For reference purposes I’m labeling this Eastman VC-100 7/8 I’m currently play-testing as Number 3, the Scarlatti 7/8 I tried at Wilder & Davis as Number 2, and the original Eastman VC-100 that was sold Number 1.

I did a bit of recording in my office, and it’s not the same as the recording I did at the second luthierie. It’s completely the environment; when I recorded the second 7/8 it was in a practice room lined with cellos, and so the sound was super resonant, because all of them were vibrating when I played. I have no way of checking the actual sound unless I sign out the Number 2 on home trial and record it here. Which I may do at some point this summer, I suppose. One must entertain oneself somehow.

This third one just doesn’t grab me. I don’t feel the same smoothness. The action’s pretty high, probably because those extra millimetres of string length have to come from somewhere. It doesn’t bother my fingers, though.

I haven’t touched the bow. I tried it a bit and it needs a lot more rosin; it skipped around a lot. The balance seems all right, as does the weight. Nothing outstanding.

The finish is a polished satin, but I liked the colour of Number 1 better. I am very, very shallow. But it’s part of the aesthetic.

I took it to rehearsal last week, and it performed adequately in the ensemble. The sound was slightly warmer than my 4/4, which tends to a more brittle sound. I don’t know how much of this is due to the newer strings. Mine are a year old, after all. I did have to fine-tune frequently throughout rehearsal. (Yikes — I just double-checked, and mine are not one but two years old. Oy! I remembered getting them just before a spring gig, and evidently it wasn’t the Victoria Day 2007 concert but the April 2006 concert just before t! and Jan got married.)

Part of my problem is the cello I buy now won’t be the same in a couple of years; they need to be played in before the sound matures. Mine’s had forty years of settling in. This one was made last year and would need a lot of work to break it in properly. (Hell, my strings are older than this 7/8.) Of course, this is true of any new cello I buy. Still.

I do adore the case with much adoration, however. Not that this will be a deciding factor. It’s good to know if I can’t afford a hard case, however, I can buy this kind of soft case for the next cello and it will be better protected than the thinner gig case I use now. (Which is, I have discovered to my absolute horror, scratching the sides of the cello. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad! Did I mention it’s bad? And bad?)

Part of me is still thinking I should look at a step or two higher. Sure, the quality of the VC-100 is equivalent to mine, which is a high-end student model itself, but I really do want to upgrade in quality as well as the size. The size and playability might make a long-term difference, but I can’t evaluate that until I’ve had the damn thing long-term. I want to visit a shop in Toronto when we’re up there later this month and see what they have, too. I thought about asking Olivier to order in an other one, but I don’t think I will at this point.

I can’t see the point in buying something that’s equivalent to mine but with a slightly different shape. Number 1 had enough of a difference in sound and feel that I considered buying it. I simply don’t like this one enough. I’ll play it again early next week, but I’m fairly certain it’s going back. (Well, it’s going back either way; I don’t have the money for it at the moment.) If I loved it I’d have negotiated putting a deposit on it, but I don’t, so that’s that.

Can I get away with saying “Best Canada Day concert ever?”

Not really, I suppose. And it wouldn’t do posterity any good, either. The main reason I journal is so that I can go back and refer to it, after all, so a bit more detail is necessary.

First of all, hearty thanks go out to the following in the order I saw them before the concert: my mum and dad, MLG, ADZO, t!, Jan, Lu, Ceri, Scott, Marc, Miseri, Mousme, tcaptain and J. One of the reasons I love this concert is because I see friends I don’t see often. Your presence was deeply appreciated, and I hope you all enjoyed yourselves. And thanks go out to everyone who wanted to be there but couldn’t as well.

And of course, deepest thanks go to HRH and the boy, for making it an extra-special concert. This was the first concert the boy was old enough to attend properly and be aware of what was going on. He’s known for weeks that it was coming up, and as the date approached I reminded him, shared some of the music with him, and looked through his book about instruments to explore the different kinds of things he’d see. He stayed for the warm up and by all reports enjoyed himself thoroughly, sometimes tapping along with the rhythm on the back of the pew in front of him, sometimes conducting like Douglas. After the warm up he pulled me outside to a jungle gym-type thing next to the school across from the church where he proceeded to throw himself up ladders, across hanging bridges, and down slides in all possible ways, encouraging me to do the same. Then MLG and ADZO showed up and he exhorted them to join him in his play too. Then he called some random teenagers over: “Hey, hi! Come play with me! Come slide!” and he did it with such openness and enthusiasm that they did so with decent humour. We met up with a few other people (Lu brought me swag from the BEC! I have an TSFT lace hairband among ARCs and books for the boy and other things!) and then I headed back to join the others preparing for play. (The music kind, not the jungle gym kind.)

