Return to January routines

It's now Tuesday evening and we are more or less back in the normal routines.

Sunday was only the 5th of January, so we were a day early taking down the tree (we usually do that on Epiphany) but we wanted to get things sorted on the last day of vacation while we had time.  The tree is currently sitting in the driveway waiting until the tree pickup on the 16th, next to a load of firewood that I need to chainsaw into shorter lengths so that it will fit in the stove.

It was nice to get all of the decorations safely packed away, to take the tree outside, change all of the table linens, and get all of those pine needles swept up and thrown into the compost.  The cats are indoor/outdoor cats now, and so they gave the tree no special attention this year, which was nice, but even without their help, the needles were everywhere.

On the topic of routines, Duncan has managed to awaken on his own both yesterday and today in time to take the morning bus to school; that's a good sign, as neither Maggie nor I are interested in badgering him to wake up when he ignores his 6:20 alarm clock.  He has had some mixed results come in this week from tests that he wrote before the break, so it's back to a more structured studying environment for him, at the dining room table so that we can keep an eye on him... sometimes external authority is a good thing for keeping one disciplined.  He is rather focussed on painting tiny models of orcs and knights and dragons, and I get the sense that he would do that eighteen hours a day if he could manage it.  He's voluntarily leaving his iphone plugged in downstairs when he goes to bed, to avoid the temptation to stay up late, which is a good thing.  I have been doing the same.  In my case that means that I have to get up and get dressed and go downstairs if I want to read the news in the morning.

Maggie had a restful holiday and got lots of embroidery time in, so seems to be well recharged.  This week she has been in training sessions and meetings yesterday but had students for the first time today.  This evening she spent many hours before and after dinner, reviewing the assignments that they just handed in, and so I set her up with the second larger monitor so she could have more computing space.  Almost none of these major assignments from her 11/12 year old students are on paper; they are all "written" on computers and submitted electronically, so she likes having a bigger display to read them.

We didn't see much of Malcolm around the end of the holidays; he celebrated NYE with friends, and then was visiting Camille's mother for a couple of days near the end of the holidays.  On the last weekend of vacation he had rehearsals with his band in Brussels, and afterwards went straight to Boom to get ready for the resumption of classes.  One of the band projects over the holiday was to make a kind of good-naturedly goofy promo clip for their band, kind of like something you would see in the 1960s from the Beatles.  "Strawberry Storm" has been on hiatus for quite a while, and now they are preparing for a gig or two in Brussels later on this spring.  As well they are hoping to promote themselves more aggressively, so some video is always good... Here's the clip if you are interested.  Take note that it's in French; there are no English subtitles as yet but Malcolm is working on them.

I went running yesterday for the first time since New Years' Day; it was absolutely gorgeous out, seven degrees and bright sunshine.  Yoshi and I did the shorter 9km route here in Wavre, but it was a good training run: a relatively slow 5:55 per km and my heart rate never hit the top zone, which is ideal.  I was fighting something like a cold this weekend so was happy to get outside after a few days off.  Kiana wanted to run today, so I went out again on the same route, with Yoshi and Osa.  It wasn't as sunny but was maybe a little warmer than yesterday.

Afterwards I decided to do some singing for the first time since the Minimes concert on December 15th, and did a nice long warm-up.  It's always nice to do some vocal exercises; it's a bit like doing stretching or calisthenics, just to limber yourself up and make your voice remember what it's like to make sound throughout your entire range.  Then I had a brief look through the two Bach cantatas that are coming up in February (they will be quite challenging).

I also also talked with Bruce on the phone about how I should approach teaching my new student, who for privacy reasons I'll call "E".  She is one of the talented singers from St. John's, and we have arranged for me to go there and give a lesson starting this Thursday.  "E" has been singing a lot in the lower part of her voice but I am hoping to do some exercises that will open up the top of her range a bit.  In modern pop music women never sing high, so there is every possibility that she has some notes up there that she rarely uses.  I have direct experience of teaching male voices but not as much with female ones, and Bruce had lots of good advice on how to approach female singers.  The coordinator has already said that she will do some "advertising" and try to get some more students to do private lessons around the same time, which will make it worth my while to go there. 

One good thing is that even in the cold weather when the scooter is not suitable, Maggie has no issues taking the bus in the morning, and then coming home with me by car after lessons are finished at 18:00.  So we'll see how that goes in the new year.

Other than that there is little to report.  Yoshi is doing fine; he ran with Maggie on Sunday, and with me both yesterday and today, so he is certainly sleeping well!  And the cats are liking the fire, which I have going during most waking hours, if I'm home... it does a good job of heating the whole house, in fact...