Wonderful Christmas

I am now back in Florida after a wonderful week in Maine with family. I really enjoyed seeing many of my cousins, aunts and uncles, and my parents.
My dad has built a beautiful new home across the road from the home where I grew up. You can see pics from this vacation in my flickr photo stream.
I also enjoyed a wonderful Christmas with my love once I got back home to Florida. We had a wonderful evening together exchanging the gifts that we had got for each other but mainly just spending time together was great!

Home Again

This week I am back in Maine to visit my parents and the many members of my family. It is always great to come back and visit. It never seems to last quite long enough. Unfortunately these trips are never perfect because Kristin has to stay home and work at the hospital. So the trips tend to become bittersweet.

Today I spent "Christmas" with my Aunt's family. It was wonderful. We watched the grandchildren open presents, made cookies, and played a board game. My Aunt, having visited this blog, had made a "Looney Bin" sign...something that I have always wanted. I now can't wait to hang it up at school. These pictures are of my Aunt and Uncle. The puppy is a new addition to my cousin Patrick's family. Her name is Miley.

Lets see where this leads...

This blog was started for a class project. I am now done with that class and have successully maintained my straight A's for my master's degree in Music Education. I am hoping to keep up with the blog and see where things go.  We will see. I learned a lot from taking this last class (Internet in K-12 education). Areas that I had to study were: blogging, social bookmarking, podcasting, wikis, and the list goes on.  I also learned about how to utilize RSS and create a google reader account.  I am now very addicted to this and check my reader about as often as my email (which turns out to be about every hour if not more). I have found some real interesting blogs, and wikis to follow that are both educational and just plain intersting for me to follow. I have included links to some of these on my sidebar.

There are no words for this......

Just listen and...



...wow

Us

Inspiration from a suprising source

This weekend was our All-County Orchestra Festival. This consists of auditioned orchestra students getting together for 3 days to put together a top notch performance. The guest conductor for the high school group was Thomas Sleeper from the University of Miami. 

I have not been so inspired by a person in a long time. I watched, on the edge of my chair, as he elicited emotions from these high school players that only exist in the darkest reaches of our soul. You could cut the intensity with a knife.

What the most inspiring moment to me was learning that this college orchestra director/composer's background was apparently on the trombone!  See, from my point of view many orchestra conductors are either string players themselves or pianists.  So...perhaps there is hope for me yet.

This is Sleeper's Trumpet Concerto Movement 2. Sleeper is conducting and the trumpet soloist is Craig Morris

One of the perks...

Ok...so living in exile can have its perks too. When one lives in Orlando it is extremely convenient to go and visit the Mouse.

For my birthday in August I received assistance in the purchase of an annual pass. What does that mean? I can go to any Disney park, when I want any time I want. FANTASTIC. Needless to say that we often will go on the weekends and just hang around.

After you go to Disney so many times you begin to see past the rides and things and start enjoying it for more than what is on the surface. The other day we found ourselves in an art shop enjoying the lovely Disney paintings and statues. What creative people!

Also it is nice being able to go to the Epcot Festivals. The one we went to the past two weekends was the "Food and Wine" Festival. Food and wine from all over the world are served in kiosks all around the lagoon. What an experience. My favorites are Germany, and Ireland. Oh, and of course Canada. :-)

A taste of home...

For lunch this weekend I enjoyed lobstah rolls. Ahh Maine Lobstah rolls. There isn't anything like the taste. The only thing that would have made them better would have been able to eat them on the type of hotdog roll that you can only find in a Maine grocery store.

The lobstah came from my parents who sent them canned by the Look's Canning Company (renamed to Look's Gourmet Foods)near where I grew up.

As good as it was, unfortunately I am now totally out of lobstah meat (two cans in one weekend!) and will have to wait until my parents send more.

A Life Long Dream...

Years ago my father put in my mind the idea of hiking the Appalachian Trail. For years we talked about going on the trip. Now, years later, I still have this great desire to "thru-hike" the trail. I have done much reading and study, and hope that someday I will get the opportunity to do it.

A few years ago (back in 2002) I took my first hike upon the last five miles of the trail (going north) to the summit of Mt. Katahdin. That too was a dream of mine and I got to share it with my girl friend (later at the summit my fiancee). It was a wonderful day and when we got to the top I asked for her hand in marriage and she said yes. The end to a perfect day.

My first post!

Well here is my first post on my Looney Bin blog! The name? Well I love Loons (the bird that is) and there is this sign that I have seen and have always wanted that has a picture of a loon on it and the sign reads "Welcome to the Looney Bin" "Home for the Unusual" I think that pretty much says it all.