Heat, hormones and headphones

I am suffering from heat and hormones, both of which are adding to my general mood of mild depression and fatigue. So this entry will be a little vague and I may ramble, but I promise that if you stick with me, there will be a delightful little something for you at the end, unless you’re one of those people who reads the last page of a book first, and then I would expect you to skip right to the bottom of the post. Don’t do that, please. Humour me. I need the attention.

Walking home from school yesterday I fortuitously had my camera with me and took some pictures. It is late summer. Things are about as green as they get before they start turning red and gold and brown. There has been little rain since our deluged anniversary party, so the river level is at its lowest.

The first of the maples is turning red already, just at the entrance of the private school. You could say it is a harbinger of things to come.

When I arrived home, there was this cute furry critter to greet me:

This afternoon I wasted two hours of my life in a department meeting that would have been just as much a waste of time if I hadn’t been there. The chair of our department is a terrible chair. He didn’t get the pianos tuned before the semester started (the upright in the teaching studio is in terrible shape and the American Steinway sounds awful). He didn’t even remember to order textbooks for the course he’s teaching, an oversight which Hubby corrected at the bookstore (the students need the same textbook for second year, when he gets them). He is doing much to delegate, giving himself less to do, but things are not getting done. The university made such a mistake giving this guy tenure.

After this meeting, through which I barely made it awake (I was doodling all over the agenda in a fit of boredom), my accompanist and I hit the piano practice room (this is how I know that the grand is so terribly out of tune) and we read through the Fauré, Rossini and Purcell. She had forgotten the scores at home of the music I gave her before the summer, so this was all we could do. But we were both tired, she suffering from menstrual pain and ibuprofen-related distraction, I just feeling down. I started walking home and Hubby picked me up, coming back from a visit to the new beer store where he bought fair-trade coffee and, of course, beer.

Anyway, yesterday at choir practice we were able to purchase the long-awaited CD of last spring’s concert extravaganza, and I uploaded the mp3 of the quartet from Kismet, “And This is My Beloved”, so that you could enjoy it here. I am the soprano in it. I apologize in advance for the quality of the recording: the piano is too loud and there is some horrible horking of phlegm at some point in the audience, and the mp3 is further compromised by the uploading process. But, if you wear headphones and crank up the volume, it’s not too bad.

Enjoy!

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