a good day: friends, teachers and tranzac

From my photo archives. Me and my friend Ray. Ray took this photo by holding the camera out in front of us.

Yesterday was one of those extra-wonderful days, where every little thing falls into place just the way you want it to, when one good thing happens after another. I'm very glad, and I'm hoping it's only part of the payoff for all the negative karmastuff that's been going on before.

As I mentioned yesterday, SO good to be getting back into a normal writing schedule. Right now I'm working my way through my queries and submissions database, figuring out which queries can be sent out again, which articles can be submitted for reprint sales, etc.

Then I heard from David Smallwood, my teacher from Grade 8, my favourite teacher of all time. He was a teacher that had a huge influence on my life in so many big and little ways, especially encouraging my writing skills. He says still has a bunch of my old short stories, a fact which delights (that he kept them) and horrifies me (I've improved so much since then) at the same time. Not only was he a fantastic teacher, but he was also very much a kindred spirit. I am SO happy we're back in touch.

Also, Rand and Erin and I made plans for them to come visit this Saturday, which means I get to meet Erin before FKO! Allison's coming downtown to join us. Really looking forward to this weekend.

And we have a house! Ok, old news. But I still wake up every morning thinking happy housethoughts and counting down the days until we can move in.

Postcard from Lyanne, written with an Inkspot pen. "I'm continuing my trend (quest?) of finding the ugliest postcards in cities I visit and sending them to all my friends."

My already good day was capped off by a fantastic session at the Tranzac yesterday evening. I got to know several more people including:

Deirdre: amazingly talented flute player, seems to know all the tunes. I found out more session etiquette stuff from her, like the fact that while sheet music is okay at the Tranzac because it's a learning session, it's frowned upon at places like Dora Keogh. She let me try her flute a bit since I've been curious about the long black flutes I see at the sessions all the time. The holes are further apart than on my metal flute, and I fear that it would be a bit of strain for me right now because of tendinitis. 'Tis ok; I still have my whistle. :-)

Adam: first-timer! He's a conductor and vocalist in other music groups, but also plays a number of instruments including the concertina. He said that my Blatherings posts about being a newbie at the Tranzac helped give him the courage to give it a shot himself (yay!). We shared sheet music.

Heather: accordion player (I think it's an accordion) I've seen at pretty much every session, obviously very experienced. She had posted a message at TheSession.org in response to my session cartoon and Blatherings entry about the Tranzac, but I didn't connect the name with the person until she introduced herself. I'm looking forward to chatting with her a bit more at future sessions.

Last night we learned "Red-Haired Lass" and "Lord Inchiquin." Then before the free-for-all, we went around the circle, each person picking a tune. I chose "Apples in Winter", using sheet music despite the fact that I can play it from memory at home. Though I can play several tunes without music when just one of a group, I'm still too nervous to lead without music yet. Gradually getting better at it, though. At least my hands don't shake anymore!

I played "Apples" somewhat more slowly than normal, and my whistle was soon outnumbered by other instruments. The resulting chaos of some people speeding up, some trying to slow down, ended up in the song stumbling to a halt. I apologized, but Denis (the friendly banjo player I mentioned in early Tranzac posts) encouraged me to try again, and asked the other players to stick with my speed. And this time it worked, yay!

I'm also purposely putting down my whistle and just LISTENING sometimes, even when I know the tunes, instead of feeling compelled to play every time. I love LOVE the music and atmosphere in that room: the comaraderie, the laughter and quips passed back and forth between tunes, the encouragement and good humour. How I wish I could bottle it up and take it with me everywhere.

Tonight, I'm heading up to Richmond Hill to get together with Allison and Jodi to work on our Urban Tapestry DVD project.

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Writing, musicstuff, doodles

It's a relief to get back into the normal swing of things, not having to worry about househunting, being able to focus on my writing again. Sent out a completed article yesterday. Started my regular combing of writers' job boards again, queried a listing, updated my weblog for writers: Inkygirl. I also heard back from a print publication that had accepted one of my articles but then the editor left (hate when that happens, since the article often goes into limbo-land for a while); the new editor is going to run the article in the fall issue, yay! Also getting back to working on novel writing.

And we have a house!! Ok, I've already Blathered about that, but I can't resist mentioning it again. By the way, I won't be posting photos of the outside of the house on Blatherings or Flickr. For one thing, there's someone else living there now; we won't be moving in for a few months. Also, though the Internet usually makes it possible for anyone for find out a lot of information about information about anyone else, I'd rather not make it too easy. From my traffic logs, I know that there are a LOT more lurkers in my readership than those who post in the message boards. 'Nuff said on that topic. If you see me in person, feel free to ask to see some pics. :-)

re: Irish session musicstuff: Learned Apples in Winter and Dusty Windowsills this past week on my own, two tunes that seem to be played frequently at the Tranzac. You can find both at the Durham Music site.

