(no subject)
Yesterday was the twenty-eighth anniversary of my twenty-nineth birthday.
The day started out well. I got up plenty early enough to be able to put in an hour or so on feeding one of the pieces from the Turn-Of-The-Century musical review scheduled for August into Noteworthy so that I could transpose it to a key the singers would find comfortable. By the time I had to quit to get ready to go to the service, where I was scheduled to provide a minimum of 15 minutes of musical interlude before a meditation service, I had only half of the bass clef to program in. I can do the transposition by hand, but having the computer simply take an entire clef line and drop it X-many half-tones (and adjust the key signature accordingly) is such a time-saver!!
Hokay. Got to the temple in plenty of time so that I could warm up the fingers for about 10 minutes before folks started trickling in. Played a program of Mendelssohn: a Kinderstück, Morning Song, Venetian Boat Song #2, a Caprice, and a fun but exquisitely difficult Duet. Spent the meditations day-dreaming up plot elements for the next chapter of IDD, which will be the payoff on some more of the cliff-hangers I left in place in that. Most surprising was the chorus of Happy Birthday during refreshments after!
Lunch was a quick pair of Soft Taco Supremes from Taco Bell, courtesy of daughter Súl, who knew that I had about an hour and a half between when we left the temple and when I had to be at a practice for the musical review. Still had the rest of that piece to program in, print out, slip into page protectors in the notebook where I have the rest of it, then drive back over to the hall. After a really GOOD practice, during which I even had the chance to run through the two Joplin ragtime pieces I'm doing as solos, got serenaded again and shipped home early (when we could have run through our favorite all-cast piece, "The Oceana Rag," one more time to get the cast used to the introduction (which is long, and confusing to them.)
Went into daughter Súl's apartment, whereupon she made me a very lovely drink with watermelon vodka, watermelon sour and seltzer water (quite refreshing - and relaxing on an arm that was tired and REALLY wanted to spasm and cramp.) We lounged and yakked for a while, and then I stuck around for chitty-chat while she started perking in her kitchen, making me my birthday meal. It's tradition in our family that the "birthday boy/girl" gets to choose their birthday dinner menu, as well as what kind of cake & ice cream.
I'd post a pic of my supper, but LJ is being a patoot, telling me that "my connection has been reset - please make certain FireFox has 'permission' to post to my journal." Sheesh!! Anyway, Súl made twice-baked potatoes, grilled ground sirloin burgers (gotta keep it easy to chew on a half-finished root canal topped off with only filling material - no crown yet) and green peas. Cake was a home-made from-scratch angel-food cake (my favorite, and my mom's recipe) with vanilla ice cream and caramel drizzled over the lot. NUMMMMM!!
Came back to the computer to discover all the wonderful wishes and graphics that had been given me. All in all, this has been one of the nicest birthdays I've had in a long time. Thanks to all who posted, and a HUGE hug to Súl, who is proving to be quite the domestic gal lately.
So, on my To-Do list for the week:
1. Get the ALEC website update done - wish there were more entries this month... :-(
2. Re-do the piano accompaniment on a couple of the review pieces of music to something less "busy" and more "accompanying". I'm not the star, after all, the singers are.
3. Start working on the next chapter of IDD. I think I'm starting to see the finale starting to peek around the corner with that one - which will be another novel-length WIP shifted into the "Completed" stack (and a big one, upon the posting of which I've got several smaller, associated finished stories pending.)
4. Clean my desk. It's starting to pile up again, and it's bugging me. Oh No!! Aeärwen's becoming a neat-nik, after years of being on first-name basis with all the dust bunnies in the place! Well, with all the wonderful changes in the household taking place (which includes yet another piece of refinished furniture almost ready to come back into the house from Hubby's "Man Cave") I'm discovering I do NOT like clutter anymore. Slowly moving it out of my living space and out of my life.
5. Start planning Súl's birthday meal and dessert - as soon as the dear girl (who is on a very stringent diet, which has had the most spectacular and fantastic results, I swear) tells me what she wants me to fix.
So I'll take Pandë's delightful birthday drawing and print it out so I can frame it and hang it somewhere close to where I keep Lisa's pencil sketch that she did for In The House of Elrond. I'll save all the lovely graphics to my HD so that I can give myself a warm, fuzzy feeling when I peek in next time.
