New Toys and Ice Trees

(The following should be read in the voice of Garrison Keeler.  If you can do that, you get a free Christmas song at the end of the post!)

Been quite a day on the farm, quite a blustery day as you can see by the photo below.

Looks cold out there and you're probably asking yourself, "what happened to that tree?"  The answer is, my father happened to that tree.  Every year he takes the hose to a tree and makes it into an ice tree.  This one's a little skinny but he's growing.  You water an ice tree like any other plant and it will grow bigger but unlike other plants sunlight kills an ice tree so try to avoid too much if you grow your own.

But, despite the cold we went out and visited a lot of stores in search of a new family TV.  We hit 7 stores in 3 1/2 hours, a record really and at the end of the day we came home with this:
a 37" LG LCDHDTV.  We hooked it up and watched some of my YouTube videos on it, some family photos on a DVD and 20 or 30 seconds of the Tonight Show.  But, something much better came to the house today, better if you like high pitched squeals more than TV, which some of us do, myself included.  This came in the mail today:
You thought you didn't know what you were looking at with the ice tree now what is that?  That is a Moog Etherwave Theremin and I'm going to learn how to play it probably (certainly) to the annoyance of my NYC roommates.  My goal is to be able to someday play my favorite classical piece on this instrument.  Bonus points if you know what that is.  For more info on a theremin (the 1st electronic instrument) go to the wiki page on theremins.

Don't forget your Christmas song!

-Idaho Bob-