Canada Day Concert Reminder!
What? Canada Day approacheth? Why then, the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra Canada Day concert must be nigh!
On Sunday July 1 the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra will be giving a free (yes, free!) concert as part of the overall Canada Day celebrations in conjunction with Pointe-Claire Village. We do this every year, and it’s always terrific fun. Our conductor is the justly famed Stewart Grant, who is phenomenal.
This year’s programme has a Northern theme and features music from Scandinavian, Russian, and Canadian composers:
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Glinka: Russlan & Ludmilla overture
Borodin: Symphony no. 3
Grant: Chaconne
Grieg: Peer Gynt
Sibelius: Finlandia
The concert begins at 20h00. As always, this Canada Day concert is being presented at St-Joachim church in Pointe-Claire Village, located right on the waterfront at 2 Ste-Anne Street, a block and a half south of Lakeshore Road. The 211 bus from Lionel-Groulx metro drops you right at the corner of Sainte-Anne and Lakeshore. Here’s a map to give you a general idea. I usually encourage those facing public transport to get together and coax a vehicle-enabled friend along by offering to buy them an ice cream or something. It works nicely, and it’s fun to go with a group. And hey, you can’t beat the price. Be aware that if you’re driving, parking will be at a premium because of the whole Canada Day festivities thing going on. Give yourself extra time to find a parking place and walk to the church, which will be packed with people.
As it’s a holiday, the village will be full of various celebrations, booths, food stalls, and the like. You might want to come early and enjoy what’s going on.
Free classical music! Soul-enriching culture! And as an enticing bonus, the fireworks are scheduled for ten PM, right after we finish, and the church steps are a glorious spot from which to watch them. Write it on your calendar, tell all your friends and family members! The more the merrier!
(If you need more enticement, there will be a certain little girl in attendance. It will be her first concert. That means we won’t be staying for the fireworks this year, though; we’re going to need to leave ASAP, as it will be way, way past her bedtime and we have a forty-five minute drive home.)
Yesterday, Things Went Wrong
It could have been worse, of course, but:
1. The phone line, which was supposedly fixed, went dead again yesterday. And then came back this morning. Then it was dead again. And now it’s back up again, but for how long?
2. My printer is officially also dead, which means I need to buy another new one. I’ve tried everything I can to get it back on its feet. Although this one lasted me two years and worked wonderfully when it was operational, so I shouldn’t grumble too much. I seem to replace them every two to five years, and while that seems horribly wasteful to me, it’s probably the lifespan of what’s made these days. (Which disappoints me on a whole other level. I don’t like thinking of small appliances and electronics as disposable.)
3. The new umbrella stroller I bought yesterday at half price to replace our old tatty one (a canopy! reclinable!) was missing two wheels, and I didn’t discover it until I unpacked it after dragging it and the baby in our other stroller home. So I have to take it back again today.
4. My rickety Windows laptop finally bit the dust. It won’t even boot up now.
So I baked chocolate shortbread bunnies. They were very good. And I made veggie-cheese nuggets and froze them for quick Owlet meals, but it took great strength on my part not to eat them all myself.
Update!
1. We have an operational phone again! After the spectacular failure with the last live chat thing with Bell, yesterday’s session went off without a hitch, and an hour later the phone rang. It was Bell, telling me they’d fixed things from their end. I was staggered. I’d expected it to be a song and dance and entail a tech here on site being annoyed, and having to argue with head office… but no. So it was a thing on their end and not our wiring, and they fixed it, and it’s all good now.
2. No word from the magazine position I applied for… but the work gods gifted me with my first freelance editing project from the publisher in almost exactly twelve months this week. I am so incredibly relieved. My professional self-esteem was taking a really bad hit, as was my sense of financial responsibility regarding being able to handle my bills and the household bills I used to cover, too. Unexpectedly being a one-income family for a year really hurt us a lot. I’m always going to be bitter about being denied maternity benefits. (The kicker is that if Owlet had been born a year earlier or later, I’d have made more than enough to qualify for the benefit program.)
3. Two days left of school, including today. While I am excited for Sparky, I am also realizing that this means he will be home 24/7 until camp begins, and I get exhausted with both kids home in just an hour after school. I have also realized that unless we build a daily schedule, he is going to want to drift all day from playing Pokemon on the DS to watching videos and playing games on the computer, to watching movies downstairs, all things he does once his homework is done after school and he is free to relax. And while that keeps him out of my hair, it also is way, way, way too much screen time. We need to schedule cello, and perhaps an hour-long block of quiet reading time (possibly concurrent with Owlet’s afternoon nap), and I have a French workbook that we’ll do two pages of each day. We may schedule a walk, too, so we all get out.
4. Owlet has figured out how to sit up on her own (finally — it came very soon after she figured out Real Crawling), is cruising around the house at an alarming rate, and is practising crouching down and standing up again without holding on to anything. Eek.
General PSAs
1. Our phone voice line is officially on the fritz after being dicky for the past two weeks, and Bell can’t open a help ticket because they’re experiencing technical difficulties. (Fills me with confidence, that does.) Our internet is still functional. If you need to get hold of us, please use e-mail (or a Twitter DM or Facebook message if you’re on either of those, since notifications for those go to my e-mail as well).
2. The Canada Day concert is rapidly approaching: July 1 at 8:00 PM, in St-Joachim church in Pointe-Claire village. It’s free! It’s fun! Come early and enjoy the festivities in the village, and stay for the fireworks after the show!
3. One week left of school. Gods help us.
4. No reply yet from the magazine to whom I submitted an application for the position of part-time editor last Friday. I am totally not stressing. Totally not.
5. Happy Father’s Day weekend to all the dads out there!
Recital Post-Mortem
That went well!
When we last left our cellists, we were prepping for the end of year recital, and I was feeling neutral about my piece, which was about as good as I could feel when I’d been working on it with no guidance for four or five months. The last two lessons were full of things going wrong (everything falling apart is an important part of the constructive process, I know, but it’s no fun when it happens and certainly not seven to ten days before a performance, because reconstruction and mental rewiring usually takes longer than that), and my rehearsal with the accompanist was mostly a disaster with a couple of acceptable patches. By that point I had pretty much accepted that whatever happened happened, and as long as I muddled through it and came out somewhat alive then I’d be okay with it. Now, that’s a huge step forward for me, because usually I worry and worry and worry. This time, I knew that I’d had months off, and if my performance reflected that, well then, that was fair. I was also more concerned about Sparky, who was being more sensitive than usual about performing his piece. (If such a thing is possible, because he angsts about it every time.)
Sparky played second, and he did very well indeed, keeping a steady rhythm and remembering to keep a high third and fourth finger so that his F# and G were in tune, and to reach back to get his E in tune as well. He played a pre-Twinkle piece called “The Little Mouse,” which ends in a squeaky bit played on the string between the bridge and the tailpiece that he just loves to do. I was near the end, and I went in with pretty much zero expectations. I wasn’t entirely happy with how thin the sound was at the beginning, but around the third line of the first page things kind of clicked and I sailed through all the trouble spots and even sounded good. If I ever see the video I’m sure I’ll be embarrassed at how incredulously thrilled I looked at the end when I’d done and I looked at both my teacher and my accompanist.
So that’s the end of Suzuki book 3. Due to both my and my teacher’s schedules we can’t fit in another lesson this month, and we’re both taking the summer off, so that’s it till September. Now I get to start working on book 4 and the Breval sonata, which I played in its entirety with my first teacher; it was my first public recital piece, in fact. And I get to do some swotting up on the orchestra pieces, since the Canada Day concert is in only two weeks.
