Category Archives: Weather, Seasons, & Celebrations

Brief Weekend Roundup & The Birthday Monday Activity Log

I am really, really tired of househunting. HRH spoke with one of the daycare dads last week who is a real estate agent, and when he complained about how quickly houses were selling — literally in less than 24 hours between the listing going up and agents calling for clients to see it — the dad nodded and said, “What’s happening is people are buying up houses in batches unseen, painting and doing slight renos required or uplifts like lighting, and reselling them at a profit.” HRH expressed his frustration at this, because it really screws families who are actually looking for houses to live in, and the agent agreed. He said it irritates real estate agents, too. He asked how many houses we’d viewed and when HRH said about thirty, he nodded again and said, “Yeah, that’s about the average these days.” So it’s nice to know we’re not just having an atypically horrible experience, but still incredibly frustrating to know that we’re being stymied by people who are just in it for the money.

Somewhat related: The house we saw yesterday was tiny but sweet, well-located in regards to amenities and school but the general neighbourhood was a bit more working-class than others we’d seen. And it had the most adorable cat, who was about six months old. She was mostly grey with small splotches of blondish red on her sides and white legs, and was very affectionate. She and the boy played all over the house while we viewed it. And we have come to the conclusion that we will never find a house with three bedrooms on the same level, because for some reason ninety percent of the houses we’ve seen have only two on one level and the additional room or rooms somewhere else. It’s very odd.

I spent an hour last night working through the Gigue of the first Bach solo cello suite with the bow, and the Prelude of the second suite in pizz. I used the heavy practice mute, and even so when HRH and the boy came upstairs the boy ran up to me and said I was so loud he could hear me even in the garage and the noise could really get on people’s nerves. HRH pounced on him verbally and the boy had a severe talking-to about speaking without considering how you’re phrasing something, and the difference between practising something to get better and just making random annoying noise, but even after we both had a go at it he didn’t understand. It was one of those parenting days where you’re certain nothing you have ever taught your child has sunk in, never. And way to go, kid, hitting me in the most sensitive hang-up I have about playing the cello.

Saturday night we had a double-header game of Settlers of Catan with the upstairs neighbours. Everyone pitched in with various alcohol and nibbly things, and it was a really awesome evening.

In good news, I discovered today while paying bills that I only have $21.05 left on my student loan. As of the end of the month I shall be free of it. While I should like to revel in having a few extra dollars a month, I shall be a sad and disciplined Responsible Adult and just program the equivalent monthly automatic payment to my credit line. Actually, it ought to go to my Visa, which has the higher interest rate.

Today, I:

– baked bread
– baked a birthday cake for myself
– paid bills
– finished my freelance assignment
– handled the post-weekend and daily correspondence

That looks kind of short. Hmm. Plans to go to the bank and the post office were rescheduled to tomorrow morning, because when I checked the thermometer outside it said that it was 37 degrees in the shade. If I don’t have to go out into the mid-afternoon heat, why would I?

And best of all, my lovely editor with the publishing company I worked with for a few years pinged me regarding a dearth of copy editors in the company. She’d told the copy chief about my super-clean manuscripts and the beginnings of my search for a more regular copy editing position. The chief thought I sounded marvellous and told her to send me her contact info so we could get started right away. I wrote her a “hi here I am you asked for me to contact you I’m looking forward to talking to you” message and am now waiting for a reply. Seriously, a regular book copy editing gig with a publisher would be the best birthday present ever. My editor rocks.

I’ve spun up four ounces of the Luscious Ditty batts in the Baby Silks colourway from Spin Knit & Life, and am about to resume filling the second bobbin with the other half of the batts. I’m using a modified longdraw for it and enjoying it very much. It draws beautifully, and spins up equally nicely. I think it’s going to make a gorgeous two-ply light sport weight yarn.

Joy!

Lots of terribly nice stuff happened yesterday.

