Another Year, Another Dollar
Happy New Year! I know I should probably write something about new year’s resolutions and all that stuff, but this year, I’ve decided that I’m not going to have any resolutions, since I never keep them anyway.
I’ve been exceedingly busy this past Christmas season, what with performing in three Philadelphia Singers concerts and one Crossing concert, not to mention Christmas caroling. Oh, and did I mention I’m taking over said Christmas caroling company? Yeah, I was doing administration, HR, and payroll, while the current owner did sales. The deal isn’t done yet, but hopefully next year I’ll be running the whole thing myself, and by the time December 2008 comes around, it’ll be a well-oiled machine. Hopefully.
I did manage to get myself sick sometime around Thanksgiving, and I never really shook the after-effects of the bug. I’m still suffering from post-nasal drip, which is making me cough, and thus harming my voice. Very, very bad news, folks. My biggest problem is that I normally have quite a bit of time after Christmas to rest up and heal for the next round of concerts, but not this time! I’m currently in rehearsal for a Crossing concert with Piffaro (Jan. 5 & 6…come see us!) and then a barrage of Philly Singers performances of a Jennifer Higdon world premiere. So I’ve been in rehearsals since the day after Christmas, and I’ve only had New Year’s eve and New Year’s day off for some much-needed rest.
Of course, during all this craziness, my cat, Scratchy (no, not Itchy, who had the toxoplasmosis…Itchy is better, by the way, although his head is still a little bit sideways and probably will be permanently), got a urinary obstruction (essentially bladder stones), and we had to take him to the emergency room. He had to stay there for two nights with a catheter up his you-know-what, which, according to the attending vet, caused him to be “grumpy.” No kidding. Anyway, he is home now, and we have to keep both him and his brother (since they eat each other’s food) on a special diet formulated to raise the acidity of the urine in order to break up the crystals. They also have to be fed only canned food (it hydrates them and dilutes the urine) for the next two weeks, and man, that stuff is expensive!
Oddly enough, from all I’ve read and all the vets have told me, urinary crystals, or FLUTD, are pretty common in male cats of Scratchy’s age (he’s 5 years old). But when I went into the pet store, out of the myriad of cat foods, I only found one brand that made a canned formula suited to his condition. Oh, there were about two or three different dry types, but because I’ve been cautioned to keep Scratchy as hydrated as possible during the next two weeks, canned is all he should eat. So Purina has the monopoly on cats with urinary tract disorders. It’s either that or get the really expensive prescription stuff from the vet’s office. Oy.
Ray keeps telling me the cats are going to have to go out and get themselves jobs if they’re going to keep spending all of our money. I’m beginning to think he’s right. It’s definitely a good thing that I’m working so much.
Filed under Blogging, Health, Holidays, cats | Comment (1)I want a new drug
So in my sojourns through transcription world, I get to hear about a lot of different new drugs, most of which I can’t comment on because of confidentiality reasons. But today I heard about the best drug of all: Havidol. Haven’t you ever wanted to Havidol? It’s the “first and only treatment for dysphoric social attention consumption deficit anxiety disorder,” according to the website. I think there are a lot of folks in America who need this drug.
Many people who are devotees of the Flying Spaghetti Monster take Havidol regularly, and they find that they become closer to his noodly appendage.
(You know, the really sad thing is, there are people who have gone to their doctors actually requesting the drug, and then they write to the conceptual artist telling them it’s her fault that they are so stupid they can’t tell the difference between real and fake)
Filed under Bizarre, Blogging, Health | Comment (0)Influenza
I’m feeling much better. This flu has been brutal over at the opera house! Angela Brown and Renzo Zulian (playing Radames) were both sick with it all during tech week, and they both went MIA during the final (invited) dress. Oh yeah, and they don’t have covers at Philly Opera. There was a last minute replacement for Aida: Lisa Daltirus, who sang the role at Opera Delaware last spring, went on stage for the dress and it looked like she had been there the whole time. She was amazing.
For the dress, they flew someone in from Columbus, OH, to sing Radames, but he didn’t have it memorized, so he sat on the side of the stage and read from the score while everyone pretended he was on stage. Clearly that wouldn’t do for opening night, though, and both Angela and Renzo were sick for opening night, too. They found a really good tenor, though, who had randomly auditioned for something else and happened to use “Celeste Aida” as his audition aria. The director said, “Do you know the role?” To which he replied, “I just covered it this fall at Chicago Lyric.” What luck! After 6 hours of rehearsal, he was in costume and on stage for opening night. He got rave reviews, too.
