Monthly Archives: August 2002

Scheduling Minor Cello Surgery

I did something I haven’t done in a few weeks.

I walked past my cello, paused, and said, “I really should play something.” Before I could talk myself out of it, I sat down, pulled the cello towards me, picked up my bow, and just started playing whatever was on my music stand. It happened to be the second movement of a Breval sonata. When I’d done that, I flipped the page with the tip of my bow and started playing the next thing: the Prelude to the first Bach solo cello suite. The I played both Minuets from the same suite – with repeats.

Not bad. Not bad at all. Nice sound. I now have throbbing fingers, however.

Then I picked up the phone and called a luthier. I haven’t played my cello these past three weeks because the bridge is so badly warped that I’m afraid that it will slip and smash the belly of the instrument, turning a minor repair job into a major disaster. Not only can the luthier replace my bridge ($120 – eep), they can stabilise the black stain that’s wearing off the fingerboard and onto my fingers every session. (Ick.) This is a good thing, of course.

Naturally, however, now that I will be bringing the cello in for minor surgery, I’m getting all antsy. I just know I’ll want to play it while I don’t have it. I’m taking it in on Thursday afternoon, and I’m already wondering how much playing I can safely indulge in tomorrow without threatening the safety of the instrument.

He’ll Become George Clooney Or Something

So I finally saw Bridget Jones’s Diary last week, hard on the heels of reading the second book in the series, and discovered that the film was a blend of both books. I think what might have happened was that Helen Fielding, who co-authored the script (love it when they actually get the author to work on the film) was writing the second book while coming up with a couple of key scenes for the film, and ended up using similar versions in both movie and new book, never dreaming that a second film might be made.

Clicking on Bill’s link to Bridget Jones today, I discovered that they’re making a film based on the second book.

Er?

This should be interesting. How they’re going to top Colin Firth and Hugh Grant pounding each other and crashing through windows on a snowy street, I truly do not know.

The other wonderful bit of meta-fiction, Bridget’s obssession with Pride & Prejudice‘s Mr Darcy and Colin Firth, was by necessity disposed of in the first film, since, well Colin Firth was in it, providing fans of the book with a deliriously smug in-joke. (And heaven forbid we mention Jane Austen in a pop film. Pride and What? Good Lord, no, we might lose the audience!) The second book has Bridget actually interviewing Firth in Italy. However, and I quote (although I have cleaned up the spelling and the punctuation), Colin Firth has suggested that the scene in which Bridget interviews, er… Colin Firth may not appear in the sequel. Firth said in a recent interview, “He won’t be there, he’ll become George Clooney or something.” This may not have quite the same effect as the original way Fielding intended but since Firth is not in the scene maybe they’ll simply hope the audience doesn’t notice the remarkable resemblance.”

The statement made me laugh. Probably not for the right reasons, but I laughed.

Fun and Games

Yesterday we cleaned out the fridge. We do this out of self-defence periodically; not because we’ve run out of room, but because we don’t know what might be back there. We liberated a few Tupperware containers from bondage and discovered not one, but four bottles of wine that were open. This comes about as a result of people bringing wine over for parties and such, not finishing the bottles, and saying, “Hey, that wine in the fridge, it’s all yours,” as they leave. I forget it’s there until a time such as this.

“How many bottles of wine are in here?” my husband asked, peering into the depths.

“We should pour them all together in a pitcher,” I said. I was joking. But then, all of a sudden, I wasn’t. “We could mix them and blend them with 7-Up and have kind of a sangria,” I said. My husband looked at me oddly, but gave me the bottles of wine. I tasted each first to make sure it hadn’t soured; nope, the three whites were fine. The single red, however, was definitely past its prime. I wouldn’t even be able to cook with it. Down the sink it went while the husband went to buy 7-Up. I found a bottle of lime cordial in the fridge that had only an inch or so of cordial left; I poured that in as well, being minus the lemons and limes I like to put in mixes like this. And the whole thing tasted divine.

We made dinner, poured glasses of the mystery mix, and decided to play Junior Trivial Pursuit. Ordinarily this means it’s a quicker game than the adult edition. However, the edition of Junior Trivial Pursuit I own is the original version, dating back from 1984. (Go ahead. Count on your fingers. Yes, it’s perilously close to twenty.) This means it asks many questions based on contemporary pop culture like information about hockey leagues and now-defunct sports teams, and the question that stumped us both: what is the Sugar Crisp bear holding on the Sugar Crisp box? The box has since been redesigned, so it was more of a challenge that we’d anticipated. This is definitely a game we’ll have to pull out at a party, just to watch people rummage around their two-decade old store of history. It was terrific; a mix of a walk down memory lane, a high school reunion, and a realisation of how much the world has changed.

