Just in time for Seattle’s long delayed spring, I caught a cold. The last few days I’ve been spending far too much time doing this to get to my keyboard for any length of time:

But I’m on a brief respite thanks to some awesome nasal spray so I thought I’d check-in before the NyQuil kicks in and I’m off for another early bedtime.

Orchestra has been on break this week after our last performance at the benefit auction. I was the sole cello in our little band, but I did a fair job with just about everything, except Brandenburg – of course – which as it turned out later I rushed hellbent though like my endpin was on fire. I didn’t miss a note, though, which I’m going to count as pretty amazing. Speaking of endpins – our second (and last set) was played during dinner on parquet floor, instead of the carpet we played on earlier. I put the rubber stopper on my endpin but it kept slipping and I literally had to haul the cello back in place about four times during (of course) Brandenburg. Suffice it to say, I missed a few notes.

But it was all for a good cause: as an auction “item” a future performance was auctioned off and raised $400 bucks for the RCB/O. Not too shabby.

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I haven’t had much of a chance to try more cellos, but I have been doing a little research online and will post on that to follow. In the meantime, since I missed Friday’s cello video, here’s a a makeup – and one of the exercises I’ve been doing while flopped out on the couch watching sick movies (Wolfman, Firefly/Serenity and the BBC series Primeval) or reading (I’m halfway through A Clash of Kings)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CObNd3lJ3Q&w=640&h=510]

As much as I would like to take credit for finding this video, I confess I stole it during one of my fever enhanced interweb surfing sessions. I also can’t remember exactly what blog I stole it from (again, I blame the fever) so an apology and hat-tip to the mystery blogger who came on this first.

The Spider and The Squid are great exercises to practice while I’m not yet up to playing (I got winded going from the couch to the fridge for ice cream this afternoon) but help me feel like I’m still in the game.