How I Changed This Week

Every school day this week I did something new.

Tuesday: A few weeks ago, I was wearing a pair of bling-y love-heart earrings.  One of my most entertaining girls at school - I've taught her for nearly 6 years - thought they were gorgeous, and said I should take a photo of them (which I did for this blog anyway) and then use it as the wallpaper on my phone.  Somehow we got onto that topic on Tuesday, and I went to show her the picture - suddenly she had my phone (!) and was telling me I had too many photos and ooh Instagram and then she set the earring photo as the unlock screen -

and picked another -

for the wallpaper.  It took me about a day to stop doing a double take every time I checked my phone for the time.

Wednesday: On Tuesday I had coughing fits to and from work.  I hate these, and they stopped me feeling like I was getting over this cold.  On the way home I realised it was most likely due to the air on the train, and all I was wanting was a cup of hot tea.  So for Wednesday and Thursday, I took a travel mug with tea in it for all trips.  It worked.  The lid of this mug is really well-sealed so I wasn't worried about any spills.

Thursday: If you follow my other blog you'll know about this.  My grade 6 quartet had their first performance last week, and I would normally give the Freddo Frogs as a reward.  But I always do that.  I recently got into cupcakes (baking them, not really eating them), so I made them some mini cupcakes, and decorated them with appropriate musical things.

They were a big hit.  (I do apologise for the not-straight lines in this photo.  Taken in a hurry before leaving for school on Thursday morning.  Meanwhile, how cool is the board underneath?!  It reads: George Frideric Handel - Too Hot to Handel)

The DIY Chamber Concert

You know when you're just casually having Australia Day drinks, and you realise you could be a string quintet?  And then decide to have a quintet night?  And then agree to put on a concert with that same string quintet?  And do a quartet too?  On Star Wars Day?  Yeah.  So that's been my last 3 1/2 months...  Schubert, Schubert, and more Schubert.  Death and the Maiden (now known as Darth and the Maiden), and the String Quintet in C (or, 'squintet', as one of my kids read it) for 2 violins, 1 viola, and 2 cellos .

Our concert was yesterday, and as far as I can recall, this was my first time.  That is, first time performing as a small chamber group (gigs don't count here, obviously); that's not organised by someone else (such as, it's my recital for whatever will you be a backing string quartet); in which we had to do everything ourselves - rehearsals (duh), organising a venue, advertising, tickets, food, clean up.

Yes, you can only just see my head

As we had booked a 6pm concert that would go until about 8, I thought we should provide food.  Friday evening and Saturday I prepared finger food - I love my mini-muffin tins.  This was the first time I'd ever made cupcakes - I find them visually appealing but never really want to eat them.  Except for the icing.  But I figured everybody else in the world seems to adore cupcakes (ooh, more evidence I'm weird).  More than that, though, I only recently found Cake Wrecks (which I love!) and thought, I can do that.  I was right!  Not only could I successfully spell our group name (formed from our initials, ADEPA), but I did all three clefs - and, in true Cake Wreck style, I put the dots of the bass clef on the wrong side.  And only realised this after a friend put a photo on Instagram and a couple of others did the head tilt, phone turn, head tilt, eyebrow raise, then "How did they flip it without.. um... flipping it?" oops.

Anyway, the concert went well.  There were a few odd notes here and there, and my ricochet was not the most amazing ever, and I'm sorry for augmenting the C chord at the end of the first bit of the quintet.  Not all that many people showed up, but about half the audience seemed to be made up of my students and their families.   Although small in number, they made up for it with enthusiasm.  I'm pretty sure there will be more concerts to come!