Happy spring! We've had a couple of days of nice weather. I should really go out for an exercise walk after I finish this, but it's gloomy as fuck and fairly chilly. Maybe later.

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On Tuesday, I had dinner with Miss vikkiwill, which was great. We're both on diets, so there wasn't a lot of actual eating that we did. We got caught up, though, and discussed the impending visit in April of some of our British Savoynet friends, and scheduling events for their visit. Then we ran into Miss Jane B at the bar and chatted with her for a bit. I never get to see her, so that was a nice surprise.

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We bought our wedding rings on Friday! They're awesome. I won't show them off until they are on our fingers for real, but they are beautiful. Then we had to decide to get engraving.

HIM: What do you want engraved on the ring?
ME: I don't know. What do you suggest?
HIM: Something short.
ME: "Penis"
HIM: *deathglare*

We did decide, and it's nicer than that. You'll find out eventually....

Then we had our dinner with drood and husband, which was a lot of fun. Apologies to Craig for dumping (not very much) water in his lap. I hadn't had that much to drink, I swear!

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I went to the Met yesterday! I saw Wozzeck, which is the quintessential bizarro twentieth-century opera. It's very bleak and 'death-affirming', and very strange. I'd heard selections from it, but had never seen it before. Here's a sample scene.



Wozzeck is going to murder his common-law wife, Marie, because she slept with the Drum Major. Fun, huh?

Anyway, it was a terrific performance. James Levine conducting, the Met orchestra is always the best, and Thomas Hampson and Deborah Voight in the leads. I had heard from several directions how good the stage production was - I didn't love it, but it worked for the opera. It was really good, but it's not an opera for people who don't know opera, or 20th-century music. If it were food, it would be something really bitter and vinegary - but tasty nonetheless. (and it's short, which is good)

I ran into F. Paul Driscoll, editor of Opera News, who directed me in a show a few years ago, and said 'hello'. He introduced me to the lady he was talking to, who turned out to be Beth Fowler. "The famous Broadway actress?", I ejaculated. She snickered and said, "well, famous..." She was very nice. And then when I came into the theater, I was behind a short and wide little old lady with white hair and a cane, being assisted by a younger woman - and I'm 90% percent sure it was Marilyn Horne! (I never got a good look at her face.) It would make sense she'd come to Wozzeck - that opera was a success for her in her soprano days and was her ticket to coming back to the States after her years in Germany. I've been a huge Marilyn Horne fan ever since I started paying attention to opera, but I don't think I've ever seen her or been in the same room with her before. I love New York!

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I have a new transcription project. They really do just come to me sometimes, and now that I'm, in an Artist's Way way (way way way...), paying more attention to good ideas and noting them as they come, I grabbed this one. There's a lovely Vaughan Williams piece called "Six Studies in English Folksong", originally written for cello and piano, that is now up for grabs by pretty much any instrument. (When I accompanied it, it was a series of clarinet students, each taking a movement.) Anyway, I thought it might be nice to arrange it for woodwind quintet, and have each movement feature a different instrument. (and what about the sixth movement? Don't know yet.) So right now I'm just feeding it into Sibelius so I can do some experiments and see which movements might work best for which instrument. No rush - I'm still in the 95% done holding pattern on the Corelli and Vivaldi arrangements I've been working on for years. (I need to have them read by actual musicians in order to finish them.)

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Off to the races. Enjoy the week!

So, a somewhat productive Labor Day weekend, but not a thrilling one. Things accomplished: laundry, ironing, picking up the coats and scarves from the dry cleaners and returning them to the closet (this took way longer than it sounds), finishing the Bach Little Prelude arrangement, booking flights for Thanksgiving, ordering some clothes for the trip, preparing the form and stuff to go get an international driver's license.

Yesterday was FAIL day, though. I had an appointment today to get bloodwork done, for which I needed to fast. But, even though I'd been quite careful about keeping and keeping track of the form the doctor had given me months ago for this appointment, yesterday, I could not find it. So I cancelled the appointment and will have to get another form. Immediately, pretty much - I need to get the bloodwork done in enough time so the results come in before my appointment next Tuesday, so he can give me new prescriptions before we leave next Friday. Arrgh.

