In transit

We're in the midst of moving to our tiny apartment, and I don't know if we'll have internet access there right away. . . so I thought I'd put up a quick entry (before Daniel comes home and finds me avoiding the packing I should be doing right now!). I've been inspired by a friend's photo blog, so I think I'll keep the typing to a minimum and just post some pictures:















Daniel rocking out at a friend's Karaoke night; Me caught in the act of writing with the notorious lefty "hook hand", which I swore I didn't use, and wouldn't have believed without this photographic evidence

















I recently met up with my dear old friend Anna for dinner - we see each other once every 4 years or so, so it was good to get together. I also got to meet her very sweet boyfriend, Will. Anna is hott.


















Oh, the adventures of moving with Daniel. Point and laugh all you like - he really doesn't care.

That's all I've got. I really need to go and scrub the grout in the bathroom with a toothbrush now. Are you jealous? Thought so.

Voices

You know the scene in “Billy Elliott” where Billy opens the fridge and starts chugging from the milk bottle, and suddenly his deceased mother is there with him in the kitchen saying, “Now Billy, what have I told you about drinking straight from the bottle?” and then reminds him to put the milk back in the fridge when he’s done?

Well, here at work, I just had that moment, except it was my Grandpa’s voice.

I slammed the tray of the printer shut, and heard him say with a wince, “Oooh, you’re going to break it if you keep closing it like that!” If Grandpa were really here, a short and very predictable lecture about the fragility of the latching mechanism would follow.

The nice thing about my moment, unlike Billy’s, is that my Grandpa is still alive (*insert preferred superstitious gesture here*), and I can give him a call later to tell him I was thinking of him. Or, alternatively, that his many years of gentle nagging have achieved their intended impression on me (except for the part where I slammed anything in the first place) and I can’t get his voice out of my brain.

A funny little story about my grandparents is that shortly after they met, my grandpa witnessed my grandmother unplugging her iron by PULLING ON THE CORD. My grandpa asked, “Is that how you always unplug the iron?” Again, presumably, a lecture followed. When I was a teenager, I sarcastically suggested that Grandpa could save his breath by numbering his lectures and saying "Lecture 62", for example, rather than having to tell me exactly why I should never wear my shoes in the house and what sort of filth they may have picked up on the sidewalk and what types of illness those bacteria might cause.

To counter my grandpa’s “fussiness”, my grandmother has maintained her general indignance and outright disgust that he insists on enjoying peanut butter on toast and taking naps after meals. Their daily script of mutual annoyance and affection has been perfected by 55 years of married life.

I love my grandpa very much. How could you not love a man who has reasoned that there is an appropriate direction in which twist-ties ought to be twisted, along with a particular number of twisty-rotations that ought to be executed to ensure sufficient closure as well as ease of re-opening? I will be hearing his voice in my head for the rest of my life.

Basement apartment

One of the girls I've met at my summer job says that I look like Sarah Harmer. I don't know about that, but I do know that I will be singing "Basement Apartment" once again this fall.

I posted a while back about our past basement apartment experiences. The search for this one was interesting - because it's that back-to-school time of year, apartments were being rented the same day that the ads were appearing online. It was getting a bit frantic, and I was getting ready to settle for anything we could get.

When I called about one of the ads, the person said that the upstairs tenants would be doing their laundry in our kitchen. Um, no thanks. Another apartment was hideously ugly, had only 2 tiny windows and one entrance, and all I could think was that I was going to die in a fire.

The apartment we finally rented is small but very clean and bright, with windows that we can escape from easily in case of fire (okay, so I'm a bit paranoid), and a garage where we can store a housefull's worth of belongings. It's also on a beautiful tree-lined street. So it won't be SO bad. But still a little bit bad.

I guess if anything is going to make me look forward to moving to Moose Jaw, it will be living underground for 4 months. I'll be longing for the 'land of open skies' by mid-September.

Skinnamarink

I attended a "Voice Care Symposium" in Banff last week. It was fantastic, with speakers ranging from surgeons discussing the molecular structure of vocal folds to wacky Los Angeles "Sing Like the Stars"-type voice coaches to. . . . BRAM from Sharon, Lois, and Bram.

If you're not Canadian, or over 20-or-so years old, this may not interest you, but for me it was one of the major highlights of the whole event! Bram was presenting at this symposium to offer the perspective of a singer who has significant hearing loss - he is completely deaf in one ear, because of an acoustic neuroma, and wears a BAHA (bone-anchored hearing aid). Because we had been sitting through 3 full days of somewhat dry lectures at that point, he brought out his guitar and had a sing-along with the audience. It was awesome, and he was very entertaining. I didn't realize how likeable and funny he is.

I learned a lot at the conference, particularly that it's very nice to sing "I know an old lady who swallowed a fly" with a room full of otolaryngologists, opera singers, and speech pathologists.