Saturday, March 04, 2006

So this violist walks into a bar....

So I've decided to get into this whole blog thing. Again. I think my last attempt was unsuccessful because a) I made the site myself so it just meant waaaaay too much upkeep for someone as busy and important as I, and b) because I thought my life was boring. Well, I've decided to bore the world again, and am really going to try to document the mundane. So here we go.

Let's start with Tuesday. I was feeling footloose and fancy free. I deposited my pension cheque in the bank, and was rich beyond all imagining, and agreed to go dancing with my crazy Chinese friend Chonghua. I don't know how she ever passed TOEFL, as half of what she says is either incomprehensible or cursing. "Katya! Why the fuck you fucking do that!" And, our quartet made a smashing appearance at the York Club, one of those swanky private clubs for really rich people. There were four acts from our school there, Phillip Chiu a pianist, Kornel Wolak, a clarinettist, the Three Young Tenors (these three tenor guys), and us. We were the cap to the evening, and played during dessert. Anyways, they loved us. Because we're hot. After that we met up with Tom and Peter at the Duke for a drink, as they had been attending a seminar on how to build straw bale houses right accross the street from the York Club. It's a skill we will need to know for our commune. So I went to sleep feeling pretty good.

And woke up not so good. I had a fever, sore throat, stuffy nose - the works. I only get sick about once a year, but when I go down, it's bad. And this was bad. Unfortunatly, we had a quartet coaching with Steve at 9 am that it was too late to cancel, so I hauled myself out of bed and over to school. I don't remember much of the coaching, other than it was too early to play in tune, and I almost killed Ingunn over an up-bow (I'm a belligerent sick person). As soon as our coaching was over, I told Michelle to tell our Canadian Rep teacher I was sick and went home, took a dose of delicious (disgusting) NyQuil, and went to bed. I woke up once at about 8 pm for another dose of delicious (disgusting) NyQuil, and slept through till 11ish the next day. I then got up and tried to check my email. After beginning to feel queasy and blacking out, I collapsed back in bed and slept until 1ish. I got up, tottered over to Shoppers to get some more delicious (mmm....gelcaps) NyQuil and throat lozenges, and tottered back home. I finished the rest of the Due South episodes I had downloaded, and went to bed around 8. I slept to 9 am, and lo and behold the fever was gone. But sadly, my throat was worse. I could now no longer swallow. I thought that this might prove difficult in my mission to keep on living, so I threw on some clothes and stumbled over to the walk-in clinic. Where I waited in a trance for the doctor to take a throat swab and tell me that I should really just be taking lots and lots of ibuprofen. If only I could swallow them..... I stumbled back home and went back to bed.

I woke up at about 4 and realized I hadn't really eaten in the past few days, and I was a teensy bit hungry. And also, my throat had subsided so that I could now swallow small amounts of saliva and mushy food. So I ate some mushy food, and got a message on my phone from Catherine saying that my peeps were getting together at 6:30 to sightread with Andres Cardenes, the violin teacher in town giving masterclasses. I figured I missed all of his classes, and I haven't done anything but sleep since Wednesday, so why not. At 5:30 I bundled myself up and headed off to school. The sightreading was fun - we read through Brahms Eflat sextet and Tchaikovsky Souvenir de Florence. The Souvenir was scary because it's tricky and I was reading 2nd viola, and the last couple times I played it I was 1st viola. Then afterwards we went to the bar with Andres and we had some beer and gossiped. We finally extricated ourselves at around midnight, and caught the subway home. I then made the decision that instead of getting very little sleep, I would just stay up until it was time to go busking. In about 10 minutes I will call Tom, who will pick up Peter and then me, and we shall make glorious music in return for pocket change. I love paying for everything out of my bag o' change.

No comments: