Not, fortunately, the Choir Invisible, though a significant percentage of members are visually impaired. (One white cane, one guide dog, and three pairs of glasses. It is a little choir. I think I constitute member number eight.)

I have joined the choir of the Universalist Unitarian Church of Halifax, of which I, at the age of 41, appear to be the youngest member. Songs we were working on at my first practice on Thursday include "The Hippopotamus Song," whose chorus extols the virtues of "Mud, mud, glorious mud." Oh, and some religious songs, only about a third of which were actually from a UU hymnal. We UUs like to borrow. There were some really nice Quaker songs.

Naturally, on the day I was to join this choir, for which I must depart directly from work to get there on time, a child at work decided it would be a good idea to vomit on me. Good thing that A. I keep a spare set of clothes at work, and B. my workplace has a washer and dryer on site. Good thing also that my small friend found one bout of vomiting sufficient. I don't like making those, "Your kid is sick. You need to come get him," calls. Though they're not as bad as filling out the "Someone has been chomping on your kid" forms, or worse, the "Your kid has been chomping on people" forms.

One would think that clients of a day care centre ought to be safe from vampiric behavior!

I can picture my young paperwork-generator singing "Blood, blood, glorious blood," as he stalks his prey across the playroom floor....

Current Mood: nerdy

I have found a source for a daily internet fix that costs me nothing and can be accessed on my lunch break at work! There is a C@P site right around the corner from my day care. A C@P site, for those of you who are not Nova Scotia literate, is basically a government-funded internet cafe with no coffee. Just a room with a bunch of computers that you can use for free for an hour at a time. More than adequate for checking email, LJ, and facebook to see what all my friends have been up to. Not enough time for the snopes message board, though. For that I need at least two hours....

Current Mood: happy

I have figured out what to do about the technical difficulties that have kept me from posting anything to LJ for the last month, and it's so simple it's fiendishly clever!

Okay, it's so simple I must be fiendishly stupid for not having figured it out before now.

See, my problem has been this. My browser likes to randomly skip back to earlier pages with no warning. A minor annoyance while just reading stuff, but catastrophic when trying to post. You see, when I sighingly page back to what I was trying to write, it has all vanished. Really, really maddening when I'd just typed out several paragraphs of terribly exciting (to me, anyway) news that I just have to share with all my friends back in Filkland.

And so I have concocted a clever plan to write out all my future LJ posts in Open Office Writer and then just cut and paste them!

It's so crazy it just might work, right?

At any rate, things are going just swimmingly here in the land of babies and bookshelves. I'm enjoying the day care job very much—it is often hectic and stressful when all the babies decide to be cranky and demanding at once, but that's offset by the built-in stress relief of getting to rock in a rocking chair and cuddle with somebody while listening to soothing music several times a day. I'm also getting in a lot mor guitar practice since I play almost every day for the kids. Now If only I could get them to understand that putting their hands on Kitty's strings and turning pages in the songbook while I'm trying to play is, well....

Me: Can you say “counterproductive”, Little Boy?

Little Boy: “Gahbagoo!”

Me: Close enough.

I think my babies are budding filkers. To them music is something to be touched and felt and interacted with. Bless their little hearts. They adore Maggie, because I will put her down on the floor and let them thump on her to their hearts' content. Kitty I'm a bit more protective of, but they can't exactly put a non-tunable bodhran so far out of tune I need to call in a professional, like they did to Kitty once.

Later today I will unpack my rhythm instruments and I will bring them to work on Monday.

Which brings me to the news that my possessions have arrived from Toronto! And my uncle has brought down my furniture from my bedroom at Mom's, so I have both a bed and a mattress to put on it. My living room chairs are currently a pair of turquoise plastic Muskoka chairs from Canadian Tire, but they're comfy and match my bedding.

My office is starting to shape up—it has space for five Sauder fake-oak bookcases, of which I currently have four installed, and I have a desk coming from my uncle's sister. But it's mostly been acting as I junk depository right now while I get the rest of the place put together.

The apartment is big for an under-$550 bachelor. How big? About the size of the kitchen in the Shulmans' house in Toronto. Which doesn't seem like much in print if you don't know that the Shulmans have a simply enormous kitchen.

