Monthly Archives: July 2009

Forty-Nine Months Old!

Big things this past month have been taking the GO train into Toronto and the TTC subway for the first time, and taking pictures. He wanders off with the camera any chance he gets. And about a third of his pictures are actually usable, to. I may put together a Boy Photographer post at some point. He took pictures of me playing my cello one day, and if he hadn’t fiddled with the settings and turned the dial to Movie he’d have had some excellent shots. Even with the Movie setting on, if he’d kept the camera on me instead of winging it crazily around the room it might have worked. We may keep our eyes out for a decent low-end camera for him — not one of the kids’ ones, those are terrible, but one that won’t die if dropped. That’s my biggest fear right now, because he’s come close to smashing it against something a couple of times, and I really don’t feel like replacing my digital camera for the second time in three years, thanks.

To everyone’s surprise, he had a very negative reaction to his first pool experience this summer. He loved it last year, and splashed around while holding on to whatever adult was with him. But this year, his teacher went into the pool with him at preschool when the weather finally warmed up enough to do so, and he shrieked and cried. He explained later that it was cold, but we think this was shorthand for “I’m a year older and I know bad things can happen and while I trust my teacher that’s a lot of water, there. Oh, and it’s also a bit chilly.”

He is thoroughly in love with the Animaniacs. My work here is done.

After months of on-again-off-again suggesting it, we finally got around to reading Ursula LeGuin’s Catwings series, and he is in love. He also really enjoyed the Brambly Hedge stories, but the Catwings are his favourites among the new books.

The very last guppy finally went to the big aquarium in the sky, so we took a trip to the local pet shop and bought three sturdy polka-dot mollies. We tried to convince him that a small school of neons would be awesome, but he wanted the spotty mollies, so the spotty mollies he got. “What will you call them?” the salesman said as he decanted them into a bag. “Um, I don’t know,” said the boy. “Well, my name’s JF, if you wanted to call one after me,” the salesman said, which amused us. The boy amused us even more when he eagerly said, “Yeah, yeah — I’ll call them all JF!”

Gryffindor has taken to racing into the boy’s room when it’s bedtime, throwing himself on top of the bed and flopping over with great force, looking up at us with an expression that says, “I am so heavy you cannot possibly pick me up to toss me out.” After the story has been read and the light has been turned out for the snuggle part of the bedtime ritual Gryff often stomps up the bed, purring loudly, and thumps into the boy or I lovingly. Sometimes the boy wants him to cuddle some more, but usually he says as I leave, “I don’t want Gryff to stay.” Especially since the night he had to shoo the cat away from the tank and those shiny plump new fish. Very traumatizing. When I go in to check on him last thing before I go to bed, adjusting covers and turning off the music and opening or closing windows, Gryff often pushes his way in with me and leaps up on to the bed, finding a cosy nook to do some intense snuggling and purring before I shoo him out again. It makes us feel good to know that Gryff chooses to play and be with the boy. Even Nixie is allowing him to pet her gently when he finds her, an unforeseen turn that the boy recognizes as being extremely special.

“Are these bad guy socks?” he asked when he put on a pair of Transformer socks the other day. Very important to know when you’re four. It sets the tone for the entire day, you see.

Other boy-themed posts:

Rocking out with the new Rock Band set
The trip to Nana and Grandad’s house
The grand finale to the Week of Birthday

In Which She Successfully Subverts A New Generation

I bought the first season of the Animaniacs yesterday.

This is something I’d intended to do for a while, but never got around to it. Then Tamu passed her Dot t-shirt on to me at the Canada Day BBQ (there’s a long story here about how there was one of these shirts left for sale at Nebula, just before I started working there, and the day I went in to buy it Tamu had purchased it; fifteen years later she has been weeding out her wardrobe and remembered I loved this shirt, so passed it along to me in pretty much perfect condition to use as a sleep shirt, yay!) and the boy saw me wearing it and asked who the cute creature in the graphic was. So I tried to explain the Animaniacs to him. Anyone who has seen the Animaniacs knows that such an explanation is doomed. So I resolved to pick up a season of the show, because it was rather wrong that I didn’t own any.