We were fortunate in the weather. There have been awful, awful days when the night has been dreadfully humid and sticky, and there have been nights where the wind has been so bad we lost music and stands. But this night was just about perfect. It was hot (it’s July, after all) but fingers weren’t slipping on keys or strings and shirts weren’t sopping wet. It was pretty much perfect.

There’s something remarkably special about playing the national anthem. First of all, the cello line is so unlike the melody we sing that it’s really unique to hear how it all fits together. Second, there’s something very powerful about how the drum roll steadies and then initialises the orchestra. Third, it’s incredible to sense the audience suddenly recognising what’s happening and surging to its feet, joining in with the vocal line around the third note. Finally, it’s just so damn cool to play it and to hear a few hundred people singing the anthem to orchestral accompaniment. And there’s always an extra bonus when people applaud. Traditionally the anthem isn’t applauded, and while I’m sure there’s some sort of philosophical reason for it, I can’t think of a time when I’m more prompted to applaud than after a stirring rendition of the anthem, partially for the anthem itself and the nation (yay us!) and partly for the performers. Besides, it was Canada Day.

While I never hit the cello zone, I was very comfortable throughout this performance and please with my work. I enjoyed myself a lot, which on its own is huge. I had no major technical issues during the concert. The finger I use for pizzicato froze up during “Younger Than the Springtime” as it always does, but apart from that and some minor intonation issues (I can’t hear a thing in that church, it melds all the sound together), and a bit where both the principal and I stopped in frustration because the cellist behind her was playing very loudly and racing ahead in a certain passage in the first piece and we couldn’t hear things well enough to keep the proper pace going, it was a very good concert from the performance side of things. It was lovely from the artistic side, too. I like to begin with a piece I find pretty because it gives me confidence for the rest of the night, and the Symphony no. 3 (by not-really-Mozart) has a beautiful and expressive second movement that I love to play. I greatly appreciated not beginning with the Figaro overture, as it has some finicky technical stuff that would have frustrated me had I played it cold. As it was we did a very good job of it, nice and quick. The church may muddle sound but it also makes it sound very large and well-blended, so the overture had a very nice overall presentation that allowed some of the less precise stuff to slip through without calling much attention to itself. The 32nd symphony went well too.

The second half of the concert was the musicals, and we nailed them. We absolutely nailed them. In the past we have done passable renditions of some medleys, but these are decent arrangements and we were really on. It helps to have a good brass section for these things, and ours handled things just fine, thanks. I heard people in the audience singing along at a couple of places, and there were people crying at the end of The Sound of Music medley (of course they were, the ‘Climb Every Mountain’ arrangement was specifically designed to rip shamelessly at heartstrings). It’s always good for the ego to see people surging to their feet almost as soon as the conductor has cut the orchestra off, and to hear the wave of applause crash into us.

Sitting right next to the conductor means I make a lot of eye contact with him throughout the concert, and I get to see his face as soon as we’re done each piece. He winks at us with a crooked grin, or beams, or clenches a fist in a “yes!” motion, or nods and places his baton on his stand, or gives us a wordless smile to tell us we aced it before turning around to accept the applause and bow. Seeing his immediate emotional reaction is worth a lot. He’s genuinely happy for us, or thrilled at what he pulled out of us; he acknowledges what we’ve done. I like to smile back at him and nod, to reinforce what he’s given us and to thank him wordlessly in return. I often get a chance to thank him in person after the concert as well, and he always seems so hesitant, so unlike the caught-up-in-the-moment triumph in the moments following the final chord. He told us at the dress rehearsal there would be no encore, that he’s not “an encore kind of guy”. “Leave them wanting more” is more his style, and I can see his point. It’s great to leave things on that much of a high, vibrating with that much energy. An encore is satisfying in a very different way. (Besides, where could we go after ‘Climb Every Mountain’? Nowhere, that’s where.)