Also decided to clean up a mess I made back when I got a secondary media hard drive a few months ago. I needed a cable and was going to cannibalize my old PC for it, but ended up with my old PC in pieces and still no cable (I ended up buying one). I couldn't face trying to reassemble the (small-footprint, awkward-to-work with) old PC, so stuck all the pieces in a box. So yesterday, I tried to reassemble. Got to the point where I tested whether it worked still - drives all plugged in, but not in place - and it did. Had to look up on line how to put it back together. Did that. Put the case back on. Rebooted and it couldn't find the hard drive. ARRRGH. So now it's back in the box and I have a NEW project to open the damn thing up again just so I can try to plug that cable in a little better. Low priority - with luck, I'll never have to use that box again. (Have I mentioned lately how much I love the NEW box? Because I do.)

All that FAIL took more time than I thought - I'd hoped I'd get the publishing project actually published, and it's closer to that point than before, but not there yet.

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Thanks to my buddy Kathryn pointing out that, finally, "Scandal" has new episodes available on streaming, I spent quality ironing time and sofa time watching both Scandal and Revenge. Also more Gilmore Girls - Rory's finishing up high school and some very interesting things have been happening.

We watched "Inglourious Basterds" on Saturday. Like "Django Unchained", I thought it was disgustingly violent in parts, but mostly loved it. Christoph Waltz is terrific - also loved both of the blond ladies. My favorite part was when Brad Pitt's character speaks Italian through a thick (American) southern accent, and Waltz can't keep from laughing hysterically. Last night, we watched a documentary, "Outrage", about conservative closeted-gay politicians. There wasn't a lot of new info in it, but it was interesting to watch. Michelangelo Signorile made the point that closeted-gay politicians taking (and voting) anti-gay platforms is just the grown-up version of a terrified gay kid joining the other kids to harass the openly gay kids to shore up the 'proof' that he's 'not gay'.

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Read an interesting article through Facebook about the movie "Clue". I saw it in the theaters, didn't love it, haven't seen it since, but it's available on streaming. Maybe I should give it another shot.

Mostly, a good week. I feel so much more relaxed since I decided not to tackle grad school applications this year. Clearly I had a lot of internal arglebargle about it that needed to Go Away and it has.

So much so that I quickly got inspired to do a short arranging project, which I can use to start up my online music publishing. (There's an Etsy-like equivalent for music publishing.) I've had some big projects in the work for years, but this teeny one may be the first one I actually finish and get published. Stay tuned...

The American Prize is getting closer and closer to announcing the winners of the conducting competition I'm in the finals for. I haven't heard anything from the directly, and I'm not expecting to win because my submitted materials were short on actual footage of me, but it would be nice to get an Honorable Mention or something.

Work was busy and all over the place this week, but ended up in a good position. Since I have only two more weeks until I drop off the radar for a bit, I need to be able to FINISH what I'm working on before I leave. And now I can.

Weight loss - I stalled out, poundwise, and bounced up, then back down. But Mr. Man says he can see it and I can feel it in my clothes, too. Which is the point.

Bookwise, I've started "Curse of the Spellmans". It's just as good as the first one so far. Also, somehow have managed to obtain ebook versions of the entire Arthur Hailey oeuvre ("Airport" and so on), so have popped those onto my Kindle. I read at least half of them when I was a kid.

Nothing's set in stone yet, but it looks like my fall is going to look like this: France trip, Firebird performances through October, possibly Drowsy Chaperone in November, Blue Hill chorus rehearsals throughout, prepping for Ruddigore auditions in December, and all the holidays. Which reminds me, we need to book our Thanskgiving flights soon, probably this weekend. Other than, the weekend will just be about chores and trip prep.

Mr. Man said something last night about the "French police" and I was all like, "they have FRENCH police? Will I get arrested if I use the wrong gender or tense? Mon dieu!".

And finally, I added another one to my list of favorite drag names (this one is real, apparently), "Toccata Anne Fugue".

Or maybe they're just whore-derves.

Nothing earth-shattering to opine upon today, so I'll just do some random bits.