The boy was initially disappointed — I told him I’d picked up a surprise and he must have thought it was something he’d asked for. “But I don’t want this, I didn’t ask for it,” he said, on the verge of tears. HRH had a little talk with him about how nice it was of me to buy him a present, and how I wanted to share something fun that I liked with him. So he said we could put the first disc in. Initially he sat as far away from the television as he could and was a bit bemused, but gradually I saw him move closer to the TV, and then he really got into it. “I love the Animanaics, they’re my favourite movie!” he exclaimed somewhere around the end of the first episode. “Is there more?” Oh, oh yes, my son. There is lots more.

In fact, we finished the first disc last night, staying up an hour later than his usual bedtime to do so (“Just one more, Mama, please, please?”). He curled up on my lap and rested his head on my shoulder, determined to see it through to the end. “Hey, I have him!” he said at one point, pointing to Yakko, and he’s right. Once upon a time when Tal, t! and I were throughly immersed on the Animanaics, finding a delightful parallel between the three characters and our own personalities (oh, the song sessions in various cars on various trips!) Tal found stuffed toys of each character and presented the appropriate one to each of us. When Liam was born he passed his Yakko along to him. Until now, Liam’s never really been interested in it, but that should change around nap time today. (I think my Dot is still in a box. I shall remedy that.)

I am charmed by the fact that the boy crawled into bed with me this morning and asked to watch the Animaniacs instead of his regular Friday-at-home-with-Mum cartoons. Why, yes, yes you can, my son. Muah-hah-hah.

This is also slightly bittersweet for me because the only video I had of the show was a best-of complied for me by Emru. I lost the video in the last move (although I’m sure it’s somewhere in a box that hasn’t been opened in a while) and our VCR died anyhow, so we wouldn’t have been able to watch it. But I’ll always associate the Animaniacs with him as well as Tamu, Tal, and t! — a noble host indeed. When the series was first released on DVD Emru tried to get a review copy for me through fps, but it didn’t materialize. I did get to review the first season of Pinky & the Brain, though, which was an acceptable consolation prize. It has still never been quite right that I own a season of that, but not the Animaniacs.)

Today we’re bound for the EcoMuseum, and I’m going to sneak my three Animaniacs CDs into the car as another surprise. Whee!

In Which She Discovers Subtlety And Hidden Meaning

So I just hit the one-third mark in the manuscript on this oh so exciting voyage through second draft. Slog, slog, slog. O motivation, where art thou?

And then out of nowhere, I found Hidden Meaning in something one of my secondary protagonists says. When I wrote it, I just meant for him to be talking about the main protagonist’s situation. But lo, upon this rereading, I have realized he’s talking about himself and his own situation as well. What’s even better is that the protagonist replies to him about her own situation — she has no idea about his health issue at this point — and could very well be describing his own denial anyway.

“Stop trying to tell me I’m right to be so upset.”

“You have every right.” He stood his cello case in the corner of the entry hall and pulled off his jacket. “But it sounds to me like you’re already telling yourself it’s okay to lose.”

“Well, yeah. That’s the point.”

“But it isn’t.” He turned at looked at her, hard. “She’s come out of nowhere and is trying to take something that belongs to you, for whatever reason. Don’t give up before you’ve even stood up to defend what’s yours.”

“Don’t you get it? I’m trying to trick myself.” Clare dropped her own jacket on the landing, grabbed the viola case, and walked away from him into the living room. “If I pretend I don’t care, I can play properly. If I admit that I do care, I can’t concentrate.”

I would like to take this as proof that I know what I’m doing, but if it happens without me planning it, I can’t call it genius; it’s more likely to be a lucky coincidence. I should credit my subconscious instead. Apparently it’s both craftier and smarter than I am.

