Musical Mutterings and Other Nonsense
All in all, things seem to be going along reasonably well of late.
Son JJ had his surgery to excise the cyst on his backside and he's recouperating - and discovering (again) that having an operation isn't all that much fun. He loves the attention, but forgets that there's a considerable amount of pain involved in the healing process. He's having trouble sitting (duh!) and generally moving about. It's probably just as well that I set aside any drive to get him into that new job until he's bounced back.
Daughter Súl is slowly recovering from her adrenal fatigue, but part of the healing process for her is having to let go of some of the weight loss that she achieved for the nonce. Right now, the Functional Nutritionist is more interested in seeing that her "Leaky Gut" is healing, and how well her endocrine system reacts to stresses in her life. She's had to drop a day of her strenuous exercise regimen, grumbling all the way. She had to give up running on the beach for 4 - 5 miles on Saturday mornings. She's so "tired of giving things up for this whole thing - what do I lose next?" I feel for her; it's gotta be really frustrating.
Hubby is getting more and more curious about learning how to do wood inlay work - to the point that Súl and I will probably go halvsies and get him a scroll saw for New Year's. He made me a custom cane, which is gorgeous, has two custom canes of his own that are drawing favorable comments - and I pointed him at some inlaid wood images. Eyes brightened, ears perked up - yup, he's hooked.
Writing-wise, my Doctor Who Muse is now pushing me to finish my current novel. It's starting to give me the finer details of how to accomplish the climax and denouement in my dreams, so I'm gonna be focusing on that when at my keyboard. Actually, I'm glad of it, because I really want to finish that and IDD before I pretty much head off in the O-fic direction for keeps.
But it's music-wise that I'm kinda celebrating today. In order to prepare for the Halcyon Christmas production (No, don't ask why I, as a Buddhist, am the musical director for a Theosophical group's Christmas doings.) I have to put together a quartet to sing some carols and other songs SATB and a capella. Now when I had a small choir going over there, I had a fair number of non-musicians in it - ie. folks who couldn't read music if their lives depended on it. My quartet this time - well, the three others who with me make four - ALL read music!! YAY!!!! Last night was our first rehearsal, and we accomplished in our single hour about twice as much as our choir used to - if not a bit more. Last night it was Frank's Panis Angelicus - next week, I'm hoping to shift into a SATB version of Carol of the Bells. I'm really going to enjoy that end of things.
The more challenging thing is that I simply can find no way to order sheet music of Enya's "Magic of the Night" - so that means I get to sit with the MP3 my director gave me and listen and transcribe what I hear into my composing software, and then massage it into a piano solo. I've done this to arrange SATB music, and I did it a little while ago to create a piano accompaniment to a Jimmy Webb song; and Enya's music isn't complex. So I should be able to do it without too much trouble.
Now I just gotta sit down and DO it.
And that's life here of late. Hoping things continue to stay fairly calm and peaceful. It's so much nicer that way...
Son JJ had his surgery to excise the cyst on his backside and he's recouperating - and discovering (again) that having an operation isn't all that much fun. He loves the attention, but forgets that there's a considerable amount of pain involved in the healing process. He's having trouble sitting (duh!) and generally moving about. It's probably just as well that I set aside any drive to get him into that new job until he's bounced back.
Daughter Súl is slowly recovering from her adrenal fatigue, but part of the healing process for her is having to let go of some of the weight loss that she achieved for the nonce. Right now, the Functional Nutritionist is more interested in seeing that her "Leaky Gut" is healing, and how well her endocrine system reacts to stresses in her life. She's had to drop a day of her strenuous exercise regimen, grumbling all the way. She had to give up running on the beach for 4 - 5 miles on Saturday mornings. She's so "tired of giving things up for this whole thing - what do I lose next?" I feel for her; it's gotta be really frustrating.
Hubby is getting more and more curious about learning how to do wood inlay work - to the point that Súl and I will probably go halvsies and get him a scroll saw for New Year's. He made me a custom cane, which is gorgeous, has two custom canes of his own that are drawing favorable comments - and I pointed him at some inlaid wood images. Eyes brightened, ears perked up - yup, he's hooked.
Writing-wise, my Doctor Who Muse is now pushing me to finish my current novel. It's starting to give me the finer details of how to accomplish the climax and denouement in my dreams, so I'm gonna be focusing on that when at my keyboard. Actually, I'm glad of it, because I really want to finish that and IDD before I pretty much head off in the O-fic direction for keeps.
But it's music-wise that I'm kinda celebrating today. In order to prepare for the Halcyon Christmas production (No, don't ask why I, as a Buddhist, am the musical director for a Theosophical group's Christmas doings.) I have to put together a quartet to sing some carols and other songs SATB and a capella. Now when I had a small choir going over there, I had a fair number of non-musicians in it - ie. folks who couldn't read music if their lives depended on it. My quartet this time - well, the three others who with me make four - ALL read music!! YAY!!!! Last night was our first rehearsal, and we accomplished in our single hour about twice as much as our choir used to - if not a bit more. Last night it was Frank's Panis Angelicus - next week, I'm hoping to shift into a SATB version of Carol of the Bells. I'm really going to enjoy that end of things.
The more challenging thing is that I simply can find no way to order sheet music of Enya's "Magic of the Night" - so that means I get to sit with the MP3 my director gave me and listen and transcribe what I hear into my composing software, and then massage it into a piano solo. I've done this to arrange SATB music, and I did it a little while ago to create a piano accompaniment to a Jimmy Webb song; and Enya's music isn't complex. So I should be able to do it without too much trouble.
Now I just gotta sit down and DO it.
And that's life here of late. Hoping things continue to stay fairly calm and peaceful. It's so much nicer that way...