My deepest hope for this concert was that the boy would fall asleep or get so cranky that HRH would have to take him away from the concert. He was fine but squirmy, and HRH took him to sit on the steps to listen to the music. And when we began the Sound of Music he looked at HRH and said with excitement, “That’s from my movie!” “Do you remember what it was called?” HRH asked. “Sound,” the boy said after thinking about it for a moment. “The Sound of Music, that’s right,” said HRH. Another parent with a girl on the steps looked at him incredulously and said, “He’s how old?” “Three,” HRH told her, “but his mother is in the orchestra.” (We apologise for his precociousness, it’s subject-related, we assure you.) HRH brought him back in during the post-concert applause and they both applauded. HRH tells me the boy applauded enthusiastically after each piece during the whole concert, too. I was so pleased that he’d lasted the whole night, and that he’d had the opportunity to listen to the Sound of Music medley. I knew it would be exciting for him to hear us play something he knew.

As we’d expected, the boy was tired enough that we had to head directly home; no fireworks for us this year. He laid his head against the edge of his seat and stared out the window until he pulled his cap down over his face and drowsed. When we got him home at ten o’clock he went right to bed. I snuggled next to him, and he said sleepily, “Oh no, Mama, we forgot your cello at the concert!” I assured him it had been in the back of the car and it was safely home again, and he was asleep in seconds. We heard the faint sounds of fireworks in the neighbouring boroughs as we got ready for bed.

This was one of my favourite Canada Day concerts. It also marks the end of my seventh season with the orchestra. This time of year is always bittersweet for me, because I like to ride the high of a concert and use it to propel me into the next set of music. Without the structure of rehearsals every week I tend to lose momentum and stop playing. I have the ongoing search for the 7/8 to keep me going, but being on hold financially takes a lot of steam out of that project, and without rehearsal to test the various cellos in a group environment I lose out on that aspect of the home trial. (In fact there’s a post due on the current 7/8 trial; it will come soonish.) It’s hard to walk out of a concert on that kind of high and know you won’t see everyone again for two months. We all scatter with instruments and stands and sometimes you can’t even find section mates to bid them a good summer. I did get the chance to thank our substitute principal for stepping in to help keep us even and confident for this concert, and thank our conductor for a wonderful concert and an excellent season. The orchestra as a whole thanked our secretary/librarian/general manager with a lovely bouquet of roses; she really has done an incredible amount of work this season.

I’ve gained a lot of technique this year, and I owe a lot of that to our section leader. I absorb so much by simply sitting next to her. There’s also a certain amount of pressure that comes from sitting right in front of the conductor (oh gods, he hears every wrong note I play), and it’s done me a lot of good. I think my expression has firmed up a bit too, partly from the kind of music we’ve been playing, and partly from reading things like The Art of Practicing, Making Music for the Joy of It, and Rosindust, all of which talk about the emotion associated with playing and how to communicate it. It’s important to remember that we make music because we love it. I think one of the reasons I prefer to play in ensembles is because I can relax more and merge my sound with someone else’s. (I had a partial solo of two notes this concert! Yes! I played them with the principal, sharing the first note and playing a different note afterwards! If you were there you probably didn’t notice. That’s okay. I know it was marked ‘Solo’ in the music and that’s what counts. And yes, I played it very nicely.)

I should really think seriously about lessons again.

Okay, this is very long, and more than enough. It was good, it was great, I loved it, I’m very pleased with how I played and with the overall evening. The end.

No, wait, one more thing: I hate it when audience members rush the stage to talk to people or to get to the bathroom before anyone else. We have sensitive and freaking expensive instruments here, people, and there’s a mess of stands and chairs. The amount of times I had to step in front of people so they wouldn’t kick my cello or knock a stand over onto someone or another instrument was unreal. Sheesh. At one concert we made an announcement to the effect of “stay back you thoughtless mob until the musicians have left the stage, thank you”; I think we should do it every concert. Also, people who won’t step out of the way when one is attempting to carry an instrument past/around them annoys me greatly as well. I move to the side as much as I can, but they just stand there. I’m not sure what they expect me to do, other than to politely repeat “Excuse me, may I get past?” Gnarr.

All right, now I’m done.

ETA: No, I’m not. I added photos. Finally someone has taken a picture of me playing in the orchestra! HRH did a simple point and shoot while corralling the boy while we warmed up. I like it. I needed to lighten it a bit, but it’s decent regardless. The only problem? It demonstrates how a mid-calf length skirt is Just Too Short on a cellist. Damn chairs; damn cellos. A bit too much leg, there. (HRH: “I liked it.” ME: “Yes, and I’m sure the most of our friends did too, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s inappropriate.”)

