Category Archives: Cello

Notes

Not dead.

Concert was brilliant. The church was standing room only, and the overflow of people was directed to the church hall where there was a closed-circuit AV broadcast of the concert on a 20-inch monitor. That hall was filled to twice legal capacity (shh). And they had to turn people away because there was no more room anywhere. Thanks to Tal and Lu for coming out, and to Jeff and Paze and Devon for making the attempt!

So yes; I’d say it was a success. I even ran into an old high school friend whom I haven’t seen in about fifteen years, and it was terrific to see him.

I am completely wiped. I was tired going into the last few days, but now I’m utterly exhausted.

Also, Yule gift exchange party thing yesterday afternoon. Liam was awesome. Had a lovely relaxing chat and drank tea from real china cups with saucers and ate delicious cheese.

More later when I have time and a functioning brain.

Quiet

I’ve been getting things done: Christmas shopping (finished!), reloading programs as I need them, designing a new website, sleeping. Plus I haven’t been very talkative in general, so that translates to not much journaling in any form.

In other news, we have had two roasts and a lasagne in the past seven days. Apparently the comfort food season is upon us.

We had an exhausting but encouraging Messiah rehearsal last night, our first with the choir and soloists. By the end of it I was so weary that I couldn’t translate the music I was reading into actual movement. We’re playing the Skaters’ Waltz again to accompany the freewill offering, which means I have to (a) remember the bassline because I’m actually playing an octave lower than the bass music is written, and (b) remember the triangle parts. The carols and the Messiah sound excellent, however, and I’m looking forward to Saturday night. The only hitch is that I have to be there for six in the evening, which is usually when we’re finishing up the boy’s bath. We’re going to try to get him down a bit early so the neighbours who will be staying the evening don’t have to try to put him to bed, but I don’t know if it’s going to work. It depends on what his day has been like. If it goes badly I may have to leave HRH at home.

Also, due to rearranged seating to fit the orchestra into a small space, I am sitting directly in front of the conductor, which is very odd.

Remember: This Saturday night at 7:30, The Messiah at Cedar Park United church, corner Lakeview and St John’s Blvd in Pointe-Claire (one block south of autoroute 20)! Admission is free; a freewill offering will be taken halfway through the concert for various charities.

HRH’s work appointment was cancelled today, so we’ll be going to get our tree once Liam wakes up from his nap instead of doing it on Sunday as was our original plan. There’s something mildly disturbing about shopping for Christmas trees in temperatures that are ten degrees above the seasonal average.

Concert Reminder!

Here’s your cheerful reminder about the upcoming Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra Christmas concert:

The Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra
with the Cedar Park Church Choir and friends
present
Selections from Handel’s The Messiah
and seasonal carols
Saturday December 16 2006
at 19h30
Cedar Park United Church
204 Lakeview Ave, Pointe-Claire, QC
(corner St-John’s Blvd and Lakeview)
A freewill offering will be taken
Donations will support the work of St. Columba House
and the Montreal City Mission

Everyone is welcome to come enjoy some holiday cheer, good music, and to sing along with the carols!

Thoughts on a Grey Day

It has taken me over an hour to realise that I have been working with no music on. All that time instead, I had the new Loreena McKennitt album running through my brain. Actually setting it to play in the real world frees my brain RAM up to do other things, like, oh, work properly.

Coming to the end of the time I have in which to touch it up, I find that ESTC is much better than I remember it, and yet still so very far from being the very serious spiritual self-examination I originally envisioned it being. In actual execution it became a more practical collection of information and exercises designed to sort out how one feels about various aspects of pregnancy within a Pagan spiritual context, and while it’s very good, it’s not what I wanted it to be. Apples and oranges, really, and I’m very proud of what it is, but I do feel a bit wistful about the book that never was. Silly Imp would likely tell me that the book-that-isn’t is still in me to write after a few more years of thought and introspection, and she’s probably right.

Things are being cancelled left, right, and centre today thanks to the dreadful weather. Both HRH and Liam are home, which is doing nothing for the absolute silence and solitary feeling I need to work. I love them both, but Liam is crazy due to those lower canines, and I pick up on that as well as the frustration HRH feels when he deals with Liam in a mood like this. Plus with my office right next to the living room, well, it feels like we’re all in the same room a lot of the time. It’s days like this when I wish I had a writing haven at the bottom of the garden, something like a one-room tiny cottage with excellent insulation and an electric kettle with which to boil water for tea. (And an awesome sound system. It could double as a cello practice studio.)

