Happy New Year! I know, I said that last year, but what else does one say this time of year? :-) I would just like to say, for the record, that MY STUDENTS PRACTICED!!!! Most of 'em, anyway. New Year's was weird, there was supposed to be a big party at Libby's in New York, but Katie and Scott and Nova all either bailed or brainfarted and I was too chicken to ride the Chinatown bus all by my lonesome (not to mention deal with New York subways when I got there...), so I ended up coming back up to Boston, catching up with Kate straight off the plane (poor thing spent Xmas in Albuquerque - of all the weird places) and caught Joe at the Black Rose. Works for me.

We've been working on a lot of trio stuff, including recruitment demos for trying to get the real little anklebiters interested in playing strings - the younger the better, at least for those who go on in music. I just hope we can rustle up enough little bitty violas. Anyway, our trio seems to have been named - Brontë, since there's three of us and we're all women and ummm... yeah... Beethoven, Dohnányi, good stuff like that. Hmmm, what else... oh, I'm going to attempt my first group viola lesson with my 6 kids in Wellesley - should be fun, they've all made a lot of progress, and it'll be good for them to meet each other now, so they'll have some buddies in the section when they get to All-Town. I'd love to have some in Milton too, but I just don't have any extra time in my schedule. It's messy, I'm kind of stunned that this many kids are really hooked on playing, but I'm not complaining - obviously whoever said classical music is dead was, well, dead wrong! So there.

Oh, and I almost forgot, I'm writing this on a new computer! It's so exciting, I actually have enough harddrive space to DO THINGS! Yay! Of course, my DSL hookup is still being weird, but I'm sure I'll become a download junkie again as soon as it's working. In the meantime, I've finally got Chessmaster (Mr. Taylor, are you reading this?) and (drumroll please...) a word processor! How on earth I made it through 6 years of college without one is beyond me... Imagine, I had to manually double-space my papers. Honest. Anyway, I'm definitely enjoying myself, and it even came with a new addicting card game - Spider Solitaire. Move over, Free Cell! :-) Actually, I think I'll go play a few rounds...

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