I don’t know if it’s the weather, the new to-the-penny financial stress (one wonders what the point of trying is, really) or scheduling hassles that are getting me down, but I’m down today. Actually, I think it may have begun sometime yesterday afternoon in a pale lilac shade, has slowly deepened more towards a violet, and now is well and truly blue. Part of it is the post-concert blues, of course. These are always especially bad after a concert as excellent as this past one, because there’s more of a high from which to tumble down. There will be a concert recap later today. Part of it is also the ongoing stress of waiting for paycheques that don’t come. Every day I think, Hey, today could be the day when there might actually be a cheque in the mailbox! and every day I’m disappointed.

I had a good day with the boy yesterday. We didn’t do the caregiver thing as is customary on Wednesdays because we knew he’d be up late on Tuesday and that he’d be off on Wednesday as a result. We paid the car registration (while we waited, the boy entertained himself by bringing me leaflets and saying, “Let’s read this book, Mama!” Sure, kid. How about I skip the words in the one entitled ‘In the Event of a Hit and Run’ and we just play the ‘identify this road sign’ game?), chased butterflies on the way back to the car, then went to the big book store to pick up a book I’ve been waiting for for months and months. (I now have my very own copy of Elizabeth Bear’s Ink & Steel, having finally tracked down a staff member in order to ask her to check in the back, because despite the computer insisting that there were two in stock there were none on the shelf. She returned reading the back cover copy and said, “Wow, this looks really good!” so I cheerfully did a reverse hand-sell of all Bear’s work to her. Nothing like selling to a book store employee. Good times.) The boy actually agreed to only look at the trains and not play with them, and he was very nearly true to his word. He very transparently steered me down an aisle and affected surprise when it opened up into the play area, saying, “Oh, look, Mama, the train table!” I let him put his train on it and run it around a bend before reminding him about our deal to go to the pet store to see the animals instead of playing with the trains, and he came quite willingly. So to the pet store we went and saw many many animals, including a very sweet Senegal parrot who quietly leaned its head against the bars and gazed into my eyes until I reached a fingertip in and scratched its head gently for a few minutes. It never took its eyes from mine. It broke my heart to eventually walk away.

After a lunch the boy went down for a nap (three hours! well, he didn’t get to bed until ten after the concert, so it wasn’t unusual, just very welcome). I fully intended to read Ink & Steel all afternoon but I’d only read the first couple of chapters when I realised I wasn’t in the right mood to do Bear’s work justice, and as I’d been waiting for The Stratford Man duology for so damn long I didn’t want to ruin the reading of it. I picked up Frank Conroy’s Body & Soul instead and read it cover to cover by bedtime. I somehow also managed to read all of Charlie Bone and the Hidden King. Go me; three books read this month by July 3.

I wish I didn’t feel so melancholy. My throat is swollen and my eyes are stinging for no particular reason. I should go light a whole bunch of candles. They’ll help take some of the water out of the air, too.

Rosindust by Cornelia Watkins
Tigerheart by Peter David
Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan
Curly Girl by Deborah Chiel
The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket
Personal Demon by Kelley Armstrong
A Flaw in the Blood by Stephanie Barron
Charlie Bone and the Blue Boa by Jenny Nimmo
Guitar Girl by Sarra Manning
You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem
A Flaw in the Blood by Stephanie Barron
Charlie Bone and the Time Twister by Jenny Nimmo
The Ersatz Elevator by Lemony Snicket
The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket
Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
Danse Macabre by Laurell K. Hamilton
Killashandra by Anne McCaffrey (reread)
Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffrey (reread)
Larklight by Philip Reeve
Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones
The Art of Practicing by Madeline Bruser
Midnight for Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo
Mable Riley: A Reliable Record of Humdrum, Peril, and Romance by Marthe Jocelyn

This may have been a record month. I’m too busy to check. Yet more props to my local library for supplying me with YA and middle-grade fiction. See me tear through the Charlie Bone series! See me go through the Lemony Snicket books too quickly and have to stop!

Quick notes:

Rosindust by Cornelia Watkins: One of the best books I’ve ever read about teaching. Coincidentally, it’s also one of the best books I’ve ever read about musicianship and musicality, and the making of music. (Note that they are not the same things.)

Larklight by Philip Reeve: Er, Victorian steampunk in space? Sort of? Quite fun.

