Not Soon Enough! in Everyday Ramblings

It is raining but if it weren’t it would look like this right now. I took this around this time a few years ago. With this unusually wet weather one needs to get one’s mood pictures in where one can.

They say the temperature is going to drop on Tuesday and we’ll get a break in the rain and even some sun. Yes, thank you, that would be lovely.

And then maybe snow. Sigh.

Thanks for your word suggestions for totally tapped out. :)

I am working, listening to Mozart and fending off the cats that are trying with all their wiles to convince me it is time for their afternoon wet food. I have a pot of brown rice just finishing up, enough for a week with lentils and some spinach paneer.

My wandering around listen lately has been a Great Courses series I got from Audible called “How to Listen To and Understand Great Music.” The lecturer is Robert Greenberg. He is quite lively, these are not boring lectures.

Last night I was listening to one about the early beginnings of opera and he was talking about Claudio Monteverdi and the development of the aria and today I stumbled upon this piece called “Ulysses Awakens” written in 1989 by John Woolrich, which is based on an aria in an opera by Monteverdi first performed in 1640. Instead of for voice though this adaptation is for viola. I still have a bit of an aversion to opera. Maybe this lecture series will make a believer of me.

In San Francisco we used to live next door to the well-respected and quite extraordinary sheriff. He killed his abusive stepfather as a young man and served time and then went on to become sheriff. So he knew about being incarcerated. Having participated in this deeply difficult and mythic story line himself he was a big fan of opera. We would hear arias wafting over all summer long. I was thinking of that last night.

I enjoyed listening to the piece today more having learned what I did through the lecture.

My brother (who lives in the same town as Kes and Most Honorable) broke his foot in three places yesterday helping move a friend of his roommate. He is going to need surgery and is on the state run health plan so it could get complicated. It also messes with his ability to work. He just turned 64 but is not ready to retire. He barely makes it financially with part time work for the non-profit Habitat for Humanity store.

I feel sad for him. He’s pretty tough though and has been through more troubling times. This is hard on Kes too, who has been incredibly supportive of him during all his struggles and she is still recovering from this last eye surgery that was a little more challenging than the last.

I am going down there tomorrow to spend the day and meet Henry. Oh boy. Kitten shenanigans. They sent a great picture from a few days ago of Henry gorked out upside down with his belly fully exposed on a blanket between Kes’s outstretched legs.

My family seems to have the blues… I hope I can find a way to lighten the mood just a bit here in the dark cave like drippy gloom.

The sun cannot come back soon enough!

Last updated December 02, 2016