Happy summer solstice!
10:43 p.m.
So we are officially down to one car, a state we are more used to than not, although having two cars sure makes life easier when you have to taxi kids around and the closest bus stop is a 20-minute walk away.
I bagan making corrections to the score today. One thing I had neglected to do at the start was to group the brass players with square brackets: Horns 1 & 2 grouped with Horns 3 & 4, and the same with the Trumpets and Trombones. This meant that I had to fix the score in scroll view, then re-optimize every page (this is extremely technical and only one or two of you will even know what I�m talking about) again for the change to show. I had printed out the first ten pages and was already working on page 14 when I realized that my change had reattached the bar lines between the instrumental families. The spaces I had originally left between the winds, the brass, the percussion, piano, harp and strings had disappeared. So once again I fixed the score in scroll view, but I now have to go back and re-optimize every single page I had already painstakingly formatted. I am kicking myself for not having done this in the first place.
Janice held writing group tonight, the last of the season, at her house, and six of us ladies sat in the orchard under the apple trees laden with tiny green fruits listening to the bird songs and swatting at mosquitoes while we wrote about nature. She had prepared rhubarb juice as a refreshment for when we arrived, and I quite liked it. I don�t really like rhubarb; it�s a combination of the texture and that tartness that bespeaks the toxin in the leaves. I�ve never taken to rhubarb pie, or rhubarb and strawberry pie, or the sauce my mother-in-law makes and serves over ice cream, although I politely ate it anyway. But my dad used to make rhubarb wine which was very tasty, and Janice�s rhubarb juice reminded me of it. A little vodka mixed in would have made it just right, but we were writing and driving.
The flies and mosquitoes were rather fiendish, as though it were going to rain, which it might yet, so we moved inside after the first write. The next two exercises were not so productive and I felt a little disappointed, but I looked forward to coming home and updating my diary, especially since I started showing allergy symptoms to Janice�s gray, three-legged cat.
I had been to her place once last year when she and her man held an afternoon of music in their orchard, but wasn�t sure that I remembered rightly how to get there. Fortunately I found her address and phone number on an email and was able to call to ascertain that writing group was in fact meeting chez elle, and we have a road map which set me straight as to how to get there. She and her man live in an old farm house on the way to BuIwer, one of those small towns that dot the Eastern Townships, on the other side of J0hnville.
Just as I was about to leave the house, the singer in Little Princess� band, the one who had my teeth on edge driving the other night, called because he had been informed that the percussion room was now ready to be rehearsed in but all the equipment was still locked in the teaching studio. I told him I would go there on my way to Janice�s, unlock the studio and they would have access to their gear. When I got there, the door was open and the percussion equipment had been moved out into the hallway already. Don�t you just hate that?
<~~~ * ~~~>
