Home is Where you Lose your Hat

Several people have asked me, since I've moved into my house, whether it "feels like home". I've always said I wasn't sure, but my parents' house still felt like home to me. In fact, I may have mentioned that in my blog at some point. I have now determined that it does, indeed, feel like home, because I can now no longer find anything. I have this $25 off rebate for my Kitchen-Aid mixer that's due on Sunday and I can't find the packing slip to send in as the receipt. I could probably use the order confirmation that Amazon sent me via e-mail, but I forgot to print it while I was at work. It's possible that I could get the printer working here, but there's no guarantee of that. Driving somewhere to do it makes less sense given the gas prices and the amount of time involved. In any case, I am now making an effort to start filing stuff in my filing cabinet.

Another exciting thing (as if the last topic were exciting) was that I believe that a juvenile red headed woodpecker visited my deck this week. I feed the birds on my deck rail and as I was getting ready for work, I saw a large bird with a brown head, a black back and a bright white spotted or mottled area near the tail. It was the same size, shape and had the same mannerisms of a red bellied woodpecker. Red headed woodpeckers are pretty rare around here, so it was pretty exciting. At the very least, I've never seen a bird like that one before.

Tonight I went to see the English Concert, which was a part of the Duke Artist's Series. I enjoyed it a great deal. They played mostly baroque and baroquey classical pieces of such composers as Vivaldi and Mozart. I'm definitely a fan of Vivaldi and all the music was lovely. The musicians all performed in different outfits of muted dark blues and purples, which added to the visual appeal of the performance. The director and violin soloist, Andrew Manze, introduced each piece by providing historical information as well as pointing out some of the structural components and themes of the pieces. This was well done and often humorous. It was clear that the musicians, especially Manze, enjoyed the music and enjoyed performing it, which is always nice to see.