Category Archives: Food

Il Maestro Update

The tide has turned. A tiny bit of information I read recently solved my ending dilemma: one of the two endings I envisioned simply cannot happen, for my protagonist would never make the sacrifice required for the associated unknown payoff. Now I know how it ends. And today I wrote the pivotal moment where she chooses her path and confirms the end of the novel.

Total word count, Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro: 50,260
New words today: 1,354

Mousme came over to write with me, and brought milk because I twisted my knee coming up the front stairs after waving goodbye to the HRH and the boy on their way out this morning and couldn’t safely walk to the depanneur to get a litre of milk for her tea. We had plain but comfortable fare for lunch — tuna casserole, because I forgot that I was also going to walk to the bakery to get a loaf of bread for sandwiches — and lots of tea.

I didn’t realise how much those two possible endings were weighing on me. I’m looking forward to writing on.

Il Maestro Update, Etc

I had a lovely surprise visit from Mousme this morning, which shouldn’t have been a surprise because I’d invited her. She arrived with her laptop and I made a pot of tea and we sat down and actually wrote stuff. You know, that thing I do for a living, and have been trying to do for the past couple of weeks and have been getting pretty much nowhere because I keep getting sidetracked by shiny research that really doesn’t need to be done this very second? Yes, that. I fed her leftovers and she asked for seconds, wonderful girl.

Total word count, Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro: 48,906
New words today: 1,777

We’re inching towards an end of the first draft. I still don’t know which ending is going to happen. We’ll find out as things develop, I suppose. Once the first draft is complete (how confident I sound) I have a feeling I should go right back to the beginning to polish and expand and fill in the gaps, and attack it with a metaphorical offset spatula to smooth out the continuity. I’m mildly concerned that if I put it away I’ll lose momentum on it. (Momentum? What momentum? The theoretical momentum I’ll have achieved once it’s been finished.) Remember, I put this away last December and only took it out three weeks ago; I don’t want to have to go through all the rereading and reacquainting myself yet again.

Mousme and I now have a casual regular writing date. If it works, don’t mess with it. It’s been ages since we’ve just chatted so we did a lot of that too, catching up and talking about books. Imagine how productive we will be when we don’t have to do as much catching up.

I know I wrote on Friday, but for some reason I didn’t record it. The day’s total was around eight hundred words, I know that, and there was an extra three-hundred-word character file that I finally had to draw up because I could no longer remember the specifics of the dozen or so orphans and several adults I’d created a hundred pages and ten months ago.

This post launches the new Il Maestro-associated icon, from one of Chris Van Allsburg’s breathtaking illustrations for Swan Lake. (No, there are no swans in this novel. Swans elsewhere in my other novels and novellas, yes, but not this one. Are there swans in Venice at all? Other than on crests?)

Saturday we postponed an Ecomuseum trip we’d planned with the Preston-Leblancs due to inclement weather, and had brunch out instead. Then we took the kids to an indoor playcentre and the boy had a rip-roaring time in the three-and-under room of slides and lookouts and big foam blocks. We will absolutely return, and return often, I think. On our way out I spied a kitchen supply shop that had Bundt pans in the windows, and suddenly I was coveting Bundt pans I’d never seen but only heard tell of: cathedral pans! castle pans! rose pans! And not only in the regular large size, but miniature fantasy Bundt pans too!

Sunday we wandered about shops doing errands, and after the boy’s nap we had a birthday visit with HRH’s mother. All in all a lovely weekend.

Today I also applied for a posted freelance job, doing the whole tweaking of CV and creating the perfect cover letter thing — only to have an automated return reply to my email saying that the employer receives so many applications that they’d get back to me in four weeks. Ah well; all that angst, gone in an instantaneous email poof.

Weekend Roundup

There was polenta last night. There almost wasn’t, as I couldn’t locate my special recipe. Then I remembered that I’d published it in my last book, so into my office I went, pulled down my reading copy, and made my polenta. I used fresh lemon thyme from the garden, which made it extremely lemony — too lemony, actually — and the sharpest cheese I had on hand was old cheddar, so it wasn’t exactly what I’d been craving. But I fried two squares up today for lunch and they were better fried than fresh, as frying gave them a nice smoky flavour.

