Author Archives: Panther

Saxophone lessons again 🎷

I’ve been indecisive about taking saxophone lessons again in the last few months. I feel guilty because I haven’t spent any time on improvisation in the previous six months. Furthermore, I’m unsure if I have enough time for the lessons.

But I have signed up for the saxophone lessons. I figured I would never do it if I didn’t sign up. I would never be ready for it if I didn’t have someone to be accountable to because I wouldn’t practice for it.

I signed up, and later that day, Dean (the same teacher I had last year) messaged me, welcoming me back and asking what I wanted to work on. Phew, now it gets real. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m also a bit nervous that I won’t be able to handle it.

My terrace after the gardener has done the work
My terrace without weed

Shopping in Germany 🛒

I have been shopping in Germany. Most people think I only shop in the border shops because they contain Danish groceries, but I shop in German shops instead. I want a wide variety of German groceries. The quality is better because the German people will not accept the poor quality of some of the Danish groceries.

The picture shows ⅔ of the shelve with a special kind of food, which I don’t know what it is called in English. The amount of different types of it and different brands makes it hard to choose :-)

Part of a shelve with groceries in a German store

New big band conductor 🎺

We got a new conductor in the big band. It is still unclear whether it is permanent or only lasts until the summer of 2025, but at the moment, I’m enjoying learning something on Mondays.

The new conductor is excellent and teaches us to play swing. Yes, it sounds silly, but most of the musicians don’t know how to do it. And that is kind of crazy since most of the music we are playing is swing, and several musicians have played in the big band for more than ten years!

We are getting better, and it is great to be challenged. The conductor also has a better overview than the old one. He hears when someone isn’t playing what is written in the sheet music, and then he corrects it. And suddenly, everything sounds a lot better. Not everyone is happy about it, but I think it’s great. How will we improve if we don’t get corrected when we play something wrong?

I’m looking forward to hearing the result with this conductor in 6 months or so.

Part of the pathway before the weed was removed
Before the gardeners work
Part of a pathway without weed
After the gardeners work

Gardener 🍃

It has been difficult to find someone who will remove weeds from my garden. Apparently, most gardeners do not want to do this, but I finally stumbled upon one who wanted to do the work.

It took a week to complete, but now the garden, pathways, driveway, and terraces are beautiful again. I don’t know how to describe it, but now I enjoy looking at my garden. I hadn’t imagined that the result would be this great. The gardener has done everything I wanted (and then some). She has also cut some of my bushes and small trees.

Furthermore, I’m lucky enough that she will also maintain my garden in the future, so we made an agreement that she will come by periodically to remove weeds and maintain the garden in general.

Now, my garden is no longer a mess to look at.

Part of the pathway before the weed was removed
Before the gardeners work
Part of the pathway without weed
After the gardeners work

New heating control system ♨️

I’ve got a new system for controlling the floor heating in my house. The old system from Uponor wasn’t that good. Fifteen years ago, it probably was great, but time has passed, and it is now outdated. Furthermore, I’ve replaced the control box once, and my neighbors have changed their control box twice. So, without a doubt, my control box wouldn’t last much longer. That’s why I decided to replace the system within the next couple of years.

The plumber who helped me a while ago gave me a price for a new system, and I decided to take him up on the offer. The new system is installed, and I’m very pleased. As you can see in the pictures below, the temperature on the old thermostats from Uponor was not visible, so when I wanted to adjust the temperature, I had to guess how much to adjust the thermostat. I also didn’t know how to adjust the dial and had to look it up in the manual.

Luckily, both problems are solved with the new thermostats (see picture). I can see the current temperature in the room and the set temperature. Everything can be controlled via an app on my phone or the individual thermostats. It is easy and very intuitive.

Old room thermostats
Old thermostat
New room thermostats
New thermostat

Decorating the dining area 🌸

For some time, I have been thinking about how to decorate the wall in my dining area. Earlier, a picture was hanging on the wall, but it looked weird because the picture wasn’t big enough.

Last year, I bought Santa Claus in his sled as stickers and put them on the wall. I didn’t know how difficult it would be to take it down, but it was very easy, and the stickers didn’t leave any residue on the wall. So, I took the chance and bought stickers with a cherry tree. After spending some time cleaning the wall and putting the stickers on it, I’m very happy with the result. One thing that is missing is more colors. It would look great with something green, but I’ve also seen stickers with blue blossoms, which would look fantastic with the pink tree.

