As it often happens, I started reading our book-group book at the last minute. Luckily, Bel Canto by Ann Patchet turned out to be a very enjoyable - and thus fast - read.

The book revolves around a hostage takeover of a party at a vice presidential residence in Latin America. It follows the people locked in the building as they wait for a resolution of the situation. One of the principals is an opera singer who was the entertainment at the party and a lot of the book deals with classical music - hence the title. Although I was a little disappointed with the ending, the book had me completely engrossed in the story. I almost fell like a victim of Stockholm Syndrome when I was finished reading.

The book reminded me (and was almost as good) as The Sparrow. I think I enjoyed them both - and why I was reminded of the other one - because each has such strong and engaging characters and the story focuses on the people and how they relate to one another in an out-of-place environment. The genre itself, opera and terrorists in Bel Canto and science fiction and religion in The Sparrow is really only secondary and enhances rather than overwhelms the story.

BTW, the book is loosely based on the 1996 takeover of the Japanese embassy in Peru by members of Tupac Amaru. That's another fascinating story all by itself.

We had to leave Eeyore's early because we had tickets to see Trout Fishing In America at UTPAC. I didn't quite understand why a folk duo would be booked at the biggest concert hall on campus, but it turned out that they were participating in the Austin Symphony's Spring Family Concert.

The concert was great. Before it started, the symphony was playing in the foyer of the hall where kids got a very close look at the musicians and their instruments. When they were sitting on stage, every music stand had a sign with the name of the instrument on it. Before the concert started, all the different orchestra sections were introduced and described. They also had several cameras there and closeups of the musicians were project live during the concert. A great introduction for the kids to classical music.

The concert itself began with Morton Gould's American Salute which is based on a Civil War era war song. Jennifer recognized it as the Ant's Marching Song and for me it resurrected memories of the infamous Yo-ho Song from Madrigal. It's also the same motif in Ghost Riders in the Sky.

The orchestra was followed by several songs by Ezra and Keith. They were accompanied by the orchestra which worked out really well. Most of the songs they played were new to me, I especially liked their tango Mine. They have new instruments since the last time we've seen them. Keith has a funky upright electric bass and Ezra a couple of beautiful Renaissance guitars.

After Trout Fishing, the orchestra finished off with Sousa's Hands Across the Sea March. They lowered a huge US flag in the backdrop during the piece - and they had it flipped! Blue field of stars was on the right side even though it's always supposed to be on the left. Oops!

We've had a busy Saturday. Jfer started it off with her Team Danskin practice (getting up and some ungodly hour on a Saturday is not my idea of fun). After she got back we headed down to Pease Park to this year's Eeyore's Birthday Party. We got there a little after 11 and found a good parking spot above the park. As we were walking toward it - with Homer pulling excitedly on his leash - I stepped into a bunch of dried hackberry fruits and wiped out. I had to get a bandaid at the first aid station - feeling a bit like a wuss. Homer was pretty impressed with my seeping wound, though.

The Hackberry is a fast growing and much reviled weed tree in this area and now I know why. When the berries dry they turn into little ball bearings and become extremely treacherous. When we were leaving Eeyore's I saw another guy slipping on the same patch - albeit with more grace and balance than me.

I've added a link to my home page - when you click on it, it'll show you other people's blogs that are geographically close to our house. Pretty neat (though some of those geeks look a bit scary).

I also recently updated the links page on the family site. It's using the MovableType mt-rssfeed for aggregating everyone's RSS feed and the very cool overLIB Javascript library for mouse-over windows.

After searching high and low, I couldn't find any chocolate ice cream recipes that appealed to me. I mean, who would put corn syrup in their chocolate ice cream? Luckily I discovered that my favorite ice cream makers have a recipe book out, so on Saturday I bought a copy of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book. They have several chocolate ice cream recipes and I made "Jerry's Chocolate Ice Cream".

Beside a small fiasco of having twice as much ice cream as what fits in the maker (note to self, "whisking" and "whipping" eggs are two different things), the ice cream turned out incredibly and was a huge success at the Easter picnic yesterday. If you make ice cream, you've got to get this recipe book. The ice cream is so rich and delicious - way better than what you get from Blue Bell, et al, and just as good as any premium ice cream. I still need to find a good source of pasteurized whole eggs - the ice cream requires raw eggs so we went for the organic best we could find. So far there are no ill effects.

Easter is here and since I got the afternoon off work, I went by Central Market and picked up three pussy willow branches to hang painted Easter eggs from. Pussy willow, despite the name suggesting a James Bond heroine, is a bush, Saliz discolor, whose branches produce furry buds in the spring. In the Czech Republic they are blessed on Palm Sunday and thus, along with painted eggs and pomlazka are part of the Czech Easter traditions.

The store actually charged me $3.50 per twig! And the twigs are almost blooming, so they won't last much longer, either. That's what you get form living in Texas and from Easter in late April.

I'm not sure if I'll be even able to make a pomlazka this year - willow branches in the park are full of leaves and probably too dry to weave. I guess Jfer will have to be whipped with last year's - I need to make sure she stays young and healthy, don't I?

The Thomas Jefferson Center has released their annual Jefferson Muzzle Awards to call attention to those who in the past year forgot or disregarded Mr. Jefferson's admonition that freedom of speech "cannot be limited without being lost."

The recipients rang from John Ashcroft and 107th US Congress to miscellaneous school boards and principals. I think my favorite is to Zoo Director Lucy Spelman who suppressed the release of medical records of the deceased giraffe Rhyma by claiming that it would violate client-patient [keeper or curator-zoo animal] privacy.

We had recently broken in our ice cream maker that we received as a wedding present with five wondrous quarts of strawberry ice cream. Five quarts is a lot of ice cream, BTW.

This Sunday we're supposed to provide home made ice cream at the neighborhood Easter pot luck picnic and we were planning on making some peach ice cream. Alas, it's to early for Texas peaches - actually, pretty much any kind of peaches - so we'll have to come up with something else.

We have some ideas and we'll probably make a berry or chocolate ice cream. As usual, I'm open to suggestions and recipes.

I'm glad that Colin Powell still occasionally speaks his mind. In February, he answered a student during an interview on BET that the U.S. supported coup in Chile in 1973 (the date "9-11" means something very different to Chileans) "is not a part of American history that we're proud of."

Now one of Kissinger's cronies is making a stink about it and the state department already distanced itself from Powell's statement.

Still, it's cool that Powell would say something like that - even if it goes against the "we do no wrong" message of the government and especially in light of the (then future) occupation of Iraq.

We ended up not having all the paperwork together, but luckily my buddy 4686 came to the rescue. I filed over the phone and sent out a check this morning.

The marriage penalty was not as bad as I feared and with my additional salary withdrawals this year we'll be in a good shape next spring.

Still, Jfer and I better "get busy" increasing the number of dependent, a.k.a. "tax credits". Unfortunately, it's too late for tax year 2003 for that...