Windy Friday in Toronto

Bruce arrived back home in Toronto on Monday, and we have spent a fair bit of time doing work around the house.  It was great to see him, and congratulate him on another successful production with Pacific Opera Victoria.

I was pretty busy with running and swimming, and yard work.  As I wrote earlier, I had already recovered a ton of wood from the tree that fell across the street in the ice storm, and on Tuesday I set to work building a sawbuck out of some reclaimed wood to make the cutting of stove lengths easier.

I had a busy day on Tuesday and now am nearly done the cutting and splitting.  Not counting the extra bits still to be split from the wood that came from Bruce's front yard tree last fall, it looks to me like I've gathered, cut, split and stacked at little more than two cubic metres, or a little over two face cords.  There's easily another cord there to be done, maybe two, so he's going to be set for firewood for a long time.  (I hope to burn some of it next May when I come back to do Elijah, so it's not a totally selfless act.)

This afternoon Bruce had to leave again to go to Ottawa to adjuticate a singing festival and will see a concert that Dina Namer is playing, but he will be back at the end of the weekend.  Right now it's nice and sunny in Toronto but extremely windy; Environment Canada has said that we could get gusting winds at speeds up to 110 km/h.  Fortunately the big tree in the backyard is well taken care of by arbourists every year and has some supporting cables on it to keep it from splitting, so I hope that everything will be ok. 

Here are some photos of the end of the show run:

cast and crew goofing off at intermission on Saturday evening

my nephew (who attended with my sisters) having a photo op
with me and with Adam Fisher, who played Prince Paris

Adam, Beste Kalender (who played Helene) and yours truly at the show closing

It was sad to say goodbye to everyone from the team, but that's how it goes... I do hope that someday I will sing with this company and these actors again.  But singing has been the last thing on my mind recently as I haven't been feeling so well; since Wednesday I have been in terrible shape, with coughing and sneezing and a core croaky throat.  I went finally to see a voice specialist yesterday, and he scoped everything out.  No signs on infection in the throat, sinuses or nasal passages; the vocal folds are a little swollen from coughing but they are fine.  The voice doctor said that it might be a viral bug, but most likely it is an extreme allergic reaction to all of the tree pollen that the air is loaded with.  The trees have been so suppressed by the cold that with a sudden rush of warm weather they reacted with the release of many allergens.  I never seem to get allergy symptoms in Belgium but I guess the plant species are different?

I did manage to warm up and sing a bit yesterday, and with the help of my saline sinus rinse I did sing through the Brahms Requiem a couple of times today.  It will work, although I have to be a bit cautious in parts.  I hope that I can get through the rehearsal tomorrow without too much trouble, and of course that I can recover by Sunday.  I am feeling better now, so fingers are crossed!  It takes a lot of long slow warming up to get the voice rolling, so tonight it's going to be an early night with a very early wake-up, as I have to rehearse starting at 10h!

Duncan has been away on a school trip all week to the Ardeche region of France, and Maggie will be picking him up after midnight tonight in Brussels.  I'm sure he's going to be completely toasted.  Malcolm I think will stay in Brussels and do stuff with his band and his friends over the weekend.  We also had a couple of birthdays this week: Maggie's dad celebrated his birthday on Wednesday, and our friend Raoul is celebrating his today...  it's just another ten days until Malcolm's 19th birthday, which I expect will involve another facetime shared dinner...