Most of you know I’m interested in odd kinds of instruments. When I say odd, I don’t mean out of the ordinary; I mean things you can’t get easily and are stupidly expensive, and even if you could get one you’d have a hell of a time trying to find a local teacher for it. Like a harpsichord. Like a viol (AKA viola de gamba).
Like this seven-course Renaissance lute.
Repeat after me: Autumn has no time. Autumn has no money. Autumn should stop subscribing to Craigslist RSS feeds.
I have further caught up on the holiday backlog of e-mail and cleaned out most of my in-box, I have yogaed, and I have celloed. I am very pleased to see that my cello skills haven’t completely crumbled in my two-week hiatus. In fact, wow. Positive proof that my two months of lessons have made a definite impact and improvement. The Lee piece sounds excellent, especially considering that this is only the third time I’ve played it. But in the interest of full disclosure and humbling myself, the piece from the Mooney book sounds awful: I can’t get the damn rhythm of “Erik’s Minuet.” I subdivide, I count, nothing works. Argh. It figures I’d stumble on the easy piece and whip through the more challenging one.
Now for a snack (because I had an early lunch before celloing), and then work. I think I’ll do the first half of the proofs today, or however far I get so long as it’s at least five chapters. Drat; I need to download and install Foxit on this computer so I can mark them up if necessary.
And later, when I need a break (and I will, because I remember what page proofs are like) I will sew up the ends of HRH’s scarf and put the tassels on, because I went over to Ceri and Scott’s house last night and Ceri gave me a J crochet hook of my very own. The test tassel I did was too long, so I’ll need to find an intermediate-sized book to wrap the yarn around. And in other knitting news, I did indeed frog those two inches of hat last night; I cast the Softwist yarn on my size 8 Addis instead, and wow. I prefer bamboo needles to metal, and I thought the slippery yarn on the super-slick metal Addis would be a match made in hell, but it’s spookily easier, somehow.
Right; Foxit has downloaded. Time to install and get to work.
I spent last night in the company of a few good friends, eating excellent food, drinking very good wine, with cats about and a lovely fire in the fireplace, and it was Very Good Indeed. If one takes the first minute of the new calendar year as an augury of sorts for the coming year as a whole, then I will be laughing and comfortable and thankful for the good things in life in 2009. And that’s just fine with me.
In his wishes for the new year Neil Gaiman said something wonderful and beautiful and inspirational, and it is worth quoting here:
…I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you’ll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.
A good rule of thumb for this and every year: Be wise. Be kind. Love. Make things. And always, always dream big.
My site was down earlier and I could not blog! So here’s the day so far in one shot.
8h47: I am very achy. Not as achy as yesterday, thank goodness, and my focus is better. I was so achy yesterday I couldn’t even knit. This damn freelance assignment is getting done today, come what may. Because, well, I did nothing on it yesterday. Not for lack of trying, though. And I handled lots of other things that needed to be done, many of which were overdue to be handled. None of it was stuff that would yield a paycheque, however.
9h35: I have now spent an hour and a half trying to figure out what yarn Mousme used for Bodhifox’s Ravenclaw scarf. I think I have it tracked down by comparing the recommended yarns in the pattern and the pictures she posted. The name she gave me wasn’t correct (which she suspected when giving it to me) so I went around it the long way. (No, I am not yet working. Shut up.)
10h25: Ceri has just given me the correct name of the yarn! I was completely wrong. Are those angels singing? And I’ve just found a replacement for the discontinued shade! Now to track it down in person at one of my local yarn shops, many of whom carry yarn from this manufacturer.
11h47: Oops. I overcooked my chicken nuggets and smiley fries. They probably shouldn’t shatter when you bite them.
12h31: Facebook is a good place to divert frustrated blogging energy when attempting to work-avoid.
