Day 73: Not as clouded as it might have been

Day 73 (16 Feb) It's Saturday and rehearsal morning. Regular clarinet rehearsal that is. We do that every second Saturday. It's a good group, the core of which has been playing together for about 13 years. It's a clarinet choir, yep, 25 clarinets of all shapes and sizes in the one room. But it works. 

Sometimes I do feel running off to band rehearsal is a bit of a luxury I can't afford, particularly when it comes to the weekend when so many other activities will have my attention. Still, I encourage my students to embrace their leisure time seriously, I should follow suit. 

To cloud over, or not to cloud over,
at 6.12am

The morning started off somewhat cloudy, the promise of more showers. At 6.12am I was up and about deliberating whether or not I should do the laundry today or tomorrow. Clouds but a touch of blue...it clouded over somewhat later so the decision to put off washing, and play clarinets, was the right one. There are many other pressing things to do the weekend before classes commence and sometimes it seems the clouds are permanently overhead. 

The horridness that can be modern technology too means that emails are immediately to hand and I'm never quite sure what to do when colleagues send emails at 6am...on a Saturday. To answer, or not? I answered. Not what I wanted to do. 

Rehearsal done, back home, lunch and on with work. Saturday is generally accompanied by ABC Classic FM so news is fairly scarce. I am, however, quite conscious moving around my electorate of Griffith that the election is in the offing. The two key candidates are making their respective presences felt and noticed. Yes, one of them is a recent prime minister...the year is going to be interesting. 

The evening was the first subscription concert for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. I've been a mostly loyal subscriber for the best part of the last two decades, save a brief period of uncertainty after the merger...but that's a story for another day. 

Clouded and incomplete, at 6.12pm

I do go with a friend and we meet friends, other subscribers, there. It's always pleasant for having turned up, even though those moments of indecision prior to leaving play on the 'guilt' of not working. The guilt of not working clouds an academic's day, and night, constantly. I called by my friend's place to head into town and at 6.12pm had just arrived at their place. I was still looking at the clouds, they were quite fascinating this afternoon. (Clouds actually make for great photographic subjects/objects.) There is a shell of a house across the road that seems to have been being 'transformed' for the last three years or so...it makes for a poignant foreground to a cloudy moment, in the sky, in life. 

Artfully cloud-like, at QPAC

The concert was quite good, the Beethoven piano concerto 'Emperor' and a Bruckner Symphony no 4. For the first time in 100 years or so of attending concerts, I left the tickets at home...clouded thinking. Luckily, as a subscriber, I could sort it out at the box office. Sheesh, embarrassment. Still, for the first  time in 100 years of attending concerts, the soloist from the first half, Anton Kuerti, joined the audience in the balcony seats to take in the second half. How lovely, and he was greeted with polite but appreciative applause. Heh, sometimes the clouds part. The ceiling of the concert hall presented its own version of 'look up' tonight too...

It was just one of those 'head in the clouds days' today, in all the manifestations that might mean. It's not always a bad thing.