The Art of Practicing by Madeline Bruser: Excellent. I must own this one.

Tigerheart by Peter David: I’ve tried to read Peter David books before and just couldn’t quite settle into them. This one, though, was very good. If you’re a Pan fan (the original book, thank you very much) you might want to look into this one.

The boy appeared in our bedroom doorway rather precipitously last night around ten past one, eyes somewhat wild in the dim light. I sat bolt upright in bed. It’s astonishing how awake one can suddenly be when progeny is involved. “What is it, lovey?” I said. “Did you have a bad dream?”

“Yes,” he said in a slightly desperate, slightly muffled voice. I held my arms out. He ran around the bed and flopped onto me.

“It’s okay now,” I said, hauling him up onto the bed and rolling over with him, snuggling him in between HRH and I. “Mama and Dada are here, and you’re safe. Nothing can happen to you.”

And we slept that way for the rest of the night. I say “slept” but it was mostly heavy drowsing on our part. We’re not used to sleeping with a restless three year old. This morning HRH got up with the boy around six-thirty (the boy himself woke up around six, went and got a colouring book, and coloured quietly at the end of our bed for about twenty minutes), and I got another hour and a half of sleep. When I got up the boy told me about his dream.

“There were cracks,” he said. “But there are no cracks any more.”

“Cracks?”

“In his room,” HRH said. “When we walked into his room this morning, he looked up and said, ‘Oh, there are no cracks any more. It was just a dream.’ He told me that he’d dreamed the walls were cracking and the house was falling apart.”

I know he’s had nightmares before, but this is the first time he’s been able to articulate what he dreamed and to understand that it was just a story his mind told him while he was sleeping. It’s also the first time he’s settled down and slept when he’s come to us in bed. Usually he tosses and turns and sits up and decides it’s playtime, but then again, we’ve tried to bring him into bed in a vague attempt to encourage him to snuggle and drowse for a while, because it’s usually around five-thirty when he wakes up too early in the morning.

He’s off with the caregiver today. HRH and I have tidied the entire house (again, argh — that makes the third time in five days!) including overhauling his room. We sorted through a lot of baby toys and packed them away, and designated certain containers for certain items. There’s a box of assorted trucks and vehicles in his closet (out of sight, out of mind) and the box of baby toys and another of stuffed toys have been taken downstairs. We also thinned out his cars and Thomas stuff, putting the extras away in a storage case that’s still in the living room if he decides he needs something in particular, but at least it isn’t all out on the train table or the bookcases. And in case we haven’t mentioned it to you in person, no more Cars toys or Thomas stuff! It was nice that he had two main things people knew he loved to play with, but we’ve reached our limit of associated items. (Our limit is much lower than many other people’s, we freely admit, but still, enough is enough.) If you want to treat him to something, art supplies are big right now and get used up, so frequently need to be replaced.

HRH and I are treating ourselves to a film this afternoon: WALL*E, of course! It’s nice to know that whenever a Pixar film comes out we know it will be good, so we don’t have to worry about spending time and money and walking out of a theatre wishing the past two hours could have been more worth it. We really, really don’t see a lot of films in the theatre. I think the last movie we saw in a theatre was The Golden Compass.

Tonight is our dress rehearsal for tomorrow’s concert. I’ll be bringing the 7/8 to see how it performs in a group environment. There’s no way I’ll use it tomorrow at the concert, however, even though the luthier crossed out the ‘no public performances with the instrument on trial’ clause on the contract, of his own accord.

And finally: the crazy lady downstairs is moving out. Most of her stuff went last Thursday. Tonight is her last night here, and good thing; without all her stuff to absorb noise her TV or radio or whatever it is that she listens to awfully loudly is positively intrusive. We could hear every word of it clearly in the kitchen last night. Heck, Scarlet and Blade upstairs could probably hear it too. You have no idea how much we’re looking forward to July. Not just because the four of us get to take over that one and a half as shared office space, or because we get to unplug her ancient appliances, multiple fans and dehumidifiers and garner a greatly reduced Hydro bill, but for sheer peace of mind. We don’t need to worry any more about her falling asleep while cooking something to a burnt and fire-alarm-tripping crisp, or her letting thieves into the building, or her claiming nothing is wrong when her washing machine is leaking and ruining our stuff in storage in the garage, or allowing her jammed dryer to run all night figuring it would eventually fix itself, or her ambushing and verbally abusing us, or taking paranoid complaints to our landlord because she is convinced we’re trying to kill her. Liam will actually be able to play in his room and we’ll be able to use the kitchen in the morning without her banging on her ceiling. I have no idea what kind of place she’s moving into, but I hope she is very happy there, and I hope that her lack of comprehension concerning what life in a shared dwelling is like doesn’t negatively impact her situation.

