Halftime

Superbowl. Kitchen. Rockin' with The Boss. DH demonstrates the Dying Cockroach (I think it was originally called gatoring, but we renamed it in honor of a prominent feature of the hospital we trained at). I was worried that he would hurt himself, but he emerged unscathed. Kistler pinot noir and chocolate ice cream sandwiches. Man, we are getting old.

No privacy

In case anyone wondered what it's like to take a bath with a houseful of foster kitties...

Expedition

Honey, I got the mail!

Bigs and littles

The event of the day was a home energy audit, one of the services provided by the gas company where a guy with ever so many more handyman skills than have you comes to visit your house with an infrared camera to show you where all the air leaks and other heating inefficiencies in your house are and glibly describes 40 different ways to fix each one.

Most interestingly, I discovered that when the temperature is 18 below 0 all you need to do is walk around the house with your hand out to identify all the same sources of heat loss.

No, really, this was a useful thing to have done, and I learned a lot. Probably the most important things were that the biggest source of heat loss in my house are all of the cannister lights (20? 30? 40?), and that I really need to clean the metal filters in my electrostatic furnace filtering system more often than, say, every year or two.

After we brought the house back up to a comfortable temperature (part of the process involved sucking all of the warm air out of the house with a blower fitted into the front door), I turned the furnace off again so that I could clean the filters. They looked like dryer lint catchers, no lie. Unfortunately, I forgot to take photo documentation, so you'll have to take my word for it. They have been delinted and are in the dishwasher now. Hopefully they will be dry before it hits 30 below tonight.

While the house is cooling off, the "Beaches" are popular with the resident catlets. I thought this tableau was striking enough to cause me to break my temporary vow of blogging silence.

Here we have a big stripey and tuxedo on one side of the bathroom sink:



And little stripey and tuxedo on the other:



Adorable.

Ennui

Blogging is temporarily suspended. BTW, I put the Christmas tree away yesterday, when finally someone managed to knock it to the floor. Bleak, interminable midwestern winter ensues.

Tummy and toesies Tuesday

It's been a long time since I showed a Tummy Tuesday post, but with Frankie being so obliging I had to close out the 2008 Tuesdays with this one.

This was a new bed style I thought I'd try. I plopped it down in the kitchen in front of the heating vent, and voilà, instant Frankie favorite place. And here he is, doing his day job.

How I spent December

Tree + cats + camera + me.

Merry Christmas to All

This is a special Christmas for Dolly, because she's at home - we officially adopted Dolly this month. She continues to graciously share her tree and ornaments with the other fosters, big and little, and hopes fervently that they will all find homes of their own soon.

One more day 'till Christmas

So many ornaments to destroy, so little time...

But you can't get the full effect without sound. I've learned to recognize this rustling from wherever I am in the house.



I have collected a large basket full of ornaments from the floor and various other resting places, and will do one last total tree-redecoration tonight.

Two days until Christmas

Have you been naughty or nice?

Three days until Christmas

Stay warm!

Four days until Christmas

Concert

The hairiest part about last night's concert was getting there.

I had planned well, I thought. I went to my 4pm lesson in concert black attire, with dinner (Zone-friendly string cheese + 2 slices luncheon ham + medium honeycrisp apple + walnuts and roasted squash seeds) packed in my bag. I figured if I left by 5:30 I could make my 6:30 call, as it is usually 30-40 minutes in rush hour.

Lesson was great, BTW. The student before me ran over, by design, I discovered. There was no student after me, as T- planned on running over with me on the other end. So I had a half hour of observing one of T-'s old students who had come back for an advanced brush-up on Haydn C. Then I had a little over an hour for my lesson, G major scale concentrating on intonation in the upper 2 octaves, and revisiting Lee #1. I've been working on memorizing it, a topic for another post, and it is amazing how much new technique gets overlaid each time I have a lesson on this etude.

Anyway, I left the lesson room at 5:20, and was exiting the parking lot by 5:30. Then I ran into one nail-biting back-up after another. The details don't sound as exciting today, but I was sweating, and grateful to end up only 10 minutes late for call. We have had horrible traffic since the snow started seriously falling last week. I surely hope people remember how to drive here again, soon.

