Category: Jake

I actually sent this to Jon last week (because, really, who comes to my site to look for local events?), but wanted to wait to post something here until I knew exactly what we were doing for the concert. The Central Oregon Symphony is putting on a family-friendly children’s concert this weekend. Whether you’re a kid of even an adult, this concert (which will last about an hour or so) will be an educational and fun experience for everybody. There will be music, demos of the various instruments, some audience participation, and a whole lot of fun (and some hand-on stuff afterwards).

The concert is free at 2PM at Bend High School on Saturday, February 13 (the full-length concerts are the following weekend). Hope to see you there!

Yes, I know you’re probably sick of me saying how cold it is in Central Oregon. It was only -6°F this morning at my house (though it did get into the minus-teens overnight, apparently). I do geek work for several property management companies in Sunriver, and I’m hearing a very similar story: frozen pipes all over the place. I’ve heard stories of failing furnaces in more than a dozen homes, causing really cold homes. Some have been caught and fixed before it got too cold, but there are still many homes that have frozen pipes (including my boss’).

I heard of one homeowner here in Sunriver who refused to have his property management company blow out his sprinkler system — “I can do it myself, I don’t want to pay you to do it.” There are lots of homeowners in this area like that, sadly. He never did (he lives hundreds of miles from here, as do most of the homeowners out here), nor did he turn off his sprinkler system timer. It somehow managed to not freeze and sprayed a nice sheet of water all over his back yard, where it then froze, and then the water that was coming out of the sprinklers just ran down the street instead, creating a nice little skating rink.

Stay warm, folks. More links later today.

I got up this morning and it was 1°F on our front porch (that’s -17°C to the rest of the world), and in the last few hours, it’s gained a total of two degrees. It’s just bitter, bitter cold out. I just got my hair cut, so it’s especially nippy on my newly thinned head. My house has actually has more snow than my office, though it is about the same temperature out here. The wind-chill is supposed to bring the temps down even more tonight, into the minus-teens range. Thank goodness we have plenty of firewood.

I do want to personally thank the folks who made it out to our band concert yesterday. The weather was really awful with snow blowing sideways because of really stiff winds. The parking lot at Summit High School was well-buried to the point where you couldn’t even see the curbs, causing many folks to drive over curbs as they were the same level as the pavement in some spots. We had a pretty good turn out considering, and I could only imagine what kind of turn out we’d have if the weather would have cooperated. Those of you who didn’t make the trek, you missed a helluva show — though with the weather the way it was, I honestly don’t blame you. Many of the band members had trouble getting there, too, but as they say, the show must go on.

Many of you know that I’m a percussionist for both the Cascade Winds Symphonic Band and the Central Oregon Symphony (I’ve been a percussionist for the Cascade Chorale on a few occasions as well). While I love playing with all those groups for a variety of reasons, I really enjoy playing with the Cascade Winds (aka the COCC Concert Band) the most because of the large variety of music and (obviously) the variety and complexity of the percussion parts.

We have our first concert of the season this weekend. Feel free to click on the banner to the right or click here for all the details. The concert is Sunday, Dec. 6, at 2PM, at Summit High School. The concert is free (donations accepted), family-friendly, and refreshments will be served during intermission.

You can also find the event on Facebook.

Hope to see you there!

I finally got around to doing some spring-cleaning over at Bend Blogs. There were a bunch of blogs listed that were either dead or haven’t been updated in a year, so it was time to clean some of the stuff out. I started the day with 431 blogs listed, and after getting rid of the ones that were either dead or haven’t been updated in over a year, we’re down to 364. The archives from those blogs, unless specifically requested by the authors of them, are still listed in the search function on Bend Blogs, the site’s names just won’t show up on the left-side column.

I also fixed a few broken RSS feed URLs as well as new blog addresses for folks who change their address on a fairly regular basis (I’m looking at you, Shannon).

One of these days I’ll get around to updating the blogroll on this site, and hopefully LinkBox will help me with keeping that managed.