I, on the other hand, have a teensy-weensy kitchen the bottom cupboards of which look like they may have been assembled by the toddler class at work. It has one of those little kitchenette units with two burners, a sink and a really dinky fridge that I'm just keeping turned off—I bought a nicer mini-fridge at Wal-Mart that has a separate freezer compartment which is big enough to accommodate a week or so's worth of frozen foods for a single chick. With a small microwave and a good-sized toaster oven (thanks Mom!) it meets my needs.

Many women (and no few men) would have seen that kitchen and turned around and run. But the apartment met so many other things on my wish list—lots of space, affordable rent, walking distance to work, church, shopping, and coffee shops with free internet, and most of all a real, functional home office! My requirements in terms of a kitchen were essentially that the place have one, and that it be mine, all mine!--insert maniacal laughter here.

Oddly enough, however, I have yet to use it to cook pork or shellfish. The first meal I prepared there was a microwave can of lentil soup.

But I have utensils now, and pots and pans, so there is a distinct possibility that tonight's supper may involve scallops. There is a grocery store right across the street from the coffee shop where I am writing this and I be they have such things.....

Some of you may have heard of the late author and motivational speaker, Leo Buscaglia. Pretty upbeat guy; big on living life to the fullest, loving each other, and hugging people a lot. What you may or may not know about him is that his book titles have the power to predict the future.

While staying for a day or so at my brother's place during Mom's and my Great Canadian Road Trip Adventure (complete with beer and Scrabble) I happened to pick up and read a bit of a Buscaglia opus titled Bus 9 to Paradise. Now, I had read this book long ago but had forgotten all about it, but the whimsical title still put a smile on my face.

LJ has now decided to switch on italics for no reason and not let me switch them off. Bear with me.

Where was I? Oh yeah. I arrived in Halifax, and after a few days of settling in and taking care of little chores like getting a cell phone, I sent out a batch of resumes. These resumes were sent out on Saturday morning, my strategy being to have them appear in various day care office inboxes first thing on Monday morning.

The employment ball having been thus sent rolling, I went down on Sunday to check out the UU church down on Inglis Street. The service was a celebration of music. Various members of the congregation shared some very diverse music, and I enjoyed it very much. The people were very friendly and welcoming and gee, it seems as though the italics have shut off as mysteriously as they began. I know I am gong to love that church!

I wandered the Halifax waterfront for many hours, discovering wonderful fair trade coffee shops, a United church with a labyrinth on its lawn open for the public to walk on, many large and lovely sailing ships, and other wonders. I fell utterly in love with downtown Halifax. This is home. This is where my spirit wants to live, I belong here.

I came home and found a message in my email inbox asking me to come in for a job interview. The day care is down on the waterfront, on Barrington Street, right across from the naval base. It's new and bright and shiny and offers many benefits and opportunities for advancement (It's part of a nationwide chain with a really cool program philosophy. Emergent curriculum. Which means letting kids be themselves and explore the things they want to explore and building the curriculum around what most fascinates them.)

I interviewed yesterday. I was offered a job today; I will be working with the infants.

Guess what number bus runs along the Halifax waterfront from Inglis Street along Barrington?

Current Mood: excited

I arrived safely at my aunt's house in Halifax late yesterday afternoon after several very enjoyable and musically rich days' travel. Filk artists whom I inflicted on my poor innocent mother included Kathy Mar, Urban Tapestry, Echo's Children, Junaita Coulson and Phil Mills. Her comment on what she heard? "You guys must have a lot of fun at these get-togethers, eh?"

Yeah, Mom, that about sums it up.

Highlights of the trip included a nice visit with my brother's family--my youngest niece was celebrating her sixth birthday--and an evening of beer and Scrabble in a motel room somewhere in Quebec.

I am now armed with a Halifax Regional Municipality transit map, and the papers for getting my Ontario government health insurance swtiched to Nova Scotia government health insurance will be on their way to me first thing in the morning. Now if only my aunt would hurry up and get me a house key made so I can come and go as I please, I could start some serious job and apartment hunting.

The job hunting part I do not expect to have any trouble with. On my way back from my OTHER aunt's house last night to get my hair cut, I passed three day care centres along one short stretch of road, all within walking distance of each other. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Current Mood: optimistic

The good news is that there's going to be a con in Halifax in October of 2010!

