Category Archives: Diary

So Tired…

I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.

When I look back over the weekend, I wonder how I survived it. (The likely answer? Sugar. But I digress.)

Chamber orchestra rehearsal Saturday morning and early afternoon: brilliant. Teaching our first level 2 class of the session: fantastic. An unexpected evening off, when I’d been looking forward to some thought-provoking discussion with friends, but HRH’s cold got the better of him and there was no way I was trying to park out in narrow snow-covered streets. I prepped for the first lecture of the level 3 session instead: wonderful. The actual delivery of the level 3 lecture this afternoon: excellent. Yes, everything seemed fine until I got to the Beethoven rehearsal this afternoon, where I started to fumble and my energy began to flag.

All I wanted to do was sit back and play lovely, liquidy Andantes or Largos. Instead I was plunged directly into the fourth movement, where I rattled around in the Masteosos and Prestissimos, trying to settle into the rhythm. I was given a slight respite at the end for twenty minutes or so when we worked a bit of the third movement, but then it was rushing home, not being able to find parking nearby, lugging the cello home through snowbanks, a quick bath, an even quicker bowl of spaghetti with homemade sauce (thank you, my love), lugging the cello back to the car, and off to the chamber orchestra concert.

Where, yet again, turnout was disappointing. Not personally, mind you; I had four people there. If, as our conductor pointed out, we all had four people come to hear us play, we’d have an audience of almost two hundred.

I believe the lack of audience affected our performance. I personally think that our Saturday morning dress rehearsal had more life and energy to it than did tonight’s performance. Anyone who’s ever performed knows that a good audience has a significant impact on the morale and output of the artists involved. The small audience we had was enthusiastic and appreciative, but there’s something about glancing up at the conductor and noticing a sea of empty space dotted by a few people behind him.

Ah well. There’s always July. The July concert is always packed. And rumour has it we’ll be playing our May concert in Hudson, so we’ll have a new location from which to draw attendees.

Speaking of audiences, my parents will be in town for the Beethoven next weekend. I’m looking forward to it immensely, as I haven’t seen them since Christmas morning. So I’ll have both sets of parents in the audience next weekend – that’s a treat!

I thought I had tomorrow off, but on the way home I remembered that I’d promised to have those final two chapters edited and back by tomorrow morning. That was terribly optimistic of me. I intend to feel dreadfully sorry for myself for the rest of the evening, and perhaps some of tomorrow mornign as well. By noon, it wil be gone, and I can get some more research done.

Speaking of research: anyone know Bruckner’s Mass in F Minor? What’s it like? It’s the main programme for the May 1 Cantabile concert, and I don’t want to commit to four Sunday rehearsals in April, dividing my time between teaching and rehearsing, unless I absolutely love the piece we’re to play. And there’s rumours of the orchestra doing Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration before the mass.

I can’t think that far ahead at the moment. I can’t even think past Monday at noon.

Still Fragile, Less Functional

The migraine is back. It was lurking.

Just sent off those chapters, and I’m taking a good long break before looking at the next ones. I currently have an aromatherapy jar with lavender oil going right in front of my keyboard, both for the headache and to counteract the smell of burnt eggs that’s been hanging around since a neighbour got off to a bad start this morning.

My cello strings still haven’t arrived, so I’ll have to play this weekend’s concert with my old ones. Not great, but not the end of the world; it’s the Beethoven next weekend I’m more worried about.

Fragile But Functional

After a migraine which removed me from the end of our weekly afternoon writing jam, and prevented me from the much-anticipated Changeling game last evening, I feel bruised all over this morning. Migraines creep up on me; they masquerade as regular headaches until about four hours later I realise that the multiples of Advil I’ve taken have done absolutely no good, sound is bothering me, and light is hurting my eyes. At that point there’s nothing to do but curl up in a dark, dark, quiet room and sleep it off.

Ceri, your pizza was fabulous, and just what I needed when I woke up from a nightmare of being attacked and unable to breathe or swallow. It seems that I fell asleep on my stomach and turned my face into the pillow at some point.

I had a warm bath with lavendar oil after I ate, and that helped a bit too. (That and drinking over a liter of water; but I digress.) Cricket ended up walking around the edge of the tub when I got out. She made one careful tour, and I complimented her on her elegance and dexterity and told her to get down. Naturally, being a cat, she ignored me, and started round again. Three-quarters of the way through, she slipped and fell into the four inches of water left in the draining tub. Being quick of mind, I slammed the bathroom door shut and grabbed her with a towel. I started to dry her, but she was a squirmit and insisted on being let down. I set her on the bathmat where she calmly licked all the wet parts I hadn’t dried off. She wasn’t freaked out, which makes sense; Cricket’s the one who flips the drinking dish to play in the water on the kitchen floor. She was probably more annoyed at breaking her tub-walking record than anything else.

So I’m fragile but functional this morning, which is a good thing because I only got thirty pages into the set of chapters I have to have edited by this afternoon, and there’s still ninety-six pages to go. I don’t know what it is with this author — it almost seems as if this is an old draft, because I know we’ve fixed some of this stuff before…

*Snap*

I truly dislike photo shoots. The one that I have just suffered through was, in fact, relatively painless. Probably because my husband was the photographer.

Why did I force myself through this dreadful process? Because, dear readers, it’s in my contract that the Publisher has the right to use my name and likeness to promote the new series. Hence the need for a likeness to send down.

We used two alternating cameras, just as extra insurance. Different hairstyles, different clothes, different poses. Glasses off, glasses on.

Now we have three rolls of film to develop (yes, there was one in our camera already, and no, I have no earthly idea what’s on it — oh, wait, Elim (muah-hah-hah), and various Yule celebrations, including the now-traditional shot of myself and Roo. Right.)

I’ll get them same-day processed, then HRH and I will pore over the various shots to choose the three best, and I’ll have them enlarged to 8 x 10 formats. Then I’ll Purolate them down to Boston, accompanied by the signed contracts that arrived in today’s mail.

If nothing else, I’ll have piles of photos to send to my grandmother and my parents and such.

Time Flies

As of today, my imprint specialist contract should be in the mail. I’ll get it next week, sign it, and then somewhere along the next four weeks get a tidy US check to sink into my bank account to help chase away the winter blues. Half will go onto my Visa; the rest will sit and gather interest. And then, then I will go out and look at sewing machines. And a filing cabinet.

I took a look at the first date I scribbled down in my notebook that’s reserved for work with this publisher. On August 6 I had the first phone conversation with my contact, where we began to throw ideas back and forth and the position of series editor was brought up.

On Friday, it will have been six months since that day. I didn’t sign an official contract until October, but I started working with them before that.

Six months. Half a year.

Wow.

Foiled!

The high-speed package arrived. Yay! said I.

There were a couple of issues. Namely, the fact that all the manuals were in French, and that even though the salesguy had been told that we already had Sympatico service and wished to keep our e-mail address, we were assigned a new address, and a new user ID. I know how bureaucracy works. We’re likely to lose our current e-mail for a time, if not forever, while they sort things out.

Despite all this, I tried to install it this morning.

The operative word being “tried”, of course.

I wasn’t home when the salesperson originally came to our door. My husband therefore handled the transaction, with the best of intentions. The salesguy took a look at the back of our computer and checked off certain things on the contract, like the fact that we have a USB port.

“We don’t have a USB port,” I said when my husband told me this.

“Sure we do!” HRH said. “The salesguy checked!”

Yeah, well, guess what. The installation software ran a diagnostic on the computer and told me that I couldn’t install my new high speed kit because of two reasons: my hard drive wasn’t big enough, and I had no USB port.

The software doesn’t allow you to choose what hard drive to direct it to. My C drive was partitioned when Skippy constructed my machine, so of course it says it’s smaller than it actually is. I use my new second hard drive for programs now.

So: Sympatico gets called tomorrow. The high speed thing gets cancelled, and I’ll return this useless kit. When I’m ready, I’ll call and upgrade my service myself. I have been promised a new/old computer by the end of February (thank you, Ceri and Scott!); I’ll try again then.

My technical frustration has been assuaged by the production of an entire short story (which means I can take one of my story assignment postcards off my bulletin board), and eleven hundred words of a second new story. And a new version of the anthology proposal. And a glass of champagne celebrating t!‘s 100,000th word of Baker’s 12.

Plus t! said that the whole idea of being a gutsy author was nonsensical, since he had solid support from fellow writing-type friends which filled him with confidence.

Still, I’m vaguely frustrated, for some reason. There’s a warm bath in my future.