I got halfway through my latest freelance assignment in about ninety minutes. MLG picked me up and we went out to the Burgundy Lion for lunch together. Let me tell you, it has been aeons since I’ve had a Scotch egg, and oh heavens, the one they serve is just lovely. So there was excellent company, and excellent food, and then the heavens opened and we had a terrific storm, something long overdue. HRH and the boy met us there. The plan was to pick me up on their way home, but the rain meant they stayed for lunch (on HRH’s part) and milk and dessert (on the boy’s part, as he had already lunched at school). The boy barely nibbled his sticky toffee pudding, though, so HRH and MLG polished it off quite happily.

We came home and opened all the windows to the thunderstorms that continued all through the afternoon. I had a wonderful time sitting in the open patio doors to the front porch, blowing bubbles with the boy into the rain.

After the boy went to bed, HRH gave me my birthday present early:

I adore my fox and my copper deer, but this one is my absolute favourite. I love the colours and the knotwork. So my deer got moved to the right and my owl now hangs in the very middle of the art collage wall of my office. I need to adjust the empty spaces, but I have to do that every time I get a new piece. It’s like a puzzle.

I have a wonderful husband. He’s very talented, and original art designed specifically for the recipient is such a special gift. He’s going to look into the cost of making full-colour prints from the Celtic totems series of paintings, too. We’ve meant to assemble pictures of them all in one place online for a while now; I’ll have to add that to my ongoing list of things to do.

Re: That Birthday Thing

I’ve had a couple of queries about what I’m doing for my birthday this year, because it’s upcoming and I’ve said nothing about it.

Well.

The original plan was to do the annual birthday picnic, which I enjoy. It’s not planning-intensive, I see people, we share food, we get fresh air, it’s nice. I was even looking forward to it.

Except this year, I am fully exhausted. I was low on energy, and then there were two weeks of prepping and camping and concertizing. Actually, now that I think about it, most of June was high-consumption in the energy department, what with the recital and the boy’s birthday happening in the first half of the month. When I say that I am flatlining I am using the word figuratively, but it’s appropriate because emotionally and energy-wise, I’ve got nothing. I’m numb. I’m literally exhausted; I ain’t got no more. I fell asleep at the early birthday thing my inlaws did for me and couldn’t eat my cake. The very idea of packing up and going out to a picnic makes me tired. The thought of dealing with people socially is fatigue-inducing.

And now, even worse, the city’s perishing under a nasty blanket of heat and humidity. Even with a thunderstorm predicted for Friday, the weekend is going to be miserable and more of the same weather we’re suffering now. If I wasn’t exhausted now, going out to picnic in oppressive heat and humidity when we’re all being told to stay indoors out of the sun would suck any energy I had. And I’m certainly not going to make other people do it.

The irony is that for once the Polaris convention is scheduled for the weekend after my birthday, so the ten or so people who would normally be out of town are actually available this weekend. Fibro, your timing sucks. (Not that in my experience you have ever displayed good timing. And not that this decision to postpone is to be entirely blamed on you; the weather is also culpable.)

I’m going to wait till I’m more with it so that I can actually attend and enjoy my birthday picnic. I suspect that early August might be better. (For my energy levels, I mean. Although the idea that early August will have better weather is kind of amusing, too.) I have (quietish) things booked over the next couple of weekends anyhow.

So there you are. A birthday; I have one soon. A celebration; we will have one later. I promise.

Canada Day Concert 2010 Announcement/Reminder Thingy

Hail, faithful orchestra groupies! July 1 is coming up, which means that the annual Canada Day concert presented by the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra is also nigh!

On Thursday July 1 the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra will be giving a free (yes, free!) concert as part of the overall Canada Day celebrations in conjunction with Pointe-Claire Village. We do this every year, and it’s always terrific fun. Our conductor is the justly famed Stewart Grant, who is phenomenal.

