Holiday and Music

I've been quite busy with music lately. Yesterday the Pleasanton Community Concert Band held our holiday concert. We played a lot of holiday music, and my favorite piece was "You've Got a Friend in Me" from Toy Story - not necessarily holiday music, but a feel-good song nonetheless. The day before I played in a saxophone quartet as a VA hospital - more Christmas music. The Wednesday before that was my usual weekly performance with the USS Hornet Swing Band at a senior citizen's center where I got to play lead. And the Saturday before that the sax quartet played at a local holiday parade. Phew! I have one more Hornet Band performance this week, and then I'm done for the season.

We got together with some friends last night to watch the Survivor: Gabon finale. We haven't followed it for a couple seasons, but this time we had to watch since Matt Whitmore was a contestant and we know him. He did really well, and if he had actually learned how to make fire with a flint (how do you not practice making fire when you know you're going on Survivor?!), he would have won the game and the million. Its been really fun watching this season. Congrats Matty!

I took our friends a bottle of Armenian pomegranate wine that I found at Whole Foods around Thanksgiving, and a Fair Isle Snowflake Ornament that I knit with some yarn from my stash:




This was a fun, quick knit (a couple of evenings). The red yarn is sparkly and the white is a bouclé, so its fluffy. You are supposed to put a Styrofoam ball in the center, but all I could find last-minute at Michael's was an egg shape, so that's what I went with. I'll definitely make more of these. Perhaps next holiday season I can make a bunch to send out with presents.

Speaking of presents, I have just a few more to get. How's your holiday shopping going?