Hello Prosebox, Goodbye OpenDiary in Trichotomy

I suppose all good things must end. 10+ years and 930 entries (8 of which were favourite-only) later, I must leave OpenDiary. I've been reading the 'last entries' of open diarists and realized how important the site had been to a lot of people, but I won't write anything retrospective here, because I don't have the time or energy to be reflective anymore - [ndsjhp] lasted one year and has only 29 entries; [nds] has more than that in a month. I did say all I wanted when I closed [jhp].

One good thing about starting anew on Prose Box is that I get to keep my name! Long as I have written as [jhp], I am still attached to the [nds] name.

Let's see just how good prosebox is, shall we?

House Concert, Take I

The "big event" last month has to be the house concert my sister-in-law and I thrown together for my friends last Saturday. She did really well, but I did not. I could hear myself deteriorated from November's practice recordings, to December's rehearsal in Binghamton, to last Saturday's house concert. In fairness I have not been practising diligently, but I didn't expect to regress that much. The tempo was all over the place - Ave Maria was way too slow, the Widmung not detailed, and Revolutionary Etude was way too fast. So at least that's a data point I can adjust. I still have 2 months before Carnegie Hall, and the development at this stage is par for the course.

We ordered too much food. We made egg salad-stuffed sandwich and fruit and smoked fish kebab, and also got shrimp cocktail. We also had hummus and chip, and a large variety of cookies. I was surprised that La Professeure thought we should order two 4-foot heroes. There were 15 people supposed to come, but Wise Young Friend was sick so her family stayed in the city, so only 10 people were here - the Violist and his family, Ex-Chamber Music Group Organiser and her husband, the Japanese pianist, and Self-Taught soprano, and La Professeure, her sister-in-law, and me. So a lot of the food went untouched and wasted. Our guest, moreover, brought a lot of delicious snacks - Russian chocolate, Oreo truffles (which is supposedly easy to make - you mix cheesecake and oreo cookies into a ball and coat it with chocolate), salami and mozarella, and Chinese dessert red bean soup. It was a fun day; we get to catch up with the friends.

The amateur group has changed a lot in the past year or so - the 'old-guard' is becoming less involved (the Violist and ECMGO, both are on the boad, were struggling to remember when the last time they went to a board meeting), and there are more and more new people joining and performing there. There are also fewer people performing each time, and attendance is down, even though I understand a lot more people getting turned down. So, I don't understand how it is run. I know it performs a useful function, but I feel like the group used to have a lot more people involved.

But in any case, I should get serious about practising.

• S
  
  

Broken pipe

Last Thursday morning La Professeure woke me up to tell me we'd forgotten to close the Garage door the previous night and now there is no water in the house, meaning ice had formed in the pipes exposed in the garage and they may be bursted. We looked around and found no broken pipe, closed the garage door, and the water started running after a few minutes. We thought we lucked out.

In a sense, we did. However, when we came back from dance lesson that night, we found a puddle of wate on the garage door, and found that there was a drip from a bursted pipe that connects to the hose outside the house. We eventually figured out that the valve to that hose was actuall closed already but didn't work well, so a little bit of water still passed through. The bucket we put in to catch the drip was filling up in an hour. So to prevent further drips we shut of the main valve to the house. But to my surprise that doesn't work well either, because a little water was still coming through, and the bucket was still filling up in an hour. So, I ended up having to run the faucet in the bathroom to relieve pressure off the outside pipe (they share the same pipe). The worked; the next morning when we checked, the bucket was barely getting any water.

I stayed home to work the next day and the plumber came immediately - he was quick - and replaced the valve and repaired the pipe. So all is well now.

Things could have been a lot worse - if the inner pipes had bursted, or if the outside valve was not closed. So we are counting our lucky stars.

• D
  
  

Honeymooners

Half a year after we are married, I finally booked our honey moon for this summer. La Professeure was had no opinion on where to go, so I get to make the decision all on my own. Considering how physically active (not) we are, I looked for a romantic-getaway that targets clientele of 60 year olds or older.

So of course I ended up with a river cruise in Europe. Up the Danube and down the Rhine. I had visited none of the cities before (except Amsterdam, but we won't be spending much time there), so it will be new for both of us. And I like the fact that we don't have to worry about arranging for lodging (we'll sleep on the ship), food (we're fed on the ship!) or transportation (we'll travel on the ship, while we eat and sleep!), so that makes it attractive.

I was annoyed, however, to find out that the cruise actually takes us past several cities by the river that we won't stop for. Bonn, Frankfurt, and Linz (a day-trip away to Salzburg) are all missed. But whatever, there are plenty of other towns to visit already.

I think, I have reached the age where doing less is more appealing.

• N