Right. Time to tie some things up before we finish the house and head off to see the film.

Pretty wiped, actually. Very languid. Not much energy at all. I think it’s partially due to the weather (How much more damp can it get? Can it just rain properly, already? It feels like we’re walking through mist all the time, the air is so wet.), partially due to the intense rehearsals and lack of sleep after them (I’m doing the skating through light sleep cycles thing and waking up a lot these days), and partially due to something I haven’t quite figured out yet. Plus there’s that kid who lives here who gets cranky in high heat or humidity, loses his appetite, and sleeps abysmally. He’s been getting up at five-thirty in the morning, and didn’t nap at all yesterday.

We had a pleasant day with my mother in law yesterday. She had a test scheduled at the local hospital and finished early, so she called us and we picked her up. She took us out for lunch (which the boy did not eat, despite ordering enthusiastically) and even bought us clothes. I took her home with us and plied her with a nice refreshing white wine on the back porch under the new awning. This would be the day the boy wouldn’t nap. He was all right until we went out to pick HRH up around four, and he drowsed in the car for about half an hour. He slept in till sevenish today, thank goodness, so hopefully we’re back on track.

We went out to the luthier this morning and I picked up the new 7/8 cello for a two week home trial. (I have to take it back on my birthday. How depressing is that?) I played it for half an hour straight after the boy went down for his nap, and, well, I don’t know. I liked the first one better; I think it sounded a bit more mellow. (Oh, how I wish I’d had the idea of recording them when I tried it back in May!) The colour on this one is more orangey-red, kind of a deeper version of the one I have now. I preferred the brown-amber of the first one. It has nice resonance, and is easy to play, and feels all right under my fingertips. I haven’t tried the bow yet; I used my own. I’m just not completely in love with it the way I was with the first one. I am, however, completely in love with the soft case it comes with (three handles, including a double handle on the side to carry it like a suitcase! Lots of pockets! Padded straps! So well padded overall that it almost stands up on its own! Extra padding around the bridge! And I got to see an Eastman hard case, the one with wheels, which was so light I thought I was dreaming. It too had multiple handles. I was having a geeky day, evidently, to be so impressed by multiple handles. I also got to see the finish in person, which was important, because all the photos I’ve seen of them made me very wary, as the finish is pebbled and looks almost iridescent. This one was blue, and while I’d prefer a deep green (but they don’t make a darker one) or an ivory or black, I could live with the blue if I had to. Mind you, if I’m going to drop $500 on a hard case, I’ll darn well get them to order the colour I want, thanks. (Oooh! The Z-tek Deluxe model is now available in dark emerald green! Hmm. Duly noted.)

It feels a tiny bit bigger than the last one, too. But then, I didn’t switch between the 7/8 and my full-sized cello when I played it, like I did the last time. I checked the windings: it’s strung with a Helicore C and G, and Larsen D and A strings. It has a really deeply arched back, too.

The A doesn’t blend as well as the last one did. But that’s something that can be adjusted by poking the soundpost. It’s certainly resonant. I’ll post more notes as I play with it over the next couple of weeks.

People requested pictures. Here’s a shot of the two cellos side by side, so you can see the difference in size and proportion.

Nothing to see here, other than my brand new icon for use in future posts about the YA music novel.

I just got a phone call.

THERE IS A NEW 7/8 CELLO AT THE LUTHIER’S SHOP!

Why yes, I *am* shouting. Also dancing, and doing lots of jumping up and down. Yes, I want to go right over, and no, I can’t, because the boy is home with me, and once he wakes up from his nap we have to pick HRH up. Friday’s out, because we have a lunch date, although maybe Friday afternoon? No, I won’t be able to handle the boy alone if I’m trying a cello. Maybe Saturday morning. Probably Saturday morning, actually, because no one will be able to live with me beyond that point.

7/8! 7/8!! 7/8!!!

Hello, we are the LCO, and we are about to kick some serious musical behind this coming July 1 at the Canada Day concert.