Corel Painter doodle.

This means that in theory, I've learned the following tunes so far:

Apples in Winter, Austin Barrett's (Dusty Windowsills), Thrush in the Straw, Maurice Manley's (Ballydesmond=2), Ballydesmond #1, Egans (the two Ballydesmonds and the Egans are often played as a set at the Tranzac), Dusty Miller #2 (can't find this in any online tune compilation, so I suspect it has another common name), The Swallow Tail (reel), Donegal Reel, Galway Rambler (reel), Cooley's Reel, Boyne Hunt (reel), Sligo Maid (reel), Drowsy Maggie (reel), Ms McLeod's Reel, Dunmore Lassies (reel), Green Groves of Erin (reel), Bank of Ireland (reel).

The last few are a bit hazy and need to be practised more before I'd be confident launching into without sheet music in a session. I've heard rumours that Mary Bertke and Dave Clement are planning an informal session sometime during FKO weekend. If this is true (and Mary just confirmed in LJ), I plan to bring along my sheet music in hopes of being able to play along on a few. :-)

Illustration Friday collab. This week's topic: "Ancient."

I'm really enjoying my lessons with Karen Light. I've settled into focussing on learning to play one tune with proper technique at a time. Karen told me that in theory, once I get in the habit, I'll apply this proper technique to tunes I learn on my own as well. So far I've studied Thrush in the Straw this way, am doing Austin Barrett's (Dusty Windowsills) next.

Looking forward to the session at the Tranzac tonight. The iTalk that Jeff bought for me a while back is wonderful; I've been recording session and lesson tunes, practising with the recordings back at home, listening to the tunes on my iPod while I'm out walking. I've also been gradually compiling an alphabetized master index of all the tunes for which I have sheet music.

Three more weeks until FilKONtario in Toronto!

Only seven more months until FilkContinental in Germany!

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inspections, real estate goddesses and gingko trees

I'm pleased to report that the house inspection went fine and we signed the final papers yesterday afternoon. We take possession near the end of the May, though it sounds as if there's a chance we may get it earlier; the owner is going to let us know.

Many thanks to Walter for coming along on the house inspection so we could get his expert opinion as well. My sister was there for the first bit and got to meet our real estate agent as well as the owner.

Speaking of real estate agents, I must sing praises of our wonderful agent, Kathy Gordon of ReMax, whom we found through Parki. Kathy is Goddess of Real Estate Agents as far as both Jeff and I are concerned. She never pressured us, remained incredibly patient despite our indecision on the type and location of house prefs, was always cheerful and in good humour, worked incredibly hard for us.

Our friend Walter.

One thing I really appreciated was the fact that Kathy would point out the good AND bad points of a house when we were looking at it, warning us about potential problems. As a result, Jeff and I learned a lot about buying houses at the same time that Kathy was learning more about what we liked and didn't like even when we weren't really sure ourselves, or at least not enough to properly articulate it to her.

Kathy's unflagging sense of humour also kept our spirits up and helped take the edge off what could sometimes be a highly frustrating process. And she uses e-mail! And has a Blackberry! Much better than playing phone tag.

I would recommend her services without hesitation.

While Jeff, Walter and Roger (the house inspector) went around the house examining and poking, I measured things, like the dimensions of my future office so I could start planning the layout. We're going to raise the floor a bit to make it warmer, fill in the spaces between the ceiling joists to keep cold air from coming in, etc. I want to cover the wall space with as many bookshelves as I can.

The photo below is meant to be a "before" picture. I'll take another one six months from now. :-)

My future office!

I'm pretty excited about planning my new office, which is going to be twice as big as my old one. Right now I'm intending to make one half (the half in the photo) my writing office. The other half will be for music; I can set up my keyboard, guitarstuff. Depending on how stable the temperature ends up being in the basement, I may opt to store my harp upstairs. I'm also hoping to put a rolling storage cabinet setup in the middle of the room that also doubles as a craft/layout table. Depends if there's enough space.

I chatted a bit with the owner, who was in the house during the inspection. She is a wonderful older woman who has obviously put a lot of work and love into her house; both Jeff and I really liked her, and hope to keep in touch even after we move in.

One of the things we talked about was her garden, which was designed by Zone Six. I've posted part of the garden map at the top of the page. Here's a list of some of the plants in the original design.



Holy cow. Talk about pressure...though I enjoyed gardening when Jeff and I lived out in the country many years ago, I was never very good at it. But I'm determined to learn more. There's a Japanese maple! A dwarf lilac! (I *love* lilac) Honeysuckle! A gingko tree!