This year’s stirring programme features:

Rosamunde Ouverture – Schubert
Gentle River, Prairie Sky – Grant
Symphony n. 5, “Reformation” – Mendelssohn
Pomp & Circumstance, March no. 4 – Elgar

See the composer of that second piece on the programme? Why yes, he does share the same name as our conductor. And if you made the leap to thinking our conductor composed it, you’d be right. We’re thrilled to be playing this piece. And on a personal level, Mendelssohn’s Reformation symphony is my favourite symphony of all symphonies, and playing it is an incredible experience.

The concert begins at 20h00. As always, this Canada Day concert is being presented at St-Joachim church in Pointe-Claire Village, located right on the waterfront at 2 Ste-Anne Street, a block and a half south of Lakeshore Road. The 211 bus from Lionel-Groulx metro drops you right at the corner of Sainte-Anne and Lakeshore. Here’s a map to give you a general idea. I usually encourage those facing public transport to get together and coax a vehicle-enabled friend along by offering to buy them an ice cream or something. It works nicely, and it’s fun to go with a group. And hey, you can’t beat the price. Be aware that if you’re driving, parking will be at a premium because of the whole Canada Day festivities thing going on. Give yourself extra time to find a parking place and walk to the church, which will be packed with people.

As it’s a holiday, the village will be full of various celebrations, booths, food stalls, and the like. You might want to come early and enjoy what’s going on.

Free classical music! Soul-enriching culture! And as an enticing bonus, the fireworks are scheduled for ten PM, right after we finish, and the church steps are a glorious spot from which to watch them.

Write it on your calendar, tell all your friends and family members! The more the merrier!

Weekend Roundup, Father’s Day Edition

Happy summer solstice!

I’m exhausted. I feel like a black hole; I keep absorbing energy, but it vanishes. It was a good weekend, with nothing specific or enormous that drained me. There were small annoyances and obstacles, though, and when I deal with those the energy tends to slip away like something appropriately metaphoric through a sieve.

Saturday morning we headed out to do groceries and our Father’s Day shopping, and the boy got his hair cut. Then we headed to Angrignon Park for a naming ceremony I was leading, but the people were an hour later than they said they’d be there to prepare, and then the guests showed up half an hour after the specified time, too. They were all wonderful people and the ceremony was lovely, but it reminded me of why I usually charge for these things: the money covers hiccoughs like these that end up forcing me to adjust the rest of my day’s schedule. While we were waiting for everyone to arrive our real estate agent called with yet more bad news (actually, this was a repeat of earlier bad news that had been potentially rescinded, but no, we got disappointed for the second time on the same property). We ended up having to leave pretty much right after things finished because of the late start; the boy was very upset because we’d promised him he could play in the playground for half an hour after the ceremony, but the adjusted schedule meant the time wasn’t there for it any more.

We went home and changed, and fed the boy a very late lunch, then we headed to to the library just as it began to rain. The boy and I kicked around there for the better part of an hour and then came home to watch the storms batter the backyard till our agent arrived and we did some more paperwork.

Sunday morning I made pie crust and then quiche, and the Preston-LeBlancs came over for a lovely sunny Father’s Day/ Solstice brunch. We had piles of delicious food and the kids played inside and outside, and we had a wonderfully relaxing time talking to old friends. When they left I called my mother for our weekly chat, and while we did that the sun vanished, the wind kicked up, and we had another bad storm roll through. When it cleared up we headed over to HRH’s parents’ house (where they hadn’t had a speck of rain!) for a Father’s Day dinner of ribs, chicken, and multiple salads. I’d reached my limit, though, so all I managed to do was sit and watch the boy play in the pool with his grandmother and knit a couple of rounds on the short-sleeve sweater that I started last year.

After we put the boy to bed, HRH and I finally got to watch the Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes, which was fun and an interesting take on the characters, but somewhat annoying in that the foley and dialogue editors seemed to have fallen down on the job of making sure the lead character’s dialogue was clearly audible in the first third of the film.