The bad news is that it appears to be primarily a media and gaming con without any literary tracks or filking. Kinda like Polaris without the good bits.

I could not have asked for a better last weekend in Toronto. Lying in my bed last night waiting to fall asleep I felt awash in a warm glow looking back on it. Part of that may have been due to the large glass of wine I had with dinner, but most of it was just from looking back on the weekend--and on the past several years that led up to it.

Saturday morning Merle picked me up in Andre's car and took me (and Andre) out for lunch at Indian Kitchen, where the food was delicious and in buffet form so I could try a little of everything. We had a lovely conversation. Merle is one of my very favorite people in the Toronto filk community and I don't get to spend nearly enough time with her, especially since she'd been away from filking for a while.

Then of course it was on to the Kathy Mar house concert at Sally's, which was wonderful. I had never seen Kathy in person before and I had a front-row seat--close enough to lean forward and read her lyric sheets so I could join in on unfamiliar songs! (Reading upside-down is a skill I picked up working with groups of small children.) She is such a wonderful performer and a warm, funny, and generally lovely person and I am very happy I got to meet and share music with her.

When we moved on to open filk Jane asked me to open with Filk You, which she wanted Kathy to hear, and later on I also sang Mavis the Vegan Sadist, which she seemed to enjoy. In addition to the songs I "absolutely had to do for Kathy!" according to my friends, I did Farewell to Nova Scotia (ironic under the circumstances), my Julie Czerneda homage Paul's Song, and Blue Boat Home, which is a bit of found filk courtesy of the new UU hymnal supplement. Being able to share my own repertoire with a songwriter whose work I deeply admire was a privilege as well as being a lot of fun. And of course there was much wonderful music made by all the filkers present and much excellent food enjoyed. I also brought in some of my books and sold several copies, including a set to Kathy herself. She had me sign one of them to "just another filker". I love people who have loads of talent without having huge egos.

Then on Sunday I went to church as usual, put my farewells and thanks for eight years of friendhip and fellowship in the Joys and Concerns book to be read out during the service, and said my personaly goodbyes to many of my friends there. And as my last hurrah as a member of that congregation served as banner-carrier in the Pride Parade. I was joined in the parade as usual by my friend Miguel, who as usual dragged along several of his friends to be honorary UUs for the day.

And when I got home from the parade, the family I have been nannying for for the past almost-13 years took me out for a farewell dinner at Moxie's, where I enjoyed the above-mentioned glass of wine and an excellent Tandoori salmon salad. They presented me with a lovely, moving thank-you letter tucked inside a goodbye card which happened to be exactly the same one that I got from the filkers at Kathy's concert. I found that hilarious. 

There was much reminiscing done between my boss and I about the girls' early days, serving to nicely embarrass the girls, some discussion of future plans, pictures taken, good food enjoyed--though I must say Moxie's blackberry-apple crisp is not nearly as nice as Phil and Jane's fruit crisps.

All in all a wonderful weekend spent with wonderful people, people who have been a very big part of my life for many years now. People I will miss, and people who will miss me. A weekend in which many special memories were made to go with all the other very special memories I have of these wonderful people.

My life in Toronto has been full and rich and wonderful and I leave it behind not with regret but with satisfaction. I have made friendships here of the sort that last a lifetime, I have done good, worthwhile, and satisfying work and I've become a better and more complete person for what I have done and learned here.

Farewell, my beloved city. Farewell my dear friends. Farewell to the brilliant and beautiful children who have bought so much light into my life. We'll meet again.

A new adventure begins with the new weekend....

I thought these were funny so I thought I'd share:

http://message.snopes.com/showpost.php?p=976373&postcount=409

Scroll down for Star Wars, Star Trek, and Dr. Seuss!

Current Mood: amused

Early detection of cancer is a very, very, very good thing.

My mother called me this morning to let me know she'd just gotten back from visiting her little sister in Canso. Brenda is home from the hospital in Halifax, having had the surgery to deal with that little tumor in her kidney. The docs decided to just take out the whole kidney, which since the tumor was really small and localized, means no chemo!

Not only did she get to keep her arm, she even gets to keep her hair. And not have to deal with all that nasty chemo-related sickness. Okay, she's out a kidney, but the one she's got left is in fine working order and picking up the slack quite well. She's apparently healing up just fine--she and Mom went out for beers and stuff.