I'm pretty excited about seeing the garden after spring, when the snow isn't covering everything. And we'll have a deck! Which means we can sit outdoors on our own property! For longtime condo types with no balcony, this is going to be a welcome change. Hey, and we can get a barbecue! Yes, I know we have the Ridpath cottage, but this is going to be our very own place.



Some of you have asked why Jeff and I didn't get a bigger house, one with a guest room. Yes, it was something we were hoping for. But with the cost of houses the way they are, we found that we had to make compromises. Having a guest room wasn't as important to us as, for example, living in an area where I was able to access the TTC without too much hassle. We almost put in an offer on a townhouse with a guest room out in the West end, but it would have meant adding nearly 45 minutes to my travel time to Urban Tapestry practices, and would be at the opposite end of the city from most of our friends and family.



Other priorities included finding a place that was within walkable distance to a grocery store, coffeeshops, bookstores. A bigger home office for me. A quieter area than our old place, which was subject to nightclub noise in the evenings and on weekends. And if at all possible, a detached house rather than semi-detached.

In the end, we got most of what we wanted. Jeff and I love both the house and the neighbourhood, and I have no idea how I'm going to stand the anticipation before being able to move in:

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house inspection

First of all, CONGRATULATIONS to my friend Julie ("jwordsmith" in Blatherchat) on the birth of her son! See this LJ entry.

As I mentioned in my last Blathering, Jeff and I bought a house on Friday night, conditional on a house inspection.

The house inspection is this afternoon. Even though I'm sure everything will be basically fine, I'm still nervous. We both want this house so badly. Thanks so much for the good wishes, everyone!

Speaking of The House, we saw it several times on the weekend. Ok, maybe more than several times. Dropped by on Saturday with Parki after brunch. Then yesterday, I decided to go explore the area and time my walk to various destinations. As a result, I ended up in front of the house THREE (3) more times over the next couple of hours. I'm surprised none of the neighbours called the police.

"Er...I'd like to report a strange Asian woman loitering on our street, just staring at my neighbour's house with an intense, yearning expression on her face..."

Bizarre-looking chocolate drink mix that my friends Bryan and Elizabeth brought me from Montreal. What were the marketing people thinking?!?

Found out it took me exactly 20 minutes to walk from the subway station; if I had opted to take the bus, it would have taken me far less, but I always prefer walking whenever possible. We live a few minutes' walk away from a 24-hour big grocery store as well as a street of interesting little shops which included a CHOCOLATE STORE and a TEA STORE! I bought some loose leaf Mate Chino, which is supposedly a traditional tea from Latin America and made from Toasted Mate with cocoa, sunflower petals, almond bits, cactus flowers and cornflower blossoms. YUM.

We live a short walk and a ridiculously short drive from my sister's place. I'm also a very short walk, run and bike ride away from a network of city parks and trails. Yay, no more running through diesel fumes from under the Gardiner Expressway!

I've just realized that I've been writing "we live" instead of "we will live" as if Jeff and I have already moved in. Guess I'm really counting on this happening.

I'm sure the house inspection this afternoon will go fine.

It will.

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house!!

WE HAVE A HOUSE! Or at least almost. We saw the house around noon yesterday. Signed the papers that evening.

I still haven't quite absorbed this fact. I keep feeling as if something's going to go wrong and we'll find out it was all a big mistake. Then again, the sale is conditional on a home inspection on Monday, so there's always that chance, isn't there? No, I won't even entertain that possibility. Everything will be fine.

Dear lord, I'm rambling. Blathering, rather.

The minute we walked inside, we knew it was our house. Lots of interesting nooks and crannies and unusual angles. As Jeff says, it looks as if a (small) giant sat inside the house and pushed out with his elbows and knees in odd places. It has a spiral staircase (a spiral staircase!!) leading up to the library. Lots of light. I loveLOVE the kitchen. Easy access to the TTC.



The house is small, with just one bedroom. We don't have a guest room. There's an office alcove which will be Jeff's office, a small solarium where I plan to grow some potted herbs to use in my cooking. No garage, just a parking pad. We're renovating part of the unfinished basement to be my office. No grass, but there's a small wooden deck out back as well a crab apple tree, and we've been told there are some perennials out there under all the snow.

Closing date is late May. I have no idea how I'm going to be able to stand the waiting. I love that house; I want to move in NOW.

Jeff and I were anxiously waiting at my sister's place when the call came from our real estate agent that the buyer had accepted our offer. We cheered and jumped up and down, and then I started crying and we all hugged each other.

I still can't believe it...

We. Have. A. House.

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