Today I started my day at 6:30 am with a 8500 step walk around the woods. Met a dog with its owner who said "Hello!" to me. It was still quite dark so I lost one turn and had to make one more round. When I was coming home, it was already much lighter and I wanted to have a peek at the river Neris.
Before coming to the house when I returned from my morning walk, I decided to do 4 pull-ups on my rings. My body was well warmed-up from the exercise so it wasn't a very difficult task. While doing those pull-ups I noticed some apples on the tree which were left after I picked them to make apple cider a couple of weeks earlier.
Ausra had to go to the seminar at school for teachers and I was preparing to practice organ at my church but before that I decided to publish Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast episode 317 first. It was about how to relax your body and arms when playing the instrument.
Right before leaving the house I answered a few comments on my Steemit blog. They were mainly from people who participated in our weekly Pinky and Spiky Drawing Contest. Also @spectrumecons suggested some options about how to get notified when your favorite bloggers post an article so that you won't miss it.
These 3 ducks and one crow appeared to be sharing their breakfast (or was it lunch?) on my way to the church. I also saw Gediminas castle, Lithuanian nation symbol. The hill underneath it suffered a lot of damage during wet season because some geniuses at the authorities decided to cut down the trees that were missing in the early days to keep the look more original. Luckily now they managed to keep it under control with reinforcements.
When I came to the Vilnius University bookstore, I wanted to buy some Schneider 967 topliners because our collection of pens to draw Pinky and Spiky comics is running out. They didn't have the black color ones, only the blue ones. And they told me they aren't planning to have them in the future either... Strange way to satisfy their customers needs... Anyway, I ended up buying 10 of them on Amazon. O well...
My mood was elevated by these sweets that our security guard at the church brought from her vacation in Turkey. Some sort of candies with sugar powder and a very juicy pomegranate. Now I was ready to practice playing the organ...
In my church first I practiced Organ Sonata No. 2 by Lithuanian composer Teisutis Makacinas. I started my session by repeating previously mastered material 5 times. Then I aimed to learn 3 more difficult pages by repeating each line 10 times. Before Ausra came to meet me from teachers seminar I also recorded a video of the chorale prelude "Aus tiefer Not", BWV 687 by J.S. Bach in a slow tempo with camera pointing at my fingers.
Today we ate lunch at Ausra's parents: marinated herring with onions, vegetable casserole with baked potatoes and steamed pork and raspberry tea. Vegetables and raspberries were from our summer cottage. Ausra's mom loves to cook.
When we got back home, I brought some firewood for the oven. This time of the year we need warmth and cosiness, especially because it's getting darker earlier and earlier. Looking forward to seeing some flames...
While drinking barley coffee and eating Šakotis, Lithuanian traditional spit cake, I took a self-esteem test. On one column, there were 20 character traits and I had to rank them from 1 to 20, 1 being the highest and 20 - the lowest priority in the character. In the next column I had to judge the same character traits in me which was a difficult task. Then I had to subtract score 2 from score 1 and raise the resulting score by square. My test result was 0.6685 which was normal self-esteem.
I drew this comic today just before leaving for a concert in the city hall of Vilnius. The idea was to create a silliness out of Pinky and Spiky being inside of two pumpkins. Spiky's wish to sleep in the pumpkin contributes to the scene but the main punchline is Pinky's: Spiky is always thinking with his stomach and eating the bed for breakfast is kind of moronic in itself. Hope you will smile at this too...
The concert in honor of 80th anniversary of Teisutis Makacinas consisted of 3 parts: his academic music, congratulatory speeches and his popular music from the 70s and 80s. For people, his popular songs that every listener knows probably were a huge relieve after his dissonant mildly modern style. Nowadays the composer doesn't seem to write this popular music animore but is immersed more in a classical medium.
It was mentally and physically active day. I walked over 18000 steps but don't feel all that tired. Saw some ducks today and ate Turkish sweets... Looking forward to tomorrow. Good night, my friends! How was your day?