It being December first, I opened this year’s new Christmas CD and put it on. Sarah McLachlan’s Wintersong: very pleasant. Lots of piano.

Break’s over.

I Aten’t Dead

Tired, tired, tired. Working lots. I also played six hours of cello on Wednesday, what with two rehearsals for different groups. By eight o’clock I was brain-dead, which led to me either completely being in the cello zone, or not able to play three notes after one another. (Guess which mindset I was in when we were playing the cello-only parts of the Messiah. As long as everyone else was playing, though, I was fine. I intend to go through a couple of pieces and write the bowing in for every single note, because it was what tripped me up the most Wednesday night.)

The novella’s rolling along, and it’s about seventy-five percent complete at 52K. (Of course, a third of what’s currently there will end up being thrown out, but them’s the breaks in a first draft.) Touch-ups in ESTC have slowed as I have reached the point where I have to really think out what changes/updates I want to make, if any at all, and decide if they’d be any better than what’s already there. Overall, I’m surprised at how minor the changes I’ve made have been, but there has been lots of thought behind each of those changes.

Liam and I took the bus to the shops today for various things, and he was very good. (It helped that the weather was ridiculously warm, around fourteen degrees above the seasonal average. Of course, we’re about to pay for it with freezing rain and snow and plummeting temps.) His lower canines are now making him crazy. New words: “broom”, “angel”, he’s been saying “Santa” as of yesterday (here we go!), and why do I keep forgetting to record that he says “turtle” and has been doing it for over a month? New foods today: the lettuce, raw green pepper, and black olives from my sandwich were all hits, and he ate more of the breaded chicken nugget at dinner than I expected him to. He and his broom are inseparable. (Well, the broom probably doesn’t care much, but he does.) I gave him his first haircut last night — cut off those long curls at the back of his head. He looks tidier, but I loved those curls. Oddly, now the rest of his hair looks longer.

Adding ribbon loops and making labels for the herbal sachets I’ve made for a local Yule craft fair is on tonight’s and tomorrow’s list of things to do. And I keep feeling that there’s something else I’m forgetting, although my brain is fairly certain that there isn’t.

Today, Briefly

I would like to state for the record that my new cello pickup is teh awesome. There is zero loss of sound quality between the actual string vibrating and the amp output. Zero. I didn’t think that was possible. It’s worth every single penny. (Plus I finally get to use the patch cord I bought a year and a half ago.)

Also, band practice was excellent.

Liam’s new word today: “bubble”, said while watching his bath fill. This led to the phrase “bubble bath” directly afterwards as he put two and two together. He proceeded to eat a handful of them, then generously fed me a handful too, because he is all about the sharing.

I’m wrong; there were two new words. The other was “balloon”, because one was given to him by a server at the breakfast place we went to this morning. No, three: he said “soon”, too. Yes, the new words are coming thick and fast these days.

Poor kid, his teeth are driving him round the bend.The upper left incisor is now threatening to break the gum any moment. We can’t get our fingers near the lower set without being bitten with great and frustrated force, so we have no idea how close those two are. I picked up more infant Tylenol today on the way home, for everyone’s relief.

Now I’m going to go read Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon in bed, because I have only one-third of the book left and it is good enough to be finished in a third sitting. It’s been sitting on my to-read pile since it was released, and I’m partially upset about having failed to read it before now and partially glad that I didn’t, because it’s perfect for what I want to be reading this week. (Also, as much as I adore Neil Gaiman’s writing, Fragile Things is not exactly relaxing bedtime reading because most of the stories hinge on slightly odd and/or creepy twists at the end that get odder and creepier the more you think about them.)

Unexpected Mailbox Joy!

There was money in my mailbox today! Well, not actual money, but a cheque in US funds that I wasn’t expecting. I did a tech read for an excellent book in early October, and I completely forgot that the new consultant contract I’m working under pays me separately for things like that.

And you know what? Not only does this cheque completely cover what I paid for my new cello pickup, I will have extra left over. Which means I can buy both the new Loreena McKennitt album and Thomas Pynchon novel being released today without a twinge of guilt.

Hurrah!