I give up; this afternoon has been a write-off, as I was afraid it would be. There are now 20,052 words in the MS. I’m tired and achy and I need to lie down for half an hour before I go get the boy. I have no idea what to do for dinner; my dinner-from-nothing mojo has been exhausted.
It’s orchestra again tonight, and I have no idea how it got to be Wednesday. The cello hasn’t even come out of its case.
HRH and I just spent an hour and a half at the bank, closing HRH’s accounts and our joint account, and opening new ones and bringing our info up to date. Or, in his case, changing the info back from the false info to which the identity thief had changed it.
Words cannot describe how furious we are. Once again, we break our backs trying to make a living and doing things by the rules, and once again someone who thinks they don’t have to work tries to take it away from us and screw things up.
The good news: No money was taken. (One wonders if they thought it wasn’t worth it: there was $9 in the primarily compromised account. We’re thankful this happened a few days before the first paycheque of the year was auto-deposited.) Several applications for credit cards and attempts to do phone banking were what triggered the security freeze and the call to us, once the security department called up my profile as the other name on the joint account and compared addresses. The bank officer thinks it was a case of identity theft to set up money-laundering accounts, possibly through mail theft to get HRH’s info. His SIN wasn’t compromised. So other than losing a few hours yesterday calling institutions to freeze the automatic withdrawals that come out of the joint account, talking to Services Canada about what to do if the SIN was stolen, and the hour and a half this morning doing paperwork and updates, the only thing that has been lost is yet more faith in mankind, some hours of sleep, and decent moods.
Our bank people rock. They jumped all over this, and the security department is dealing with the tracing of the thief. I hope to all the gods they nail the bastard. Because we know we’re not the only ones to have been hit, and no one should get away with this kind of thing. Ever.
Total word count, hearthcraft book: 19,900
New words today: 1,869
Lots of cauldron mythology written out today. I wanted to hit 2K, but I need to go get the boy.
Absolutely the best tyop of the day: the Pear of Lugh.
Via The Sacred Space, a few months ago, to be honest. I’ve only just found the draft and finished writing the post. I am work-avoiding, you see.
How many Pagan oriented books do I have?
Lots. At last count I had around four hundred; there’s bound to be more. I’ve been weeding books out lately, to pass on to a local Wiccan lending library.
What’s the last Pagan book I read?
Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane. A lot of my pagan books focus on religious subjects and cross-path study. If you were expecting something a little more ‘traditionally’ Neopagan, the last book of that kind was John Michael Greer’s The Druidry Handbook. (It occurs to me that I should get back to posting my pagan book reviews on-line, once they’ve been published in print.)
What’s the last Pagan book I bought?
The Eliade, I think. I’m pretty sure, anyhow. The Greer had been on my shelf for a few months.
List three Pagan titles with special or personal significance.
Oy. Well, there’s Hutton’s The Triumph of the Moon, which demonstrated to me that there were people who could examine modern Wiccan and associated paths with a serious academic approach, instead of the superficial revisionist histories or fawning sycophantic blinkered versions you usually find. Grey Cat’s Deepening Witchcraft was thought-provoking and personally revelatory for me when it came out. And John and Caitlin Matthews’ The Western Way duology did a lot of good things for my perception of land and ancestry when I read it a few years ago.
If you were to write a Pagan book, what would the title be?
Heh. I’m not bothering to answer this one; the publisher changes all my titles anyway…
I just sent off my test evaluation for the freelance job. I’ve been going over the review for the past hour, tweaking and wibbling and tweaking some more, and wibbling some more…
I want them to like me, to like my work, and how I handled the review. My review isn’t quite like the sample they sent me, but then, the manuscript I reviewed didn’t have the same kind of problems the sample review seemed to indicate its subject did. Maybe they’ll think I was too technical, although those were the problems the MS had. Maybe I was too nitpicky. I did ask for feedback; I hope they give it to me in lieu of just putting a big red X next to my name. Handing the evaluation in three days ahead of deadline may be a mark in my favour, though. (I didn’t want to have it lurking in my peripheral vision all weekend and then taking up another day of work on Monday, that’s all. Focus, get it done, get it out.) I’d like this job; it would fill in the cracks nicely, and I could take on work as I needed it.
I am achy and very sick, and my head feels like its stuffed with cotton soaked in rubber cement, and I officially feel wonky thanks to my sinus medication. This test has taken a lot longer than I’d scheduled for it, simply because I can’t think straight. (That and it’s the first time I’ve done one, and I’ve had to keep referring to manuals and guidelines and such, and it’s a 325 page novel. It will be much quicker next time.) As a result I haven’t done any hearthcraft writing in the past two days, so I feel panicky and behind, despite the fact that the test evaluation qualifies as paying work, and despite only needing to write 1,333 words per working day to be finished by my deadline. I am okay. Things are fine. It is the truly horrible cold talking to my inner critic and messing me up.
And on that note, I’m going to lie down on the floor to try to stop the dizziness that’s currently menacing me and my self-confidence. I feel like a wet noodle.
