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

Cantabile

Saturday, Oct. 22, 2005
10:58 p.m.
My husband and I separated this evening: he went to one choral concert, and I to another. His experience was less than spectacular, mine was just the opposite. He heard a local vocal ensemble in the crypt of the cathedral, the same space where I will be performing tomorrow afternoon (he says there really are bones behind the walls *shudder*) and while the group performed well, their choice of repertoire was execrable, and he was in a suitably foul mood.

I, on the other hand, went to Centennial Theatre where I heard this male quartet from London present an entertaining evening of what we would term �encore� pieces, complete with banter, horseplay, and excellent singing. The countertenor was not well, it showed in his singing, but was still an exemplar musician. At the reception following, I purchased one of their CDs autographed by all of them and had a lovely conversation with Mike, the bass, about lots of things. He was especially intrigued to find out that I was a singing teacher, saying he�d love to talk to me about technique, et cetera, and gave me his email address. I do not believe he was coming on to me, as I did make it known several times that I have a husband. Anyway, I came home all buoyed up from that experience and met with Hubby�s black cloud. It was not a pretty sight.

(As a complete aside, I just got a note from deareddie who said, and I quote:

Now, don�t be mad, but do you ever have a hard time not laughing at the parents of your friend Vlad? To name their child something that historically has been followed by �...the impaler�? Sigh. Sorry. I�m giddy from lack of sleep. No offense intended. Hugs!

For the record, since if deareddie thought this, others must have also, Vlad is not my friend�s real name. Many years ago, she and the woman I call The Duchess [the one now battling breast cancer] called each other by the first names of famous male performers on their respective instruments. Hence Vlad for the pianist Horowitz, Flor for the organist Peeters, and when we became a threesome, I was nicknamed Jussi for the tenor Bj�rling. I call Flor �The Duchess� for a totally different reason, which I won�t go into here. So rest assured, deareddie and the rest of you, that Vlad�s parents are not responsible. Close bracket)

The rest of the day was spent sneezing. We have mold in the basement, thanks to a rather terrible rain storm of a month ago when the east wind was pelting the front of the house, a very unusual occurence, and moisture seeped through the foundation. The instant we have a frost and the ragweed dies, I get the next allergy on the calendar. Also, I got inspired to clean things today, namely the main floor bathroom, and decided to rinse the filter in the air exchanger so that we could turn it on now that fall is upon us and the windows are closed. This piece of equipment lives in the crawl space under the eave, and in the process of removing the dirty filter, I accidently pulled the intake hose out and had to get right up close and personal with all the dust and mouse droppings to reattach it.

Then my daughter had a toilet incident wherein it would not flush, and Captain Mom came to the rescue with her extroardinary plunger technique. Since lots of smelly water ended up slopped on the tiles around the throne, I decided to give it a through cleaning as well. This called for a load of laundry to be done, considering that I had mopped up said smelly water with the bath mats, on top of an earlier load of whites. That reminds me, I have to put sheets on the bed before I can crawl into it.

And that has been my day.

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