Dear City of LaSalle…

… any time you want to give us more information on the boil-water advisory issued last Wednesday evening (July 1 for those keeping score at home), we’d be more than happy to receive it. Cause you know, you told us you’d have results on Friday at the earliest, thereby setting up the expectation that we’d have news in two to three days. I know Wednesday was a holiday, and there was a weekend in there, but come on. We’re on day six of the advisory, and if there’s been nothing concrete in the test results, at least tell us that testing is ongoing and thank us for our patience and continued co-operation. I know you don’t want to spread misinformation or raise alarm more than you already have, but even a “stay tuned” note would go a long way right about now.

I’ve been optimistic and given you the benefit of the doubt, but really. The ball is being dropped in a major way.

No love,

Autumn

ETA: Well, thank you. Although why did you wait till Monday to run the tests?

Canada Day Concert Redux

It is my very great pleasure to share with you the video taken of the entire Canada Day concert.

Bless Martine and Daniel for shooting the HD footage, for editing it and posting it to YouTube; and even more so for burning all those concert DVDs for the orchestra members! It was a real treat to sit back and enjoy the concert the way the audience did, and as the Blu-Ray player and TV are hooked up to the surround stereo and subwoofer, I got to hear the orchestra in all its glory. (Okay, the church is very echoey, and at times our articulation isn’t as clear as it could have been and those two issues = occasional muddy sound, but hey! There’s sound to be heard!) And I appreciate it all the more because my audio recording was such a miserable mess.

Overall, I am very pleased with my performance in this video. Two things leap out at me. One, I tend to make small faces while I play, mostly tightening of the mouth during different phrases. It’s not in reaction to mistakes, it’s more like… expression. It probably can’t be seen from the audience, but seeing it on screen when the camera was on the celli was very odd. This summer I’m going to work on relaxing the muscles around my mouth when I play. And two, I’ve been working on lowering my right elbow, and damn it, every once in a while it pops up like a chicken wing. Down, elbow! Down! Something else to work on this summer.

There were a couple of places in the video when I waved my hands at the screen and said, “The celli! The CELLI! They have the theme, the violins are just playing a repeated note — pan RIGHT!” And there was the odd place where the camera would pan to the brass… just in time for them to lower their instruments. But those are understandable in a live recording, and really, I’m just thrilled to have the record of the event. Especially on DVD! Merci encore, Martine et Daniel, vos efforts et votre générosité sont vraiment appréciés!

Weekend Roundup

I’ve been low on fibro spoons the past few days. Here’s a brief recap of the weekend.

Friday: I moved my office around. HRH stopped by on his way to get more paint, and helped. The window is now at my back. I like the new layout; curiously, there is more room in the office now. We’ll see if the fresh perspective helps the writing process. At least now people can’t come in the door and watch what I’m doing over my shoulder. I managed to get twenty pages of Orchestrated edited, a minor miracle considering I spent three hours on the first page. I could see that it wasn’t right, but I couldn’t fix it properly, either. Cello lesson Friday night, the last before fall. The Suzuki book 2 review is officially over (yaaaaay!) although my teacher wants me to further polish the last two pieces on our time off. My summer homework: working through Position Pieces vol 1, working the page of exercises she wrote out, reviewing book 1 in thumb position, and looking at the first piece in book 3. Cool links of the day: Ottawa’s NAC Orchestra puts music archive online; and I discovered Kevin Fox, whom I can only describe as a cellist with the voice of Elvis Costello.

Saturday: HRH headed out to do a half-day of painting to finish up Mousme‘s kitchen, so the boy and I made cookies, painted with watercolours, and watched video of Neil Peart. Friday afternoon I had timed a Craiglist query perfectly and snagged a used Rock Band set for the Wii, and Saturday after the boy’s nap we collected it and set it up. The included USB hub, which is supposed to pull power from the Wii when plugged in, doesn’t, so we can only use two peripherals at once till we find a powered hub. As no one is particularly moved to do vocals, this is fine for now.