We had huge rare barbecued steaks and roast potatoes with it last night, and it was all delicious.

This weekend I also made a cake for the double birthday bash of Pdaughter and Sandman7, which was well received, and I enjoyed the associated party that we were both able to attend thanks to Blade agreeing to occupy our living room as the Designated Responsible Adult On Site. Sunday we finally went and got supplies so HRH can build me more shelves in my office cupboard (because one can only stack things so high on the ground and single shelf midway up). I’m currently in the throes of ‘must change office NOW’, and the plan is to box a lot of the current stuff in there (mostly teaching stuff in binders, etcetera) and store them downstairs, as they’re not currently needed (nor in the foreseeable future). Then with two new shelves in the closet, I can get most of what’s on the corner bookcase in there and perhaps eliminate the bookcase entirely, or at least reduce things enough that I can replace it with a half-size one, which will open the room up a lot more.

We had a lot of fun with the boy this weekend, watching him chase pigeons and laugh at ducks and run around the backyard. He had a three-hour nap both days. I’m guessing there’s a growth spurt happening.

This morning I at last figured out how to get the damned printer to handle duplex printing. And my in-box this morning held an advance view of Lu’s new collage series that she mentioned last week. I’m so excited; I can’t wait to see how the series evolves. I suspect I’ll end up commissioning a large diptych for my office wall.

Il Maestro Update

I give up. 471 new words; one new page. Mostly descriptive, and will very certainly be rewritten when the project reaches that stage, because it reads like a bad synopsis of something that should be (a) much longer, and (b) much more moving.

Bah. I will blame the humidity. (Also, perhaps I should have consumed more than an avocado dressed with balsamic vinegar for lunch, and a glass of white wine mid-afternoon. Lots of water, too, of course, that should go without saying.)

My Day, By Me

The boy and I had a terrific day today. I think we both needed it. We drove HRH to work and did a couple of hours’ worth of errands on the way home (we now have a drying rack, huzzah, but we do not have cornmeal, which meant I couldn’t make the polenta I was craving). Then Sparky asked to watch a movie while I put away groceries and made him lunch. His nap lasted somewhere between two and two and a half hours, which gave me plenty of time to read a chunk of Sarah Monette’s The Virtu as well as play the cello for an hour. Just for kicks I’ve decided to start learning the second solo cello line of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Celli in G minor (RV 531 if you are a music geek, as I am), so I played through that and did remarkably well, although I discovered that I didn’t know the timing as well as I thought I did, nor the correct stresses and musical phrasing in certain places. Also, holy sixteenth notes that feel like thirty-seconds! Playing them at speed just isn’t going to happen just yet.

Then I played through a bunch of band stuff, proved to myself that I can actually play the solo from Enter Sandman (contrary to the evidence supplied by my performance on May 19), worked on my tone during Moon Over Bourbon Street, played Wheat Kings because I love the long tones, and really worked The Bonny Swans riffs. There just is no pretty technical way to play the first call and response phrase; I tried it in three different position combinations and there’s no way to win. It has to be the way I first worked it out because as awkward as the shift is, the alternate positions are even more awkward. Still, I worked that shift and the tone, and yeah, I can make it sound good. In fact, all of it sounded a lot better than I thought it would after not playing any of it since the gig, almost four months ago.

I am rather pleased: this marks the second time this week I’ve sat down and played. I’ve really ignored the cello this summer, partially because I am lazy, but also because the fretless bass is shiny and siren-like. Not that I’ve played Eva a heck of a lot either, but she’s easier to grab and mess about with than Adele is. However, I’ve played Adele at least an hour every couple of weeks, so she hasn’t been completely ignored. And really, I’ve been quite happy with my tone, too, and the quality of sound I’m pulling from her. I believe orchestra will be back in session next week, and I’m glad I won’t completely embarrass myself in whatever we end up playing. (Apart from whatever understandable embarrassment arises from sightreading things, naturally.)

