Category Archives: Weather, Seasons, & Celebrations

Brief Weekend Roundup

I am effectively dead. I am calling in Not Living today, because that’s about as useful as I can manage to be. Work will happen tomorrow.

Friday: Excellent day running around with the boy. Dinner with Tal and Kris, which consisted of much laughter, wine, delicious food, and OMG Battenberg cake, which I have not in forever, or at least since Marks and Sparks abandoned the colonials closed their Canadian shops. Awful night of not-exactly-sleep where I am very, very ill for some reason.

Saturday: Resting in bed with tea until I decide I am able to get up and drive safely. Excellent cello lesson. Visit to the mall to pet the Easter farm animals. Scored a secondhand copy of Lego Star Wars for the Xbox, and a secondhand controller which is red so I will play better. Lunch out consisting of hot dogs and fries, as I had promised the boy. After nap, we all head out to the south shore so I can drop by the luthier and renew the rental of the 7/8 cello for two more months. Then all three of us play our new video game, and the boy is quite good at figuring out what’s what. We end the day by watching the Deserts episode of Planet Earth.

Sunday: Summer tires put on the car. I make my first homemade tourtière. After nap we head out to have a home-hosted sugaring off meal with excellent friends and many children. Everyone eats too much breakfast-style food drenched in maple syrup. I think the tourtière is too dry and kind of wishy-washy on the seasoning, but everyone else claims it’s awesome. (Next time I’m doubling the sage and cloves, not boiling off as much of the broth, and using a different pastry recipe.) After the boy’s in bed HRH and I head out for our once-monthly steampunkian-horror game, which was most excellent. I got nine more rows of the lap blanket done. (It’s the only knitting I’m getting done at all, and only during this game.)

Which brings us to today, where I feel lethargic and achy. The damp weather doesn’t help.

My mother has informed me that the FedEx shipment I missed is not in fact my cello goody bag, but a box of photo/scrapbook albums she and my dad shipped to me from my grandmother’s apartment in Vancouver when they went out to visit her last week. I’m looking forward to seeing them.

Win!

Hello, spring!

Good Things of the Day So Far:

1. The exchange rate. Hello, an extra twenty-three cents to every American dollar I just deposited into my bank account!

2. SUN! I had to take off my scarf and then my velvet jacket while running my errands. The sunroof was opened, the car window was rolled down. All the house windows are now open as well. I’m wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt for the first time in, oh, months. Also for the first time in months, I am not cold.

3. I have daffodils that I bought from the Cancer Society! So many that they all don’t fit in my little Caithness vase!

4. A stack of new library books. Om-nom-nom.

5. Not one but two pairs of leather shoes purchased at Winners: a pair of plain black Rockport Mary Jane flats, and a pair of taupe Clarks casual Mary Jane heels. (Curiously, the heels are more comfortable than the flats.) I paid less for the two together than I’d have paid for either of them separately. SCORE! (Of course, taupe isn’t my thing; I’m kind of, heh, neutral about it. I intend to have them dyed, I just can’t decide on black or brown. Because, well, CLARKS, and holy cats they’re comfy.)

And finally:

6. The anthology ms. has already been approved. The request for my delivery cheque was just put in. HOW COOL IS THAT?

Yeah. A good day so far.

Hello, Day-After-Deadline

This is the day where I wander around aimlessly because what’s been driving me for however long I’ve been handling the project is gone, but I don’t have the brainpower to start something else up again right away. This time it isn’t so bad, as it’s only been two months, but it’s enough to make me need a bit of a time before jumping into something different. I can’t completely break with the project mentally yet, either, as my editor will be getting back to me today or tomorrow with her initial response.

I need to reinitialise my freelancing gig again, and I have to get back into the headspace to revise Orchestrated. I scheduled collating and calculating all my 2008 receipts for the taxes for this week, so I need to get into the headspace for that, too. Today, however, is my official Do-Nothing Day. Which of course means I’ll do other stuff like wash dishes and empty the dishwasher and make bread and plan out an Actual Meal Of Some Kind for dinner instead of kitbashing an hour before the meal. I should practise, as well. Not that I haven’t played tonnes of cello over Friday/Saturday/Sunday, but there were a couple of new things assigned at my last lesson that I haven’t even looked at yet.

Now I need to select and print some photos to go out with a small package. One of the things I need to do is hit the post office today, so hopefully the sun will come out again because I don’t want to go out into the cold, damp, dark day, even if I’ll be on the bus for a bit of it. I’m tired of being chilled.

(Oh, hell; my colour cartridge is out of one ink, so the colour is totally off. Looks like the yellow, as the resulting test picture is eerily purple. So much for photos. Gnarr.)

