Musings of Nobody Important

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BLUE

Miss Moggs, the blonde witch on the left and JMB, the redhead witch on the right, met up in Second Life for a Halloween photo opportunity. Actually it was a bit like two stooges as we tried, rather unsuccessfully to have the broom in the right place and the lighting right , plus the correct pose. After the fact I noticed that I had two different witch hats on at the same time. Yes you can do this in SL I’m afraid. Any possible mistake that can be made is usually made by me. Sigh! Now, no laughing else I will zap with you with my Wicked Witch Dark Power Staff which emits some flashing things but no spells, or so it says. Click any photo to enlarge should you so desire.

Looks fairly ordinary in the daytime from a distance

Medieval is the theme for the next section with figures such as these lining the side garden.

The inferno follows with this horrific representation but a small part.

A witches’ coven nestles against the garage as spells are cast and magic potions brewed in the steaming cauldron. I think that fellow is beyond help.

The era of the Plague is represented in the rear garden with bodies on a cart
in the lower right hand corner.

Some pretty ghastly looking pirates with treasure chests full of loot
represent the Age of Exploration.

The Revolutionary Wars section has these life size soldiers complete with canon

Twentieth Century Mutations are represented by some ghastly pumpkins and
huge ugly insects and trees personified, but not in a nice way.

A rather ugly Queen of Hearts, along with other figures, graces the front porch.

This pair in the front garden put you in mind of anyone?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN TOMORROW TO EVERYONE WHO CELEBRATES IT

Pinchas Zukerman with the NAC orchestra

The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is on tour at the moment so last Saturday night, filling in, the National Arts Centre Orchestra performed in the Orpheum theatre under Maestro Pinchas Zukerman. Yes, that same Pinchas Zukerman, one of the world’s great violinists as well as long time Music Director of the NACO.

But next followed the Mozart Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No.3, with Zukerman playing the violin and conducting the orchestra. One of a series of five violin concertos it was written by Mozart at the tender age of nineteen years. While not my favourite violin concerto, that would have to be the Mendelssohn, a much more dramatic piece to my mind, it is indeed a very beautiful work and to hear it played by Pinchas Zukerman was a very special treat.

If it please you, here is the Adagio, the second movement played by the great Isaac Stern. This is considered one of the most beautiful sections of any violin concerto ever written. A very old slightly flawed rendition due to age but beautiful none the less.

Sometimes it is a pleasure to just go and enjoy pieces that are very familiar to you, to just relax and let the music envelop you. While the Mozart soothes you with its beauty the Symphony No. 5 of Tchaikovsky fires you up with its passion and its energy. One of several symphonies in which Tchaikovsky explores the theme of Fate, his Fifth Symphony is more evocative of the distant rumble of a funeral march, as the clarinets intone a low and somber theme. As the symphony progresses, the theme returns in various guises, sometimes wistful, at other times imposing, but the general motion is toward an increasing mood of optimism, until, in the finale, Tchaikovsky transforms his Fate theme into a triumphal march.*

Here is the very famous French Horn solo from the second movement with that oh so familiar theme towards the end.

As we were walking back towards the car, the old scientist said, “The first time I heard that symphony live was at the Sydney Town Hall with Kiril Kondrashin with the Stalingrad State Orchestra. The brass were just wonderful and the woodwinds too.” What? How long ago this was, since he left Australia in 1957, but he still remembers the experience. I have no idea when I first heard this. Do you? He certainly was impressed.

A lovely musical evening it was, somewhat dimmed by the fact that there was a hockey game plus a football game on that evening. All three events seemed to conclude at the same time with the result that it took me 65 minutes to travel from my parking space on the sixth floor of the parkade to the ground floor booth to pay the parking fee. My poor passengers had to listen to me complain bitterly about people returning to cars on the lower levels long after we did but managing to exit before us because kind people let them into the line of cars. To add insult to injury, when there are hockey or football games on they double the usual parking fee. Next time I think I will take the bus!

*Elizabeth Schwarm Glesner

When my Thursday Walking group does the Granville Island walk, like nine times out of ten since we love it so much, we usually have lunch at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts Bakeshop/Cafe. We stopped lunching at the Market itself some time ago as it had become very crowded and noisy in the food fair part, for the market is a very popular place both with tourists and locals.

The little cafe is very reasonable, for example a combination of soup and any of their sandwiches is a special, costing $5.95, with all the food excellent quality because it is a very well respected school for training chefs. Since it is small it is quiet in comparison to the market and if we want to visit there afterwards it is very close by.