I don't know how my mom would have dealt with losing her little sister so soon after her husband. I thank Whomever May Be Listening from the bottom of my heart that they caught Brenda's cancer when it was so very, very, very treatable.

Current Mood: grateful

Today my other boss--that is, the girls' father--drove me out to Oakville so I could retrieve my remaining books from my ex-publisher's garage, saving them from the imminent threat of recyclement. We were supposed to be there for 9:30 am, because Laura had somewhere she needed to be at 10 and Steve had other commitments later in the day. So naturally we got stuck in traffic on the QEW, thanks to road construction we could have avoided if one of us had thought to check the traffic reports. Called Laura from Steve's cell, arranged to have garage left open if she had to leave before we got there.

End result: we were fifteen minutes behind schedule, but Laura was still there so I got to talk to her a bit--life post-LTDBooks is treating her well, she's getting her masters in biological anthropology and is getting ready to go on a dig in Hungary. And I have about 150 very nice trade paperback SF-romance books to find homes for.

Pleas to the gang at the snopes.com message board have borne some fruit, accounting for perhaps ten books so far if each taker wants both volumes. I'm also not above farming copies out to used bookstores if that's what it takes to put them in the hands of people who will read them. Anyone in the filk community who would like a book or two is encouraged to contact me at ncmcphee@yahoo.ca.

And while I was typing the above, blessed silence has settled over my house. My employers have come home and spirited away the seven twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls who were upstairs messing up my kitchen, being generally loud and silly, and doing mysterious, I'm-probably-better-off-not-knowing things with a couple of toy snow shovels. The stated purpose of the outing is to fill the girls full of ice cream--a plan of dubious wisdom given the level of hyperactivity already being displayed--but I am somewhat afraid to go upstairs and check on whether or not the shovels are still there.

Okay, actually I'm afraid to go upstairs and see what has been done to the kitchen.

This morning, while watching out the window for Talya's carpool (not really necessary but a habit of long standing) I spotted a little brown bunny hopping across our driveway. It hopped into our flowerbed, poked around a little, then hopped away around the corner of the house.

Talya, a blase thirteen, maintained her post in the front foyer and showed no interest in looking at the critter. Eleven-year-old Kylie, on coming downstairs to hop into her father's car for her carpool, expressed great disappointment that she'd missed the little visitor. So naturally, it hopped back around the corner and proceeded to explore the front yard some more right after she'd left.

It looked like a young bunny, maybe about half grown--it had a gangly-adolescent sort of shape to it--and was a light reddish brown in color. Not sure how to tell if it was a wild bunny or a wandered-off pet, but one does not often see rabbits casually roaming the neighborhood in broad daylight around here. (Squirrels in great abundance, but not rabbits.)

Current Mood: surprised

With less than two months left before I head off into the sunrise--or at least in that general direction--I decided today to pack up all my winter clothing, fancy duds, and spare bedding and stuff it all into my old trunk from college. Aiding me in this undertaking were several giant plastic bags of the sort you can seal airtight and suck all the air out of with a vaccum cleaner, thus compressing everything to one-third its normal size.

I discovered two things. One is that airtight bags bought at Dollarama are not always as airtight as all that. But only one of the bags kept wanting to re-expand, and I figured it would behave itself once it was stuffed into the trunk with everything else. The other thing that I discovered was that when you suck all the air out of a bag of clothes, you also suck out most of the flexibility and end up with something that feels quite a bit like a shrink-wrapped bit of lumpy wood. There was, technically, plenty of room for the last one, but do you think I could get it wedged in?

It ended up getting stuffed on top, making the trunk's till lay considerably less than flat and reducing the available space for other odds-and-ends I shouldn't need before I'm situated in an apartment and can send for my stuff.

In the process of clearing out the junk from the trunk in preparation for packing, I also discovered some things I didn't know I owned, like a crystal candy dish that I'm pretty sure has been sitting in the bottom of that trunk for the past fifteen years. I think it was a gift, but I can't remember for what occasion or from whom.

Oh--as a complete non-sequitur, does anyone in the local filk community want a barely-used triple guitar stand? I've only got one guitar and she doesn't even fit in the stand properly, so there's not much point in hauling it all the way to Nova Scotia with me.

