music moments

In a desperate effort to clear out more space in my office, I have started going through my piles of sheet music to try purging pieces I know I'll likely never play again. I don't play piano very much anymore; when I practice music, I prefer playing on my harp or guitar or flute or penny whistles. Our piano sits in our living room, sadly abandoned and embarrassingly out of tune. I couldn't justify the cost of the tunings if I wasn't playing the piano, plus the piano is in need of major ($$$) soundboard repairs.

I put aside "early learner" sheet music I accumulated while teaching piano over 20 years to give to Sara's and Annie's piano teacher. Was horrified to discover that I had actually kept my old flute music from HIGH SCHOOL BAND PRACTICES. Augh. That's carrying packrat tendencies too far, even for me.

I couldn't bring myself to throw out any of the pieces I was learning for my ARCT (piano teaching degree, Royal Conservatory of Music). I'm not sure how familiar some of you are with piano lessons, but at the senior levels, you can spend hundreds of hours studying a single piece. I remember my piano teacher and I going over every phrasing intonation, every note, every pedal marking in agonizing detail. Just playing the notes correctly didn't cut it; interpretation was a major part of the practical aspect of ARCT studies. After spending so long on a piece of music, it becomes a part of you, really.

And then I came across sheet music that I had given my brother as well as music that he was studying himself. It's been nearly ten years since his death, but I still clearly remember him practising piano at home, how he used to hunch over a bit at the shoulders, his eyes fixed in fierce concentration on the music. As I sorted through his old sheet music, I could hear the echoes of his favourite pieces flow around me in the way he used to play them on our well-loved upright piano back home, like dear friends I haven't seen in a long time but whose voices immediately evoke familiarity: Manuel de Falla, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy.

I struggled to pretend that I was just doing a simple organizational chore for a while longer but then gave up and had a really good crying jag while sitting there on our living room floor, my hands full of pages of sheet music covered with my brother's messy handwriting, trying not to get the paper wet.

Felt much better after.

I ended keeping much more sheet music than I expected, but I'd rather be a little cramped in my office than let go of some of these memories.





Links/News:

there.com is inviting beta testers to try out its new chat environment. Here's a Wired story about the "virtual universe" start-up.

Coming soon: Uru: Online Ages Beyond Myst!

Dontlink.com: Stupid linking policies info. "Don't Link to Us! links to sites that attempt to impose substantial restrictions on other sites that link to them."

Curious to see pics from the upcoming Return of the King? Look here.

dentists, Gwyneth Paltrow & bread

Had my annual dental check-up yesterday morning. Wasn't feeling sick enough to cancel, and my dentist is popular enough that I knew that trying to re-book would be a nightmare.

I used to dread dentists' appointments as a child. I was terrified of my dentist, who seemed very big and grumpy and gruff-voiced. He did not use freezing/anaesthetic when drilling, just for extractions. He would mutter "Shut up!" if we whimpered during treatment (my sister also remembers this). He was supposedly one of the best in the field, however, with an excellent reputation for working with children.

I love my current dentist. She is cheery and gentle and compassionate, so much so that even when she is causing me pain, I feel like hugging her because she so obviously hates causing me discomfort. When I arrived for my appointment yesterday, I couldn't help but notice the reams of holiday season cards displayed on the walls, the gift baskets overflowing into the hallway. I feel guilty for not sending my dentist a holiday season card or gift basket.





Played Gwyneth Paltrow for an hour last night. I've been neglecting her; I could tell from the way her D string stubbornly kept sliding out of tune, as if she was punishing me for ignoring her for so long.

I've decided to shut down Harpresource.com. I started it while I was in Philadelphia because I wanted a fun online project (Inkspot definitely wasn't fun anymore), but now I'm trying to cut down on non-writing projects so I can focus on my freelance writing.

