…from an undisclosed location.
Yeah, okay, so you figured it out. Just wanted to let those deeply concerned know that we are safely here, and to thank you for your good trip wishes. It was indeed jolly, except for the wind, which made for a bumpy, nausea-inducing ride, but all’s well that ends.
…’til the next message from the underworld…
This past weekend we went to a “flash-mob” performance of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” at Kelvingrove Museum (although people weren’t quite surprised). You can find the performance here, as a streaming video. It appears that the Sacramento Choral Society had the same idea, and organized a flash-mob of their own … but there were too many people, which resulted in damage to the Roseville Galleria. Oops. Perhaps one shouldn’t invite 5,000 people to a party?
Off to a cold country tomorrow, leaving this one for a different one. Pictures shall ensue (internet-connections allowing), and more description as well. It’ll be interesting to see whether we make it out … and then whether we can make it back!
-D
Ho, hum, winter. Even the geese are dragging their feet.
Greetings, this 19°F/-4°C day. The house is awash in books as T. is approaching the end of her reading session for the Cybils awards, our concerts are over for the year and our house is a disaster and our wits are disordered. (Oh, right, you can say “as usual” if you want to, but just know the ice you’re standing on is very, very thin.) Speaking of ice — it is maddening. For now, the snow has covered the worst of the black ice, but cabs still can’t get up our hill, and we’ve taken to getting into our place around the back. D. took a really bad tumble the other day and we believe that he’s cracked a few ribs. Nevertheless, this didn’t stop him from deciding that he wanted to show T. the fountain with all the ice on it on the way to the museum this weekend. Against her better judgment, T. went along, and we crept, slid, and slithered our way to the park.
A trip which should have taken fifteen minutes took us a solid hour. It is NOT the time to go gallivanting about, unless one has a well-padded backside, and/or the wherewithal to land well and laugh. The city is full of the veritable walking wounded; a choir acquaintance had to have a music stand at our last concert because her arm was encased in a temporary cast, and she couldn’t hold her folder or turn pages. One of our acquaintances who is an adjunct professor at the University fell flat on his back crossing the street, and was up and smiling ruefully moments later. Ten days on, however, he’s still feeling twinges, and is cranky at his much-reduced mobility. The clinics are simply looking people over and sending them on (sans painkillers, our choir friend complained), admitting that they are full up with a rash of bonked heads and bruised elbows. We are grateful that D. didn’t hit harder — really grateful. Hot tubs are sounding pretty good about now, we only hope, with the forecast ramping up for ridiculous weather again, that we can make it on our magical mystery tour.
As previously reported, Sunday night was our final concert for the year, and it was an unqualified success, to our surprise. Christmas songs are tricky to do well at any time; the old standards and favorites turn into either a nostalgic mush or the new ones are so jarring as to be unpleasant, and in a concert, there’s the chance that the audience will be bored out of their gourds, or unhappy that classics aren’t being represented. We had a good mix of old and not normally sung and, oddly, movie music, but we belted out Rutter’s arrangement of The Twelve Days of Christmas and the theme song for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace with equal aplomb.
Baker’s rule: you can eat the ones you have to redo.
The second half of the concert was sheer silliness as the orchestra and chorus donned strobing headgear — Christmas tree hats, fluffy marabou halos, blinky bow ties, strings of garland, reindeer horns, and the works, and encouraged lots of audience participation in caroling, and the uniquely British tradition of pulling crackers. T. felt a tiny bit stupid backstage as she was handed a cracker and two “party poppers.” “Okay, what am I supposed to do with these?” she blankly asked her section leader, who smacked herself in the forehead in apology, and showed T. how they worked. T. waited politely through the explanation — she knew that much; since they’re sold for the 4th of July and New Year’s in the U.S. — but her question was WHY do we have noisemakers, and what are we doing with them in the middle of the concert?! This was never sufficiently answered, so she just popped off her popper when everyone else was making noise, and shrugged.
Sadly, D. had to sit out the second half of the fun, as he almost took a swan dive offstage when his blood pressure bottomed out. As his FIRST fall had only been the previous day, he figured it was the better part of valor to sit down until he could escape.
T. made a rare visit to the kitchen and baked sugar cookies (or butter biscuits, as she heard them called) for her section, waking at six to bake and chill and pipe away. They were accepted with surprise, and though T. is a well-known curmudgeon and Bah Humbug aficionado, her section briefly thought she was of cheerful and sweet disposition. Little do they know.
Cookie fever.