Birthdays are landmarks of sorts. This has been a good one.
The day started out well. I got up plenty early enough to be able to put in an hour or so on feeding one of the pieces from the Turn-Of-The-Century musical review scheduled for August into Noteworthy so that I could transpose it to a key the singers would find comfortable. By the time I had to quit to get ready to go to the service, where I was scheduled to provide a minimum of 15 minutes of musical interlude before a meditation service, I had only half of the bass clef to program in. I can do the transposition by hand, but having the computer simply take an entire clef line and drop it X-many half-tones (and adjust the key signature accordingly) is such a time-saver!!
Hokay. Got to the temple in plenty of time so that I could warm up the fingers for about 10 minutes before folks started trickling in. Played a program of Mendelssohn: a Kinderstück, Morning Song, Venetian Boat Song #2, a Caprice, and a fun but exquisitely difficult Duet. Spent the meditations day-dreaming up plot elements for the next chapter of IDD, which will be the payoff on some more of the cliff-hangers I left in place in that. Most surprising was the chorus of Happy Birthday during refreshments after!
Lunch was a quick pair of Soft Taco Supremes from Taco Bell, courtesy of daughter Súl, who knew that I had about an hour and a half between when we left the temple and when I had to be at a practice for the musical review. Still had the rest of that piece to program in, print out, slip into page protectors in the notebook where I have the rest of it, then drive back over to the hall. After a really GOOD practice, during which I even had the chance to run through the two Joplin ragtime pieces I'm doing as solos, got serenaded again and shipped home early (when we could have run through our favorite all-cast piece, "The Oceana Rag," one more time to get the cast used to the introduction (which is long, and confusing to them.)
Went into daughter Súl's apartment, whereupon she made me a very lovely drink with watermelon vodka, watermelon sour and seltzer water (quite refreshing - and relaxing on an arm that was tired and REALLY wanted to spasm and cramp.) We lounged and yakked for a while, and then I stuck around for chitty-chat while she started perking in her kitchen, making me my birthday meal. It's tradition in our family that the "birthday boy/girl" gets to choose their birthday dinner menu, as well as what kind of cake & ice cream.
I'd post a pic of my supper, but LJ is being a patoot, telling me that "my connection has been reset - please make certain FireFox has 'permission' to post to my journal." Sheesh!! Anyway, Súl made twice-baked potatoes, grilled ground sirloin burgers (gotta keep it easy to chew on a half-finished root canal topped off with only filling material - no crown yet) and green peas. Cake was a home-made from-scratch angel-food cake (my favorite, and my mom's recipe) with vanilla ice cream and caramel drizzled over the lot. NUMMMMM!!
Came back to the computer to discover all the wonderful wishes and graphics that had been given me. All in all, this has been one of the nicest birthdays I've had in a long time. Thanks to all who posted, and a HUGE hug to Súl, who is proving to be quite the domestic gal lately.
So, on my To-Do list for the week:
1. Get the ALEC website update done - wish there were more entries this month... :-(
2. Re-do the piano accompaniment on a couple of the review pieces of music to something less "busy" and more "accompanying". I'm not the star, after all, the singers are.
3. Start working on the next chapter of IDD. I think I'm starting to see the finale starting to peek around the corner with that one - which will be another novel-length WIP shifted into the "Completed" stack (and a big one, upon the posting of which I've got several smaller, associated finished stories pending.)
4. Clean my desk. It's starting to pile up again, and it's bugging me. Oh No!! Aeärwen's becoming a neat-nik, after years of being on first-name basis with all the dust bunnies in the place! Well, with all the wonderful changes in the household taking place (which includes yet another piece of refinished furniture almost ready to come back into the house from Hubby's "Man Cave") I'm discovering I do NOT like clutter anymore. Slowly moving it out of my living space and out of my life.
5. Start planning Súl's birthday meal and dessert - as soon as the dear girl (who is on a very stringent diet, which has had the most spectacular and fantastic results, I swear) tells me what she wants me to fix.
So I'll take Pandë's delightful birthday drawing and print it out so I can frame it and hang it somewhere close to where I keep Lisa's pencil sketch that she did for In The House of Elrond. I'll save all the lovely graphics to my HD so that I can give myself a warm, fuzzy feeling when I peek in next time.
Birthdays are landmarks of sorts. This has been a good one.