Friday Fragments

Hosted by Mrs4444.

My mind isn't so much fragmented as mush at the moment, it's been kind of a long week, but I've fished out a few bits and bobs to share. For more end of week shrapnel head on over to Half-Past Kissin' Time!

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On Tuesday I had my 3rd singing lesson and my teacher said nice things to me. So I guess I'm not completely delusional and there might be some point to this exercise. Who knows, one day I might even be fit to be heard in public. I'm really enjoying the lessons and the practicing, if I practice when the kids are at home Tom often plonks himself down beside me and joins in.

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The first five e-ARC (electronic Advance Reader Copy) chapters of Lois McMaster Bujold's new Miles Vorkosigan book (due out Nov) are online at Baen. I've given in to temptation and started reading but I know I'm going to regret it when I get to the end and then have to wait.

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I'm also reading Mrs Darcy vs The Aliens and so should you. 

Mrs Darcy vs The Aliens is a slightly demented sequel to Pride and Prejudice, although it has been described more accurately as "not so much Pride and Prejudice's sequel as its bastard offspring following a drunken one-night stand with the X-Files."

*****

My 11 year old daughter has a friend staying over tonight. After dinner they watched a movie, then they took themselves off to bed and when I went at 10pm to tell them it was time for lights out I found the room dark and silent. Caitlin was still awake enough to whisper "good night" but only just. I'm not sure this is normal behaviour for 11 year olds, I'm pretty sure I'd have been going strong till at least 11pm under similar circumstances at that age.

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I have embarked on a campaign to get my house under control and I'm keeping myself on track with the project by posting my progress daily. Here's my decluttering for today:

The kitchen dumping ground, this is where all the stuff that no-one knows where it goes ends up. Plus there's the tupperware cupboard which, of course, explodes into chaos as soon as someone uses the third item since the last it was beaten into submission.

I decided that the first thing I should do was to alphabetise the spice rack. No, I don't know why that seemed important, but it did forcibly bring to my attention the fact that I have a habit of buying cloves and chili flakes as though they're going out of fashion.

Sadly the rest of the kitchen still looks rather more like the first photo than the second, but hey! there's always tomorrow.

Friday Fragments and Linkfest No. 13

Hosted by Mrs4444.

I won't be around to comment on everyone else's Friday Fragments till early next week, we're off camping at the beach for the weekend - wish us good weather and kid-friendly surf!

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Monday morning's car trip to school conversation went like this - Tom: Mum, how old do you have to be to mumble mumble mumble? Me: I can't understand what you're asking. Tom: *repeats* Me: It's like you're speaking a foreign language! Tom: How old do you have to be to have sex? Me: *enlightenment dawns, he was spelling S-E-X and I just wasn't parsing it because I wasn't expecting it*

I do love these philosophical challenges pre-caffeine and with only 2 minutes to adequately answer the question. I think I said something about the age of consent in NSW and the fact that even if you're "old enough" it's not whether you're allowed to that matters, it's whether both you and the person you're with really want to and if you both feel ready for the sort of commitment that being that intimate entails - only with smaller words.

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David went to his end of Year 6 dinner on Monday night.



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From David's page in his school yearbook

• People I Most Admire: My dad because he does medieval re-enactment.
• When I Grow Up I Want To Be: A happy adult.
• Where I See Myself in 10 Years: Successful.

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Caitlin won first prize in the singing section of the school talent quest and Tom came third :-)

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We watched The Fifth Element with the kids on Wednesday night, they hadn't seen it before because David has always vociferously protested that he Does. Not. Want. and we've always given in and watched something else instead. It was the same with Star Wars way back when, we practically had to hold him in a headlock on the couch to make him watch it. Apparently if it's something Dad and Mum like it couldn't possibly be good. But on Wednesday Adam and I told him we were watching whether he liked it or not and when he said he'd go sit in the study we were even meaner and told him he had to sit in the lounge room.

When we got to the bit where the Diva is singing and Leeloo starts kicking butt Tom got very excited and said "I love it when the girl is not the damsel in distress!"

Oh, and do believe David quite enjoyed the movie after all. I apologized for making him sit through it and he said "Yes, it was a bit silly."

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Linkfest time!

Feeling like doing a virtual culinary tour of Sydney? Check out the list of Sydney food bloggers at the end of Helen's post about the Sydney Food Bloggers' Christmas Party.

I HAVE to cook this sometime: Momofuku Bo Ssäm (slow roasted pork)

Continuing the food theme and adding maths to the mix - The Mobius strip bagel. I don't usually eat bagels but I think I may need to go buy some just for this.

Tim Minchin's White Wine in the Sun is available to purchase as a single and 50% of the proceeds from December sales will be going to Autism research.

Beginner's Guide to Messiah

When Adam announced that he was buying tickets for us to take the kids to a performance of Handel's Messiah at the Sydney Opera House the day after our Christmas party I was a little unsure of the wisdom of such an endeavour. At breakfast this morning, which we were eating at midday on account of Adam and I having gone to bed at 4am, Tom very nearly confirmed all my fears by greeting the news that we were off to the city with a massive attack of the grumps, but after I threatened dire consequences for bad behaviour and Adam promised mango smoothies as a reward for being cooperative he pulled his head in and stopped whinging.

What we went to see was not a full performance of Messiah, instead it was this:

From the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs website:

Beginner’s Guide to Messiah

SUNDAY 13 DECEMBER, 2pm

On Sunday the 13th of December at 2.00pm, we invite you and your whole family to The Beginner’s Guide to Messiah with an entertaining and informational performance of Messiah excerpts. Our Artistic Director Brett Weymark will guide you through the inspiration to the music with insights into the great master, Handel.

