Orchestrations

Here's a link to the article I wrote for Flanders Today in case you are interested in learning more about musical robots.

Deadlines!

Good news! I was able to find at least a bit of work with Flanders Today, the English language newspaper for the region of Belgium we are living in. I contacted the editor and proposed an article about the Logos Foundation (where Troy is working) and she agreed that it would make a fantastic story. Well, who could say no to an article about a robot orchestra? Strangely, even though they have been in existence for over 40 years, Logos hasn't had a lot of external press.

I'm working on a deadline of Nov. 18 and so is Troy. As most of you know, I tend to be a bit more organized than Troy, so I'm nearly finished and haven't lost a ton of sleep over the deadline. Troy, on the other hand, has been up for most of the last two days working on a piece for tomorrow's Logos concert. He just told me he was going down to use the bathroom and now I hear him snoring. Yikes. Well, I had better go try to wake him up and get back to my story!

Trying to Work it

It's hard to believe that I've been unemployed now for over 2 months. I've had long periods like this before when we moved to Eugene and when we moved to Virginia. It took forever to find a job each time. Somehow now things seem a little more urgent though. Time is flying and we want to be able to take advantage of our geographic location by traveling to some of the great European cities.

I have been keeping myself very busy, updating my resume, trying to teach myself more about web design, bidding on jobs on elance.com, and following up on a few leads we have gotten from people in Belgium. Hopefully something works out soon.

In the meantime, I've been trying to save money and calm my nerves by cooking. My chocolate "chip" cookies (had to make them with a real Belgian chocolate bar b/c I couldn't find chips) were a huge hit at the dinner party we attended on Sunday. Nobody had eaten cookies like that before and I already got a request for the recipe.

I just made a pot of carrot/ginger soup that turned out really great despite not having a blender or food processor anymore. I used a potato masher to mush it up and realized I kind of prefer chunky to smooth soup. The soup paired perfectly with the aged Gouda we picked up in Amsterdam and some whole-grain bread I bought today. It was a delicious combination, and just what I needed--some fantastically comforting food!