Congrats, Music & Friends

First of all, a massive congratulations to Steve and Christina on their engagement on Friday night... congrats guys, we love you and are so excited for you. 

Now, on to the last couple weeks here... last night we had our good friends Mark and Michelle over for dinner and Dutch Blitz.  Michelle teaches grade 1 at Andrew's school and Mark subs, just like me.  They live just 2 minutes up the hill from us and we always have good times together. 

My latest "big" purchase has been a keyboard... I've been really missing mine in Canada, but since it's WAY too big to fit into a suitcase and bring over here, I've settled for a cheapy version... I got this one second hand and it sure isn't the best keyboard that ever lived, but it does the job for now.  

And yes, that is our ironing board being used as a piano stand.  Since we have barely any space in our apartment, when it's not being used, the piano goes under our bed and the ironing board folds up and fits in between the fridge and the wall.

The reason I wanted to start playing again is that since Andrew joined this band, they said I could play some keyboard and sing back-up... if I learned the parts.  So I've been practicing along with the cd's and we've had a couple shows together so far (none with the piano yet). 

One of our shows was this afternoon at a street carnival in Brisbane near the Ascot horse races.  It was a really nice stage with good sound equipment and lots of seats, but unfortunately because of where the stage was located, there weren't too many people in the audience.  Had we been one or two stages over, it would have been a lot better. 

Oh well, good for the stage experience and the fun of playing.  (Drew, the main guy, was on guitar and vocals, Andrew was on acoustic guitar, Lucas was on bass, violin, and backing vocals, and I was singing back-up too). 

Last Sat night we played at a little venue called the Sol Bar near where we live.  It was a really nice atmosphere... kind of a living room kind of feel with lots of couches, old lamps, and chilled out people.

Drew played the first set on his own, and then Andrew, Mark, and I joined him for the second set.  The crowd seemed to enjoy the tunes. 

In other news, Andrew is right in the thick of doing report cards, which are due this Tuesday.  His school requires him to write a one-paragraph comment for each kid in every one of his classes, so the poor guy has to come up with about 125 paragraphs, on top of all the marks and other stuff that go on report cards.  He's been at it for about 20 hours already, and probably has at least another 25 to go.  (And that's on TOP of teaching full time.)

He is also working on his final assignments for course #6 of his masters, so between that and his report cards and marking, he is in his little home-office for hours on end.  So proud of him, but can't wait till he gets a break in a few weeks so he can relax.

(It's times like this that I'm really super glad I'm a sub and don't have to do report cards.)

3 more weeks till the term is over and we get 2 weeks of holidays.  We don't have plans to go away this time since we just bought tickets to Canada for Christmas, so will probably have a bit of a stay-cation with possibly a couple nights away. 

That's it for now, talk soon,

~Corinna

ps- if you're ever wondering how many meatballs you can make out of 900 grams of organic ground beef, 2 eggs, some bread crumbs, and parmesan cheese... this is how many.    :)