One of my problems is that I've found that there are too many interesting things to do, but not nearly enough time to do them all. I don't understand people who say they're bored; I feel like jumping up and down and screaming at them (you think I'm kidding, but I'm not). It ties into my impatience with time-wasting people and activities. Life is too short and precious to fritter away. My advice to people who are bored: find something you're passionate about and pursue that, whether it's childrearing or writing or cooking or poetry or collecting widgets. And to clarify, relaxing and doing nothing on purpose is not the same thing as being bored (unless you're complaining about being bored, of course).

Anyway, I've realized that a crime almost as bad is to try pursuing too many things, because it means you don't go after any one thing properly, and you end up unhappy with all of them. I really liked Bilbo's line in Fellowship of the Ring: "I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."

My goal is to cut down on the bread. :)

(I love food analogies.)





Links/News:

According to SeattlePI.com, a 19-year-old self-published his fantasy novel, heavily promoted it, then sold it and two unpublished sequels to Knopf for over $500,000. Not only that, but this guy is a budding artist as well! (check out his art gallery).

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Today's Blatherpics:

I took the top two while waiting in the dentist's chair at my appointment yesterday. The bottom image is a partial scan of my article in The Dollar Stretcher magazine, which arrived in the mail yesterday.

spacey

Definitely sick.

Went out yesterday to get a few ingredients I needed to make Tori no Usugiriyaki, the first recipe I'm trying out from Hiroko Shimbo's The Japanese Kitchen cookbook, a gift I received from Parki for my birthday last year.

Felt pretty spacey as I walked around, as if I was watching someone else through a fog. Fumbled with vegetables, trying to get them in their plastic bags. Got suddenly super-tired as I paid for my purchases, wanted desperately to just sit down in the aisle and take a nap.

I probably shouldn't have been cooking while I was sick but heck, I figured that Jeff was the one who gave me the cold so he likely couldn't catch the cold again right? Anyway, dinner turned out pretty well, despite my weird headspaciness. I purposely picked one of the easiest recipes I could find, which was basically thin-sliced chicken briefly marinated in a mixture of crushed sesame seeds, green onions, garlic, shoyu, honey, pepper, sesame oil, then pan-fried. I served it with rice and spinach, the accompaniment dishes suggested in the book.

Jeff's still sick, but is getting better. We both went to bed at around 9:30 pm. Blech.

Links/News:

Slashdot has an amusing thread about what The Lord of the Rings would look like if it were written by someone else.

Christopher Reeve will be guest starring in "Smallville", according to CNN.

William Gibson has a blog! (info from BoingBoing)

cornmeal muffins and workouts

So I began my vow to cook more "from scratch" by baking cornmeal muffins yesterday morning. I haven't baked anything in years, so before you Bakers out there start laughing, be aware that this was a major step for me.

The choice of cornmeal was the result of a pantry purge yesterday, culminating in the realization that there are items in the pantry that have been sitting there for Quite A While. Nothing obviously perishable, which is why they've been sitting there so long, like the small bag of cornmeal I had bought on whim in some health food store a while back.

To my surprise, we also had some small paper muffin cups in the pantry, so I opted for muffin format. They actually turned out okay! I had four small cornmeal muffins for breakfast, feeling virtuous and overly proud of the fact that I was eating a baked good that didn't come shrink-wrapped. I wanted Jeff to sample some of my muffins when they were fresh-hot from the oven, but after weighing the pros and cons of waking him up just so he could eat muffins, I decided to let him sleep in.

I decided to follow up on my virtuous points by going to the gym on Sunday afternoon, my first real workout of the year. I started slacking off late last year re: working out, mainly because running indoors wasn't nearly as enjoyable as running outside. Allison found the same thing with walking, so we've both resolved to be better in our fitness habits this year, regardless of the weather. Allison might sign up for the Idita Winter Walk Challenge.





