The koi pond at our new house has served as a source of immense inspiration for yours portly. I’ve spent many late nights researching various species of aquatic life that can thrive in our little pond ecosystem. I’m most excited about getting some Japanese Trapdoor Snails for our pond.
In the meantime, however, I’ve added some ramshorn snails to the pond already. They arrived in a bag from an eBayseller in Oklahoma, clinging to the walls of their watery shipping compartment. I drove them up one frosty night and gently plopped them into the pond, which inspired today’s new piece.
It’s a quick Lazy Sunday this week as Dr. Wife and I hunker down in the cold. I’m casting my gaze back to two posts from earlier this week, one based in the coolness of the watery depths, the other in the fiery crucible of the modern restaurant industry:
It is the deep midwinter, and even the Carolinas are getting their share of the white stuff. Murphy and I were up at Dr. Wife’s house in North Carolina this past weekend, and there was a little bit of snow on Sunday afternoon!
This weekend brings Winter Storm Fern, which is supposed to dump lots of snow and/or “wintry mix” and/or ice all over the Southeastern United States. Gulp! We’ll know more by Sunday.
In the spirit of wintry frostiness, here are a couple of recent videos from North Carolina all about the cold.
I’ve been working hard on this week’s piece, “Koi Dance,” for about two weeks now. It’s a chamber piece featuring two flutes, bassoon, and piano, and draws inspiration from Bedřich Smetana’s “The Moldau”; that piece also features a flowing theme that depicts the movement of water.
I plugged the finished piece into Audacity and applied some additional reverb and a master effect, both of which I think have allowed the sound to “pop.”
My YouTube uploads have been a bit barren lately, so I’ve got one quick video this week, featuring a Lipper & Mann dish or container in a flamboyant Rococo style:
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Now that it’s 2026, it’s time to make a few changes to the blog. One of those overdue changes comes to the long-running weekly feature Open Mic Adventures.
According to a hasty review of my records, I ceased playing open mics—and, indeed, most live gigs outside of private bookings—in 2025. I simply lacked the time and energy—and interest. I much prefer rehearsing my students so they can play live.
That’s been one of the big changes in my life in recent years. I enjoy playing live, but as I get older, going to open mic nights and playing songs I wrote a decade (or more) ago lost its luster. It’s also amazing how once I got engaged (and now married), my desire to show off in coffee shops plummeted. If I’m going to play to impress anyone—always a dubious proposition—it’s going to be for Dr. Wife.
That’s all to say that I’m not ending Open Mic Adventures, per se—there’s always that chance I’ll get that itch to play and get some good video in the process—but that I’m shifting it into something more accurate: New Music Tuesday. The “Open Mic” appellation ceased to be accurate for most of 2025, as I featured more and more of my original electronic compositions.
Of course, good ol’ WordPress.com makes it easy to put together these weekly, multimedia posts. One thing I’ve come to love about WordPress.com is how intuitive it is to upload all sorts of media.
For example, here is today’s featured track, “Herald,” uploaded as a beautifully lossless WAV file using the “Audio” block:
I found this brief piece scribbled on a red tardy slip I had in my desk. I apparently wrote it down on 8 August 2023, and finally put it into my music composition software this morning. It’s a very simple, quick piece, indicative of the kinds of etudes I was composing at that time. As such, “Herald” is a brief piano fanfare, suitable for players at most levels.
Regular readers will know how much I love animals. One of the more surprising changes as I approached middle-age is that I went from being aloof towards the animal kingdom to adoring animals. I’m not sure what changed or what clicked, but getting my dog Murphy was definitely a big step in that process.
Regardless, this Friday I have a couple of cute animal videos from below and above the waves:
I’ve been going through a bunch of my old stuff in preparation for moving items to the new house. In doing so, I’ve come across quite a few Star Wars action figures and collectibles.
I was a hugeStar Wars kid. I loved the original trilogy and tolerated the prequel trilogy (indeed, I was super excited for the latter). I particularly loved the miniatures. I’ve sold most of the action figures in the following videos to a colleague of mine—he will take excellent care of them—but I am keeping the miniatures. They are so cool!
So, here are some recent videos featuring these fun figurines:
Dr. Wife and I took a cruise for our honeymoon aboard Royal Caribbean‘s Explorer of the Seas. The artwork impressed, delighted, and even confounded me.
As such, I put together a brief video showcasing some of the art onboard the ship. This video only captures a small fraction of the collages, paintings, photographs, mosaics, etc., aboard Explorer of the Seas. The selections were often odd, but they really fit the atmosphere of the ship, and added a touch of elegance and class to the cruise.
The Portly Politico 