...where I had a wonderful time, debuted several songs, got my hands on Phil's new CD, and enjoyed watching Kathleen Sloane, Peter Ellis and Merle von Thorne get into a bidding war over my auction donation. And I got a call from my mother.

My aunt Brenda got through the surgery on her arm and shoulder in a manner that even impressed her surgeon, and is already recovering at home with various members of our huge extended family taking turns taking care of her. Removal of the itty-bitty tumor in her kidney was postponed due to somebody else having a more immediate and urgent need of the surgeon. The doctors are not worried and think they can afford to let Brenda's arm heal a bit now before they start carving her up any more.

And a resounding thank you to the Canadian health care system, which is paying for all this wonderful life-and-limb saving work. I do not begrudge them one single cent of their cut of my taxes.

Current Mood: grateful

Two weeks ago or so, my aunt Brenda broke her arm. The bone broke in an awkward place--almost to the shoulder--and the only way to cast it would have been to put her in a body cast. Nasty, right?

In the course of examining her, though, the doctors at her little hometown hospital found something else. Cancer. It had started in her kidney, they said, and spread to the bones. That's the kind of medical news that has people rushing to get their affairs in order. It's also the kind of medical news that gets one packed off to bigger and better hospitals.

My mother just called me today with the latest news. (She's been incommunicado for a bit while hanging out at the hospital with her little sister.) It seems that the hospital in Canso overstated things just a tiny bit. Brenda has cancer in her kidney, all right. One itty-bitty tumor that they might not even have to take out the whole kidney to get rid of. And she has cancer in a bone. One bone. The one that broke. They're planning to take out that section of bone and do a joint replacement on the shoulder, so she probably doesn't need to lose the arm.

The surgery and other treatment she's facing is nothing to sneeze at, but her prognosis is a lot better than we'd initially been led to believe!

Now, prior to Brenda's accident, she was completely asymptomatic. No pain, no funny stuff going on with her pee, no indication that anything at all was wrong. The only reason the cancer was caught now, instead of much later on when it had had time to get much worse and much less treatable, was because she fell and broke her arm.

Sometimes, we end up having to be thankful for the weirdest things....

Current Mood: thankful

So I've been trying to learn to play "Paul's Song", my little Czerneda-inspired ditty which phillip2637  and sexybass  helped me enchord (is that a word?) a few weeks back, and I've fallen afoul of another pitfall of being out of practice- my damned calluses are gone! I didn't really notice when I was practicing songs I had already been able to play before the Great Practicing Hiatus of 2008, but trying to work through this one it's really noticeable.

It was starting to sound pretty nice tonight before I had to stop due to sore fingers, though.

The other thing I've discovered? The irritation from practicing guitar without calluses makes typing on a computer feel really funny.....

I suppose if I need to take a break from practicing I can work on some songwriting, though.

Ahem

Her name is Mavis, the vegan sadist
And she's a friend to you and me
She's the world's first dominatrix
Who is completely cruelty free!

Verses pending.

I have just rectified the unfortunate fact that I did not have a Star Trek song in my repertoire. It's a country song.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

 As some of you already know, I'd gone a long, long time without practicing or playing guitar for one reason and another, and when I finally started getting back into it I was more than a little rusty. Well, the degree of skill loss was sufficiently frustrating to lead to still more procrastination on the practicing front, as I couldn't get Kitty to sound anywhere near as good as I know she can sound...

Anyway, the other night I decided I was going to get in a good hour of practice no matter what, and I picked Kitty up to tune her, and one of her strings just plain wouldn't tune. The thing was dead. Okay, not surprising, as she hadn't been re-strung once in the whole time I wasn't using her. So Sunday afternoon between church services (Sunday school teaching in the morning and actually going to service in the evening) I took Kitty in to my neighborhood music store to get re-strung.

Oh, God, the difference! I had no idea exactly how dead those poor old strings were, until I heard the new ones! She sounds like a whole new guitar!

So this post is my sincere and abject apology to Ms. Kitty Taylor, the finest little guitar in filkdom, for my heinous and unforgivable neglect. I vow to keep her properly strung, tuned, and exercised in the future.

And now, back to working on my chord changes!

Current Mood: guilty

No, I don't literally want to toss my computer out the window. In point of fact, I want to throw Windows out of my laptop. I seem to have gone over to the Linux side of the force.

