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Preparations, Day 9 and 10 - The Lyorn's Den

Fri Dec. 7th, 2012

12:16 am - Preparations, Day 9 and 10

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I feel that I'm getting tired, or lazy, or focused on the basics. Some tasks start to get moved from one day to another, never completed. I do too much of nothing, and not even the things I want to do when I have nothing else to do.

In part I blame the weather, but mostly the need to meet some carpenter or plumber or electrician every darned morning, so I never can start a day rested and energetic.


OK, so Wednesday was kind of meant as a day off. I had wanted to do that the week before but there were more urgent things to do. This Wednesday, at least, there were other things to do, but none extremely urgent, so off to look at furniture it was.

I met with N___ at IKEA for breakfast, which was nice. There was sweet Swedish tarte, which makes everything better. I saw a few things which might come useful, but did not buy anything because I want the move completed first.

After IKEA, N___ went off for some more shopping, and I went off to some more looking at stuff. There are two upscale furniture stores within walking distance of IKEA. As expected, they had shiny, pretty, useful things. Comfy and solid chairs, tables that were a pleasure to look at and to touch, the perfect solution for a record player in a household with cats, a daybed for the library/guest room that had amazing features and was so comfy that I could have fallen asleep on it right there in the store. And, as expected, everything was OMGWTFBBQ expensive. (Four letters would not do. This needs nine.)

Still, I find that looking at nice things is good for the soul, even if I cannot have them. So I went home reasonably happy.

I had coffee, slept some more, and then, with dire warnings about snow storms and traffic breakdown on the radio, drove to I___'s place to pick up one of my spare keys, and the cat transport box. (I only have one.)

Then I went to choir practise, and that was not good at all. I was cold and hungry and moody and short-tempered, the piece we were practising in the ensemble still did not work as it should, and than that stupid, stupid impro...

We are practising a high-effect but pretty boring piece by Martin Carbow. To make it a tiny bit less boring, there are some very short impro parts. They are fun to do in a dialogue way: One singer does two bars, the other replies, and so on. I like to do impro and like to believe that I am halfway competent at it, and had fun doing the dialogue style with someone from first soprano when we started that piece, and with someone from second soprano when we re-did it.

There is only a tiny problem. I improvise always from harmony, never from single note. Which is not a problem at all, because there is this whole verse and chorus in C major, then it shifts to D major for the impro. So I am perfectly at home in the harmony and can do useful stuff. However, in practising the impro, we never start with the C major and do the lift. Instead, we start with a single D major chord, and as the sopranos only sing the d above the middle c, that's all I get to work which. And that is not enough for me. I am homeless on that. If I had the chord, I might be able to do it, but not on a single note. I keep telling that to the conductor, and she keeps being baffled. So, she was very happy the first time we did it (coming from the C major) but of course we could never reproduce it. So she said, "we won't do impro". OK. Annoying crap, but OK. And then she asked someone else to do the impro (someone else was placed to hear the second alto, which I was not). I was so pissed off, when she looked at me expectantly again 15 minutes later, I could barely restrain myself enough to say "Nope, I'm sick of it" instead of "Go to hell."

So I came home in a rotten bad mood and did not to anything useful and was generally not happy with the day. I hate it when I am prevented from doing stuff I'm good at by people who will not give me the tools I need.


At least I had managed to call the electrician about the power sockets on Wednesday, and he said he'd come in between nine and half past on Thursday.

So I got up at twenty to eight, after sleeping very badly (again. I do not think I had a good night's sleep for ten days (nights?) now. I wake up in the middle of the night in a panic, I can't sleep, I wake up too early, I dream annoying or scary stuff.) Scraped the ice off the car, drove over to the new flat, had coffee and a croissant in a cafe, same as Tuesday.

And same as Tuesday, the guy took his sweet time. I should have called him as soon as I was in, instead of assuming he'd remember the appointment, because he didn't. ("Hindsight is 20/20", Snow commented.) I read the newspaper until 10, then, all temporal tolerances exceeded, called. He had forgotten and said he'd be over in 15 minutes. I fell asleep, and got woken by him finally arriving at 11. Turned out, he did not have the hardware available to secure the power sockets. So I left the flat at half past 11 with nothing accomplished and a sore shoulder from napping on the floor.

I went to the gym, so I would have done something, at least.

Afterwards I went home, switched on my computer, ate too many cookies, and lost the day.

In the evening, Snow came over to pick up the telly. We had tea, then loaded the telly and the VCR and some other gear on a handcart, and dragged it through two inches of fresh snow to her place. There is a very empty space now where the telly used to be, and that empty space makes me strangely happy. Things, at least, are happening.

I then cooked (and ate) dinner, glazed the muffins I had made, baked some leftover dough I had found in the freezer to cookies, and read useless stuff on the internet.

I suspect the reason why I have not yet done anything about my upcoming loss of internet access after the move is that I feel that my life will be much better without that greatest of all time-wasters.

Anyway. Stuff is happening. I will cut everything not really needed before the move from my to-do list, or shove it to the other side of next Tuesday. The making of doctor's appointments, the sorting of paperwork, (oh goodness, the tax stuff. Have to get that done tomorrow, or it won't get done), the cleaning of the balcony, the writing of lists for the packers and movers (will have to do without lists), the finding of a cabinet maker, the tidying up (just shove it in boxes). I am very unhappy about the last point, but I need to be realistic.


* Get up at half past six
* Dig out the car
* Try to catch breakfast on the way.
* Hope that the electrician shows up at a quarter to eight as agreed, and has all the stuff needed to fix that stupid power socket issue.
* Have the kitchen carpenters come in at 8 and put together the kitchen.
* Be extremely relieved if they succeed.
* Pick up 70 empty boxes from the moving company
* Arrange for food for Saturday
* At 4 p.m., meet cat net guy who will make the balcony safe for the boys.
* Sort the tax paperwork and put it in a box that will go to Snow for safekeeping.
* Put additional money on the cell phone pre-paid account
* Make a plan for Saturday.


Send good thoughts.

This entry was originally posted at http://lyorn.dreamwidth.org/18079.html. Please comment whereever suits you.

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