Confidential to whomever sent me stuff

I'm not sure who these are from, so I can't send you an email directly and let you know your very much appreciated birthday package for me has arrived, but I've so far gotten packages from Shutterfly and Amazon (very thin and flat). So if any of you sent me those, thank you! I will thank you directly when I open them and find out what they are and who they're from on Tuesday.

Have a splendid, sniffle-free weekend, everybody.

Edit: second present's identity has been solved, too. Thanks, parents!

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Patrick practicing his early Christmas present

I love listening to him play. The instrument has such a warm sound, and he spent a bit of time learning guitar a while back, so he is picking it up again very quickly.

I played more piano last night and ran through a few exercises after Pachelbel, plus adding The Music of the Night from The Phantom of the Opera. I'd learned it on organ quite a few years ago, so it wasn't difficult to pick up again. While I was playing it (slowly, figuring out the chords), I had a sort of mental breakthrough. All of a sudden the bass clef started making sense to me and I could remember what the notes were without transposing them in my head! (If you can't read bass clef but you can read treble, there's a trick for it: just take whatever note it would be in treble clef and transpose it up two whole steps. So what looks like an F is an A. This information, if I recall, was imparted to me by a drummer some time ago. Gracias!)

I'm not amazing with bass clef by any means, but at least now I can read the damn thing again. Playing clarinet for years did nothing to help me retain my memories of the lower clef, and I was never as proficient as I was with treble. But perhaps I will improve significantly with ongoing practice. We shall see!

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