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I know I’m definitely coming out of a bad patch when I start enjoying parties again.

I’ve always been a poor fan of large groups of people; I prefer intimate gatherings. Lately, though, I’ve not been bothered by being in public places, which usually include crowds and noise. And last night, I was at a party which I absolutely loved. As a rule, I also dislike arriving late, because it means that a whole ton of people turn around and fall on me at once with hellos and hugs. Last night, what with the husband arriving home at 6.30, picking up groceries, stopping by the SAQ, and then going across town to pick up a spare key from a friend, we arrived not only fashionably late, but so late that it was hard to see people in the backyard as we tried to barbecue chicken over rapidly failing coals. But I loved it anyway.

It might have had something to do with the fact that I saw about ten people I hadn’t seen in a year or more, and one or two that I hadn’t seen in a few months. It also might have had something to do with the fact that I saw people I see frequently (whose company I enjoy, hence the frequency). The grilled chicken salad we created was pretty darned amazing. My Smirnoff Ice was unchilled but I didn’t care.

Darn it all, I was just in a really good mood. And I was enjoying the good mood; part of me saw what was going on and rather than saying, “You know, this probably isn’t a good idea for the following reasons”, it said, “Aw, heck, you just have fun. Stop censoring; stop worrying what people think.” (Sage advice from someone I respect. It worked perfectly last night.) As a result, I think I was probably more positive and more open to laughing and being relaxed than I have been in a very long time. I’m usually so serious; last night, I most definitely was not.

Not only that, but I was actually disappointed when my husband walked up to me and said, “I have to go home; I’m working tomorrow.” If I don’t want to leave, that’s a certain sign of having a very good time.

The only iffy spot was, once again, being pegged as an experienced Pagan and being approached by a couple of eager novices for advice in a sticky situation. To protect me from similar future situations where I’m too polite to walk away, I have been given a code word (which I am not sharing here!) so that a handful of people will know to rescue me by removing me bodily from the conversation. Even that discussion, though, had a good side: it proved to me that I can speak excellent French even while drinking my second terribly yummy Smirnoff Ice. Go me!

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My husband just came home and said, “I brought you mice.”

Yes, I did a double take as well. He handed me a package of, yes, white mice. Little ones, about the size of a peanut. They’re candy.

“I got them free with my Sloche today,” he said. “And I know you love trying to figure out the Sloche ads, so here.”

‘Dead in your hand, Alive in your mouth’ the slogan proclaims on the back. I opened the package; we tried them. They’re raspberry-flavoured gummy mice. I love them. He hates them.

Woo-hoo! More mice for me!

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Heavy cream is lighter than light cream because it contains more butter fat, which weighs less than water.

Hunh?

Science. It gets me every time. It explains the unexplainable. And proves, of course, exactly how much we don’t get it; how much we just don’t understand the world around us. Even when we think we do.

Take, for example, the popular expression “it’s so hot you could fry an egg on the sidewalk!” Sure; it’s a figure of speech. But Robert Wolke, professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, actually tested it out for his book What Einstein Told His Cook. Others have done this (even at least one person of my own acquaintance). Wolke, however, went a step further. Actually, he took a whole hike further:

To investigate the egg assertion, he actually went out and measured the pavement temperature in Austin, Tex., during a heatwave. He found that the hottest it got, even on blacktop, was 145 degrees F — well below the 158 degree minimum needed for an egg to start coagulating. Not satisfied with pure theory, he cracked an egg on the pavement and waited. Nothing happened.

Helpfully, Wolke then went around measuring the temperature of other surfaces, and reports that a dark blue Ford Taurus reached 178 degrees F, making it a better frying pan than sidewalks or roadways.”The wonderful thing about science is that it can even explain things nobody needs to know,” Wolke concludes.

Heck, yes.

Makes you want to go out and experiment. Our dark blue station wagon won’t work; it’s a Saturn and made of resin. Hmm; I know someone with a dark blue Ford. I wonder if she’d be willing to experiment – all in the name of science, of course.

(Check out BusinessWeek Online’s article called Plenty of Food for Thought, their review of Wolke’s latest venture into science.)