We are still at home, leaving only to run errands or go shopping. Mr. Man's job has started scheduling conference calls and stuff, but there's still not a lot we can do. My job is as busy as it ever is, and perhaps I'll detail later on why it's been mostly frustrating.

Blue Hill's fall show is Grand Hotel, a show I am not familiar with, really. I'm seeing it a week before Thanksgiving with vikkiwill. And, as I mentioned, we had auditions for concert solos. I'm doing the Mountararat line in Iolanthe's "Soon as We May", Vikki is singing the Duchess in "Sunny Spanish Shore", and we both may get the opportunity to cover other people's solos too. That'll be fun - the concert rep is really awesome and I'll post info about how to GO to these concerts once the new year arrives.

I got back on the horse yesterday* with my Corelli project (woodwind quintet arrangement). I'm cleaning up the parts enough so that I can have a reading with an actual quintet. It's been so long since I looked at it that I forgot the Sibelius formatting tricks I learned the last time, oh well.

* Picture is not from yesterday, alas. Picture is from our Aug 2011 cruise, right before our last big weather event, Hurricane Irene.

We watched "Corpse Bride" last night, had only seen it once before. I think I was disappointed the first time we saw it, because it wasn't matching what I was expecting, but I liked it a lot this time. It's not big on character development, but it's fun to watch and beautifully animated.

And, finally, to no one's surprise, I join the New York Times, Mayor Bloomberg, John Scalzi and many many others in endorsing Barack Obama for re-election. There's never been a doubt in my mind - I agree with him on almost everything, I admire him personally, and I like his style. If you want detailed reasons, read the NYT endorsement, which lays it out beautifully.

Happy Friday!

I think I'll make a point this weekend to actually finish some things. I find more and more that I'm letting projects trail off into nothingness. Some of them, probably, it's not worth finishing. Others...

I need to dive back into my head and write more about the very odd relationship I had with my friend Bob, the one I just found out passed away last year.

I need to pull my info together and get around to making a will.

I need to get back to my two arranging projects and finish them up. And start on some of the others.

I need to develop a new data backup plan for my home computer and implement it.

I need to push the remodelling of the home office forward. The faster we remodel, the faster I can get rid of my storage closet.

I need to look at the stagnant parts of my life and yank the stoppers out or whatever. That would pretty much be all of it, wouldn't it?

Mid-forties, mid-life crisis? No crisis here, more like I need to refuel.

The weather is gorgeous.

I'm finally involved in a performing project again. Yay, rehearsals!

I've been making such good progress on my woodwind quintet arrangements of baroque string pieces, and having so much fun doing it, that I think I'll keep doing it. Plus actually get them ready for publication and market them. And take some other stuff out of the drawer and clean it up for the same, like my concert band arrangements of the Habanera and "His Yoke is Easy" and (most marketable, but not public domain so not sure how I'll work that) the Prokofiev 1st piano concerto.

I'm enjoying Cryptomonicon so much, and it's enormous, so I'll be reading it for quite a while. Plus the other two books I've got going are both fun too. I'm really enjoying reading.

Mr. Man and I have realized the need to build talk-time into our lives, especially now that I'm in rehearsals again. So we're having dinner at the table, not in front of the TV. Good idea. (though I miss Jon Stewart. Maybe it's time to get a Tivo-like device)

I bought a clock radio that's an Ipod dock. This will make listening to podcasts while I fold laundry much easier.

I had a breakthough at work and got beyond a writer's-block kinda thing.

I'm looking forward to Orlando. And "Into the Woods" auditions. And the various Troupe events coming up, including the spring meeting and the picnic.

I'll be done whipping up the trip reports very soon. Then I can build a webpage for the whole shebang like I did for the 2005 trip and I'll be done!

Mr. Man and I did two things this weekend we never do, and should do more often - go out for Indian food in our neighborhood, and go to a movie. Plus, he's about to buy us a new round of theater tickets from TDF.

Reasons I shouldn't be in a good mood... oh, but let's not dwell on those NOW.