I have so much to do in the next three days. I’ve already booked off my regular freelance thing because I have an interview to finish up, and we need to pack for our upcoming camping trip and do all the other stuff associated with it. I have tonnes of planning to do regarding shopping for food at the other end, plotting out the route, trying to pin down the budget… and mix CDs need to be made!

But first, I get to invoice. Hurrah!

Weekend Roundup, Birthday and Recital Edition

What a wonderful weekend.

Friday I did over half of the freelance thing in four hours, had a catnap, wrote the boy’s five-year-old celebratory post, did more househunting research, and started the laundry. We let the boy stay up an hour past his usual bedtime to finish building his Lego Atlantis sub, and HRH went out to the party store just before it closed to get helium balloons with which to surprise him the next morning.

Saturday morning the boy woke us up at 5:15, and while HRH got back to sleep I did not, so I gave up around 6:00 and got up with the boy. He was not impressed that the World Cup coverage was on instead of his cartoons. The morning felt rushed for some reason, and I headed out for our recital dress rehearsal just before nine-thirty, which was fifteen minutes later than I wanted to be out the door; as a result, instead of taking the detour and time to treat myself to a breakfast sandwich as I’d originally planned, I hit the local depanneur to pick up an orange juice and a huge granola bar. I’d expected the rehearsal to be as stressful as home had been, but it wasn’t; it was relaxed and went very well, and was very enjoyable.

After lunch I made the boy’s birthday cake while HRH did the final tidying up (who knew the front window could be that clean?). My parents had arrived in town the night before, and they came over around one-thirty. The overcast skies and drizzle cleared up enough for us to sit outside, which was lovely. Mum brought fresh peas (both the kind to be shelled as well as sugar snaps) and Niagara cherries, both of which the boy was into as soon as he saw them (he won’t eat tomato sauce, but will eat sugar snap peas by the handful, and asks for them as a treat; go figure). And he got cherry juice on a brand new button-down shirt, of course, but at least the juice kind of matches the shirt’s colour scheme.

HRH’s parents joined us around three, and the boy asked when we would be able to open birthday presents, so when everyone had settled down with a drink we let him go to town. He was perfectly thrilled with all the Playmobil and Lego (“Oh, this is what I wanted! Thank you!”), and while he didn’t seem as enthusiastic about the clothes, he has chosen to wear three new shirts from the pile of birthday clothes already, so while they were not immediately gratifying they did make an impression. He finagled various adults into helping him build the new sets of things until dinner, and had HRH fill his pool so he could play in it and take the Playmobil seaplane in. He was in and out of that for the rest of the afternoon while the adults snacked on crackers alternately piled with Brie and my mother-in-law’s wonderful seafood dip.

We had flank steak and herbed sausages for supper, and while the sausages were dry (partially a result of their composition and partially to miscalculating the cooking time) the flank steak was really quite excellent. We put out a pile of fresh raw veggies and made dip to serve with it, and a potato salad. Dessert was the cake the boy had requested, vanilla with maple frosting. The recipe for the cake is a definite keeper, though I used four whole eggs instead of eight yolks. I’m not sure why I continue to use new recipes for special occasions because so much can go wrong, although it didn’t in this instance: it was lovely and moist, although the frosting I made was essentially my regular frosting with about a half-cup of maple syrup added to it for flavour, and since maple syrup is sweeter than sugar it was a bit cloying. Now I understand why people use maple extract.

