My Staycation

I took this week off from work, and am being trendy by spending it as a 'staycation'

This week's activities:
--Seal the kitchen counters
--Polish all of the wood furniture and cabinets (days later, still have a few rooms to go...ugh, at least I am clearing off junk and cleaning up as I go)
--Buy solar-powered walkway lights (still have to install)
--General house cleaning...trying to get rid of the clutter...
--Organize all of the stray music (bought file storage bins today)

Practicing is in there, too, not as much as I would like! There are more things on my list, but I think that I'm going to be stretched to finish what I've started.

It's amazing how busy I've been and how little I feel that I've accomplished (but the cabinets sure look good!). I could happily retire and keep extremely busy.

On the practice front: still working on landing my fingers in the right spot, and this week my teacher asked me to make sure that I'm doing that AND keeping my bow hand loose...sigh, something goes when I work on one thing. My Sunday group is getting ready for our next gig, so I need to practice my part of the Vivaldi Double Cello concerto (yea!) and the piano part of the Bach A minor Violin Concerto. I don't need to work as hard for the other pieces. And, need to spend time on chamber orchestra stuff. If only my hands weren't so tired...

Chamber group on Saturday was fun; we played piano quartets. I found the score and parts of the Faure Piano Quartet No 1 (C minor) online, and printed it for us to play. The string parts weren't too bad, but our pianist said that the piano part was really hard and would take a long time to prepare The slow movement was absolutely gorgeous. We finished with the Brahms G minor Piano Quartet, always a favorite!