Jonas?
Thread Starter
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 65,349
Likes: 4,652
From: Smalltown
Originally Posted by jukngene,Feb 18 2011, 09:57 AM
The roads also lead south out of Mass, you know! 
Edit: The roads/route to the south kinda sux.
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 15,020
Likes: 2,303
From: Delawhere???
Originally Posted by Lainey,Feb 18 2011, 10:39 AM
Edit: The roads/route to the south kinda sux.
Too bad there's I-95 and the Jersey Turnpike, etc. you have to travel. After you get to Virginia, there are lots of scenic roads to take. 
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 8,211
Likes: 135
From: Euclid, OH
Sorry I haven't been around too much. The winter, and the spring so far, have been busy, busy, busy.
I'm also sorry that I had to back out of Spring Fling. Too much going on right now, and I don't see it slowing down until sometime June (hopefully by the time the Tomcatt comes around!)
The things keeping me busy are all good, though.
The winter has been beautiful here.
Of course, as she grows, Anika is taking up more of our time with her activites:
I joined Anika's school ski club with her, so every Friday through the winter, we've been out on the slopes:
Anika and her school friends on the quad chair:
Anika on the slopes (that's my brother in the background)
She was quite proud when I allowed her to go on the black diamond chair alone. (For non-skiers, black diamond is the designation for an 'expert-only' slope. The black diamond at this ski area is only relatively difficult. )
She seems to have found her true love: horses. Yes, pretty much all girls her age go through a horse phase, but hers seems a bit more intense than most. She's started horseback riding classes, and is doing very well:
(Sorry about the lower quakity - it's never very bright in the barn.)
Her favorite horse is Andi:
She also did pretty well at her first show:
I've been busy, too. Our home has some work that's been needing to be done for quite some time now. Our upstairs bathtub had some water issues way back, oh, about 10 years ago. I pulled off the wall material that had cracked and leaked, bought the materials to replace the surround, but somehow never got back to it. That tub has been used for storage for a decade now. It was about time to convert it from this:
To this:
2 weekends sweating copper pipe, 3 weekends installing the surround. Lots of material trimming, carefully pre-fitting, trimming some more, buying new tools to do the job right, etc... I had to be super careful, because the materials that I bought 10 years ago are no longer available. If I were to screw something up, I would have to start all over. We've had several showers & baths there (first one was Anika just last Friday evening), and nothing is leaking yet.
Finally, some of you may remember last May when I may have mentioned that the leader of a men's choir that I was in many years ago had passed away. For the funeral, several of us got together to sing a few pieces. It wasn't the first time that we had gotten together for such a purpose - at least 3 other times in the year or so before we had gathered to sing for some fellow singer from one of the several groups we've all been in over the years. After the funeral, several of us talked about the possibility of getting together again as a group. So, finally, this past January we started rehearsals. 4 of us - fortunately a bass, a baritone, a 2nd tenor (me), and a first tenor. Unfortunately, since we don't have a leader, the music selection, arranging, and such fell to me. Having a music professional in the house certainly helps! I found an online music notation site, and have spent many late nights since January entering 4-part harmonies, exporting the individual parts to MP3 files, mixing them into rehearsal MP3s, locating music (I've got a few tunes on order from sheetmusicplus.com) and trying to locate piano accompaniments in the boxes of music that used to belong to our leader.
We're hoping to do a small concert in early June, if we can get ready in time. We've already decided that once a week is not enough, we'll be rehearsing twice a week staring this week. Our bass owns a bar with a back room with a piano, so we rehearse there every Tuesday night. It's been a lot of work, but I hope we sound OK, considering that we really haven't sung togewther (except for the occasional funeral) for something like 20+ years.
Lots of other things going on, but those are the highlights. Now that spring is (slowly) coming, soon I'll have the S on the road, and hopefully be seeing a bunch of you at the Tomcatt. (More on that later this week).
JonasM
I'm also sorry that I had to back out of Spring Fling. Too much going on right now, and I don't see it slowing down until sometime June (hopefully by the time the Tomcatt comes around!)
The things keeping me busy are all good, though.
The winter has been beautiful here.
Of course, as she grows, Anika is taking up more of our time with her activites:
I joined Anika's school ski club with her, so every Friday through the winter, we've been out on the slopes:
Anika and her school friends on the quad chair:
Anika on the slopes (that's my brother in the background)
She was quite proud when I allowed her to go on the black diamond chair alone. (For non-skiers, black diamond is the designation for an 'expert-only' slope. The black diamond at this ski area is only relatively difficult. )
She seems to have found her true love: horses. Yes, pretty much all girls her age go through a horse phase, but hers seems a bit more intense than most. She's started horseback riding classes, and is doing very well:
(Sorry about the lower quakity - it's never very bright in the barn.)
Her favorite horse is Andi:
She also did pretty well at her first show:
I've been busy, too. Our home has some work that's been needing to be done for quite some time now. Our upstairs bathtub had some water issues way back, oh, about 10 years ago. I pulled off the wall material that had cracked and leaked, bought the materials to replace the surround, but somehow never got back to it. That tub has been used for storage for a decade now. It was about time to convert it from this:
To this:
2 weekends sweating copper pipe, 3 weekends installing the surround. Lots of material trimming, carefully pre-fitting, trimming some more, buying new tools to do the job right, etc... I had to be super careful, because the materials that I bought 10 years ago are no longer available. If I were to screw something up, I would have to start all over. We've had several showers & baths there (first one was Anika just last Friday evening), and nothing is leaking yet.
Finally, some of you may remember last May when I may have mentioned that the leader of a men's choir that I was in many years ago had passed away. For the funeral, several of us got together to sing a few pieces. It wasn't the first time that we had gotten together for such a purpose - at least 3 other times in the year or so before we had gathered to sing for some fellow singer from one of the several groups we've all been in over the years. After the funeral, several of us talked about the possibility of getting together again as a group. So, finally, this past January we started rehearsals. 4 of us - fortunately a bass, a baritone, a 2nd tenor (me), and a first tenor. Unfortunately, since we don't have a leader, the music selection, arranging, and such fell to me. Having a music professional in the house certainly helps! I found an online music notation site, and have spent many late nights since January entering 4-part harmonies, exporting the individual parts to MP3 files, mixing them into rehearsal MP3s, locating music (I've got a few tunes on order from sheetmusicplus.com) and trying to locate piano accompaniments in the boxes of music that used to belong to our leader.
We're hoping to do a small concert in early June, if we can get ready in time. We've already decided that once a week is not enough, we'll be rehearsing twice a week staring this week. Our bass owns a bar with a back room with a piano, so we rehearse there every Tuesday night. It's been a lot of work, but I hope we sound OK, considering that we really haven't sung togewther (except for the occasional funeral) for something like 20+ years.
Lots of other things going on, but those are the highlights. Now that spring is (slowly) coming, soon I'll have the S on the road, and hopefully be seeing a bunch of you at the Tomcatt. (More on that later this week).
JonasM