an oboe player who just happens to be his 10th grade daughter. They sounded so wonderful, the two of them together, that the rest of us, the entire band, forgot to keep counting and none of us came in after the 14 or so measures of their solo. The director laughed and lowered her baton, voicing what we were all thinking; what a wonderful opportunity for this father/daughter duo to play something so beautiful together. To create something breathlessly beautiful with her Dad…it will be a memory she remembers forever.
That is the beauty of playing in a group like this. There are several parent/teenager duos in the band and I think they all enjoy the experience of doing something like this together. I know we enjoy having them with us. We would not be the group we are without the support of many local musically talented kids. They fill in our gaps, cover our mistakes and generally don’t treat us like the old farts we are. Sometimes they remind us of how old we are just by their intense youthfulness. But generally it’s just fun to have them around.
So, time to get back to the daily practicing. Don’t want those young whippersnappers to outshine us more experienced players. They get to play in their high school bands every day. We have two hours a week. But then we have less homework to do at night so it all balances out.
I hope.