Several weeks ago there were six of us at lunch at the tables in the rear of the Cafe. We were surrounded on three sides by a wrought iron railing, one side being adjacent to the passageway from the bakeshop to the school’s office, through a door at the end of the passage. It had been raining so we had a jumble of raincoats and wet umbrellas scattered about, some of which were on the floor.

As we got up to leave and gathered our belongings my Turkish friend, T, said where is my bag? We looked at each other. Yes, my bag, it was on the floor under my chair, it’s not there. Now she always carried on our walks a very distinctive small ladies backpack, black velvet with embroidered red roses. She doesn’t drive and often travels on the bus so this suits her very well.

Of course she had paid for her lunch so it was in her possession then. She checked in the washroom in case by chance she had left it there but it was nowhere. She reported it to the manager and more frantic searching followed. Finally I said, the first thing to do is cancel your credit cards and now the people at the PICA showed us how helpful they could be. The young woman in the office managed to get contact numbers for each of T’s three cards with the computer in her office and gave her private a phoneline to use. In the meantime others in the office began to look at the security tapes and others offered my friend, who you can imagine was quite distraught, and myself cups of tea. However first things first. T discovered that one of her credit cards had already been used in the short time since the backpack had been taken. When she tried to notify her cell phone provider she could not remember her own cell phone number which is totally understandable since you usually don’t call yourself and she was very upset. It came to her eventually and she reported the theft. Finally we had done all that we could and she phoned her husband who said he would return home and one of the group drove her home.

During the week, T kept me up-to-date as the people at the PICA discovered the thief on the tapes, a young man who had entered the bakeshop, remaining for a few moments, then leaving. A little later he returned and worked his way along towards the cafe part and hooked my friend’s backpack with his foot, dragging it away with no one noticing and finally he picked it up and departed. A copy of the tape was given to the police but it is very unlikely that he will ever be discovered. My friend took a large box of chocolates along to the office to thank all those who had been so amazingly helpful to her and she gave the young woman in the office a beautiful Turkish shawl. Those people could not have been more wonderful and we really appreciated it.

The following week, after our walk at Granville Island six of us trooped in there again to have lunch. I had asked T, is it OK if we go there? Will it bother you at all? But she said, not at all. In we went to find four people ahead of us and only one young lady instead of the usual two behind the counter. So we waited patiently while she served the others and then she ran into the school kitchen to get someone to come to operate the espresso coffee machine. Then she asked us to tell her what we wanted, all one after another and she started to put it on the one tray. But we want to pay separately we told her. She insisted and we thought, oh she is so busy she thinks this is more efficient, we’ll go along with it. Finally, we all had ordered, everything was assembled on several trays and we tried to pay. No, she announced, it is complimentary, for what happened last week.

We thanked her and went to eat our lunch. These people took this situation very seriously since I am sure they don’t want to have this occur again but I can only commend them on their swift action and their overall helpfulness and the lovely surprise of a free lunch next time we came in. Although our experiences there before this incident were alway fine, now we are greeted warmly by the staff and we have learned their names. Sometimes something good does come out of something bad.

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SCARY

Now that Miss Moggs has brought up the topic of hair in a post, well Second Life hair, I thought I might share my search for the perfect hair in that virtual world. But first a few words in general about hair in Second Life.

But may I digress a little here before continuing, with a rather poignant story. One of the groups I belong to in Second Life is quite chatty. The members who come and go during the day send messages to each other and share technical tips and lots of useful information and I tend to leave that window open on my desktop when I am in Second Life, sometimes adding to the talk, but mostly just observing.

Little personal things are shared sometimes and in a discussion about hair the other day, one member shared that she is a three time survivor of chemotherapy treatments for leukemia and wished that dealing with hair in such circumstances was as easy as it is in Second Life. She’s only 39 and can’t work at the moment but lives a very active vibrant life in the SL virtual world. Another piped up that she was currently undergoing radiation and chemotherapy for cancer, a young woman of 26. Neither they nor the other “listeners” knew this about them but only knew them as “friends” in Second Life. They said they would send private messages to each other and I am sure that, as I did, others monitoring the chat thought how great that they had found another who understood. For me it was another example of how Second Life is helping people make the best of a terrible situation in their Real Life.

Back to the search for the perfect hair for JMB Balogh. For quite a while in the early days I wore the Lucile Ball red coloured hair above. It wasn’t quite right but frankly I was still intimidated by shopping for hair as the choice was staggering. Then I found this one. Not bad at all. Not quite perfect but much better and very distinctive.