The cold is bringing out an host of unique creatures… squirrels, which run across frozen ponds, begging, pigeons, which run toward people in the park, again, begging, and the most disgusting, fattest, shiniest, largest palmetto-bug sized COCKROACH we had EVER seen, at the pool. Possibly begging, though it looked to just be kickin’ it poolside.
Months ago, when T. crossed several lanes to escape a floating spider, her friend Val said dryly, “Wait til y’see the roaches.” Neither of us really understood… and now we do. And are properly grossed out.
And on that note…HAPPY HOLIDAYS! ::snicker::
This week’s links are largely dominated by the unfolding WikiLeaks saga. It’s quite interesting, really, reading the opposing views, and understanding that the world is frightened of truth, particularly politicians. Of interest (not related directly to WikiLeaks, but feeding into the frenzy) is research which shows that Fox News Makes You Stupid. It’s quite telling that Fox is the dominant news station throughout the US, and has such an effect upon the populace. No wonder so many are frightened of truth: they live their lives believing lies.
The comic is, of course, Dilbert. What they’re referring to is that FaceHook has now incorporated facial recognition, which scans your pictures and those of your “friends” to “suggest” that you tag them.
In any event, enjoy the links!
It’s cold, folks. VERY cold (OK, you folk, in the Yukon, yeah, yeah, we know). Shown here is our friend A. holding a hunk of ice. He and D. worked very hard to break a piece free from the layer atop the fountain in Kelvingrove Park: they took a fence-post (somebody else had the same idea, and helpfully left one) and bashed upon the ice until it broke free. This looks to be about 8 inches thick (we must allow for A’s thick fingers – and, yes, the boy is a computer programmer with those sausages). After fishing this piece out of the frozen fountain, A. was wingeing and whimpering about wanting to let it drop, it was so cold. After the photos were taken, he threw it up as high as he could, and … it shattered upon the surface of the ice in the fountain. No cracks in the ice, no damage whatsoever. The edges were probably less frozen than the middle of the ice, so who knows how thick the stuff was?
It was thick enough for D. to stand upon the surface, though (A. says that it was more than twice as thick as it needed to be to support D., but … well, D. was still cautious).
It’s cold. And it’s forecast to get colder. We’ve both had our ice-cleats strapped to our boots for weeks, now, and don’t foresee taking them off any time soon. Even when we’re on our Christmas Holiday. Where will we be going? To an undisclosed location. Have a guess, won’t you? Some hints: their native language isn’t English, the travel guides say that you shouldn’t go there if you’re looking for culinary delights, their land-mass is roughly equivalent to the size of the United Kingdom. Any ideas? Do keep on guessing – we’re away from next Wednesday through to the following Monday. We expect to eat quite a bit of flat-bread, and to spend lots of time in hot-tubs.
-D & T
Ho, hum: winter.
We’ve had a ragged start to the week.
Back-to-back shows on Sunday reminded us of the many reasons why we were English majors and not musical theater majors (not the least of which it wasn’t offered at our school). We started the week tired, cranky, and sore — five hours on stage, holding a folder full of music in outstretched arms and standing still or sitting still for a long, twelve-hour period in cramped quarters will do that to you.
With the weekend partially lost, the usual housework catch-up from Sunday got pushed into Monday. T. is still trying to come to a natural sounding conclusion to her middle grade novel, instead of just quitting because she’s sick of writing it, but she had to intersperse work with doing the laundry and grousing that one other thing she wished the Pro-Snow Contingent had mentioned was the fact that with snow, a pair of jeans you just put on to cross the street to go to the store returns inevitably filthy on the hem, unless tucked into boots. City snow is filthy — and means more laundry, and much-needed time polishing shoes. (T. also groused quietly about wearing the same pair of black leather insulated boots every day and everywhere, but with these near-freezing temps, it’s just another winter reality.)
D. groused about having to meet with his supervisors, and having to hurry to a deadline for work, with his boss asking for meetings he didn’t have time to attend. Tuesday found us prepping for our last big show on the 20th, plus another event at Kelvingrove on the 19th, and we found ourselves tired and grumpy — and too busy.
Obviously, that meant it was time to start the Christmas baking. And maybe take advantage of the fact that the store is selling tons of salt for very cheap (the ice has persisted, and it’s forecast to give us another eight inches starting tomorrow – oh, joy!) and dye something a bright color. Quickly.
Creativity makes everything better.
T. decided that she was sick of racing around frantically every year in the pre-stollen prep stage, trying to find sulfur-free citrus peel, and that she should make her own. It’s funny – it’s such a simple thing — it’s orange peels, how hard could it be? – but most people only ever buy it. T. did a little research, and came up with a simple recipe. All you need is oranges, two cups of sugar, a cup of water, and some time.
