Passionate and mesmerizing.

Talk about a passionate and mesmerizing weekend. On Friday, I headed up to Ames to the last of my Ames concerts. The performer this time was Kremerata Baltica. It's a group that's comprised of classical musicians from the Baltic Region. Gidon Kremer, an accomplished violinist heads the group. What's really neat about this group is that they consist of young adults from three Baltic countries - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. You can say it's the best of the best young classical musicians in the region. Before the concert, I went to a Thai restaurant called "The Spice". A number of people from DM insisted that I try the food there since they all raved about it. I thought the food was fine, nothing too extravagant. I did not get the wow factor that everyone was talking about. However, I thought the ambience was very contemporary. The highlight of the meal was dessert. I had tiramisu and I can most certainly say it was one of the best I've ever had. I even asked one of the servers where they got the tiramisu, and they could not tell me. I would even go back there just for the tiramisu. It was that good.

With a full stomach from dinner, I sat back and thoroughly enjoyed the concert. They all played with so much passion and enthusiasm it was infectious! Too bad there weren't too many people in attendance. I guess a lot had to do with the fact that most people have never heard of the group before. It was their loss for sure. I normally do not buy cds at concerts because the mark up tends to be outrageous. However, I made an exception this time because one of the cds that was sold was a double cd that cost $20. The cheapest you would normally get a double cd would be $18 so I thought it was a pretty darn good deal. Boy was I glad I got the cd. Oh, I should share with you how during the last piece, there was a little panic with the second violinist because the pages on his music sheet was off and I could see a little fear in his eyes, but somehow he managed to pull through. If you did not play too close an attention, you would not have caught it. The music sounded fine so the mix-up was barely noticeable.

On Saturday morning, I was off to Ann's house to help her saw some tree limbs that had fallen a couple of months ago after the nasty ice storm. It was kind of scary just looking at the aftermath of the storm. Harley and I spent a couple of hours just sawing and bundling the tree limbs to be put outside. Weather wise it was perfect to be outside working on those tree limbs. I do have to say that we accomplished quite a lot. The next step is for their family friend to come over with a chainsaw and hack the larger tree limbs that the handsaw would have been futile.

After that was done, I came back to the apartment to clean up before heading to Maria's house to pick her up for a "date". Since Maria is no longer volunteering to help me file, I don't see her as often. She's on staff now and is working on the other side of the office. I do see her when I walk around the office, but it's different when you don't work together. So, I had asked her if she wanted to accompany me to a concert which I had an extra ticket since John could not make it. She said yes. We had dinner at Hessen Haus - the German Restaurant in Des Moines. She's never eaten there before so I thought it would be a good place to go. She was impressed with the food. Maria was born in Austria so she's somewhat familiar with German food. Oh, before dinner, we went to the I-Max movie, "Everest". That was definitely one of the better I-Max movies I've seen. The photography was amazing and there we scenes where you would get a little choked up because of some of the lives that were lost.

After dinner, we went to a classical concert at the DM Art Center. The group that was performing this time was Claremont Trio. These three young women met at Julliard. Two of them are twin sisters and the third was invited to make up the trio. I would say they were probably my age, but you could not tell that based on the way they played. I've never heard so much passion being played by a group before and they nailed all their pieces. There were times when I was just sucked into their performance and lost track of time. Talk about a wonderful evening to say the least. Maria too thought they were magnificent for such a young group.

That was my weekend. Later this morning, I'll be headed to Mass and then most probably off to the Art Center again to watch a documentary about the systematic destruction of art pieces during WWII and the efforts to recover them. The title of the documentary is "The Rape of Europa". Today is also the Holocaust Memorial Day so I think it's most appropriate to be showing the movie. It's free and sponsored by the Des Moines Jewish Federation. After the documentary, I have my prayer group with Joyce Rupp. That should be a lot of fun. I'll barely have time to grab dinner before RE at 6PM. This evening I'll be showing them the movie, "The Mission" - one of my all-time favorite movie. Most of them have not seen it so I think they'll be in for a very nice surprise.

It's kind of funny looking back at this weekend because I really did not plan on doing that much. It kind of worked out that way. Some weekends are busier than others and this would be one of the busier ones. I'm OK with that considering I have nothing planned for next weekend.