We played through the entire program at last night’s rehearsal, and it sounded full and cohesive and just about ready. We had multiple horns last week, and this time we had a trumpet too. Now all we’re missing is the trombone. (The conductor has been singing the trombone part so far. It has been very amusing for those of us sitting right next to him who can hear it.)

Best of all? Brad’s our trumpet player! Once again I had no idea he was there until the conductor directed a question at him, and I perked up when I heard his name. How many Brads can there be on the West Island who play trumpet, after all? When the night was over I tidied up and headed over to say hi and reconnect with him. He was just as surprised to see me. It’s a small musical world around here, really. And it’s good, because it means I get to run into people like Brad every four or six years, sometimes more often if I’m lucky.

Or, Hey, I Remember This!

Total word count, YA music novel: 1,204
(That would also be total new words today.)

I set my freelance profile to ‘vacation’ after uploading my latest MS evaluation, because I needed some brain space and some time to work on my own material. When I only have two or three days a week to work and at least two end up being devoted to freelance for someone else, my own stuff keeps getting pushed aside and I’ve been getting somewhat resentful. So today, after dealing with the printer and doing some final research and character name assignment this morning, I just finally made myself sit down and start writing.

Do you know long it’s been since I wrote? And I don’t mean editing my stuff or handling rewrites or whatever. I mean the creating kind of writing. And it’s been even longer since I did it with fiction.

I felt a bit awkward going in. The opening scene probably won’t make the cut in the end. But I learned a couple of new things about my protagonist, and some more background leading up to the current state of affairs. (I had no idea she’d recently won a concerto competition, for example, or carried a photo of her cat in her viola case. But apparently she has and does.)

I’m going to need an icon for posts related to this book.

Gryff broke my printer last night. He tried to jump up on my lap, discovered there wasn’t enough room between my legs and the keyboard tray, and fell off onto the printer (which was printing up a large document). It promptly went CLUNK and whirred a bit, then stopped and began displaying a carriage jam error. Forty-five minutes of poking and reseating and turnign it off and on and unplugging cables and troubleshooting and trying all sorts of solutions found via the Internet, HRH and I have declared it Officially Dead. I was livid.

Like I need another expense right now. Well, it can wait until all those Cheques In The Mail come to roost in the mailbox sometime in late July.

While seeking solutions on-line, I discovered a whole slew of people who have encountered the same error message and who have not been able to fix it, or get HP to solve the problem. Great. This is something I never discovered when I did my obsessive research before buying the printer. I mean sure, I encountered the occasional negative review citing problems, but the majority of them were okay and even positive.

On the bright side, I recently received a letter from the Aide financière aux études for Quebec informing me that I might be one of those who could benefit from a recent class action ruling concerning student loans obtained in 1997-98, and sure enough, when I logged into the website yesterday I discovered that I, like many others from that particular time period, had overpaid interest on the loan and was eligible for a refund. So I initiated the process and I’ll be getting a refund of just under two hundred dollars in mid-July. I always feel a grim satisfaction when a government has to send me money, instead of me having to write them a cheque or being told that oops, sorry, those taxes we accepted way back then have been recalculated and you owe us a bunch of money plus interest even though neither you nor we knew, ha ha ha.

And in completely unrelated news, I am devouring Marie Brennan’s Midnight Never Come.

LATER: Huh. I realised that part of what I wanted to do today was print out reference photos for the YA music book, and in a fit of pique tried turning the printer on. It’s working again. Of course, it randomly spews out pages of dots and dashes now and again when I haven’t sent anything to be printed, but it’s printing. I think a night on its own to consider the error of its ways plus me waxing grr about it in a journal entry may have spurred it to attempt cooperation.

EVEN LATER: Nope, dead. Oh well.

LATER STILL: Okay, this is stupid. Maybe if I drop it from about shoulder height it will decide if it will work continually or be conclusively dead. Because this sometimes-yes-sometimes-no is making me very, very cranky.

Words mean things. Crazy, I know, but they do. And they have specific meanings.

Lately I’ve been encountering a lot of misused terms. These three groups of people are the ones that have been driving me up the wall and down the other side lately.

- People who identify something as a cello when it is very obviously a double bass. If you’re going to tag or describe a photo or other item, make sure it actually is or depicts what you say it is. Otherwise, you look like you don’t know what you’re talking about.

- People who describe something as “vintage” when it’s under twenty years old.