Aaaaand, that’s it.
Now we have sulfite-free peel for use in stollen, or to dip in chocolate and package up as gifts, or to ::cough:: scarf up by ourselves. Not that that would happen. Unlike with store-bought peel, this will be crisp and citrus-y, but not soft. (Don’t know why store-bought peel is soft. Does anyone?)
We took the excess sugar syrup, which we caramelized, added a bit of vanilla extract, and bottled it. Can we say “pancake syrup?” Why, yes we can.
Sometimes, when you’re exhausted and grouchy, it really does help to do one small, sweet thing right.
December
by Gary Johnson
A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here—and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
And are there angels singing overhead? Hark.
The hopes and fears of all the years, in intersection….
Welcome to this week’s “links” post. Yes, the biggest thing in here is political, having to do with WikiLeaks and all of that. There were other things going on in the world … but WikiLeaks just took everything by storm, really. I mean, how can you not be interested?
A bit dark for NOON, dontcha think?
In need of a little light in the dark and cold? (This pic was snapped when it was SEVEN DEGREES, which is just a bit MUCH for the wimpy Californians in the room.) Sick of rain, snow, sleet, or gloom of night? (Or, gloom of morning, as the case may be.) Then, you need the December Lights Project. The December Lights project was started by Northern authors living in Wales, Ireland and the great Northern reaches of the UK where it is dark and c-c-cold, and is a bundle of short stories, each one posted a day in December, each with a happy ending.
Happy, lighthearted short stories. That’s the December Light Project.
The stories are FREE (and no donation button even appears on the site), and are written by well-known and highly regarded young adult and children’s authors including Tiffany Trent, Sherwood Smith, Stephanie Burgis, Sarah Prineas, Leah Cypress, Patrick Samphire, Karen Healey, and many more.
Consider it a little Hanukkah, Solstice, Christmas, Kwaanza gift, and enjoy a little light reading.
Except for occasional crunches of plastic sleds being dragged over snow, and the occasional car creeping up the road. Despite the light overnight snowfall, people have all but given up, and are staying home. They are leaving their cars where they sit, parked haphazardly all around the crescent. The light rail is back, the trains are running – with delays, but moving slowly. The buses out of town are running, but we haven’t seen any inner city buses pass our stop since Monday. And cabs –hah.
D. put on his ice crampons and hiked to the University yesterday, and later we mapped out a strategy to get up the steep hills to Strathclyde Uni where we rehearse — only to be overjoyed that chorus rehearsal has been rescheduled. The 7°-9°F/-12° and -14°C temps we’re having are supposed to break by Thursday, but if they don’t, we will have zero rehearsal time, and we have a performance this weekend! We hope the orchestra and soloists are at least able to rehearse, since they’re the main draw.
When we moved here, we were told a.) that it rarely snowed and b.) that it could get quite cold, but mostly didn’t. Because we are wimpy Californian nutcases, we bought silk long underwear, take-no-prisoners heavy boots, wool socks, balaclavas to wear over our heads and faces, knitting needles and lots and lots of yarn. Guess who is happy to have been a wimpy nutcase. The Canadians are laughing at us — and well they should, because this little snow and ice should not shut down a whole city — but we are, at least, mostly warm. …And thinking we should maybe start knitting some more indoor-woolens, as we have frost on the INSIDE of the bathroom windows and the candles and heater aren’t exactly keeping up with this. Oh, well. This is why we have blankets. And hats. Which we’re wearing indoors…
According to The Geography of Bliss, by Eric Weiner, people living in cold countries are… happier. Weiner attributes this to the “get along or die” school of thought – that interdependence is a necessity to get through something like cold. It’s the idea that we all have to hang together, or we’ll all hang separately.
Maybe after a LOT of snow and cold, we could understand that. But as of now, most people can fall down on the road, and have others perhaps gasp, but not offer a hand up. Smiles are exchanged, with endless eye-rolling facial commentary about the ice, snow, the frozen puddles, etc. — but not much else. Head down, we hurry forward, scarves wrapped around our mouths, just hoping to draw breath without coughing, just wanting to get home.
We shudder to think what would happen if we did have to rely on each other. Hopefully this time we won’t find out…
The River Kelvin, Freezing. (The park fountain is frozen solid. Should go get a picture. Eventually.)
Looking up at the University
Stay healthy. Make soup. Keep baking! And stay warm!