My workout starts the minute I head out the door for the gym. Just the brisk walk there and back takes 20 minutes. Yesterday I ran on the treadmill for 20 minutes, did the rowing machine for ten, then weights and abs. Except partway into the rowing machine workout, I hit a wall. It was like all the energy into my entire body suddenly decided to flee all at once, leaving behind silly putty.

Geez, I thought. I'm more out of shape than I thought. I forced myself to keep going, but the last part of the workout was definitely not fun. On the walk home, it felt like my legs were made of lead. And I realized the only thing I had eaten that day so far (it was 4 pm) were those four cornmeal muffins. Probably not enough to sustain a good workout. How dumb could I be?

Jeff and I went to my sister's for dinner, and then I felt worse later that night. I think I might be coming down with Jeff's cold. Compared to the Norwalk Virus, however, I'd much rather take a head cold. Woke up with strange dreams during the night (but not nearly as interesting as Terence Chua's), took some Nyquil, went back to bed.

Poll: recipe organization?

A follow-up from my entry yesterday. How do you cooks store your recipes? The ones not already in cookbooks, that is? On paper or electronic? If you use software specifically for storing recipes, which one? (and do you like it). It's about time I purged/reorganized my cookbooks and loose paper recipe collection, and would appreciate any advice.





Today's Blatherpics:

	Annie, Jeff and Sara play Labyrinth last night. Very cool game! There's also a Junior Labyrinth available in stores. We also played Crazy Eights and Jenga. I always try my hardest to win these games, but Sara (8) and Annie (5) still beat me more often than not. :-)
	I'm amazed at the cool crafts that Sara and Annie come up with on their own.
	Annie is into Nate the Great these days, and read part of one book to Jeff and me last night for her bedtime story. She is sitting on Jeff's back in this photo.

cookbooks

Spent some time working on my novel yesterday, and also indulged in one of my secret vices: reading cookbooks.

Yes, I know I'm always going on about how I can't cook. The fact is that I'm not one of those natural cooks who can whip something up out of her imagination, with an intuitive knowledge of what ingredients go well together, just the right amount of spice to add. The few times I tried "creative" cooking, they were disasters.

But I can usually follow the instructions in a cookbook. In fact, I sometimes enjoy going through a cookbook and trying out recipes. To me, cooking has always seemed magic. A cookbook is a sort of book of spells, outlining all the ingredients and incantations necessary to make that spell work. As long as you follow the instructions, you're almost always guaranteed an edible result.

And I've always loved reading cookbooks. Yes, I do actually read cookbooks. Maybe not from start to finish, but I'll browse through and read through recipes that sound particularly interesting, savoring the sound of the words in the same way I'd enjoy an especially sumptuous description of a meal.





One of my goals this year is to cook from scratch more often, rather than just open a can or stick something frozen in the oven, to use fresh ingredients whenever possible. I also want to do more Japanese cooking, which is why I spent time poring over cookbooks given to me by Parki and by Jeff & Gail Kesner for my birthday last year. I also enjoyed reading through the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks At Home cookbook, a gift from my sister and her family. The latter has recipes a lot more straightforward than the ones in my other Moosewood cookbook.

A question for those of you who cook at home regularly: Do you use cookbooks? If so, which are your favourites and why?

Jeff is helping me switch to OS X very soon! If I drop out of contact suddenly, you'll know that something went Terribly Wrong.





Links/Updates:

Loved this entry by Seanan entitled "100 Things About Me". Really well-written, funny and heartbreaking at the same time. It's her birthday today!

Insecurities Project: If you're asked by airport security personnel to take a photo to prove that your digital camera works, you can send it here and have it turned into art. :)

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Today's Blatherpics:

From archiving project. Click on any image to see a larger version.

	Jeff and his siblings years ago. From left to right: Case, Jeff, and Larkin.
	Jim and Ruth playing checkers. Annie and Sara are now playing checkers (and chess!).
	JBR, Ginny, me and Jeff at Virginia Falls during our canoe trip in the Northwest Territories several years ago.