Tuesday, May 30, 2006

OK Fine

So, I take it back. They're not that wierd - they're actually really nice. If a little overly religious, but of course they must find my complete lack of religiousness a little strange also. I had to go and buy a crappy Dan Brown paperback to read, because the only books in the house are religious ones. But other than that, it's all good. We're rehearsing this afternoon at somebody's house who has a grand piano, and since they live near West Edmonton Mall, Matthew and I are going to rehearse the Clarke first and then I'm going shopping!!!! After, I'm going to meet up with my Aunt Elaine who's been in Korea for the past five or six years. So, good work.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Wow

Well, I'm in Edmonton now. Markerville to be more exact. I dropped my bow off to be rehaired at a place in Edmonton, they said they'd put a rush on it and I'd have it by Wed night or Thursday morning. I can't say very much because I'm on the communal computer in the living room, but after meeting only Matthew's mother, I'm surprised he's as normal as he is. Seriously. That and they have bible quotes all over their bathroom.

Home again

Home again, home again, jiggity jig. Well, to be more precise, Ingunn's home. But whatever. Domaine was super awesome AGAIN, and I even enjoyed the retardedly long concert yesterday. It lasted 7 1/2 hours - I went on stage at 2pm with the first group, and the last group finished at 9:30. So then we had to party. Like crazy party, with people peeing in the bushes and everything. We ate a late dinner after the concert, and the best part was as I walked into the room where we ate, one of my chamber coachs, Ian Swensen, handed me a beer. Then after we finished eating, my other chamber coach, Anssi Karttunen, invited all the people from his two groups up to his studio where he produced a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. Apparently in the States, teacher aren't allowed to pour liquor down their students throats. Just one more reason to study in Canada. I then proceeded to drink lots, and mix my liquors, which was a very bad idea. As I discovered this morning when I woke up in a room full of stolen pate and cheese, and could not keep anything down for hours. Apparently while very drunk, Carolyn and Catherine thought it would be genius to steal the pate and cheese from the party. But then they just left it sitting out all night. Needless to say, it was very disgusting by the morning.

About a week ago Carolyn told Martin Beaver about Steve leaving all these messages on her phone and how he pronounces my name (Kah-tya). Martin thought this was hilarious and proceeded to call me Kah-tya all the time, and got everyone else to do it also. Then he started singing it, while conducting himself like a choral conductor at the same time. It culminated in the moment when I walked back into the room from drinking champagne in Anssi's room, and the entire camp (all the students and all the faculty) erupted into singing. Singing "Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah-tyaaaaaaaaaaaa". It was pretty awesome, I have to say. I'm thinking of hiring someone to just follow me around all the time singing my name. You should try it.

We set off from Domaine around noonish and got as far as Chez Ginette's, the local greasy spoon at the bottom of the hill. It's a Domaine tradition that you have to eat one last cheeseburger before you leave, but unfortunatly I couldn't stomach more than a few bites of poutine. Happily though, the grease soaked up the rest of the liquor in my stomach, and by Quebec city I was feeling good again. We decided to show Ingunn a bit of Quebec city from the car, as she'd never been there before, but we just ended up getting kind of disoriented and lost and its windy and confusing streets. We finally made it out, and it was clear sailing the rest of the way back to TO. I'm off to Edmonton tomorrow (or rather, later today) - watch out, it should be hilarious. Check my Flickr site for more photo goodness from Domaine.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Flickr

I made a page on Flickr for all of my photos. Check it out. http://www.flickr.com/photos/39938743@N00/
I don`t have much time, as we`re in the middle of the big chamber music marathon. The concert started at 2 pm, and will probably go till about 10 - there`s 12 groups all playing full works. Yeehaw.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

It`s Alive!

Well, now here I am at Domaine. I`m in the middle of nowhere, where no one speaks English. It`s totally awesome. It`s wierd though, being disconnected from the world. The internet was down for the whole day here yesterday because it was super stormy, and everybody was really antsy. It wasn`t that we had to really DO anything, but it`s our only connection to the outside world. Just the fact that we couldn`t check our email or read the news was unsettling. It`s been disgusting and rainy ever since we got here on Wednesday, and the sun only came out this afternoon. Praise be. Now I have to go to Chez Ginette`s for a cheeseburger, because both lunch and supper were completely inedible and I haven`t eaten since breakfast........

I aplogize for my wierd apostraphes - it`s a French keyboard, and I have no idea where anything is on it.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

It's Art I Swear


So............they just put up a trailer on Apple for the new movie 300 based on a Frank Miller thing about some sort of Greek war or something. I think that it is going to be a cinematic gem to be passed down through the ages, mostly because it seems as though the entire movie is greased up men wearing nothing but metal underwear. As seen is the hot hot hot picture of Gerard Bulter in his metal underwear. I'm thinking that I may just have to see this movie over, and over, and over, and over again. Because I care about art. I swear.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

End of an Era





Well, I shipped the last of my boxes today. The Zapfs/Tom have offered to take my furniture off my hands, and so I'm basically moved out. It's so sad! When I cleared all my stuff out of our apartment today, it looked so bare! It's a naked and sad apartment.
When I was driving my stuff down to the Greyhound depot, there was this really wierd low-lying smog over downtown, so I had to take a picture of it. Because what good is a camera phone if you can't take random pictures of smog!

