Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Tuesday, February 15th

I have been very remiss about updating this for a while but I do have a good excuse known as a never ending case of bronchitis which has been hanging around since early January. It is slowly getting better but I still have hacking fits and feel tired and washed out and not much like doing things. The upshot of this is that many routine chores are way behind. Not only blogging, but Christmas is still not put away (although the majority is at least boxed up) and the vacuuming and dusting is way behind which is no joke in a household with four cats.

Besides respiratory ailments, January has been about three other things. The first is mass craziness at work. Due to certain changes in Medicare regulations and a different approach to the mineworkers contract, I have had to stuff about another eight hours into my work week which is making me slightly insane. Something has got to give as I cannot keep the pace up long term. I'm going to do all of this through March and then reevaluate.

The second is opera season. Faust was a significant success due to a talented chorus, both as vocalists and actors and a good director who made use of us so it wasn't all park and bark as is often the case in opera. The principals were all also in fine voice. I have been unable to locate much in the way of production photographs yet but here is one I found featuring yours truly as the town drunk in the first act.



The third is the somewhat crazy weather we've been having around here. We have had four significant snow/ice falls since Christmas so far. The one mid-January put so much ice on the roads that the whole city was shut down for two days. Another one brought ice mid-afternoon that led to a blind panic and everyone trying to get home at once and my ten minute commute took an hour and a half. We could get snow through March so we may not be out of the woods yet although this week it's sixty degrees and sunny.

I'll try not to get quite so far behind the rest of the spring but the road to hell and all that...

posted by Andy @ 5:58 AM