Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

A solo headache with a side order of boobs.

Thursday, Nov. 17, 2005
7:24 p.m.
I have a headache. Well, to put it more exactly, I have been having a headache, and it is now receding a little, but I still feel the dull pain that sits around my eyes and forehead, even though I took two extra-strength pain killers almost three hours ago. I can attribute it perhaps to the fact that I am in calorie deficit mode, being adamant that I lose the weight that has been settling around my stomach and on my chest lately. I think the latter bit might be water retention, because I�m sore there too, but after so valiantly gaining my much coveted weight loss objective a year and-a-half ago, seeing the scales rise is disheartening. The thing I forgot is that I am a small person with very low fuel needs. The amount I must eat to lose weight is starvation for a normal-size person. The amount I need to maintain that weight loss is what a normal person would consider a �diet�. Just because I am only 5' tall, I still have a healthy appetite and my eyes are just as big as the next guy�s. It�s totally unfair.

This morning I visited with Natalie who runs the all-natural clothing store on Wellington Street. I had been to the coffee roaster�s to purchase that commodity, and figured I would wander over to see if she had anything I might be interested in. I did end up buying a beautiful pair of warm woolen socks, but the visit was mostly taken up with lively conversation. I noticed that she was reading my favourite novel by CIive Barker, Weavew0rld, and so we had to get into a discussion about that and other literature. Here is an anglophone, not even originally a Quebecker, who is running a retail business in the heart of Sh�brooke, and getting by with her bad French. I have to admire her. She has more balls than I do.

I have a gripe about choir. At the beginning of the term I told the interim conductor that if she needed me to sing a soprano solo, I would be more than happy to do so, but I felt that the solos should first go to students wherever possible. After she held auditions, she emailed me back to say that she really agreed on that point, and there was no need for me to be her �ringer� in this case. Then, at practice on Tuesday, it was revealed that Herr Doktor Professor, who is on sabbatical this term and that is why we have an interim director, but who is singing in the choir because it is more recreational for him than conducting it is, has a rather prominent solo in one of the spirituals, a solo which is not written into the piece itself. I am, to put it mildly, slightly pissed. Here I declined, or rather did not insist that I get a solo because students were available to do them, and she has given one to J. who is also a prof when there are male students who could do this solo just as well (if not better). It makes me wonder if I was wrong, if I shouldn�t have insisted that I get thrown a bone. The student singing soprano in the quartet at the end of the Haydn sounds really rather terrible (that may just have been today, but I know her voice, a small, thin, high thing with no body or presence [she was actually a student of mine for her first year, another long story] and she�s barely audible above the other quartet members, let alone the choir when it comes in). Next term I should probably talk to the regular conductor and insist that he sweeten the pot for me, as the spring concert tends to be rather dull intellectually anyway. If he wants me to stay in the choir badly enough, he hopefully will.

Since I�m in a complaining mood, I may as well continue. Last night I was interested in some marital conjugal play with my marital partner, but I left it a little too late and he was too tired (imagine that, a man being too tired). At supper, I expressed the fact that I had a headache repeatedly, and yet afterwards, when I had already come upstairs to update my diary, he calls up, �Is tonight the night?� I answered, �Which night?� and he replied, �To replace last night.� At this point you must imagine me rolling my eyes and responding, �You obviously don�t listen to a thing I say,� and that was the end of that. If my headache gets better (and I sincerely hope it does), I shall change my mind.

The girl of whom I have written many times, the one with the large breasts who exposes much of them shamelessly much of the time, was wearing a garment which did just that today. After choir she was chatting with one of the tenors, actually a guitar student and one of the guys I hang out with at lunch on Mondays and Wednesdays, standing in a rather provocative yet winsome way with her hands behind her back and her front thrust forward, and I was watching him not looking at her chest. As we both exited the hall together, I asked him how he did it. He answered, �It�s taken years of practice.�

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