We need another guitar peripheral so I can play bass while the boy rocks out on guitar (perhaps we won’t plug his in). I’m not enamoured of the fret keys on the guitar; the red one seems to be stubborn on the lower frets, while the green is stubborn on the higher ones. I suppose I’ll get used to it. (I am amused that I refer to them as ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ when they have nothing to do with the frequency of sound produced. Well, they’d be lower or higher if it was a real guitar.)

Saturday night HRH and I were supposed to break the Rock Band set in properly, but I was too tired and he couldn’t really drum while the boy was asleep because the kit sounds exactly like my cousin Iain’s practise pads used to sound when he practised for pipe and drum band (in other words, loud and sharp).

Sunday: We ran errands. Looked for a powered USB hub but couldn’t find one for less than $50 so left it for now; picked up the silencer pads for the drum kit; bought Tal and Kristie’s housewarming present (breadmaker!); bought an ice cream maker for us (something I’ve been on the fence about for two years). Picked up a couple of 4 litre jugs of water because despite promising there would be news on Friday, LaSalle still has us all under a boil-water advisory. Early lunch and nap, then off to beautiful, bucolic Hudson for a Very Important Orchestra Meeting, at which we did a recap of the year and the conductors we’ve evaluated. We chose our new conductor (thereby also approving the substantial fee increase) by unanimous vote. We’d intended the vote to be by secret ballot, but people were just so enthusiastic that it wasn’t necessary. While the orchestra met, the boy ran around and around the gorgeous property, played with the dog and counted frogs in the waterfall/pond. Back home, made dinner, put boy to bed, set Blade up as the Responsible Adult On Site (Now With Rock Band) and headed out to an RPG, which hadn’t met to play in, um, very long. Hurrah for fully-assembled parties, and action finally beginning. Feels like things are underway at last.

I’m so very excited about this new conductor. I think he can do a lot for us, and I’m looking forward to seeing how we can be better integrated into the local music scene.

The only bad thing about the weekend (other than being short on spoons) was buying rechargeable batteries that would only work in a proprietary charger not once, but twice. Two different brands; two different sets of tiny tiny fine print. Not amused.

Right; on to editing.

Canada Day Concert Review

Every year around this time I say something along the lines of “best concert ever.” I feel rather like the boy who cried wolf, because I’ve said it so many times now that you’re not going to believe me when I say that no, this was the best Canada Day concert I’ve ever had the joy and honour of playing in. No, really. No hyperbole here. I can produce witnesses. A couple of hundred of them, even.

Thank you so much to everyone who came out, including (but not limited to!) HRH and the boy, my in-laws, Marc, MLG, Daphne, Lu, Tamu and Patrick, Jeff and Paze and Devon, and I’m sure I’m forgetting somebody. A couple of fellow cello students were in attendance, too, and it was fun to see them. Thanks must also go out to Ceri and Scott, who hosted a pre-concert barbeque with the intention of leaving with everyone else, but who were detained by a sulky house with plumbing issues. (Scott, you grilled our steak to perfection; thank you.)

I’ve been talking about recording a concert for aeons, and I finally brought the MiniDisc to this one. I’m heartbroken to hear that the levels were too high, and because an awful lot of last night was Loud with a capital L, there’s static and popping and muffling throughout it all. Still, I can hear how good it was under the poor sound quality. I wish I’d thought to check levels during warmup, but I completely forgot I had the thing in my bag. This is better than nothing for me, though, because it showcases the precision and interpretation. The recording is also somewhat weighted toward the celli, bass, and tympani, because, well, that’s the side I sit on (although the mic was just a foot left of centre) and all those instruments have deadly low frequency levels that together can really distort a recording. I can’t do much about it with Audacity; I’m hoping that I can transfer the files to a Mac-friendly format and work on them in GarageBand once the Mac Mini has been acquired at the end of the month.

