I'm feeling Scottish

As you probably know, my family and I are heading out today to New York, to spend Christmas with Wendy's parents. A consequence of that is that we exchanged our Christmas gifts last night after the Eklektos celebration.

Consider this post fair warning.

Wendy gave me a set of bagpipes. I've been interested in them for a while now. I've been learing for a while on a practice chanter, which is basically the mouthpiece connected directly to the fingering piece, without the bag or the drone pipes. Well, let me tell you, the real thing is very different from the practice chanter. When I finally got it all assembled, the "best" sound I could get out of it was rememiscent of a family of cats thrown into a laundry bag and then dropped in the dryer. But I will learn, and none of you will escape. ;)

Then, this morning, I was reading a post on TallSkinnyKiwi's site about their Christmas celebrations, and he had a link to an article about Hogmanay, a Scottish celebration of the New Year. Maybe we should "recreate" some of the festivities. ;) You up for it, Randy?