(no subject)

Aha. Laura does have a fifth cat! She assured me that she did, but it's taken the better part of a week of cat-sitting to get direct confirmation. And cat #4 finally let me pet him today.

Laura is a neighbor with whom I trade cat-sitting favors. Last time I did this (about a year ago) they had three cats. Then they took in two "temporary" cats who ended up sticking around. They're very pretty from what I've been able to see (they're both Maine Coons), but we're talking about skittishness that can rival that of my cat Embla.

I might have done an unkind thing today, though I didn't realize it at the time. One of the three older cats enjoyed playing with the laser pointer the last time I cat-sat (Laura doesn't own one but I took mine over), so I brought it over today. The aforementioned cat #4, who only let me touch it today, was enthralled by the spot -- and became upset when it went away. He was digging under rugs and reaching under doors looking for it. Poor guy; that's the first cat I've ever seen who didn't lose interest within a minute or so of my turning the thing off.

I think Laura is going to have to buy a laser pointer now.

last few days

Sunday morning the Pennsic camp met for the annual post-mortem. Things actually went pretty well this year, so while there were issues to discuss, it wasn't all that long and involved. And everyone there agreed that there would be no problem with my leaving on the final Friday next year to avoid the Shabbat problems, which is good to hear.

Sunday evening we had dinner with Ralph, Lori, and Mike. It was a fairly normal dinner until the plumbing rebelled. Fortunately, Ralph has plumbing clues and was able to take the kitchen sink apart and find the clog. (Diagnosis: the disposal wasn't.) Unfortunately, that can't have been a pleasant way to spend the last part of the evening. I hope they're able to get it fixed fairly easily.

Last night at choir practice we went through the repertoire, deciding what to remove from the active repertoire and what to bring back (from previous culls). I was surprised by some of the choices; I didn't know anybody actually liked "Pastime with Good Company" or "Belle Qui". No accounting for taste, I suppose. :-) But *whimper*, people wanted to kill one of my favorites, "In Pace", a lovely three-part piece that just flows wonderfully. Oh well; maybe it'll come back in a year or two. Or maybe there'll be an opportunity for a subset of us to perform it at some point.

It sounds like the choir is going to do its usual concert of Christmas music for the 12th Night event, so I get to take a couple months off again. This is fine; I don't mind the break at all.

A couple of the non-Christmas songs that are coming back, and one new one that a group member is proposing, are problematic for me. I'll continue to just sit those out. Fortunately, the choir director understands the issues and is very accommodating -- much moreso than a previous director was. I'll never understand people who say "it doesn't matter what the words are if the music is pretty". (What this usually means, in my experience, is that their own sensitivities just haven't been bumped into, and they can't appreciate other peoples'.)

Last night after rehearsal some of us went to Dave & Buster's for dinner, which meant we got to watch Chris do impressive things with Pump It Up. One song in particular was quite impressive (level 5 and fast), but I didn't note its name.