Nothing like being the de facto principal cellist in the absence of the first chair on the first day of orchestra… and not embarrassing myself. Go me!

Yes, it was the first orchestra rehearsal of the season last night, and our principal cellist couldn’t make it. It’s entirely possible that the late notice caught her with a double-booking. Anyway, our new conductor graciously asked if I wanted to move into the first chair and I said, “Oh, no; I’m good right here, thanks.” So everyone else shuffled so as to be closer and the third chair moved up to sit first. And I discovered something: Even though we were sight reading, in general my rhythm and timing is more accurate. We all ran into problems with a badly printed copy of the music and nasty accidental-sown runs (oh, Beethoven, I love you but you’re a bastard, with your notation tricks of slurs across beats and those damn modulations within scale-like passages), but I was pretty reliable in entrances and so forth. I did lose my place more than I’d liked in the runs because everything was squished together, and I have trouble ignoring people who are playing the wrong thing at the wrong time to focus on my own technically correct stuff. Still, it was a good time, and bodes very, very well for the season. Also, yay for my intonation. Lessons and a new cello are working well.

And in related news, I can’t listen to the Schubert ‘Rosamunde’ theme without singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ in my head. (Now you can’t either. Ha.)

On Tuesday I had a minor heart attack. I submitted my freelance project before lunch, and around five o’clock I got a note from them saying that they couldn’t read my file. “Are you using a Mac?” they inquired. “It looks like a conversion issue.” Oh great, I thought; the freelance people can’t read my Mac Word docs. They’re arriving corrupted. It hadn’t made a difference before when I used the iBook, but for some reason now it’s a problem. So I opened the file in Open Office, saved it, and sent it off to them, and all was well. Not only was all well, but they gave me an approval code right off the bat before reviewing it so I could get an invoice in by the end of the day to make the next pay period, bless them. I had deliberately not planned for that, figuring they’d be swamped.

My back’s been slowly improving each day, but yesterday I still had to spend a couple of hours lying down and reading. This morning I seem to be operational without the aid of tiger balm or painkillers, which is a huge improvement. Still being very careful, though.

While waiting for another freelance assignment to land, I was aimlessly wandering through the files on my computer, waiting for something to jump up and say “Me! It’s time to work on me now!” Nothing really did. I’m at one of those low points in the process where I’m not immersed in something and I need something to work on that I’m excited about. Slogging is necessary at times, but when one is looking for a new main project, it’s good to have at least some interest in what you’re about to sink time into. I found Wings & Ashes, the novella loosely based on Swan Lake I’d written a few rough scenes for two years ago. I knew I’d written more than what was in the file, so I dug through notebooks until I found what I’d done, and transcribed seven pages of writing. When creatively frustrated and uninspired, transcribing handwritten stuff from two years ago can help one feel not totally useless. And it eased me back into the story. We’ll see what happens now, because just before I logged off last night the next freelance assignment landed in my FTP folder. It’s a short one, though, so I’ll work on that this morning and do a couple of hours on Wings & Ashes this afternoon.

The dough for cinnamon buns is rising, I have the Schubert tenth and thirteenth string quartets lined up, and a full pot of tea. Let’s see how far I can get.