Getting ready to leave

I haven't posted for a while, for a number of reasons; the most prominent one is that I haven't had much time to myself, now that the boys and Maggie are home.  But I think I can take an opportunity to write something prior to our departure tomorrow.
 

 
The choir concert at the end of June was a big success, and many people commented on how much the junior choir has done to raise the level of musicianship since last year.  Duncan sang much of the music from memory, and liked the parts of the performance that involved movement and choreography.  Malcolm has been very lucky; Bruce told us how he didn't stop singing when his voice changed, and Penni has supported our project of trying to let him gently sing through the deepening of his voice, and he has been able to move from soprano to alto last year, arriving this spring in the baritone register.  Three years of solfège, flute and junior choir participation have made his quite a good reader, and Penni our choral director has told him that she wants him in the senior choir this coming autumn.  Being the only low register voice in the junior choir (Duncan and Clement both still sing alto) the separation between him and the others is pronounced, so one could hear him clearly throughout, and many people congratulated him afterwards on his well-intoned sound.  Penni also has encouraged him by giving him some vocal solos to try out, and he did very well!

As well the concert was the debut of a new arrangement of a Haydn piece for three flutes and orchestra taken from part 3 of "Creation".  I couldn't find a piano arrangement for the orchestra part and so commissioned Piers Maxim (in Malvern) to write one for us, and Malcolm, Joëlle and Karalyn
played it for the first time.  It went very well; I'll post a link to it when I get the video file. 

The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy with socializing.  We had a great dinner of quiche Lorraine with our friends Oliver and Isabelle, and their boys showed ours how to play cricket in the backyard.  Duncan still holds the bat a bit like a Louisville Slugger, but that's to be expected.  As well we had a nice pizza dinner with Julia and Andrew and Karalyn, prior to their holiday departure.  We also had a nice drink this past week with Luisa, the Portuguese coordinator of the garden allotment / compost sharing site, and Raoul, her Ghent-born husband who lived most of his life in North America; they are a very nice couple and live just a few houses up the street.

But the socializing is over for the moment, and today we are completing the last items on our departure checklist.  Yesterday we washed, vacuumed out and refueled the car, packed the suitcases and did our shopping.  As we are driving south this time instead of flying, one might hope that we can take more with us than last time, but in fact we are having to be judicious about how much we transport, as "Schnelli" doesn't have a huge amount of cargo space.  I have looked into small cargo trailers but as this is our first trip we will try "travelling light" and see how it goes.  Fortunately the clothing requirements are modest for three weeks on the beach, and consist mostly of bathing suits and snorkeling gear.  We will each take along a nice shirt (and Maggie a skirt as well) that will be appropriate for the opera that we will attend at the end of our trip (in Graz) but apart from that it's going to be a pretty casual affair...

I have to finalize some of my packing items; we have a roll made up of essential spices, my chef's knife, a microplane rasp for garlic and cheese, an instant-read thermometer, and other small kitchen items.  Beer is plentiful and cheap in Croatia, and the local red wine is quite nice if you chill it enough.  I might pass by the tobacconist's for a few more small cigars today; those are always nice after dinner on the terrace.  We've packed a few small family games and of course the cribbage board, so are looking forward to some epic game nights.  I am really hoping that Catan will fit into our trunk...  The ipad and our phones are coming, mostly so we can do our online banking, but no movies or television, I don't think; we can all do with a technology break.  I've also got to figure out how to fit 25 books into the trunk.  I don't like e-readers, so I'll have to manage somehow.

We are going to update the ipods for each of the boys so that they each have something to listen to in the car.  Duncan no doubt will choose 20 hours of Michael Jackson, 90s rewind dance music and modern french rap songs, while Malcolm tends more towards 70s rock and roll and funk, 1930s jazz and audiobooks... while it may seem a little bit antisocial, it does help on long car rides when you have two largish boys in the back seat to have individually-customized song lists available.

Maggie has her last physiotherapy session of the month this morning; she will be able to resume them when we return, but she should be in fine shape for climbing all those stairs up from the beach.  I am heading out shortly to hill up the potatoes over at the garden allotment; the strawberries are largely done, but the rutabagas, radishes and beetroot need watering.  We planted our garden rather late so we are hoping to get a harvest of roquette lettuce today; otherwise I guess it will bolt in the warm weather.  I have told the other gardeners to help themselves if they would like, to keep it under control.

What else?  Oh yes, the summer haircuts have happened.   Malcolm cut his ponytail off and mailed it to the "locks for life" foundation to make wigs, as a cancer awareness-raising activity.

Not to be outdone, I decided to shave off my moustache for the first time in about three years.  I have been reading the score, writing out the words for Masetto and listening to Don Giovanni recordings this past week, in advance of the rehearsals and performances coming up in October, and have the feeling that as Masetto is supposed to be a young peasant groom, I'd do well to try out being clean-shaven again, if it can (ahem) shave a few years off my age, at least from the audience's point of view.  If I have to grow a moustache back for the Baron Wurmerhelm character for December, no problem.

What else?  Kiki heads off to the cat-spa for the month; we found someone close by who will take her, and Kiki has had her injections to go outside, so I am sure that she will have a great time exploring the garden there.  It really means that we can avoid feeling nervous about keys and arranging for access to our apartment every few days; last summer we needed to call a locksmith twice because of a key mix-up, so this year we are saving ourselves the stress, putting the fish on an automatic feeder system and hoping for the best for our terrace plants.  It's likely that they will cook, but we'll try to get our landlord to come in an water them, at least on the days that he is here.

Ok, I guess that's about it.  We stay over in Switzerland tomorrow night, and hope to take some nice pictures of the Alps; then it's Trieste on the eastern edge of Italy the next evening, and we will be in Croatia by Friday, and on the beach on Saturday morning!  Here are some reminders, from the blog archive of July 2011...