Sick house

We've been quite a sick house this week.  Duncan had some sort of GI bug that sent him home from school for two days early last week, but apart from a cough he seemed ok.  Either he got something else or it stayed with him, and he's spent all of this week at home with something that involves stomach cramps and fatigue.  We had to post-pone his birthday party, originally scheduled for tonight, by one week, and he is deeply disappointed.

I did my best to take care of him, but wasn't terribly capable as a nursemaid myself, as I was bowled over myself with an aggressive streptococcus infection of the throat and ear, which left me dizzy, fatigued, and by the time I finally made it to see the ENT (or "ORL" en francais) specialist tuesday, so feverish that I was barely coherent, in either language.  Thankfully Maggie drove me to the doctor, because at one point I was convinced that we were in England and she should be on the left side of the road.  Quite scary...

The antibiotics, iodine throat rinses and antiseptic lozenges - along with lots of fluids and sleep - do seem to have done their work, though, and I'm glad especially since I have to sing some Bach this coming Sunday!  I hope to be able to sing the general rehearsal tomorrow morning, and follow it up with the performance.  Fortunately it's just two very lyric dancelike arias; no "tremble ye wretched sinners" type stuff in this cantata, for me at least, so that's lucky. 

Of more concern is Duncan; I hope he is in good enough shape to play Capitaine VonTrapp tomorrow; they've been rehearsing it for months.  He does have another chance, as their spectacle La Melodie de Bonheur plays again next Saturday as part of the larger drama festival but he really doesn't want to let his fellow actors down.  Joelle from our congregation is organizing a concert as part of her conservatory programme, and we might just be able to convince Malcolm to play a flute piece in it, to help him prepare for his flute exam this year.  One of his pieces chosen by his teacher is the Beethoven Minuet in G minor, which to the uninitiated may seem innocuous, but the sound of him practicing it has had Maggie walking around the house muttering "What's his line? / He's a fake / And he doesn't know the territory! / Look, whaddaya talk, whaddaya talk, whaddaya talk, whaddaya talk?"

In other news, Hugh and Sheila should be home any moment; their flight was scheduled for today, so soon they will no doubt be re-established in their home on Skootamatta.  Safe journey to them and bon weekend to all.

Spring has sprung...

Well, sort of.  It has been unseasonably cool in Brussels so far this April, with temperatures hovering around 10 degrees for much of the time.  Usually April is much warmer, but it seems that we have traded with Canada for the moment.  Yet there are still some unmistakably Belgian signs of the end of winter, such as the many flowering trees.  Frequently when people ask me which commune I live in, and receive the answer of "Watermael-Boitsfort", there is a gasp of appreciation, and a mention of the many beautiful trees that show their colors this time of year.

It has been raining a lot, and this is a rainy country to begin with.  Even the cars and trucks seem to be sprouting grass...

Speaking of cars, I took the bit between my teeth this week and braved the line-ups for the control technique that is required whenever a car is sold, and yearly after cars reach a certain age.  Without a passing grade they will not allow you to renew your licence, which means that one can be confident that all cars on the road have undergone comprehensive tests of their CO2 emissions, tire tread depth, headlamp luminosity, braking and stability and so on, so I should think it would reduce the risk of accidents due to mechanical problems.

The battery of tests themselves only took perhaps ten minutes, but the lineups can be really staggering, so I showed up shortly after 7am to be near the front of the line, and as it was still had to wait until 8:20 or so until it was all done.  And... we passed.

This weekend was a busy one socially, with a birthday party for our friend Mike Hill friday evening, a big curry dinner with our friends the Wismars last night, and of course church this morning.  Tomorrow evening I sing through my Bach cantata with the strings, in preparation for the performance of Cantata 87 next Sunday.  I also have quite a bit of work to do getting the french text for La Belle Meunière into shape for three weeks from now, and must make up a little book like my english one that I've used to good effect in Canada.  Then I must start getting my head around Count Almaviva from La Nozze di Figaro in time for some rehearsals to take place this coming month, for autumn performances in Flanders.  I am also waiting for the last pieces from John Burge, to complete his opera The Auction, which plays in Campbellford at the end of June; the good news is that my part is essentially unchanged from last September when we workshopped Act I, so that should make it a matter of reaquainting myself with the work rather than learning it.  I did coach it - and recorded those coachings - so I can always go back to those as a reference if needed.  So I have lots to do.

Happy end of the weekend, and I hope you have a pleasant last week of April... and I hope it warms up here!

Friday the 13th

 

It's a gorgeous day here in Brussels, sunny and 14 degrees.  I have to go out in a little bit to pick up a few things at the grocery, and so I'm going to profiter de la soleil and make a nice long walk of it.

This past week has been quite a luxury; after a crazy few months I'm happy to have some down time, and have done all sorts of self-indulgent things, like going to the sunday market, noodling about on jazz guitar, reading undemanding and purely entertaining novels, cooking rabbit in cherry beer and spending unstructured time with the family.  Elmore Leonard is part of my summer vacation ritual, and while I don't have any new books by him handy, I've been staying up late watching the third season of his fantastic tv series, Justified.  Timothy Oliphant is awesome as Marshall Raylan Givens.

Duncan has been in a multi-sport stage at Maggie's school all week, which is nice, because he has had a chance to socialize with tons of other kids in English, and Malcolm has been pretty lazy, although I did crack the whip with him in flute practice yesterday.  He pushes back a fair bit in the moment, but then five minutes later asks me to help him solve a problem with something else in the next piece, it's interesting.  As I've said before I think the transverse flute is a lucky choice for him, because of all instruments the support and phrasing is closest to singing, and of course methods of practice and memorization are pretty much the same no matter what instrument you are playing.  He had the chance to see and hear the flute trio in the Haydn Creation last week, which I was very glad of; I hope it inspires him a little.

Maggie has been home as well, and it has been nice to spend time together, although unfortunately she has been fighting a losing battle with the flu, and is currently resting in a darkened room.  I have gotten off fairly easily on the illness front so far, since my symptoms were largely muscle aches and a bit of fatigue, but she is really knocked out, and after fighting her way through all week, she finally gave in today.  She's been working in her classroom most of this week, preparing her history curriculum for the next few months, which begins with the Normal Conquest of 1066 and carries on until the Renaissance.  Quite a chunk of stuff to summarize, I would imagine!

I have also done a few work things; I reviewed and updated my biographies in english, french and flemish, designed some posters and flyers for the upcoming Schubert concert in Brussels, and wrote some thank-you letters for projects already completed.
 
There was also some basic geek work; my main hosting service MobileMe is being discontinued, and being replaced by iCloud.  The upside is that the newer service has additional features, and is free, but the downside is that hosting and photo galleries are no longer supported.  That means exporting all of my webpages to folders, and I must now port them over to another storage location.  I've already got free storage from both Sympatico and Scarlet, our internet providers in Canada and Belgium, so it's unlikely that I'll have to incur any additional cost, but it still takes time.  Then I updated the OS on both of our computers to the newest version, bought some new applications and did some hard drive verification and dumped a bunch of old files.  Now that high-resolution digital photography is so easy to do, and that much of my music library has been digitized (mostly for cross-atlantic portability), it's amazing how much stuff is hanging around on our hard drives... and I don't own a video camera!  If I did I can only imagine how much more storage we'd require.  As it is I have lots of audio recordings of concerts and coachings, and these are valuable to keep, but they are a challenge to manage.

Now I've got to head out and pick up Duncan from his sport stage... here's wishing you a fantastic weekend with lots of good luck...