So I thought this mystery tenor’s name was Don Juan Shin, which I thought was the silliest name in the world. But apparently, his name is Dongwon Shin, which makes much more sense. He certainly doesn’t look like a Don Juan; this short, squat Korean guy hardly looks like a romantic lead. But he did a good job, both on opening night and the following performance, when Renzo was still out.
The third performance, Renzo came back, but the director made an announcement that he was “95% recovered.” Yeah, make that 5% recovered. He sounded like ass doing “Celeste Aida.” And when I say ass, I mean ass. Like it hurt to listen to him sing. So after the first act, there was a frantic “Wardrobe and Mr. Shin to stage right” call over the intercom, and Dongwon (I still think of him as Don Juan) played out the rest of the opera as Radames. I felt bad for Renzo, because he didn’t really get a chance to sing the role very many times.
Finally, last Sunday, Renzo was back to his normal self, and sounded fine, and all was well with the world. Oh, except for the fact that almost the entire chorus had contracted the flu and were dropping like flies. One girl fainted in the dressing room on opening night, and another one had to leave the stage on a different night. The supers, too, have been fainting on and off stage. It’s stupid, but of course we come to the theater sick, and then we pass it around so easily when we’re all packed like sardines in the tiny wing space singing off stage.
Now Josh and Jill are sick, and it’s all my fault. Strangely, Ray has avoided the bug (knock on wood), and I think if he was going to get it, he would have gotten it by now.
Filed under Health, Singing | Comment (0)The Ghost of Death is Upon Me, and So I Flail
I managed to get the flu, and I happen to concurrently be singing in John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer, which is a contemporary piece based on the story of the 1985 hijacking by Palestinian terrorists of the cruise ship, Achille Lauro, in which Leon Klinghoffer was the only passenger who died, but he happened to be a Jewish American in a wheelchair, and they threw him overboard. Anyway, the music was very hard to learn, and we were totally under-rehearsed. And I, of course, managed to get sick the week of dress rehearsals and the performance. I was running a 100-degree fever and trying to eke out very difficult rhythms and intervals, and I did not appreciate being yelled at (the conductor was really yelling at the chorus as a whole) for not knowing the music very well. And we had two performances of Aida that week, too: a high stress situation, even when you’re not sick.
I managed to make it through the concert without fainting, although I did keep a wad of tissues in my sleeve during the performance and kept surreptitiously dabbing my nose whenever I wasn’t singing and blowing my nose when the music got loud. Basically, all week, I kept to my bed during the day, and about 2 PM I would force myself to get up and take a shower, pop a few Advil to break the fever, and go to rehearsal/performance. Afterwards, I would drive home and collapse into bed. As a result, I think I’ve been sick longer than I probably would have been if I had just stayed in bed the whole time.
Filed under Health, Singing | Comment (0)Sick
I’ve been sick and going to rehearsals with a fever. I know it’s not good. I know, I know. But I need the money and I have no insurance.
Friday morning I felt like ass, but I need the money from work, so I decided to go. I only lasted about half a day and I went home. I called the doctor on the unlikely chance that they might have an opening that afternoon, and lo and behold, they did! So I went to the doctor’s office and sat in the waiting room for about a half hour. Then I went in and the nurse took my temperature (100) and blood pressure (92/60!). She told me to wait in the room and someone would see me in a minute. I sat there for a couple of minutes and felt so bad I laid down on that little examination bed/table thing and fell asleep. I woke up a half hour later and still nobody had shown up. Finally about five minutes after I had woken up, someone knocked on the door and came in.
It was Melanie, the nurse practitioner, which was fine, because I had seen her before and I knew she was really nice and good. So she examined me, and when I mentioned that I had no insurance she said that she had been thinking of taking a throat culture and sending it to the lab, but seeing as how that would cost too much, she just went and got me some sample antibiotics (a whole bag of them!!) and sent me on my way. She just gave them to me. I’m so impressed. Anyway, I’m taking the antibiotics now and I’m starting to feel better, but I’m still not 100%.
I actually think Ray gave this whatever-it-is (probably strep) to me, because he was up at Faire all those cold weeks during kids days with all those kids who wipe their noses and then hand him money. He had been sick, too, but not feverish (as far as I know), but he never went to the doctor about it. So it’s probably his fault. Grrrrr…
This weekend we rented a van and drove up to New York to pick up a daybed from Amy that she’s been trying to unload on us for ages. Then, since we had the van, we drove over to Teaneck, NJ to pick up another pinball game that Ray had bought on Thursday. He just happened to mention this to me on Saturday morning, as we started driving to New York, much to my chagrin. Anyway, I have to trust that he knows what he’s doing…
Filed under Health, Singing | Comment (0)