Monthly Archives: March 2007

Spring!

Today is the first full day of spring. We saw it in last night with one of the best spring equinox rituals in which I’ve ever had the pleasure to participate. (Yes, it even beat the Slinky rit four springs ago.) We had a great cross-section of people present, and the insightful focal exercise was fabulously designed and executed.

It is also JS Bach’s birthday. Happy birthday, JS!

And what better way to celebrate both the birth of JS and the first day of spring than by buying a replica sword based on the weapons of A Song of Ice and Fire?

Morning — The “Good” Is Debatable

I have been awake since 3:55 AM, when the volume of the radio belonging to the crazy lady downstairs suddenly leapt to the level of Intrusively Loud (Even Had It Been Daytime). I am Not Pleased.

Since then, I have read/examined a new tarot set and drafted a point-form review of it for the next issue of WynterGreene, handled some correspondence, surfed the internet, and thought up many scenarios in which I confront the crazy lady and tell her exactly what living in an apartment means (i.e., regular living noise during the day is not “a lot of noise”, and loud noises between ten-ish and seven-ish are Not Allowed and Very Inconsiderate). In all of these scenarios she sees the error of her ways, apologises in tears for her behaviour, and moves immediately.

Sigh. I am going to be one very cranky girl later today, what with the truncated sleep and annoyance with the cause. This is bad, as Liam is home today and there is a ritual here tonight (yay, Spring!). (The aforementioned ritual is thankfully not led by me, which is a good thing because I will be in no state to do something like that by tonight.)

Monday Morning

So very, very tired. Yes, it’s my default setting these days. That doesn’t make it any easier.

This morning I found some artificial flowers left over from a craft project a few years ago, twisted them into a bunch and tied odds and ends of ribbons around them, then hung them on the front door. Spring will be here tomorrow night, and I’ll be damned if I let the piles of snow continue to depress me.

We bought a new 18-gallon recycling bin yesterday, to complement our regular size bin. The new one is already full. (My life is exciting, is it not?)

Saturday night we had people over to celebrate Tal‘s birthday, and it was interesting to see that while we’d stated a late-afternoon start time to accomodate those with families and later engagements (of which we knew there were many), a surprising number of people not in those categories came earlier than we’d expected too. It was terrific to see so many friends again, most of whom I hadn’t seen in ages. Apart from the unexpected lack of birthday candles (later I remembered that I’d brought them to my mother in law for a party last year) the cake recipe I tried for the first time flew impressively well, although I somehow managed to unintentionally get all the way from one to ten o’clock without having a meal. I think all I consumed were two cups of tea and a bite of a bar cookie, until most of the guests had left and I made myself a sandwich. (That may have had something to do with the amount of desserts people brought to the potluck — holy cats!) I was very impressed by Liam, who went to bed only a bit later than usual and slept through the last four or five hours of the party. While HRH was reading to Liam in his room we sang Happy Birthday to Tal; the boy looked up and listened to the song, then applauded when everyone else did and said “Yay!” before going back to his book.

Today: more work, more outlining, more brainstorming, some research. The kind of thing that I know theoretically qualifies as work, but doesn’t feel as satisfying or as if it really counts as accomplishment because there aren’t words on a page. It’s been a while since I brainstormed random ideas for stories. It’s both more and less work than I remember it being. Sure, now I have a list of ideas, but no details spring to mind for any of them. Details used to pour into my brain faster than I could note them down. And the end of the Pandora book is going very slowly indeed.

Chamber Orchestra Concert Announcement!

Spring is just about here, and what better way to celebrate it than by enjoying some fine music?

On Saturday March 31 at 19h30, the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra will present their spring concert at Cedar Park United Church in Pointe-Claire, QC. For your entertainment we have prepared the following programme:

Symphony no. 1 in B major – Boyce
Water Music suite (arr. Harty) – Handel
Concerto for 2 violins in A minor op.3 no.8 – Vivaldi
Symphony no. 99 in E flat major Hob. 1/99 – Haydn

Admission is $10 per person; entrance is free for those under 18 years of age. The concerts usually last approximately two hours.

The concert takes place at Cedar Park United Church at 204 Lakeview Ave, Pointe-Claire, QC (corner St-John’s Blvd and Lakeview), one block south of autoroute 20. The 211 bus stops on the St-John’s overpass crossing the 20, and the church is an eight to ten minute walk south. While there are general public transport directions here for you, I usually encourage people who are vehicle-less to find someone who has a car and share the cost of the driver’s admission to the concert among them. It’s more fun to enjoy the evening in the company of others, after all. (Here’s a map for those of you who will be driving.)

If you were one of the lucky few who found seats (or tried!) at the standing-room-only performance of The Messiah this past Christmastide, it’s taking place in the same church. If you are a long-time supporter of my musical geekery, it’s also the same church in which I sang with the Christmas choir for four or five seasons about a dozen years ago (and wow, I didn’t realise it had been that long).

So circle the date on your calendar, book some friends, and enjoy a relaxing night out to celebrate the end of a long, hard winter and the lengthening days!

Look, Shiny!

Yes, of course, what I really need right now is a shiny new story idea eating my brain, complete with a set of new research to be done and books to be bought, to distract me from finishing The Moments of Being Pandora.*

*headdesk*

On the other hand, I played some very pretty cello for half an hour this afternoon, firmly muted so no one could hear me.

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* Actually, what’s eating my brain right now is whether I ought to write it in first-person or third-person, and if the latter, then omniscient or limited?

Apropos Of Not Much, AKA Distraction

My most recent wish-I-had thing is a five-string cello. It would be so, so very nice to be able to play low B (and lower!) without going to the trouble of downtuning and changing fingering.

Also, making part of your instrument from 250 year old reclaimed Pennsylvanian barn wood is just awesome. (Most of the instrument, actually, as this is an e-cello and thus consists mainly of fingerboard.)

I need to get some Philip Sheppard CDs, now. The samples on this page are beautiful. You can hear more at BMGZomba, a media-industry library of music clips for trailers and so forth, by searching “Philip Sheppard”. ‘Crystallised Beauty’ is being used for the ITV Jane Austen season, which is what led me to Sheppard’s other music.