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Mostly sleeping

Well, I've been doing a whole lot of nothing lately. We played a gig for the Department of Training, Colleges, and Universities on Thursday night, and then since then I've mostly been sleeping, hanging out, rehearsing, and packing. I scored a bunch of wine boxes from the LCBO, and so far I've packed all my cds, dvds, books, and music. All that's really left is my assorted misc. posessions, clothes (which I still need to use), bedding (which I also still need), and computer (which I'm using right now). I do have this whole plan for how I'm going to pack everything when the time comes. I just really wish I had a laptop, because I don't know how I'm going to survive without my computer. It's my best friend. Well OK, second best after my iPod.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Mmmm...Sunny

Well, it's been an exciting couple of days. We flew in on Monday, and seeing as how it was Catherine's 21st birthday we decided to do something exciting, like a BBQ. So I made home-made burgers and we ate at a picnic table in Michelle's back yard. Then we went and picked Ingunn up from the airport (she was on a later flight, it's a long story), and sat down and wrote our grant proposal for the school, and all the thank you notes to people that we've been putting off. Then we went to bed. Party animals, I know. On Tuesday I got up at about 10:30, and puttered around the house until about 11:45, when I left for school. I ran through the Clarke with Matthew in the concert hall from 12:30-1, then I bummed around at school, and then went on a chase for new headphones. I then hung out at Ingunn's until my Mozart trio rehearsal at 5. This clarinettist at school asked me to play the Mozart Kegelstadtt trio in his recital, and he was so desperate I couldn't say no. Anyways, it's not too hard, although there's this one chord that has a b natural instead of a b flat, and it keeps messing with my head! But I digress. After the Mozart rehearsal I headed home, and picked up a box at the LCBO on my way home. They only had one, but they said they'd have more later in the week. So I sat up until 12 pseudo-cleaning my apartment, and I packed up all my dvds and books. Almost. I have a lot of crap.

Today I got up at 10:30 and puttered around the house until 12 when I went to school and practiced before my rehearsal with Matthew at 2. After that I went to the Starbucks on Yorkville Ave, right smack dab in the middle of trendy Yorkville, and I sat outside on their 'patio' with my venti green tea and people watched until my gig at the Four Seasons at 4:30. It was one of the most annoying gigs ever, for Manulife Financial's Board of Directors dinner. It's one of those gigs where no one pays the slightest bit of attention to you, you can't hear the other people in the quartet, and then to top it all off they gypped us and paid us each $75 less then they said they would. I was so angry, I stole Diet Coke (it was the only thing convenient enough to take. The desserts would have just made my purse a mess). Anyways, it was arranged through our assistant dean at school, so we're going to see if he can rectify the situation for us. The moral is though, don't trust Manulife Financial. They can't count.

Monday, May 01, 2006

Sleep Now

Well, I'm back from Manitoba. It was pretty good, if a little cold and rainy. We flew in on Friday morning, and we had enough time to get to Ruben's house where we were staying, and eat something, and look over the Communist songs before we headed off to the mini-reunion at the Fort Garry Hotel. We played a montage of Communist songs while they played a retrospective video, and then we ate. We went back to Ruben's place and folded down the sofa bed, and blew up the air mattress, and crashed for the night. On Saturday we got up and I made Catherine and Ingunn go running with me - we left Michelle behind to make breakfast. We went down by the river, but the problem with Winnipeg is that the riverfront is mostly private property, so they don't have nice trails like there are in Saskatoon. They did it wrong. Then we went back to Ruben's and had breakfast. After that Michelle's parents took off for a tour of the printing press, while we stayed behind to rehearse. Then we got all dolled up, and went off to the big May Day banquet. It was good times, we danced the night away until about 10:30, then we went back to our uncomfortable beds and slept.

Sunday was our very exciting trip to Gimli. Our ride picked us up at 10:30 and drove us to Gimli and dropped us off at the hall we were playing in so we could rehearse. We warmed up, and had some coffee and scones at the tea room downstairs, then we played our concert at 2. There was about 40 people there, and they loved us. And I love people who love me, so I had a good time. Afterwards, the woman who drove us out there wanted to take us out to eat in Gimli, but first showed us the sights. This consisted of a giant cartoonish statue of a Viking, and driving us through all the residential streets and talking about who might live there. "I think Hallgrim lived there." "No, they moved two years ago and sold it to Gudrun and, the Bjarnssons moved down the road." "I thought they lived over on the next street." "No, that's the Gunnarssons." And etc. I gotta tell you, it was gripping. Then we finally arrived at the fish and chip place where they wanted to take us, and it was closed. So we ended up at some random place down the road. But hey, who doesn't love free food! Then we got back to Ruben's at about 7:30 and decided we should get some food because we had cleaned Ruben out. There were three grocery stores within walking distance of his house, but being a Sunday night in Winnipeg, they were closed. So we ended up at 7-11 where we went for the healthy choice of Slurpees and candy. We then went back to Ruben's and set up shop on the couch. We watched Grey's Anatomy, then Forrest Gump on TBS. By the time it ended at 1 am, we were all exhausted and crashing from the sugar, so we sat there for the last 20 minutes of it and cried. Forrest's so sweet!!! And then Jenny died!!!

We got up this morning and packed up our stuff, and flew back to Toronto. We had some excitement boarding the plane, as they absolutely could not let me on with my ginormous instrument. I am so pissed off at Air Canada, and am considering never flying them again. I fly quite a bit, and I've only ever had problems flying Air Canada - I've not just been hassled, but had to deal with openly hostile attendants who belittle me and act like I'm a stupid little girl who has no idea about anything. On Westjet, they're nothing but nice, and even let me pre-board with my instrument. Our union has a deal with all the carriers that violins (and violas) are allowable carry-on even though they're longer than the dimensions allowed, but nobody at Air Canada ever seems to know this, and they all act like it's giant travesty and that I am the stupidest person alive. I hate them, and I hope they all burn.

So now I'm bitter and back in Toronto.