11h30: The rest of the LCO fall concert has been posted on Youtube:
Vivaldi concerto grosso part 1 (first and second movements)
Vivaldi Concerto Grosso part 2 (third movement)
Brahms Hungarian Dances part 1 (dances 5 and 6)
Brahms Hungarian Dances part 2 (dance 1)
My comments? Nice cello work at the beginning of the fugue in the Vivaldi part 1, with a bonus shot of my face while playing at 2:42! (Actually, this video was taken from the first violin side so there’s a lot of shots of the celli from face-on through part 1 and part 2. Even though I am often blocked by the conductor.) Nice cello work through out this entire piece, really. Oh yay, we all finished the third movement together, and with conviction. Stick the landing!
Around 2:20 of the Brahms 1: Look, we have a percussionist! Just below her and to the right is the music teacher from my old high school doing a guest turn as a trumpet player for us. (I can’t rightly call him my music teacher from high school because I never took music.) One thing I really like about these videos is being able to see everyone in the orchestra t different times. Most people in the audience only see the first couple of rows, and those of us in the orchestra are usually staring at music or the conductor.
Also, I could be wrong about the order of the Brahms dances, but I’m too lazy to track down my scribble in the concert programme. There were three, and we played 1, 5, and 6, but not in that order.
15h15: FINISHED! Yes! Now to query about the slight mess the identification numbers are in and an issue with uploading the completed assignment. Also to ask about the invoice I submitted two weeks ago which hasn’t been responded to, so I have no idea if they got it or not.
Which brings us to now! I should probably think about something for dinner. No, wait; tacos. There. Assuming we have shells or tortillas for soft tacos, that is.
So the boy is precisely 100 centimetres tall. Which translates to a metre.
Yeah.
So if the boy is metre tall, you can figure out how big the cat attacking his foot is.
I’m working on the boy’s monthly post as a break from work. It should be up later this afternoon.
ETA @ 14h00: It’s up! Click here. Normally I’d tell you to scroll down but the stupid footer is overlapping it.
My feeds are being picked up again by the RSS readers that recognised them before the new theme! Woo-hoo!
Sometimes all you need to do is wave sharp pointy and heavy blunt things at the computer and threaten certain doom sleep on it. :)
Of course, clicking on the ‘subscribe to feed’ link still takes you to a page of error messages, but hey. One thing at a time.
At this rate, I may have enough courage to try updating the entire installation again before the end of December. Assuming I can face the potential of Losing Everything Yet Again.
Also? Snow! Lots of it! With a bonus round of freezing rain in the middle! Winter is very definitely present, judging by the size of the ploughed snowbanks at the end of the driveway.
And… I have half a scarf. Go me!
ETA: I’ve just had a report that a reader can’t comment because the comment box doesn’t show up at all, in either Firefox or IE. Anyone else having a problem? If you don’t have one of my private addresses scribble a quick note to owldaughter AT gmail DOT com. (I can’t fix this one, or take the blame; this is a prepackaged theme that I have not messed with in any way, shape, or form. It’s also not the theme I wanted, though, so it’s not my Theme of Choice or set in stone.)
More new stuff: ‘Catastrophic’ low voter turnout for the provincial election this past Monday (no, really? what with election fatigue, a general hatred of government after the federal fiasco, and minus forty-after-windchill temperatures?), and apparently we had 17 centimetres of snow last night on top of the however many we got during the day.
I skipped into the living room to tell HRH that the luthier had a new 7/8 for me to try.
“When would you go?” he asked.
“I’m thinking this Friday afternoon,” I said. “Next week’s lesson is Friday night and I won’t be racing off anywhere once it’s done, so I can ask my teacher what she thinks of it and we’ll have the time to discuss it. If I go then, I can meet you at work afterwards and we can both head over to your parents’ place to pick up the boy.”
“Mama,” said the boy, suddenly standing in front of me. He raised a finger and shook it at me, looking very serious. “You should never, never, never, ever go shopping… without… a boy.”
We looked at him, mouths open. He nodded again, certain of himself. “Yes. You should never go shopping without a boy.”
HRH and I melted from the cuteness, and we finally broke out of the stasis to laugh and laugh. I grabbed the boy and hugged him hard. Then I went and hunted up “Disobedience” by A.A. Milne to read to him for the first time.