The picture isn’t great, but avoiding the shine from the stickers was difficult. The wall is light yellow, so the pink contrast is pretty.

Cherry tree wall sticker

Playing with a baritone and a tuba 🎺

I’ve begun playing the saxophone more frequently. Not long ago, I played with a new tenor sax player, and even though it didn’t go any further than that, I’ve said yes to playing with a baritone and a tuba. It was a great experience.

The guy who plays the baritone, plays the trombone in the same big band as me. After one of our rehearsals, we talked about how much we looked forward to a professional conductor. That led to him calling me the next day and asking if I wanted to play with him on baritone and a tuba player he knew. I found it thrilling and promptly said yes.

It was a great couple of hours because they are also nerds when it comes to playing like me. They were fascinated by the sheet music that I brought with me. I had a great time with them. It was so easy being in their company, and we talked like we had known each other for a long time. It was very energizing, and I look forward to playing with them again.

Room being cleaned
I'm still spring cleaning - this time it's one of my spare rooms.

Worthless at fixing taps 🚰

In my former house, I was able to repair the taps when they started to drip by taking them apart, cleaning them, and replacing the rubber rings. It was nice to be able to do small things like that myself. Unfortunately, that is not the case in my current house.

The thermostat in the shower mixer hasn’t worked since summer last year, so I bought a new one last year, but I haven’t gotten around to replacing it yet. The shower mixer had started dripping, so it was time to replace it with the one I bought. I thought it was easy, but I couldn’t unscrew the old shower mixer and was afraid I would do something wrong. I called a plumber to do the work and asked him to check the valves underneath my sinks.

The first bath with the new shower mixer went fine, but a couple of hours later, I noticed that it was dripping. I still had the old one, so I thought I could take it apart and find out which rubber ring should be replaced. How hard could that be? It turned out that it was very hard because it was impossible to take the shower mixer apart, whether it was the old one or the new one.

Then, I tried replacing the cartridge in the bathroom sink tap because it was leaking. Again, I failed. I removed the screw, but I couldn’t remove the cover, and now the water was running out of the tap. Damn. I closed the valves under the sink and called the plumber again. This time, another person showed up, and he couldn’t remove the cover either, so I decided to order new taps.

I decided to order a more advanced kitchen tap than the one that I had. I wanted to try a tap with a pull-out spout, and I’m looking forward to using it.

Finally, everything works as expected. It took four weeks to sort everything out, but finally, nothing is dripping or leaking, which makes me happy.

My new kitchen tip with pull-out

New tips for my AirPod Pros 👂

I’m still very satisfied with my AirPods, but I haven’t found the perfect fit with the original tips. They come loose and sometimes fall out. So, I’ve been looking for alternatives and have found a couple.

First of all, you can buy tips made of foam instead of silicone, and secondly, you can buy ‘wings’ for the AirPods so they are sitting more firmly. I started by buying foam tips, but they only worked in one ear. Now, the question is whether another size will solve the problem or if I should buy those ‘wings. I decided to buy both.

So far, it works perfectly with tips in different sizes. I need to squeeze the tips before putting them in my ears, but afterward, they fit perfectly. They also stay put after a long walk, so it doesn’t get any better than that 😃

Foam tips for AirPods Pro

Playing with a clarinet and a tenor sax 🎷

I’m going to play with a clarinet and a tenor sax. I usually play with the person who plays clarinet once a month. She also plays tenor sax; when we play together, we play a mix of clarinets and saxophones. I love it when we do that. She plays with a guy who plays the tenor sax, and we have decided to play together to see if it would work. I chose some big band arrangements with backing tracks that we could play.

The guy was not thrilled. He wants to play the melody all the time and doesn’t want to practice the skill of playing in a big band. I respect that, but I think it would be beneficial for him to play with backing tracks because he doesn’t respect the pauses. He always plays too early because he doesn’t want to wait, which is noticeable when he plays the melody.

It was a great couple of hours, and I would do it again, but the guy didn’t want to repeat it. He said he plays too much already, so he couldn’t find the time. Instead, the woman and I have agreed that we want to play more frequently - I’m looking forward to it.

Picture of a landscape I saw on a walk