Anywhats, yes, much with the cello playing while the boy napped. I heard him mumble an hour and a half into the nap while I played the Swans riffs and thought I’d woken him, but evidently he only surfaced for a moment and rolled over because I didn’t hear him again for another hour. And when I walked in to get him he was sitting in bed with a book, and said, “Oh, hi, Mama, I’m reading now.” “Oh, okay,” I said, “you just let me know when you’re ready to get up, then.” So I went back to chopping and frying the onions for the lasagna, and he didn’t call me back for another ten minutes. We made the lasagna together, the boy eating grated mozzarella and broken bits of uncooked lasagna noodles while standing on a kitchen chair supervising me. ( “Where go the noodles?” he said as I covered them with sauce, exactly the way he plays the Where’s Liam? game. “They’re under the sauce.” “Ah, otay, I see,” he said. Glad we’ve got all that straight, Sparky. Can we move on to the next layer now?)

Lasagna assembled, we hit the road to go pick HRH up, and treated ourselves to iced cappuccinos and doughnut holes on the way home. They were a comfort in the abysmal traffic and the August-like humidity that has returned to haunt us after a lovely cool week. Did I mention that everyone and their dog has returned to school? People are cluttering up my roads. That’s the one drawback to having the car while HRH is at work: we have to go pick him up at the end of the day and it’s lots of traffic both ways, being rush hour, and the boy gets very upset at being in the car for an hour and a half. Can’t blame him; I’m usually deeply unimpressed with the experience myself.

So, a good day all around. Tomorrow I will work on the Vivaldi novel again.

Weekend Roundup

I’ll be glad when I’ve finished this project; it’s hurting my brain. These three files have been so similar that I can only assume there is some reason why there are tiny differences in phrasing instead of using the same script for all three applications. More pronounced differences would make more sense, but then, I am not the architect of this particular project, and as it’s being adapted the company has to work with the original and existing structure. Whatever the reason, the similarities lull me into a kind of vague trance-like state as I compare the current document against the previous two, making it hard to focus on those tiny differences when I do come across them. And there are times where those differences are as basic as a single cell of text in one file has been split into three separate cells in another file, without a word changed or out of place. But someone has to do the reduction of the translated script, and it might as well be me.

Saturday’s fund-raising BBQ was delightful in that the weather cleared and the humidity broke, we spent time with good friends, and had good food. In fact, I saw people I hadn’t seen in well over a year (some who I hadn’t seen in more than two, as well), as well as meeting at least one new person who seems very interesting and is an ex-viola player (not by choice exactly, but because she moved away from the instrument she used to borrow). I also finally paid Kino Kid for her lovely, lovely desk that I have been using for a year and a half, and completely failed to accurately communicate why I enjoy Miseri‘s writing.

Sunday morning we finally resumed our brunch date with the neighbours, after something like five weeks off due to people out of town or otherwise unavailable. Liam romped with their cats until we suggested he do something quiet, like read a book. “Otay,” he said, turning to one of the several bookcases and reaching forward, “I find a book to read.” We all leapt forward because in his enthusiasm he could very well have damaged one of many hard-to-replace books on religious study that Scarlet owns. We found him a board book instead. It made such a wonderful image, though, the two-year-old turning quite naturally to the cases of academic study on Daoism and Shinto and various Abrahamic faiths mixed in with Celtic spirituality and modern religions, to ‘find a book to read’.

He asked for oatmeal for lunch, then Sunday afternoon after his nap Liam helped HRH with the vacuuming, thus ending a two-year moratorium on vacuuming if the boy was in the house. (Up till now he used to cry when it was turned on, no matter how we tried to get him used to it. This time? “Look — Dada, it has wheels!”, and that was that, he was off and bogganing. We’ve shown him the wheels before, of course, not that they made a difference.) Then we headed out to the ADZO family ranch where we had an excellent afternoon relaxing, eating hummus, drinking wine, and consuming delicious burgers and corn and home-grown veggies.