It started with my desire for a netbook--a teeny little computer that would fit nicely in the pocket of Kitty's gig bag. And my desire to move to Halifax, and my desire to attend FKO this year--not all three of which, I thought, were financially feasable at the same time. I determined, however, that my savings for the move were going sufficiently well that I could afford both the netbook and FKO if I got a refurbished netbook running Linux, as opposed to a brand-new one running Windows.

Well, partly it also started when I bought my laptop and started familiarizing myself with the starving-author-unfriendly aspects of Microsoft software licensing. What do they mean I'm not allowed to use the version of their software that came with the computer for business purposes? Or that I have to buy the "Small business" version of their office software that doesn't have one single application I need that their home and student version doesn't also have? 

Well no I don't, thanks to Open Office, my open-source gateway drug.

Anyway, I have had my netbook a week, and in spite of the tininess of the keyboard (which I'm already getting used to) I haven't even turned on my laptop in that time--except for a few minutes earlier today to email myself some manuscripts and filk songs so I could have them on the netbook. You see, the netbook loads ever so much faster. And connects to the internet faster, and stays connected better. And the desktop setup is so much more streamlined, not to mention more aesthetically pleasing. And then there's the whole less-likely-to-catch-viruses aspect....

You see, I'm ashamed to admit this, but my laptop has been antivirus-fand security-free ever since the trial version of Norton that came with it ran out. I'd meant to download Kapersky, really I had....

I think I've just about made up my mind. I could just do a memory upgrade on the netbook and make it my primary computer, I guess, but do I really want to try to write novels on a keyboard that's about the ideal size for a five-year-old?

Alas, I have no tech skills, and thus no clue how to change operating systems other than phoning the Geek Squad. And I hear they expect you to give them money for that sort of thing.

Hey, didn't this whole Linux thing start because I didn't want to spend more money?

Current Mood: geeky

So in preparation for my eventual move back to Nova Scotia, I'm paring down my possessions, including (gasp!) my library. And one category of books I'm getting rid of is all  my Star Wars books. Now, I'm a Star Wars fan from way, way back, and a die-hard one. I even liked the prequels. Well, the first two prequels, anyway. Not even my devotion could survive Padme's sudden and inexplicable fall into whimpering wimpdom. Star Wars heroines are supposed to kick butt; it's the law!

The original series characters are old childhood friends of mine, and I'd been following their continuing adventures in book after book for years--but then at about the time that the New JedI Order series came to a close, I just stopped. Haven't bought a new book in a couple of years now. Haven't re-read any of the ones I have in about as long. Not sure why. And I've got to start the paring-down process somewhere, and a series I've stopped actively following and which comprises a big chunk of my library is a good place to start. All my SW hardcovers are now sitting in Perrier boxes waiting to be dropped off at Goodwill, the paperbacks soon to follow.

A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. But it's hard to let go. Star Wars--the very first movie--was what got me into science fiction in the first place. Princess Leia, the buttkicking heroine who took over her own rescue, was my absolute idol as a nine-year-old girl. I blame these movies for turning me into a space-opera-romance writer. (Okay, my mom's romance novels had something to do with it too....) And then there's the nagging problem of parting with any book I enjoyed the first time--what if I really, really, really want to read it again someday, and it isn't there?

The problem is, I've already gotten rid of almost every book I had that that dilemma did not apply to. And I need to start somewhere or I'll end up spending so much money sending books home I won't be able to afford to send me.

Such is the life of a bibliophiliac packrat.

Current Mood: nostalgic

I suspected this was going to happen.

As a way of jump-starting my muse again I've been participating in National Novel Wrting Month. 50,000 words worth of a novel between the 1st and 30th of November is the goal. Well, I'm bowing out roughly 27,000 words in, and not because I don't think I can do it. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty certain I can. I'm behind, but know exactly what I'd have to do to catch up, and it's eminently doable. The problem is--I've reached the point where making word count the priority has become deeply counerproductive to the telling of the story. I find myself pushing ahead with plot threads I already know I'm going to need to go back and change. Or forging blindly ahead with no idea where I'm going because I can't afford the time to figure it out.

I don't think I'm a 50,000 word a month writer. But that's okay.

Current Mood: mellow