I'm listening to the Resonant Flute Consort's Corelli Xmas Concerto I bought yesterday. It took me three times to realize they left out the Adagio/Allegro/Adagio movement with the twiddly bits that I've had problems with - so I can't see how they solved it. The allegro has a repeated 16th-note pattern in one of the solo violin parts:

Very easy to play on violin (alternating between two strings), but much harder to play on a woodwind instrument, especially if the pattern goes over the break. I tried all sorts of games to switch it back and forth between the clarinet and the oboe, but finally decided to do what Grieg did for the orchestral arrangement of the first movement of the Holberg suite and rewrite the figure into a driving rhythm thus:

Instead of alternating back and forth, I've given the top note to the oboe, the lower to the clarinet, and they play in rhythmic unison. I can't do straight 16ths because they'd keel over dead with nowhere to breath. So... this may work just fine or may be a disaster - stay tuned!

And actually, now that I look at this, maybe I'll switch the flute and oboe lines. Hmmm...

In other news, our lazy Sunday was lovely, but we both felt like crap. I seem to have another cold, bleah. Or the same one, rearing its ugly haid again.

Oh, and it's my sister's birthday. Happy birthday, Sam!

Brunch of Doom? Cancelled Postponed. Two out of three factions called to say the roads were too bad to make it. Then we called Mr. Man's brother (the one who lives farthest away) and it turns out he was totally willing to brave the 4 inches of ice on the roads, but we talked him out of it. So Sunday is wide open now. I've spent the morning at the computer, so far, doing things like ordering more flute choir CDs. They're like potato chips, I guess. One of them has the Corelli Xmas concerto on it - that's one way to solve the flute problem, make all your players flutes! But then you have the issue of your bass flutes having to pound out that cello line without keeling over from oxygen deprivation. I didn't hear any *thud*s on the recording, so I guess they did OK.

I've also been listening to some old band recordings. We did a holiday concert ("Sugarplums") my first year conducting the band that was insanely fun and had all sorts of assorted crap in it, like having two singers perform "He Shall Feed His Flock" with the clarinet section. One of the numbers was a medley of modern secular Xmas songs that included "We Need a Little Christmas" - very interesting hearing that with 20/20 hindsight now. Plus some old chamber music concerts. Some of the numbers make me wince because the players are doing the best they can, but just aren't musical enough to make the pieces sing. And, of course, our infamous Mozart piano quintet which was very well performed... with a badly-out-of-tune piano. Urg. But it reminded me of how proud I was of some of the work I did with the band, and particularly of the fact that under my watch, we put together four chamber music concerts.

OK, theater reviews. ( VLOG's Scrooge and Gilbert and SullivanCollapse )

( LaGuardia's City of AngelsCollapse )

Off to help Mr. Man take the leaves out of the dining room table.

OK, so after the early morning hack-it-up-fest, everything went quite well. I was offered an upgrade to 1st class, which I took - and still 1st class was half empty. Beautiful weather for flying, bumpy sometimes. Plane left right on time, arrived in MSP a half hour early. On the plane, I did a fairly tough crossword, looked at what I'd done so far on the Corelli project and made some marks for editing changes for the first few movement. Read some. Listened to the Ipod.

In the MSP airport, "Hi, dear, I've landed. Now I'm going to check out every men's room in this airport before I pick up my luggage." "Oo, maybe you'll meet a senator!" Hee hee hee.

It was in the 20's, but sunny, when I got the car and left. I had enough time to check into the hotel before going to the office, but realized I wasn't quite sure how to get there from the airport, and suspected it might take me smack into the collapsed bridge (I found out later I was right.) So went straight to the office. Afternoon of schmoozing and writing, whee. I got an alternate route to the hotel to avoid spillover traffic from the bridge reroute, and had enough trouble driving in the dark on slushy pavement that I decided to stay in tonight.

Checked in, unpacked, went to the hotel bar, drank and ate (way too much) and conversed with a couple of fellow lonely travellers - a lady from Wisconsin and a guy from Canandegua. All of the attitude that we were all stuck here, so let's enjoy it, and we did.

Tomorrow, they say snow. I have my snow boots with me. And I have back to back meetings from 8:30-3:00. At least they're feeding us.