Busy week

Well I've certainly had a busy week.

The kids are on a new schedule: we leave in the morning around 8h to walk to school; I'm usually home by 8h45. Then I have another cup of coffee and spend the next three hours or so warming up the voice in stages, researching houses and agents, composing emails and calling around, while rehearsing and listening to the music I'm learning. Twice a week the schedule is a little delayed, as I swim first, and once a week I go grocery shopping by car to stock up on heavy items with our friend Florence.

The same routine holds after a break for lunch and a little reading or part of a movie... the kids are home with Maggie around 17h, which means I have longer in the afternoon than I had last year, to continue working and to make calls to Canadian places... it's working out very well. Malcolm doesn't seem to have a problem with staying for study hall, and walking home on his own with Duncan, and is doing very well academically. He's also found a friend, another boy in his class, so he's not the lone Y-chromosome. Duncan is progressing and doing well at his work, but I think he was derailed a bit by the illness of his teacher, and the supply teacher is having some discipline problems in class in general. We've linked his tv privileges to his behaviour at school and so he's lost tv twice this week... it's mostly not listening properly, and having to be told more than once to do something that he's got to work on.

I've got quite a bit of auditioning on the plate for when I get back to Canada, as well as another gig or two that are shaping up during that time... as well there is a Schubert lieder concert that I'd like to present again, here and in Canada. Nothing else is signed/sealed yet but I'll keep you posted.

I'm really feeling energized now that I can get back at regular singing, learning my pieces for the next six months, and the audition hunt. I have some German audition leads that I'm tracking down, and an Austrian one. Interestingly our friend Keith is moving from Hof, Germany where he was been living, to Leipzig, where there are more opportunities, and I hope to visit him and try to audition there. By a strange coincidence the director in Leipzig is Udo Zimmerman, the composer of Die Weisse Rose, the opera that Marta Matulewicz and I performed in Toronto a few years back. I had spoken with him by email at the time, and want to renew that connection and audition for him. How cool would that be?!

We bought our tickets for the whole gang to fly back to Brussels from Canada on the 31st of December, and will be back in Canada at the end of June 2010 for the summer. Sabena Airlines operates a direct flight in partnership with Jet Airways, and the fares are quite reasonable (for those people reading this who'd like to visit us in Brussels I would heartily recommend their direct flight).

Ok, that's it. The boys are asleep and Maggie and I are going to have a little cheese, grapes and wine for dessert.

Have a good weekend!