happy new year!

I stayed in Iowa a few extra days to celebrate New Year's with some old friends from Luther College. We meet every December 31 to ring in the new year and have a generally great time. It's usually the only time I get to see any of them and, this year, we gathered in Davenport, Iowa for this year's celebration.

Fred and Jana have Laser Cats.













Ryan Newstrom (the poet, incidentally, for 2 of my pieces) always cooks a gourmet meal for us all and this year was no exception. For a guy with a master's in Urban & Regional Planning he is an amazing cook and, frankly, even if he had a degree from a culinary institute it would still be crazy good.

The first course was scallops.













Followed by a potato pancake with caviar.













Pears and greens salad with cashews, bleu cheese and a dressing I don't remember.













The best lobster bisque I've ever had...ever. This was his first time cooking live lobsters. He said they were screaming but that was (hopefully) just a joke.













Lamb chops from Fred's farm in Decorah, Iowa (where most of us went to college or grew up) with mushroom bread pudding and broccoli of some sort.













For dessert it was apricot custard pie (I think) with candied apricots on top. I'm not a sweets person but I dominated this one. It was so good.













Guess where I sat?

And the requisite group picture where one or more of us fumbles with the timers on our cameras and the rest of us hold a smile until they all flash. That being said it's a pretty good picture.

So long, 2007! Now it's back to the business of music-making. I've got revisions to do for the Festival Choir of Madison's performance of Passage: Songs on Octavio Paz by the end of the month and The Singers start work on Color Madrigals, Volume 3 on Monday. Not to mention that opera I'm starting.