The concert was anticlimactic. DH caught this pic, so I can show you the set-up. The orchestra is in a pit formed by surrounding elevated walkways, where speakers, singers and dancers moved above us. You can see the front row of cellos on the big screen - my head is in the leftmost corner.

Morning paper

Last night's rehearsal did indeed end after 10pm. Much to my surprise, we have a beefy string section, expanding from 2 or 3 to 5 in each section. It feels a bit odd to be a volunteer in the midst of a professional, or at least paid, section.

Two new pieces were added, one a cello obbligato and piano accompanying a child's recitative with choir. Very nice, and handled by one of the pros. It was by no stretch a dress rehearsal for us, as we were hurriedly marking in bowings and dividing parts throughout, not to mention sorting through pieces and discovering who was missing what. At least being busy keeps things from getting tedious.

One thing I noticed was that orchestra members have much better discipline than choir members. It was no problem at all for us to sit quietly in our own thoughts while other performers were being rehearsed, while the choir couldn't seem to help chattering when it was too long between singing. I wonder why that is?

I slept in quite late this morning to compensate for the late night last night, and in anticipation of another one tonight. The black-and-whites joined me while I drank my morning coffee and, well, tried to read my e-mail and morning blogs. Sometimes it's hard to see around the crowd at the screen.









You just know that Frankie would be the little boy in class whispering to his neighbors, throwing spit balls and pulling pigtails.

Music schedule

You might not know it from reading my blog recently, but I do still play the cello. After taking two whole months off over the summer, but still feeling slightly burnt out, I cut back my schedule significantly this year.

What I am not doing:
Orchestra
Flute trio
Piano trio
Piano lessons
Vocal ensemble

What I am doing:
Cello lessons, weekly +/-
Voice class, also weekly
Cello quartet, weekly, with a coach
String quartet, sporadically, every few months
Church orchestra, weekly rehearsal and 1 or 2 services, 3 of 4 weeks

Plus a Christmas performance, which is this week. So we have a dress rehearsal tomorrow night, scheduled for four (4!) hours, and concert on Thursday night. I also simplified my life by scheduling everything at Music School on one day, which happens to be Thursday. So this week I'll go straight from my lesson to dress rehearsal, and miss voice class and cello quartet.

I am annoyed that, even with having cut back, my scheduled elements are stepping on each others' toes.

Squee!

I don't know what else to say.

Last night we had the first tip-over, fortunately toward the window, so it was easy to grab the tree and sit it back upright. Today it's below zero, and I'm making the rounds to put down towels as draught-stoppers to keep the door bottoms from freezing. The tree-tipping culprits have burrowed in together under the tree for a mid-day nap, a winter wonderland of light snow outside the window.

How cute is that? Monsters.

Tree update

The tree is still standing, though occasionally looking a bit worse for wear. This is a typical daytime configuration. I think there are five under or in the tree...



... and one taking advantage of the make-shift tree skirt that has fallen to the floor.



Yes, that's a garland of purple beads that's hanging loosely, as well. Once a day I make the rounds, picking up and replacing all the ornaments I find on the floor, and re-stringing the garlands. There are no breakable ornaments, and no tinsel, so no harm done, and we are all greatly enjoying the tree.

Tree 1 Cats 0

I hope you didn't bet against the tree - it's a sturdy little thing, and has been cleverly decorated with indestructible ornaments. I did hear a few of them rolling on the floor, not yet to be seen again, but on the whole, things look pretty good.

I have taken about a thousand pictures since yesterday - very hard to get a good photo of a moving kitten in the dark (except for the tree lights) with a pocket camera set on no flash.

Here's a truly ornamental glamour shot of Johnny, my climbing wonder.

Any bets

...on whether it will last until morning?

It's time

The snow is gently falling, our first significant storm, though we have indeed remained snow-covered since November 30th. It got up to 25F this afternoon, and felt warm. Not being inclined to go outside this evening (I hear the traffic is horrific), I decided it is a good night to put up the Christmas decorations. I put DH on a plane to Lost Wages this afternoon, so it's a good thing I have lots of other helpers.

...............................................
Oh! Charlie Brown Christmas is on TV tonight! I think I am beginning to feel festive. I wonder if I have any Christmas Cheer in the house?