While my colleagues at the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians (ALCM) were meeting this week for their biennual conference in Philadelphia, look what popped up in my Facebook feed! It was a picture of my husband, Carl, and me with my sister, Doris Au MacDonald and her duet partner, Sharon Dennis (aka The Braeded Chord)… Read More Across the pond(s)
In two weeks, I’ll be playing the organ at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Kapahulu, near Waikiki. I’m already nervous about getting to the church on time, because I’ll first have to finish playing the 9:00 am service at Nuuanu Congregational Church. The last few weeks I haven’t been able to return to my car… Read More Double duty
Last night I stayed up late, to take advantage of Priority Booking for reserving tickets for the Three Choirs Festival, billed as “the world’s finest choral music.” The booking office opened at 10:00 am in Gloucester, UK, which is 11:00 pm in Hawaii. I logged onto my computer at 10:55 pm and didn’t finish booking… Read More Three Choirs, here we come!
Yesterday, Joan Ishibashi and I were sitting in The Slipway restaurant, when a man in a sports car drove up. “Isn’t that Ian McNeice?” I asked. “Go out and ask him for a picture,” Joan replied. McNeice usually carries a small green bucket and asks for a £1 donation to the Port Isaac RNLI (Royal… Read More Starstruck
On Sunday before the luncheon we embarked on the Port isaac Walking Tour (which we had taken three years earlier) mainly because Joan Ishibashi’s husband, Kantila Vaghela was with us on this trip. However the steep hills of Port Isaac proved extremely tiring and strenuous so he decided to pass. I have to admit, those… Read More Port Isaac Walking Tour and Lanhydrock
It was in September 2019 that my relationship to other fans of the TV show, “Doc Martin,” and my life changed. I had already joined several Facebook groups, “Doc Martin (Martin Clunes) Fan Club,” “Doc Martin Fans,” “Season 9 and 10 Doc Martin Spoilers” etc. and was happy to see other people’s posts about the… Read More Doc Martin fans — Reunion!
It was bad enough that the total flying time from Honolulu to London was 15 hours, plus a 2-1/2 hour layover in San Francisco. On Thursday morning, I got up at 5:00 am to be ready for a morning flight to SFO, and arrived the next day about 1:00 pm London time—watching two movies and… Read More Sleepless in the U.K.
You probably know that I’ve been struggling to learn Spanish over the last three years, spending two hours per day with Duolingo, listening to Spanish podcasts, attending online classes, having daily Zoom tutoring sessions and watching Spanish telenovelas every night. And yet … I consider myself an intermediate student with only a moderate fluency. Sure,… Read More It’s not fair!
Cleveland to Denver, then Denver to Burbank, then Burbank to San Francisco, then San Francisco to Honolulu Yesterday I woke up at 4:30 am Cleveland time and finally arrived in Honolulu at 6:30 pm, 18 hours later, after taking four separate flights—at least they were all on the same airline and I didn’t have to… Read More The loooooong way home
Yesterday was a first for me—playing two recitals in one day and prepping for one only an hour before! The morning started out leisurely, and I was able to indulge in my usual concert prep practice of studying the score away from the keyboard. I was especially paying attention to stop and manual changes in… Read More Two down, one to go