Tonight I finally got back to the chicken-scratchings (read: notes for a piece) I started on when I first got the digital piano a few weeks ago (interrupted by too much work, then too much dead mouse, then too much anti-work depression) and much to my surprise, I think it's actually heading in some not too hideous direction. But it's becoming too sprawly (after 5 bars) to do very much more at the piano, so tonight I hoiked it into Finale and cleaned it up and adjusted and added another couple of bars. And what a brain-strain that was - haven't really used Finale in - ouch! about a year and a half, so have forgotten how to do, well, pretty much anything. Tomorrow I must print out the list of keyboard shortcuts. Seriously thinking about buying a MIDI interface for the piano very soon too. And a printer so I don't have to keep hassling the poor flatmate. My my, the list of things to purchase just never ends, does it?

Got a new CD over the weekend - the boy bought me the soundtrack to O brother, where art thou, which is one of my favourite films ever, as a belated Valentine's Day gift cos he couldn't be here for the day itself. He's such a sweetie - and he knows me so well :-)

On Sunday I decided to bite the bullet, be brave and go forth and Make New Friends by joining in the London flickr group's February meetup in Islington. I'm very glad I did - they're a fun bunch, and I'll definitely go to more. It was a very grey day, however, but perfect for a bit of an experiment I've been meaning to do for a while now - going monochrome. I decided to spend the day shooting only in monochrome (which on my camera means sepia rather than black & white - I'm not sure why Sony did that...). It was an interesting excercise - I found myself focusing more on textures and contrast more than colours, which gave a whole different way of considering potential subject matter. It was interesting too to see what worked and what didn't. I'll definitely try that again sometime.

Also been doing a bit more cooking, which I've been meaning to be braver about (brave because of lack of beloved KitchenAid heavy-duty stand mixer) and finally tried out one of the recipes in my Dandoy Biscuits cookbook which I brought back from Brussels the last time we were there. I was quite proud of myself really because I pretty much managed to work out the recipe without the aid of a dictionary. I did check a few things, but mostly my guesses were right (the main exception being that what I translated as "a soup spoon" was actually "a tablespoon") so I felt rather chuffed. The recipe I made was "Le cookie" - chocolate chip cookies - and one hell of a mixture, I can tell you - you need muscles like a prize fighter to mix it all up (200g of butter! 400g of assorted sugars! half a kilo of flour!) but it turned out absolutely superb in the end - and so much mixture! I only baked up about a third of it, which made about 20 large cookies, and have frozen the rest in 2 batches to see if it will make good refrigerator cookies. Cross fingers! If it will, that would be awesome because I don't think I have my usual refrigerator cookie recipe here with me. Anyway, fortunately the flatmate is doing sterling work with helping to eat them. I'm just trying not to eat too many... could be fatal!

"You want me to focus? At a time like this??"

# posted by minim @ 10:36 PM