Author Archives: Autumn

Concert Recap Etcetera

First and foremost, a heartfelt thank you goes out to the nine people who made it out to my concert last night. I’m sure it was wonderful. All reports I’ve had have been to that effect, so I’ll trust them. I don’t remember much of it myself, being under the influence of a double-dose of cold medication. I do remember being very pleased with my expression in general and with my intonation in a couple of tricky places, and every once in a while doing the “Are we here already?” sort of thing. I received a couple of very nice compliments, both from inside the section and from the audience, so I will trust those as well. My section leader is very encouraging and supportive of me, and I learn so much just from sitting next to her. I wish I had more time to properly devote to music, and to take lessons from her.

HRH only got to the concert just before intermission, as Liam was very irritable and fought going to bed more than he usually does. Liam has been rather cranky in general and a challenging handful over the past couple of days because of his cold. (I seem to have the worse cold, which is just fine; I’d rather it be me than the boy.) Arriving late meant that HRH missed the Boyce symphony (very pleasant and my intonation was much better in it than it has been over the past week — why it previously suffered I have no idea, because it’s dead easy to play. Perhaps because it was the first thing we played in this week’s rehearsals, and so it was like a warm-up for my fingers and brain?) as well as the Vivaldi double violin concerto plus most of the Water Music suite. Fortunately he caught the Haydn symphony, which was nice and tight and relatively gaffe-free, and had a great impact.

When we walked out of the church, the sky was very clear and the stars and moon were so incredibly bright. I was out four nights last week for various music rehearsals and meetings, and every night it’s been the same. Lovely.

I’ve been up to my ears in contract work the past couple of days, very mind-twisty as I work out what the client wants from his abstract notes and rewrite/expand upon them. It’s always an interesting challenge working in this client’s projects. I have to finish it up today during the boy’s nap and tonight after he goes to bed, as I begin the full-time on-site contract tomorrow.

We have finally opened the last box of the tissues left from the bulk pack we bought at Costco last fall. Liam and I will go out today to get more, along with a new cell phone for me and various other little things. It’s the Cancer Society’s daffodil weekend, so we’ll certainly buy some of those as well. Hurrah, daffodils! Our bulbs are up a good four or five inches along the south side of the house; it won’t be long before they’re real flowers themselves.

What I Read This March

Morrigan’s Cross by Nora Roberts
Jellybean by Tessa Duder (reread)
Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers
Snow White Rose Red by Patricia C Wrede (reread)
Mia Tells It Like It Is by Meg Cabot
Magic Lessons by Justine Larbalestier
Dance of the Gods by Nora Roberts
Firebirds ed. Sharyn November
Swan Sister ed. Terri Windling & Ellen Datlow
Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier
The Jane Austen Tarot by Diane Wilkes

Double Take

The new covers for the seventh and final Harry Potter book have been released.

Throughout the entire series, I have been glad that my country sells the UK-based designs, because I prefer them.

Until now.

I am stunned to see that I actually prefer the US cover to this book. I may buy the adult cover of the UK edition instead of the junior cover, despite my obsessive need to have matching sets on my shelves. None of the covers, US or UK, really interest me this time around. Not that the series cover art has ever been anything to hang on a wall, but this time it all seems particularly bland.

Music, Consultants, and Colds

The sun, the sun! I’ve been greedily soaking it up for the past couple of days.

We had our final regular rehearsal before the spring concert last night, actually in the church where we’ll be playing. (Due to scheduling issues our dress rehearsal will be elsewhere.) It took almost half the rehearsal to accustom ourselves to the very different sound of the room. It’s hard to hear the other sections when everyone is playing, and the sound is somewhat muffled and oddly amplified. Not in a bad way; there were times where we sounded like we were an ensemble twice as big as we truly are, for example. As usual, it took me a whole movement to sort through the different sound to actually hear what I was playing. It’s going to be a lovely concert. (Concert! This Saturday night at 7:30! Cedar Park United Church in Pointe-Claire! Here are all the details!)

Yesterday I had my first face-to-face interview in over ten years. (Most of my jobs have been as a result of networking and being familiar with the employers beforehand, and my freelance work is based in telecommuting.) It went well; so well, in fact, that I am now an official consultant working on-site at one of the local megacorps. (For those familiar with HRH, it is, ironically enough, one of the places at which he’s been trying to land a job for a couple of years now. Taste that irony!) An inside referral secured me the interview, and the two-week contract (with possibility of renewal) seems tailor-made for me and my abilities and qualifications. The heads on the project are people who care deeply about the work, and for whom I developed quick respect during our interview. So naturally, now that I have the contract I am wibbling deep inside and worrying that I will let them down, as well as making the individual who referred me look bad. It would be really, really nice to not have to field my own inner critic every time I get a job. It sounds like I would have to actively work at not making the situation better, however, and I am nowhere near as wibbly as I was last night. This morning, I am Professional Editor Girl again.

The project sounds engaging and moderately challenging for me as well as interesting on a I’m-doing-a-good-thing level. Nothing like promoting reading comprehension while sorting words and — ahem — editing a dictionary. Seriously — how cool is that? I get to edit a dictionary. It’s like a dream come true, if I’d ever presumed to have this particular daydream. (Granted, the work will also be frustrating due to its nature, but still! Editing a dictionary!)

One of the curiosities of this contract is that I will be travelling elsewhere to work, instead of working in my home office with cats and tea and other comforts. I haven’t done this in five years. Public transport is now my friend again. It’s an hour of travel, broken into three twenty-minute chunks so I can actually settle down and read without worrying that I’ll miss my stop. I’m told they will provide everything I need, but really, I will have to burn a few data CDs’ worth of music, bring tea and a mug, a dictionary (because I have learned never to assume that any office has a reliable dictionary, if a dictionary at all, and sure I could use an online dictionary but I always suspect them of being Not Quite Real), my good headphones, notebooks, and so forth.

Eep. I will have keycards and such. And, I’m told, an office in which to work, which probably means a small unused conference room with a computer brought in. My lower back already hurts at the thought of office chairs.

Also, another small freelance contract landed in my in-box last night. It will have to be done in the evenings, now that I am an official nine-to-fiver for the next two weeks.

Liam and I have both developed colds. I thought it was the general spring allergy thing, but it is not.

That is all.

Eighty Years of Genius

Happy birthday, Rostropovich!

(Irony: I spelled the name this way, then noticed that the CBC headline had a ‘t’ in the last name. I double-checked to make sure, and yes, I’ve spelled it correctly, and they got it wrong. The URL has the correct spelling embedded in it, as does the body of the article. Gah. Does no one proof these things?)

Also: Who is this Slava guy, anyway?

Blissful Ignorance

I just discovered the Autosum button in Microsoft Excel.

I have used this program for over ten years, and only just found this function.

I am speechless.

(Well, all right, so I’ve been using it for databases of words and sentences all that time, not numbers. But still. You think it’s something I would have tripped across before today, when I needed to add a column of figures and didn’t want to pull out my calculator.)

Monday Morning, With All It Implies

It’s gloomy and overcast today. See how I am not drawing a parallel between the weather and the fact that it is election day here in Quebec.

I voted. I have never been so disinterested in an election before.

I have no idea what I’m working on today. I may open random in-progress files until I find one that looks interesting.

On the bright side, despite the two massive snowstorms in March, the snow has almost completely vanished, with a curious lack of commonly associated runoff.