ETA at 4:55: Invoicing is a good thing. Except I’m so out of it that I wibbled about the format and phrasing of my regular, used-it-for-years invoice form. Someone knock me out, please.
Oh: I will hear about the job in about a month. Coincidentally, that’s when my payment for doing the test eval will arrive.
Wednesday was the first rehearsal of the year, and we got our new music, hurrah!
I am a complete sucker for ancient airs and dances, and lo and behold, we are playing Delibes’ dances ‘in the ancient style’ from the play Le roi s’amuse. I’d never heard of it, but really, when you’ve heard one suite of ancient airs and dances, you’ve pretty much got a good idea of what the rest of the genre’s like. It was very enjoyable to play until we hit the Lesquercarde, which is insanely fast pizzicato with stretches and reaches all over. I got lost in the third bar and spent most of the piece staring at the little black squiggles on the page wondering where the hell we were. Well, maybe it just seemed insanely fast because I couldn’t keep up. And when I did figure out where we were, I promptly lost it again because there was a stretch across three strings and I couldn’t figure out the fingering in time, and… oh, look, here I am lost again while the rest of the orchestra carries on. The rest of it was lovely. There’s a bonus piece after the Finale for mandolin and accompaniment, and our conductor asked somewhat jokingly if anyone knew a mandolin player. Somewhat to his astonishment there were two people in the orchestra who each knew someone different. This piece calls for the first two cellists to pluck a very soft accompaniment to the as-yet-unheard mandolin solo, with the section coming in tutti now and again. The accompaniment alone was beautiful and meditative. There are good things about sitting second chair, and this is one of them… assuming we do the mandolin piece at all. I’m just thankful it’s an easy piece to play, otherwise I’d have been sinking into my chair with embarrassment after mangling it.
We also played through Ravel’s Pavane, which is typical of the French school of the time. It’s very impressionistic, using bits of musical phrases to make a larger, well, impression of something else. It reminds me of playing Delius’ On Hearing The First Cuckoo In Spring. And like that piece, it will take attention from everyone in order to fit the little sighs and quotes from all over the different sections into the right place to make up the greater sense of music. But it’s lovely to play. (And I giggle every time I read the full title: Pavane pour une infante defunct. A defunct infanta. It amuses me, just as the term ‘neiges usagées’ does. It means ‘removed snow’ but the literal translation is ‘used snow’. It’s no wonder the Ravel is usually translated to be ‘Pavane for a Dead Princess‘.)
What else? Oh, our overture is the Caliph of Baghdad comic opera overture by Francois Adrien Boieldieu. (No, I hadn’t heard of the opera or the composer before last night either.) Very snappy, fun to play. And we didn’t get to the Fauré Pavane .
In case you hadn’t figured it out yet, the concert has a French theme. The secondary theme is dance, as all these pieces were either written for ballet (the Delius), have a dance somewhere in the work (the Boieldieu), are written on dance forms (the Ravel, Fauré, and Delius), or have been choreographed for dance (I hadn’t known that Balanchine had choreographed Gounod’s first symphony for New York City Ballet).
And let it be said here and now that while I appreciate the time and effort that goes into professionally hand-written scores, they reproduce terribly and are hard for me to read. Things just aren’t as clear and well-defined as a printed score.
It feels good to be back. I was leaden by the end of the night, though. If orchestra is going to be my Thing this year, it may have to be the only Thing until I get the fatigue and pain under control.
I found a second-hand cello listed for sale within my price range, and I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth setting up a date to try it. The seller is in Sherbrooke, and so either she’d have to come to Montreal or I’d have to go out there. The cello was purchased new in ’99, has an intermediate bow, and is a Karl Weber model 27. I know nothing about Karl Weber cellos other than they’re done in a workshop in China, so I’ve been trying to find out more, but there’s no info available on-line. I suspect it’s equivalent to my current cello, which is an anonymous make of Hungarian origin. Thirty-five to forty years of playing has developed its tone, though, whereas this other cello is new and won’t have that played-in bonus. What’s catching me is the fact that it’s a solid top, whereas mine is a laminate. It all comes down to what it sounds like and feels like, though, and if it were local I’d set up an appointment to try it and decide that way. Right now I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth the time and effort of someone commuting. If it’s another entry-level instrument, even a high-end entry-level, then chances are very good it will sound only as good as/worse than my current instrument. At the moment I’m leaning towards not bothering, and waiting. I’m not ready to start my search yet: I don’t have the energy or the right mindset. This cello would cost half of what I’m projecting as my max budget, which again, while thrifty, I suspect means not buying as high quality as I could. When in doubt, pass.
Caution: cuteness ahead.
When Liam watches the opening of My Neighbour Totoro, he stands up and does a measured bounce from side to side, bending his knees in time to the music. Then he opens his mouth while doing it…. all mirroring the actions of the little white Chibi-Totoros that form the word ‘Totoro’ on screen.