Sunday morning we introduced the boy to The Rocketeer, one of our favourite films, and it was a hit, as we’d expected: it has racing planes, a dirigible, and a rocket backpack. After lunch we got tidied up and headed out for my spring recital at the seniors’ residence, meeting my parents there. The last time my parents saw me in recital was at my first and only big public one about twelve years ago, where I played the full Breval Sonata in C (my mother tells me I have definitely improved, which is a relief). We had a really big crowd in attendance this time; either the seniors were more active, or our fame has spread. (I doubt it’s the latter.) We had two more cellists, and three violinists, so there was an increase in attendant families as well. There was a bit of oddness during setup when we discovered that the piano was tuned to A443, which meant we had to crank our cellos up three notches above the 440 we’re used to, translating to about a quarter-tone on my instrument in yesterday’s weather. You get used to A440 sounding one way, and when you adjust the tuning across the instrument it sounds really wrong to your ear for a bit even though it’s in tune with itself. The opening ensemble piece felt unsettled to me and a couple of other cellists as a result, but the audience probably didn’t notice a thing. Apart from that, I think that this is the recital I have enjoyed the most so far. Everyone did a wonderful job with their solos, and the ensemble pieces were great. I was comfortable both physically and mentally, I aced my trouble spots in my Lully Gavotte, and we delivered lovely versions of The Entertainer (all of it, no shortcuts; it’s a longer piece than people expect in its proper form) and Ashokan Farewell. All the ensemble pieces were good, but those two really stand out in my mind. Our final piece was a unison performance of the traditional fiddle tune Soldier’s Joy, and we had four violinists, a pianist, and twelve cellists playing it. We did it three times, each time a little faster, and at the dress yesterday our teacher reminded us not to speed up during each repetition because then the final set would be too fast for precision. Well, of course that’s exactly what happened, but everyone hung on and made terrific noise. My parents told me that the little kids had a blast barrelling along at the end, and it was a great way to finish the programme. I’ve never left a recital feeling that good about myself and the class. I felt like I looked good, I sounded good, and I felt really secure about everything. So secure, in fact, that when HRH complimented me repeatedly on the way home about my sound and delivery he didn’t make me feel awkward or self-conscious. I got some very nice comments from my classmates about my sound at the dress rehearsal, too, which was nice, detailed comments that went beyond the basic encouraging sorts of remarks, too.

My parents came back with us and we sat in the yard talking while the boy splashed about in his pool again, and then we went out to dinner, which was fun and pretty good. I can’t believe the amount of food the boy ate over the weekend. HRH and I wonder if he’s on the verge of another growth spurt, which would be just crazy. We parted ways in the restaurant parking lot, and after putting the boy to bed HRH and I sat down and seriously went through the latest list of houses our agent sent us for review. I think we’re ready to start this again after a few days off to heal.

It was a lovely weekend. We had lovely weather, we enjoyed great food and great family time, and the boy had a blast doing what the boy does.

Wednesday Log

We suffered another crushing disappointment today, the second in two weeks (and much worse than the first), so yeah, not so much with the productivity. I wish I had more energy to deal with the waves that life’s throwing at us.

In the meantime, today I:

– updated househunt spreadsheet
– researched more houses
– beta-read awesome spy story
– wove a bunch of blanket (didn’t measure, but it was at least a foot)
– scoured the oven (like scrubbing the bathtub, this knocked me out for a couple of hours)
– spun the rest of Jan’s fibre (I will ply it later this week)
– practised
– put aside the new freelance assignment till tomorrow, because I was in no way capable to wrapping my mind around it

The honeysuckle is just beginning to blossom, and the clematis is a day or so behind it. And the buds on my rosebushes are starting to open, too. The backyard is going to be spectacular for the boy’s birthday.

In an effort to cheer myself up I dragged the spinning wheel outside, changed into a halter top and my short jean skirt, and spun on the back porch in the sun while listening to my iPod. It was nice. Except now one of my arms and shoulders is sunburned, while the other is not.

I pulled my wooden cello bow out yesterday, the one with the cracked frog that I retired because I was afraid it was going to break. I’ve been using the fibreglass one that came with the 7/8 instead. I played with it all afternoon and really liked the feel of it; everything was easier. Then on a whim I pulled out the scale I bought to weigh fibre, and holy cow: my wooden one weighs 71 grams, while my fibreglass one weighs a whopping 83 grams. I used my fibreglass one today and it felt like I was sawing at the cello; I switched to the wooden one at the end and it danced. So I’m taking the wooden one out of retirement, and I intend to use it until the frog disintegrates.