Weekend Roundup, Featuring A Concert Review

Fabulous weekend!

I freely and cheerfully admit that I was completely and utterly wrong about the quality of performance at this concert. It was a most excellent evening — it blew us all away, musicians and audience alike. This conductor really knew her stuff; she trusted us more than we trusted ourselves. And what astounds me is that she didn’t know us, beyond observing a rehearsal or two previous to her turn at bat. We pulled it off, thanks to her, to her faith and her leadership and her solid preparation. In the end, this was not in fact the concert to miss if you had to miss one, as most of my regular concertgoers ended up having to do thanks to other responsibilities.

There were over a hundred people in the audience, which was wonderful too. I’m glad so many people got to experience it. My deepest thanks go out to MLG, HRH, and the boy, who were my own personal cheering section in the back corner. I saw the boy standing on his seat to applaud wildly after the first half of the programme, which made me grin so hard I thought I’d strain a muscle. And on the way home he was singing to himself in the back seat. We asked him what he was singing and he said, “I don’t know.” We listened closely and realised that he was singing the bell theme from the Carillon at the end of the L’Arlesienne suite. My heart just about burst. I was extremely proud of him and of how he behaved.

The only mishap on the part of the celli (and the biggest musical mishap concert-wide, I think) was that we completely and utterly missed our cue for the celli treble clef solo in the middle part of the Carillon. We were counting, and then we heard the oboe playing, and I thought, Hmm, I don’t remember the oboe playing here. And then the principal and I suddenly looked at one another out of the corner of our eyes, because we realised that we’d missed our entrance. It would have sounded awful if we’d jumped in, so we all let the oboe have a lovely solo. Who knew they played the same line we did? The conductor laughed about it once we were done, as did all of the celli. No harm done, but terribly amusing after weeks and weeks of work on that line and hitting the entrance every time. I think this version was nicer anyway; much gentler and more nostalgic.

Sunday morning was the monthly meeting of the Pagan playgroup, where they coloured eggs and painted masks. The boy’s egg is blue, although he kept handling it and most of the colour has come off on his hands. His mask is also impressive, with carefully blended colour and sparkles on the nose, feathers over the eyes, and one sparkly jewel just below the right ear with another on the left side of the chin. Oh, and with a riot of blue tinsel hair.

I had a group cello lesson Sunday afternoon, at which some of us incredulously dissected the previous night’s successful concert before settling into the group pieces. It’s nice to have all the heavy orchestral stuff behind me so that I can focus on lesson and recital work now. We got the final lineup for the recital and the official assignment of who’s playing what part in the trios and quartets, and my duo partner and I are making plans to meet to rehearse our piece. I love our group lessons, although I suspect we tax our teacher’s patience when we all get together and there’s variously missing music and giggling and rhythm issues.

Also, Saturday featured the most amazing warm, sunny weather. HRH got the last of the snow out of the shady corner of the yard, the boy got thoroughly muddy, and we went for a walk sprint around the neighbourhood with frequent pauses to examine cracks and leaves. It rained yesterday, but the ground needed a good soaking, and it was a novelty to drive through rain instead of snow on the highway.

Today is anthology d-day. I have already crossed two of the four things on the anthology to-do list off, which means I’m halfway done, right? Never mind the fact that one of the remaining things is ‘read the ms. from beginning to end’ and the other is reorganizing a fiddly Excel spreadsheet that must be legible to my editor. Once that’s gone… well, I don’t know what I’ll do, actually. Probably hibernate for three or four days after having a long bubble bath.

My signing cheque arrived in the mail on Friday, too late for me to actually take it to my bank, so I must sit on it till Thursday. But hurrah for having money again! Of course most of it will go to paying bills, some to renting the cello for another couple of months, and some to the Mac mini (I hope). And there’s definitely a dinner out this month for us in the cards, too.

Suspiciously Cheerful

Suspicious because I shouldn’t be this happy and/or laid back this close to a deadline. I should be more focused on what I’m doing. But it’s sunny outside and there is no more snow (well, other than the edges of the backyard), and I got my third lovely surprise yesterday: a small bouquet of tulips from my boys.

Today I’ve been researching Mac Minis. I had to walk away from my desktop yesterday because it was (a) loud and (b) connected to the Internet. I tried to use my Dell laptop and it was even louder than the desktop. I defaulted to the Macbook I have on extended loan, and it operated in blessed silence. All my experiences with the Macbook so far have convinced me that I want to go Apple next. HRH has told me that any time I want to go downtown to the Apple Store to do some hands-on research, he’s good to go. He gets an educational discount, too, which knocks a bit of the price down. Of course I’ll just feed that right back into a three-year warranty, but hey. It will be very exciting to have a brand-new computer with a warranty. And I’m looking at the Mini because I have all my peripherals and don’t need the all-in-one package an iMac offers. Also, much cheaper. And portable. And tiny.

