Thank goodness for my brother-in-law: unknowlingly, he gives us some comic relief at Christmas with his choice of gifts. This year a “friend” has started a craft. In my image it actually looks OK. However, we are talking about a glass brick, here. Where are you going to store it for the next year? And where do you put it at Christmas time? Apparently this friend also does a Valentine’s Day version. “Here Honey, have a decorated glass brick.”
We took my in-laws to the see the Radio City Rockettes “Christmas Spectacular” at the Hummingbird Centre last night. It seemed somewhat incongruous to have the synchronized dancers with numbers MC’d by Mr. S. Claus and then a nativity scene at the end of the show. Apparently this was what the original 1930’s era performance was like so they’ve continued to this day. I would have preferred to watch the Rockettes only. The secular-sacred combination was a little jarring.
Maybe I’m getting old or more sensitive but the music was TOO LOUD. It was much louder that sitting behind a 40 piece symphony orchestra for 3 hours and singing Handel’s Messiah.
On a cheerier note I parked for $5 just a block away from the Hummingbird Centre and the in-laws enjoyed it.
Burning rubber — On Friday I picked up three casserole dishes covered in foil from my mother-in-law and put them in the downstairs fridge. I almost forgot them for our Christmas supper so I hurriedly put them in the oven to warm up. I heard a couple of loud snaps. Later there was a burning rubber smell. My MIL had put elastic bands around the foil!
, Greg, Brianne, Stu, Ann, Ian (horizontal).jpg)
Charred wood — My wife got a new four candle windmill turning thing. She put the old one on one table and the new one on the other and lit the eight candles. I was in the kitchen at the time and I started to smell burning wood. The new windmill was only an inch or two above the candles and it had started to char. The old windmill was a good 4 or 5 inches above the candles.
Yesterday the Bell’Arte Singers and the Oshawa-Durham Symphony Orchestra performed all of Handel’s Messiah: about 3 hours with one intermission. On Friday and Saturday I sang the Mozart Mass in c and seasonal fare with the Oakville Choral Society. Needless to say my voice was rather gravelly this morning.
We just had our mainly Mozart concert this past Saturday. It went quite well. The church acoustics were great. However…
In my choir manager role I gently complained about the transept window renovation we weren’t told about. Street noise and the occasional flapping tarp provided unwelcome ostinatos from time to time. The reeds on the organ were out of tune, probably because the church temperature varies a lot with that renovation work. We seemed to be charged for the sexton even though there was another group in the church at the same time as our rehearsal. I managed to get a $500 concession from the church. For a non-profit organization that donates part of the ticket sales to charity as well this was good news today.
I was appointed Chief Returning Officer for our union in September. On Nov. 30 I supervised my first ballot counting. By the numbers: about 2,800 envelopes verified, 4 ballots, 10 candidates, over 11,000 pieces of paper to sort and count. The group of about 12 to 15 volunteers took about five hours to do sort and count. Many of the volunteers recalled factory and assembly line jobs they had years ago.
I was pleased that the winning candidates' count margins were greater than the margin of error arising from missing ballots (i.e. sometimes not all 4 ballots were returned in an envelope).
During the last week of the election, the candidate emails to me took on a soap opera-like quality with accusations that a newly joined local was being bribed or told how to vote by a union staffer. That union staffer and an incumbent were an item, etc. “Fun” reading and, at least as far as I can tell, all specious information. Again the winning margins were great enough that the losing candidates would have trouble coming up with any justification for recounts or nullifying certain blocks of votes. I had to forward one set of emails to the staffer named and the staff manager. These were personnel problems now not something that the CRO could deal with.
It certainly has been a learning experience for me: I have learned to just provide rulings to election process questions. Trying to be helpful with examples or other types of advice seems to confuse people and then replies get garbled with stuff about the advice rather than the rulings.
I’m looking forward to having many less emails to deal with now.