- People who describe or tag something as “antique” when it’s less than fifty years old. (The stickler in me defines it as one hundred years or older, but I understand that’s not how the rest of the world operates. Let’s compromise on a nice round eighty.)

Gah.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled blog-reading.

This morning in the car the boy delivered a creditable version of the chorus to “The Mesopotamians”. He hesitates on Gilgamesh and slurs through Ashurbanipal, but it’s all there. I can’t tell you how hilarious it is to hear a three year old say Hammurabi and Gilgamesh.

He requests that one three times in a row, and “Dr. Worm” as well. He knows three times is the limit, no matter how much we love TMBG.

At some point I will introduce him properly to G&S.

We had a great weekend, partly due to a financial snag smoothing itself out thanks to HRH’s willingness to do some freelance reno work over the his vacation. It’s astonishing how much better we feel with bills paid and a full pantry.

We also joined the other local coven of our tradition in a Solstice celebration. True to our experience of the gods loving irony, it started to rain as soon as the celebrant invoked the Sun God. Fortunately, we’d gone out that morning and bought a 9′x9′ awning for the back porch, something we’ve wanted to do for a while, so we all sat there and did the ritual anyway. And when it was over and the celebrant spoke a thank you for the Sun God’s presence, the rain stopped and the sun came out. It’s a good thing our trad formally recognises laughter in circle. Then we all had an excellent, excellent barbecue, and I had the great satisfaction of making a salad with ingredients mainly pulled from the garden. The boy woke up from his nap and joined us for the last half-hour, munching happily on hot dogs and showing off his new Wall*E figure.

When everyone had gone home and the boy decided to go inside to play, I asked him if he wanted to watch a new movie and he was very interested. So I put my new The Sound of Music DVD on (hurrah for gift cards), and he watched attentively through the opening scenery shots, whispering, “Do you hear that?” when the wind picked up. He was entranced by the swell of music and Maria running through the grass. “She is happy!” he said. “She is running, and singing!” And he kept watching, asking questions now and again, and I’d explain what people were doing. (Upon seeing the nuns in church, he whispered, “Do they talk?”. “Not in church,” I whispered back. “They do talk!” he said, beaming, when the scene in the courtyard started.) Once in a while his attention would wander during longer stretches of dialogue and he’d start playing with his trains or Wall*E, but whenever someone began to sing his eyes would snap back to the screen and he would be still. After the “Do-Re-Mi” sequence (also riveting for him, partially due to the children, partially due to the music, and partially due to the many different architectural and decorative details in Salzburg) I thought I heard him humming ascending three-note phrases while he played but I dismissed it.

Then we reached “The Lonely Goatherd” sequence and as the opening music played I said, “Liam, I think you may recognise this.” He’d already recognised it on the CD earlier in the week. And when Julie Andrews began singing he said with great delight, “This is the Muppets song!” (Episode 217, of course, is where he first encountered Andrews and this particular song. I love the Muppets in general, but the delicious irony of having Andrews sing “The Lonely Goatherd” with a bunch of puppets is positively exquisite.)

He sat in front of the screen and watched raptly. When the sequence was over he said, “Can we watch it again?” So we did. And a third time, too. He mumbled something under his breath at one point, but we didn’t catch it. It wasn’t until we said that we really needed to watch the next song that he let the film continue. He watched “Edelweiss,” which wasn’t as visually fascinating but nonetheless familiar to him, being one of the lullabies I used to sing to him when he was very small, and then started playing with his Wall*E again, moving it along the back of the chesterfield.

And then we heard it clearly: he was singing “oh-de-lay-lee, oh-de-lay-lee, oh-de-lay-lee-ooh,” and making Wall*E dance.

I looked at HRH, and HRH looked at me: we both had idiotic smiles on our faces, trying not to laugh. “Your heart must be ready to burst out of your chest,” said HRH, “judging by what mine’s doing.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said.

“You’re so blogging this, aren’t you,” he said.

“With great delight,” I said.

We also heard him do a rough approximation of the beginning of “Edelweiss” too before the ballroom scene, by which point he was on HRH’s lap. “I need my cello!” he exclaimed upon seeing the chamber orchestra, so I got it for him and he played it (matching the rhythm quite well, too) before he strummed the lowest string so enthusiastically that it slipped off the bridge, so I put it away.

And, irony of ironies, I stopped the film at the wedding because it was past his bedtime.

I wonder how long it will be before he asks to watch it again.