I had two cupcakes for breakfast. So there.

Yesterday I managed to finish my first draft of the introduction for the anthology; I’ll polish it on Friday. I’m still poking at the order, trying new things in different places. It feels like I’m spinning my wheels, because rearranging fifty stories doesn’t net me any tangible progress except a different sequence of titles in the table of contents. It’s harder than it sounds, because it takes a lot of brain power to remember what each story is about and what themes or tones it demonstrates. It’s like making a mix tape, trying to get the right flow between the moods and styles, except it’s 277 pages of stuff instead of two thirty-minute chunks. It’s taking up more mental RAM.

Fearsclave and I are geeking out about recurve bows at the moment, and I’ve pulled my two volumes of The Bowyer’s Bible out to lend him next time we see one another. In a rather apt illustration of my personality, they were shelved between books called Music and Literature: A Comparison of the Arts and The Technical Manual And Dictionary Of Classical Ballet.

And now, I must go and poke at the anthology with a sharp stick again.

More Joy!

The day just keeps getting better! I just had a call from Bodhifox, cheerily inviting me to go out for tea. Of course, he’s in Ohio and I’m in Montreal, but it was such a wonderful thing to ask. To unexpectedly touch base with someone I love like that was fantastic.

Fox says there’s one more good thing to come, as surprises come in threes.

I feel like spinning around in the sun for a while. I wish there were daffodils to pick. I’ll have to make do with looking at the sun and pretending it’s warm. Also, there are cupcakes to make.

In Which She Drags Herself To The Computer

Not dead. I wish I was (or rather, I have wished I was for a variety of reasons over the past five days but not at this precise moment), but no, I am not actually dead. I’m in a lot of pain, which is annoying and has been wearing down my patience and ability to deal with basic everyday things; I haven’t been sleeping; and the boy and I have had gastro. But today is a new day and we sent him off to preschool, and our fingers are crossed that everything goes well. Yesterday was an excellent day in which there were no bodily upsets and he ate and slept well, but you never know. And I only found out this morning when I called to let the director know he was on his way that there’s a kid waiting for surgery who can’t come into contact with any possible illness or the surgery has to be rescheduled. That would have been a good thing to know before we sent him in; I might have kept him home an extra day just to be positive. Except not knowing this plus my climbing the walls and increasing pile of backed-up work meant I really needed him to go in today.

Bah.

Today is St Patrick’s Day, and the boy is dressed in a new green t-shirt we picked up for him on Saturday and he looks great. They will be talking about Ireland at school today, and the boy has been reminded that he can tell them about the goddess Brigid, whom he learned all about at the little witchling circle (as one of the leaders calls it), as they probably don’t know about her. He was reviewing what he knew while he got ready to go: “She lives in water ( “And fire,” I interjected) and we throw pennies to her (they’d been told throwing pennies into water and making a wish was a form of communicating with the goddess, so now he tosses pennies into the mall fountains and shouts, “Thank you Brigid!”), and she has white skin and red hair, and she takes care of us when we’re sick and helps us get better.” I can only imagine how garbled that will come out at the other end, and how politely confused the teachers will be.

What lovely sun out there.

Evidently even when I am ill I can still make a kick-ass onion soup and chicken pot pie. The secret? Christmas dinner, and the absolutely fabulous turkey soup it made. I used a small container of the frozen turkey-heavy soup as the base for the cream sauce over the chopped chicken, and wow, it was spectacular. I’m still very confused as to why I wanted to make them when the idea of food had been turning my stomach all day, but they were delicious even in the tiny quantity I ate.

You know, the front staircase is like the bathroom: It doesn’t matter how often I sweep it, it’s dirty again immediately afterwards. On the bright side, the snow’s almost all gone in the front yard, and there’s only a thin layer left in the back. No snow and less mud can only make things better.

I read the entire stack of library books I brought home last Thursday by Sunday night. I resorted to rereading Anne of Avonlea yesterday while the boy napped.

Today: Yoga, then reviewing the final submissions for the anthology (yay!), reviewing edits/rewrites of the first round of essays, sending contracts for the ones that are done, and then I get to start playing with a new order of the fifty stories. And work some more on a scintillating, insightful, poignant introduction. I would love to hand this in early.