Nope, not there yet. This one is very nice and goes well with a certain look. Messy but quite flirty in a way and quite mod.

Not done yet. I have been exploring the Victorian look in Second Life and I needed hair which went with those lush Victorian hats. This one is perfect. All gathered together in a bun with little curls around the face. Not quite so nice without a hat however.

But what about the Damselfly hair that Moggs talked about? Her Farah Fawcett do? The very same style that JMB bought in red a while ago? I do love it but it is not quite me, however I do trot it out on occasion. What do you think?

Sometimes I think that the perfect hair does not exist, not even in Second Life. So maybe one has to compromise or wear the hair that suits your outfit of the day. After all it’s easy enough. Only a second to change it. But red, it must always be red. That is a given.

Well except for here. September 7th 2008. Bandana Day. Replace your hair and show you care. That day many in Second Life showed our support for charity and for those in RL who may have lost their hair due to illness. We all paid L$50 to purchase a bandana, with the proceeds going to Locks of Love which I wrote about before. I seem to have lost my glasses that day as well as my hair. Blue, to match my dress, sort of.

No, this is not turning into a Second Life blog. But every now and again, if I think you might be interested in something to do with Second Life, I’ll write about it here and if you are not, skip along. There will no doubt be something different here next time you come by, from the butterfly mind of JMB.

I’m afraid these are not very professional looking photos as so many are from Second Life. I am truly amazed at some I see. Just candid snapshots, taken on the front deck of my rented log cabin at Nestor.

All week I have waited somewhat anxiously for my episode of shingles to progress in the standard way. Each morning I awoke, expecting to be in pain but was not. I inspected the area of the rash and the lesions but they didn’t seem to be getting worse. In fact after a few days they seemed to be getting a bit better. By Saturday I was convinced that this was not shingles but wanted medical confirmation.

My doctor’s office provides a walk in clinic on Saturday morning, staffed on rotation by one of the seven physicians in the practice. People are seen in order of arrival instead of by appointment, so off I went with my book. After reading 100 pages, I finally got to see the doctor who allowed that she did not think it was shingles either. However she said she was too chicken to say stop the antiviral and since it would not hurt, apart from the $135 I had spent on the drugs, I should complete the course, but stop taking the prednisone. Actually I had decided that for myself but it’s nice to have your decision confirmed. She said she thought it looked like bites and since it is indeed prime season, spider bites. In fact it does look like bites now that the more generalized inflammation has subsided leaving the lesions more distinct, but since it is on my torso and normally clothed it does seem a rather odd place to be bitten. Still I am delighted that I do not have shingles and I will be getting the vaccine as soon as it is available in Canada next year.

In a way, the whole thing is quite amusing as recently my walking group pals were discussing spiders at lunch. Some of the group were quite afraid of spiders but I said I never worried about them here as I had grown up with some of the most poisonous spiders in the world in Australia. These little charmers, redback spiders were the bane of my existence growing up, as they were everywhere. One of the group at the table was a doctor on sabbatical from Australia who walks with us every Thursday. She talked about how one has to be really careful where you put you hands in Australia, since although their bites are rarely fatal they do cause a very nasty reaction and require medical attention.

Well I don’t know if it was a spider who caused my shingle scare and I am still not really worried about spiders. However I am very grateful that it was a false alarm and whatever it was, it was only really uncomfortable for a few days, although the rash and the lesions still linger on.

Of course any conversation about Australian wild life always turns to snakes, again with Australia having some of the most venomous snakes in the world. I thought I’d share this amusing snake story with you which came from my doctor friend that day.

At one point she was working as an emergency room physician and a young couple brought in their 18 month old child along with a dead snake they had found in the child’s crib. This is the correct procedure when going for treatment for snakebite, bring in the snake if you can so that correct treatment can be provided.

First things first. The young child was checked very thoroughly but nothing untoward was found. Finally they turned to look at the snake. What did they discover but tiny teeth marks along the length of the snake. Yep, the child had bitten the snake. Whether after its death or had it died from fright at this “savage” treatment, who can say? But besides being ultimately a happy story the ER staff were amazed as well as highly amused and probably have dined out on that story for years.

To those of you who use google reader, I apologize for this post appearing briefly then being taken down. Miss Moggs published a few moments before I put it up so I wanted her post to be on top for at least a day.

Update: Well I don’t have the shingles for sure but now I have a pulled groin muscle. Sigh! If it’s not one thing, it’s another!

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