Category Archives: Cello

First Birthday Party Countdown Part Deux

My tongue is fuzzy from licking icing with food colouring in it off my fingers.

It’s not going to win any awards, but I’ve had fun. My soundtrack of the night was provided by Invisible, so I take no responsibility for the somewhat zombie-looking carrots on the carrot cupcakes.

Why am I not doing any of this tomorrow morning? Because I have band practice, that’s why, and there’s no way I’m missing it because ai731 finished writing the music to her song today, lyric melody and all, and we get to test-drive it tomorrow!

Liam helped.

Okay, he didn’t. But he certainly enjoyed the music she played.

Back Into The Swing

Today I felt like I was racing to get nowhere. I hate those kind of days.

I spent the last three hours working, yes, honest to goodness working. I updated that proposal and sent it off (according to my notes I last submitted it in August of 2004 — yikes), and tried to write two more.

And wow, did it ever hurt. I’m so out of practice. Even looking at my old ones, I floundered for ideas and wrote in a stilted, rusty, hollow-sounding fashion instead of the exciting and dynamic style required. A proposal is part outline, part marketing selling tool, and the marketing bit has totally flown away from me over the past two years. My brain hurt (no, really, I needed to take Tylenol), and I wasn’t looking forward to orchestra.

Imagine my surprise when I was called at six to be told that orchestra was cancelled, as our rehearsal venue is unavailable and no one told us ahead of time. This is bad, because we only have a few rehearsals left before July 1, but also a relief, because as a result of struggling with proposals I’m nowhere near the headspace orchestra requires. So because I didn’t get a chance to go out and pick up a few things this afternoon (the proposals took twice as long as I’d expected them to — ah, optimism), I’m heading out now instead.

Observations

When I have had two glasses of my father’s Pinot Grigio on a relatively empty stomach, I can play Bach’s first solo cello suite with remarkable skill. Go me. (Yes, it’s all about getting the inner critic tipsy. And mostly off-topic, I have recently discovered that my inner critic is a sad pathetic self-defeating Muppet monster like one sees on Sesame Street.) And damn, those new strings really, really sound smooth. Honestly, everything I’ve read about steel strings and everything I’ve ever learned about how my cello sounds in the past eleven (eleven!?) years completely and totally contradicts how remarkably smooth and even they sound, particularly in transition from one string to another. It takes less effort to pull good sound out, and the strings respond almost immediately. It makes me wonder how I worked with my last synthetic set for so long. Of course, they were also two years old, so they’d stretched and lost some of what makes them work they way they’re supposed to, and since I hear the instrument all the time I don’t notice the gradual loss of quality. My intonation is more accurate with these new strings, too, a precious little bonus for which I’m deeply grateful.

Liam tripped and (a) bit the inside of his lip and (b) cut the outside on something this morning. First blood! He’s fine; now the lower lip’s a little swollen and both cuts are visible, but after the initial “my mouth is full of blood and it stings!” he forgot about it. As a treat I put his special Sunday oatmeal (with a whole grated apple stirred in and cinnamon sprinkled on top) in his Nana’s Bunnykins porringer.

Liam, of course, was more interested in the dish than in eating what it held.

Book Roundup

I’ve been inhaling books lately, it seems. A lot of that has to do with the insomnia thing. In the past two weeks I’ve read The Wyrd of Willowmere by Alison Baird (that was pretty much overnight), Septimus Heap: Magyk by Angie Sage (the basic story is fine, but it has the irritating idiosyncracy of capitalising spell names and setting them in boldface, argh), An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears (which was far and away better than A Dream of Scipio, probably due to the separation of narratives instead of interweaving them the way Scipio did), Four Seasons of Mojo by Stephanie Bird, Locked Rooms by Laurie R. King (also pretty much overnight, and Mousme was right, poor Russell), reread Travels With My Cello by Julian Lloyd Webber, and tore through The Serpent on the Crown by Elizabeth Peters (also pretty much overnight).

The result of this binge is that my stack of books to read has been brutally decimated. I’m down to a YA book that I put down half-read a couple of months ago (yawn) and a Dave Duncan book Ceri lent to me a while back. But there’s a new Jim Butcher out in paperback that I can pick up this week (Harry Dresden, yay!), and I should have a couple of non-fic research books arriving soon as well.

Quick Weekend Recap

We are so very, very tired of the rain. HRH has been cranky because he’s been working outside in it all week, Liam’s been cranky because he’s been stuck inside, and I’ve been cranky because their crankiness has been getting on my nerves. There was a brief period of sun over on the South Shore mid-afternoon when we dropped Liam off at his grandparents’ house today, and it did wonders to lift the general depression, even if it was only for a little while.

We did an elevation ritual this afternoon and because it started late we had to race off to pick up the baby as soon as the ritual was over, which meant we didn’t get to stay for the dinner afterwards. It was disappointing, because we’d really been looking forward to sitting down and sharing time with everyone involved. It sounds like the Rocky Road ice cream pie I made went over well, though. I’ll have to rely on other peoples’ reports.

Yesterday was a fabulous magic of cooking class, too, possibly the most successful one we’ve done so far.

I finally had the opportunity to restring the cello tonight (I so want to say “I restrang the cello”). These new steel strings are so thin! And they haven’t gone out of tune since I put them on! Steel strings are very stable, but I’ve never used them, because generally they’re a lot brighter than synthetic or gut core strings and I prefer a rich mellow tone from my strings. We’ll see how they settle in over the week. The tension is very different as well, so I’ll have to adjust my playing both at orchestra and at band.

A warm bath and bed are in order, I think. The gloom and rain have been sapping my energy.

And Onward, Part 2

– read and give feedback on a short story (yet another one I’ve had for too long)
– finish reading book for review, and write the review

All the review needs is another quick read-through before I mail it off tonight.

I don’t think I’m going to get to restring the cello, either, because I still have other mom-type stuff that has to be done before we leave to pick up Liam.

To Do

While we were out dropping Liam off at his grandma’s, naturally the parcel postperson came by with a parcel for me. It’s probably one of the secondhand books I ordered for research, and I’ll have to go pick it up after five.

BUT! When the regular postperson came by, I got my consultant check! Now I can schedule a trip out to the bank, to deposit it and put my bond in the safe deposit box along with some CDs of Liam photos and a computer backup. The mail also brought me a set of coupons for the office supply shop, for insane amounts of mailing labels and sticky notes. I love sticky notes, but I’m still working with the package my father in law gave me a year and a half ago, and after that I have the package from this past Christmas to use up. And really, would I ever use 3700 mailing labels in my life?

As of this morning, all Important Papers have been filed at the Palais de Justice and/or mailed to the respective correct governmental offices to put the final touches on t! and Janice’s wedding. There’s a significant weight off my chest. The entire time I had the papers I was sure something was going to go wrong. I’m still vaguely suspicious; it all seems to have been much too easy.

To do this afternoon:

– read and give feedback on a short story (yet another one I’ve had for too long)
– finish reading book for review, and write the review
– completely restring the cello with the snazzy new Evah Pirazzi strings (yes, I finally got to the luthier this morning to buy the new A)

Last Friday I got 312 words written in Swan Sister while Liam napped, but it looks like I’m not even going to get a chance to open it this afternoon.