The birthday boy ended up being well done by.
8:25 a.m.
Buddy Boy made his very first cake yesterday, a carrot cake with cream cheese icing, the recipe I got from a woman in Deep River, Ontari0 when I was there in 1974 on tour with the Ontari0 Y0uth Ch0ir. I rarely make this cake anymore, it’s just too rich, containing lots of oil and eggs and butter and sugar...mmmm.... But carrot cake is his Dad’s favourite, and Buddy Boy is broke (for another month, anyway), so this was a nice solution. I gave him instructions, then I went to bed for a nap. The best way to learn anything is by doing, and I felt he could do that on his own.
When I arose, just before going to choir practice, I checked on the results. He had not removed the cakes from the pans, they were just sitting on the cooling racks. So I inverted them and peeled off the waxed paper from their bottoms (which would have been impossible once they cooled). Also, he hadn’t tested to see if they were done. This is possibly my fault as I never told him he was supposed to do this, or how. So the very middle of the cake wasn’t really cooked and fell a bit, and ended up being somewhat mushy, but still delicious. The icing was great, and I ended up finishing the smearing of the sides of the cake with it. Buddy Boy kind of gave up after a point.
We ran through the whole choir concert yesterday. It was a very long rehearsal and my feet were killing me. Herr Doktor Professor played a recording for us, that is going to be sold in the lobby before the show and during intermission to raise money for the refugee association, of a song written by one of the drama profs and assembled by people who were on the same team as performed the Shakespeare last spring. It’s one of those incredibly sugary sweet schlocky schmaltzy pop song type renditions, the lyrics exhorting the listener not to forget about the religious aspect of Christmas while all the more commercial aspects we have come to know and love are being enjoyed. Personally I found it offensive because it was basically religious in nature, and I find anything religious in nature offensive when it is being forced on an unsubscribing (and in this case unsuspecting) audience, and because it’s just a really bad song. Dr. M. was offended because of the former, and the other Jew in choir was offended because of the latter. Dr. M. kept saying that our university is a secular institution and this thing has no place in it, but I reminded him that our whole concert consists of Christian-inspired music: a Bach cantata exhorting virgins to awake because their bridegroom comes (i.e. Jesus), a setting of liturgy in a Mozart mass, Britten’s Cerem0ny of Car0ls and the How l0vely is thy dweIIing place from the Brahms Requiem. He didn’s seem to have a problem with that. Strange. Maybe it’s because the music is just so superior.
Anyway, afterwards, I had been told that we would do a sound check for the jazz show at 6:30, and at 6:45 I asked one of the students when I could reasonably return, to which he replied 7:15. So I went home, had some ramen soup, got dressed for the jazz show and returned 10 minutes later than suggested, only to find that they still weren’t set up. We finally did our sound check just before they opened the doors.
My song didn’t go as well as I would have liked. I totally blew the first time through because I just couldn’t remember the words, and that affected the melody. But I nailed it on the repeat. Grandpa Mike, Kevin O and I also serenaded Hubby with a jazzy rendition of Happy Birthday, which was pretty funny since none of the microphones seemed to be working when I tried singing into them.
We came home afterwards, had the above-described cake, opened presents, and then Hubby and I adjourned to the Lion where we met Kevin and his girlfriend and the ringer alto sax player he’d brought in. I enjoyed that. We got home just as the clock was striking midnight, and Hubby’s birthday was over.
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