I’ve decided I’m going to try the weeknotes thing that’s common among indieweb writers. For my first one, I’m covering last week, albeit a little late.

On Tuesday, I had the final rehearsal for my orchestra concert on Sunday. I play trombone in the PennMed Symphony Orchestra, an amateur group made up primarily of medical students and healthcare professionals at Penn Medicine and CHOP, among other healthcare institutions in Philadelphia. The final rehearsal is always a bit stressful because anything that isn’t going well probably won’t be fixed before the concert, but this one was good.

I honestly don’t remember what I was doing at work last week, and that’s a different computer than where I’m writing this so I can’t check. Maybe I’ll talk about work next week.

On Friday I went to see the ballet for the first time. Despite loving music and live performances, I’d never been. My wife and I saw the Philadelphia Ballet perform the Nutcracker. Previously I have had a somewhat negative opinion of the Nutcracker from playing awful arrangements of the music in school band, but it was incredible. The dance and music were both beautiful and I’d happily go again.

My main task for Saturday was replacing the caulk in our tub, which I expected to be a quick project. An hour to remove the old, an hour to put in the new, and I’d move on with my day. It turns out, getting the old caulk out was difficult, even with a chemical remover. I had done a terrible job last time so there was just so much scraping to do. In that process, I unfortunately chipped some of the finish of the tub, so that had to be patched before I could put the new caulk in. I went to Lowe’s to get a repair kit and accidentally bought the wrong color. Thankfully I realized on the way out to my car so I could return it and buy the right one. I got home and discovered the second one had entirely hardened so I couldn’t use it. So much for a quick project. Dinner didn’t turn out right either. I tried to make shepherd’s pie, but put in too much liquid so I ended up with more of a chunky potato soup. I was really looking forward to that meal, so I was not having a good time. It’s pretty funny in hindsight how miserable it is to have a bunch of minor things go wrong.

The concert on Sunday was great. My favorite of the pieces was Florence Price’s Symphony no. 3. I had never heard of her before, but she was the first Black woman whose music was played by a major orchestra. It was cool to learn about her and perform her work. These concerts always make me feel fortunate to have this group. Amateur music groups are an incredibly special thing because we’re coming together for the joy of music and doing something it’s impossible to do alone. It’s a privilege to play serious orchestral works with such a talented group of people.

That’s all for this week. I’m not sure if I’ll start using a template for these posts or just keep winging it. We’ll see!