(I’m transferring the recording to the computer now, and hello, I nailed the exposed cello solo line in the Pavane, which was the one I was worried about. Ha! A wee bit off on the first cello-led phrase in the Grieg dances, but I’m attributing that to the somewhat, er, accelerated speed at which we played them. Also? Best rendition of the Pavane out of the three times we’ve played it since I joined. I think the proper speed is key; go too slowly and it dies a dead death. It’s solemn, not funereal.)

We got to use risers for the first time, bringing us all onto the same level and lifting us above the audience. I think it made a lot of difference sound-wise. This conductor set his music stand between the second chairs of the violins and the celli; he likes being right in the middle of things. I kind of like it too; I don’t have to crane my neck so much.

This conductor is dynamic, focused, has wonderful musical expression, has already dragged us beyond the level at which we were functioning, and comes with a host of fringe benefits like established connections within the musical and cultural communities. I think the vote on Sunday is a no-brainer, but I am only one of forty people, and there’s a money issue which I think is an obstacle of principal for some. I want to keep working with him, actively want to, as opposed to being happy with my performance under one of the previous guest conductors. Even with the poor recording quality, I can compare them to the performance caught on video in the fall, and I think there’s no comparison. This performance was much more crisp and vibrant.

It was really good to feel capable during this entire concert. And I don’t think I’d have felt this comfortable if we hadn’t struggled with the Bizet and Mendelssohn for the last concert. I’ve made tremendous strides forward this past season, what with the new cello, a new teacher, and this varied selection of music chosen by three very different conductors. Just working with a teacher has made a world of difference, enabling me to shift and nuance what I’m doing in a way I couldn’t do before. I am extremely pleased with my performance last night.

Afterward, while we were waiting for the fireworks to begin, Patrick asked me what a conductor actually does other than stand up there and wave his arms at a performance, and I realised that if you’re not a musician familiar with the rehearsal process you probably have no idea that the conductor is literally the director of the whole show from beginning to end. He chooses the music, guides the interpretation, asks for more or less from various performers, tweaks phrasing and delivery, and is basically responsible for what makes it different from other versions one hears. He’s the observing ear who reflects what you’ve just played back to you and tells you how to make it better, something that’s hard to do when you’re sitting in the middle of it.

And my new 7/8 baby performed very well. I played it in the spring concert, but it’s really opening up and sounded even better this concert. After my week away I picked it up and it sounded very rich, heavy on the ringing tones and with remarkably full resonance. Impressive. I am very happy with it. It was a good lateral move, indeed. I even like the fibreglass bow that came with it. It’s wouldn’t be my choice of bow, but it’s got good balance and resistance. My favourite bow is warping, and that cracked frog has to give out sometime. This fall I’ll start the bow search.

We were even fortunate weather-wise. The day was mostly bright, although a glorious thunderstorm boomed and cracked during our hour-long warmup. There was a particularly amusing moment where we were counted in and the thunder rolled on the beat we were to start on; apparently the storm wanted to play too. The rain ended forty-five minutes before we began, though, so everything was fresh and clean and cool for the concert itself. And the fireworks were spectacular; there were some I’d never seen before. It was the boy’s first firework experience, and he loved them. “They’re loud!” he exclaimed from his father’s lap, where he was sitting all wrapped up in a blanket provided by his godparents. “And they’re all my favourite colours!” At various points during the day yesterday he randomly yelled out, “Happy birthday Canada!” and waved the tiny flag someone handed him early in the day while we were out. We almost got caught by the parade downtown; if we’d known about it we might have planned to attend. Next year, I think.

One more lesson, and then I’m off till mid-August. Marc’s piano has been tuned, so I think we’ll mess about together in the interim. I transposed “Itsudo Nando Demo” the other day using Forte, and it was very worth the time. I can read treble and transpose down as I play for a couple of measures at a time, but not three pages’ worth.