It was fantastic! After the overture Tom leaned over to whisper in my ear "This is actually really good, I'm glad you brought us." Brett Weymark, the conductor, did a fabulous job talking about Handel and the music, covering the history of the work and its performances during Handel's life, anecdotes about Handel written by people who had met him, and discussion of the music itself. I think my favourite bit was Brett telling us to listen to the violins to hear how fast the angel's wings were flapping during the bit where they visit the shepherds. It had just the right touch of humour to make it accessible to the kids and at 1.5 hours wasn't too long. The kids would never have lasted through the 3 hours of a full performance of Messiah and I'm not sure I would have either!

In front of the Opera House



The Harbour Bridge as seen from the Opera House forecourt.



Inside the Concert Hall with the orchestra and 300-odd choristers.



My lovely family waiting for the show to start, on one side of me Tom, Adam and David



and on the other side, Caitlin.

The kids have begun singing Christmas songs

Which would be nice if they ever sang more than the one chorus of the one song over and over again. I need to put together a playlist of my favourite Christmas songs so I can switch it on whenever they start and attempt to expand their repertoire.

This one will be on there for starters:

White Wine in the Sun by Tim Minchin

Click here if you can't see the embedded video

School talent quest

This year I had two little performers doing their thing at the school talent quest, both of them practiced hard and both of them were fabulous (I may be a little biased here of course.)

Tom was persuaded to sing without any music, here's his rendition of the first half of "I Will Survive."


Click here if you can't see the embedded video.

Caitlin had a proper backing track prepared for her by her singing teacher but the volume controls were in the hands of a couple of year 6 students who are used to everyone using ordinary recordings of the songs they are singing and therefore turning the sound right down so that the kids' performances aren't drowned out by the vocals on their CDs. Unfortunately this meant that Caitlin could barely hear her music which didn't help with the tummy churning stage fright that she gets doing this sort of thing. I'm constantly amazed that she wants to get up on stage given the way it clearly makes her feel, and I know just how bad it can be because I get the same thing when I have to give talks at Kindy Orientations, or run a more challenging than usual P&C meeting, or give a speech in front of the entire school and their families at Presentation Night (oh god, have to do that again this year).

Anyway, here she is singing "Money, Money, Money"


Click here if you can't see the embedded video.

Prop 8: The Musical

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

via Shakesville.

Getting ready

I've spent the last few weeks responding to every hint of Christmas - decorations in shops, carol singing kids at the breakfast table, request from Adam for fruit mince pies (he ended up cooking his own) - by growling "it's not December yet!" in true bah humbug fashion. But come Monday it will be December and that means there's a whole bunch of Stuff To Do this weekend.

As I mentioned, we've done barely any Christmas shopping, so tonight is list writing time and the plan is to be up and out bright and early tomorrow morning for a bit of a marathon effort at the shops. I'm going to do as much as I can on-line and there are some people I can shop for at work but not every member of my extended family fits into the sci-fi geek category (more's the pity). I'm also hoping to do some major tidying up around the house and shifting of furniture so we can move our old entertainment unit out of the lounge room and take it downstairs. This will reclaim the huge chunk of space it's uselessly taking up given that the new TV doesn't fit in it (instead the TV is sitting on the coffee table, we're waiting on new TV and storage units which are being custom made). Saturday night we have a Christmas party to go to which will be nice, we won't stay too late though, I don't want us or the kids too tired for Sunday.

Sunday is decorating day. We'll be putting up the tree, festooning the lounge room with figurines and musical stuffed toys, wondering where the heck that Advent calendar is (I'd forgotten it was missing till I went back and read that post. Damn.), wrestling with mysteriously tangled strings of outdoor lights (doesn't matter how carefully you put them away the year before, tangled they will be) and putting Santa hats on the Dalek and R2-D2 robots.

David suggested this afternoon that we find all the Christmas books and put them in a special box to read in the lead up to Christmas, I was already intending to do just that so it was nice to know it'll be worth doing. Not sure when I'll tackle that one though. Sometime before Monday night I guess.

Sunday afternoon we'll be going to see Carnival of the Animals and possibly going out for pizza and gelato afterwards.

Then I will die of exhaustion.

But it will be a happy death, I will be able to turn on all my pretty lights, light the vanilla, cranberry and spice scented candles, put some music on and bask in the indulgent, silly, over the top Christmassy wonderfulness of it all.

Because I'm not really a bah humbug person at all, I love every bit of it.

Because clearly I have too much free time

Caitlin sang Abba's Thank You For the Music in the school talent quest this afternoon, she was first up on stage, the microphone wasn't working properly (again) and the audience started clapping just as she was about to start the 3rd verse. She took it all in her stride and sang beautifully.

I was thrilled to see several other very talented kids up there singing this year, a couple of year 6 girls with very good voices, one of whom accompanied herself on the electric guitar, and a boy in Caitlin's year who sang Little People from Les Misérables. I get all stupid grinning happy when I see kids doing this stuff whether they're my own kids or not, I'm the same with the dance concert each year too.

Afterwards when we were out in the playground having congratulatory hugs one of the teachers came up to us and instructed me to book Caitlin in for an audition with the Berowra Musical Society for their production of Les Miz.

So I did.

(I harbour a secret desire to be in a musical myself one day, perhaps I ought to audition too....)