Lutefisk Anyone???

This past Thursday was the annual lutefisk dinner at Trinity. We headed to church early at 4:30 and helped serve until about 6:30. The platters were overflowing with steaming piles of quivering odoriferous fish that defies olfactory description and could only be consumed (and enjoyed) by a dysgeusic person (one with "abnormal" sense of taste). I helped Jerry and Marilyn load the fish fillets the night before in the fridge at Trinity and each weighed 50 pounds. The fillets were the biggest I've ever seen. As per my usual trepidation, I ended up sticking with the Swedish meatballs myself... The boys were a great help again this year with Aaron particularly enjoying being the pie server. I had to leave early that evening, though, and head to Northland Community College to practice with the small madrigal dinner group to sing in just over a month for Christmas.

Now that we've gotten halfway through our practices for the madrigal dinner, the director asked me if I'd be willing to play the string bass for our performance in December. She had purchased about a $1,800 bass instrument that is really nice looking and even better sounding. I played it for the first time Thursday night accompanying the group and it was a real treat to play at least a half quality instrument. I've been practicing on Aaron's instrument at home and it's no comparison. Speaking of bass playing, Aaron himself continues to do rather well with his lessons and the teacher has been pleased with his progress. It's still a lot of fun to learn right alongside Aaron as he learns. Now the director at the college has asked me if I'd be willing to go a step further and learn the instrument well enough to join the "swing" band there at the college, playing "big band" songs of that era including Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Glen Miller, etc. with songs such as Little Brown Jug, Jumpin' at the Woodside, etc. so I'm excited to give that a shot.

We attended the Franklin Middle School orchestra concert that was held last week at Lincoln, watching Brett, Brayden, and Brianna Drevlow perform for Mr. Druce, the teacher. They had a really fun sounding song they performed named something like Attack of the Rosin Zombies where a handful of the musician students would scream in the middle of the piece like something out of a B movie. Aaron got to see what an orchestra concert was like, though, which was the most important thing so he knows what to expect as he progresses in his own learning of the bass. The next music event for the boys should be their fall "informances" the end of November where they get to show off what they've learned on keyboard and singing to name just a couple.