Ale Moller Band

Awesome New Coat and more

It's been a fairly cold winter here in upstate New York. Things warmed up a bit last week but got very cold again over the weekend. I'm staying warm though in my brand new coat! Here's the story:

I bought an awesome new coat a couple weeks ago because I lost both my other coats. I would bring my coats with me but not wear them. My awesome new coat is green and warm and fuzzy on the inside, water repellent on the outside, it's totally awesome and was on sale... everything a coat should be! Then I relapsed into my old habit of bringing my awesome new coat with me but not wearing it. Then I LOST my awesome new coat and was totally bummed. But then my awesome wife FOUND my awesome new coat and now I'm happy again. The end.

Okay, that should bring you up to speed. So for Sarah's birthday last week we went out with our friend Dan for Indian food at our favorite place: Sahota Palace in Liverpool. Dan had never had Indian before but it got his stamp of approval.
Giant Robot Dance was out on the loose last weekend down near Baltimore, MD for the MidWinter Ball. We had a great time reuniting with our old colleagues R2-D2, Bender, The Robot from Lost In Space, Seven Of Nine and of course, our friend and mentor, Optimus Prime...

Nailyn

In case you haven't heard, Noah and Kailyn got married a couple weeks ago! Here are a couple pics taken by our friend Morgan Marshall...It's been good to be more-or-less home this month. December kinda stressed me out. Been spending time with Sarah, getting caught up on booking stuff, working on album artwork and press pics. Still haven't really been able to get out birding very much yet. Had a nice trip to NYC recently where I got to play guitar in a jazz/folk trumpet ensemble. And Noah and I are headed to Maryland this weekend for a gig with the 'Bots. Hey, time for another random product endorsement...This stuff really is tasty! We got some for Christmas. Actually we got a lot of chocolate and candy this year... I wonder where it all is now? Okay, I should get back to work now. Bye :-)

Yellow-throated Warbler and other stuff

I don't know about you but for me 2010 is off to a good start. Noah and Kailyn got married last weekend. The new album is mastered and sounds pretty darn good if I do say so myself. I'll probably be working on the artwork and website for the next month or so but it's coming along. Also trying to get caught up on booking stuff that's been on hold since Christmas. We've got some fun trips coming up this year but it sure takes a lot of correspondence to make it all happen. Birding has been off to kind of a slow start but yesterday I was treated to excellent looks at my first YELLOW-THROATED WARLBER for New York. I got a couple kind of crappy pics through my bins...That was a fun bird to see. Wish I'd had a nicer camera with me. Anyway, last night Sarah and I had our friends Megan and Andy over for dinner. We tried this awesome recipe for Peanut Tofu stew with Kale out of our new Moosewood Cookbook. And then we played a board game. I've been really enjoying board games lately. We started playing Settlers of Catan a few months ago but there are a lot of different ones that are also fun like Alhambra and Ticket To Ride. I think the one we played last night was called Power Grid and you had to supply a bunch of cities with power using different resources (coal, wind, nuclear, etc). And of course different resources are more or less expensive at different times during the game, different power plants are more or less efficient, certain places have higher transfer costs, etc. It was quite fun! Hey speaking of fun we also just got Chuck: Season 2 on DVD. We're kind of hooked on that show. I guess that's about it for now. I'll try and post again sometime next week.

Petits Toasts

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you had a great holiday season. I got home last night from another wonderful weekend at Ashokan. Sarah and I spent Christmas day with Beck, Anna, Alan and Gretchen; it was so much fun to just relax and be home for once. Sarah got me an awesome present... cheese! A whole selection of different cheeses; some we'd tried before but some were totally new. And what could possibly go better with special fancy-shmancy cheese than Petits Toasts?! They're so cute and French and tasty. I think the Stilton has been our favorite so far but they've all been good. So what else has been going on here... oh, I went to see Avatar last week. Wow! Pretty darn frickin wild movie. We tried to see it in 3D but we couldn't make it to any of the showings. It was still amazing in regular old-fashioned 2D. Is that what regular movies are in? 2D? I never really figured that out. Anyway, this afternoon we're having a little bachelor party type thing for Noah. Sledding, pizza (plus Fritos and Reeses) and Sherlock Holmes. Their (Noah and Kailyn's) big day is coming right up on Friday! So now I'll have six sisters I think. That's cool! Or maybe it's seven. Not sure what my relationship with Dad's wife's daughter's partner is exactly. Tomorrow I head back down to Ithaca for some final mix stuff and mastering with Will and Dana. And I'm supposed to start working on album/website artwork stuff too. I'm a bit behind on booking stuff for the summer so I'll need to get busy with that as well. So I better be going. Take care... I wish you all the very best in this new decade!

Reflections on the Dietary Habits of Noah VanNorstrand (GUEST EDITION! Vol. IV ~ 2009)

Tis the season folks... our annual Reflections on the Dietary Habits of Noah VanNorstrand. Let's get things going here with a classic cheeseburger and fries in the fair city of Washington DC But wait, what's this? There's been a new development... it appears that the lovely and talented miss Kailyn Wright has entered the fray! Here she is, helping herself to a bit of Indian curry in Oklahoma City, OK And what do you know? It looks like mom's sampling some of the delicious breakfast spread down in Tampa, FLOf course Dave isn't far behind in the breakfast department with his hearty bowl of oatmeal in Homer, AKSarah's contribution: this extremely tasty veggie panini courtesy of some hole-in-the-wall in downtown Montreal, QC
Ohhh... what can I say... I love my Cholula! This breakfast burrito was consumed by yours truly at The Cowboy Cafe in Wickenburg, AZ
Well, I hope you've enjoyed this Guest Edition of Reflections on the Dietary Habits of Noah VanNorstrand. I'll try and be more stringent with next year's report. In the meantime please feel free to refresh yourself with ROTDHONV Volumes I (2006), II (2007) and III (2008). One final parting shot of our fine subject, heartily endorsing some kind of Venezuelan dish at an eatery in Elkins, WV

Thursday

This morning I decided to run a little promotion thing for the GBT / Andrew & Noah group on Facebook. A free CD for our 1000th member and whoever invited them to join. And WOW... people really got into it! So congrats to our 1000th member: Art Lane from Reno, NV. It's a very snowy, blustery afternoon here. I went to put snow tires on our car a little while ago but there are these little metal rings from the inside of the tire and two of them came out. And I'm missing a third. So not really sure what to do about that. I'm guessing blogging won't help but hey, you never know. Sarah and I went Christmas shopping earlier today. We were actually able to get a lot of things crossed off our list. Probably shouldn't go into specifics in case this information should fall into the wrong hands. I'm kind of itching for a birding day. Not very likely to happen anytime soon but I do miss it. And hey, my new Year List starts in just 21 days. I did get some new music this week. Sarah introduced me to Patrick Watson. Beautiful stuff. Kind of like a combination of the best parts of Doveman and The Books. Check out this video...