Welcome to the Afiara blog!  It looks like I’ll be adding the first post.  I’m in the midst of doing laundry at the moment so it seemed like the perfect time to do some writing!  We had a wonderful party of sorts today with our friends over at Colbert.  They are bunch of such wonderful people and I consider us quite fortunate to have met them and to have the opportunity to work with them!  Charlotte showed me a couple of amazing concert programs from their archives today, including one from a Juilliard String Quartet concert during the 1947-48 season (back when they were less than a year old) playing, among others, the 3rd quartet of William Schuman.  She also had a program from a series of viola recitals given by legendary violist, Paul Doktor back in 1967.  Although I have seen these kinds of things in photographs or as copies, it was quite special to actually handle the real thing.  Also, because they have been in storage, the programs were in perfect condition, appearing as though they were from concerts that took place last week.

We sat there enjoying some pinot noir from Mayo Vineyards in Sonoma County, CA with a fantastic couple of cheeses and some other munchies.  I find it kind of funny and remarkable how comfortable I feel around the whole gang considering that we all only met for the first time in June.  I guess that’s a sign of good things to come!

One other piece of interest for the week is our minor fiasco in obtaining Brazilian visas for our upcoming trip.  After being approved on September 10, we thought all was good.  Despite the fact that things seemed a little less than perfectly organized at the Consulate yesterday, it should have been an indication that something was wrong when the agent we saw couldn’t find any record of us in the system.  That fact was confirmed by a phone call later in the day from the Consulate saying that indeed there was no record of our visa approval.  Long story short – the left hand wasn’t talking to the right and, apparently, everything is now in order.  I guess we’ll know for sure when we go to the Consulate tomorrow to hopefully pick up our passports and visa.  We shall see.

More later but for now, see ya!