A few days ago, I was looking at cute overload. Gus was uninterested until I started playing videos of kittens. He especially perked up when watching "The tiniest 'mew'."
Our OCD cat has been developing oozing sores from constantly licking and scratching himself. In an effort to get Gus to lay off, I knitted him a little sweater. Too bad he can escape it so easily. How can I knit it so he can't squirm out of it? And will it just stress him out too much anyway? Now the two cats are having fun ripping their sweater to shreds.
Yesterday, Harold and I went to the symphony. It was a Haydn/Chopin/Mozart concert, and I wasn't too excited about it. But last night's concert was good- during the Haydn, I tried to figure out the chord structure and how he moved from key to key without jarring your ear... it was kind of a fun experiment to figure out the hook. They did Mozart's symphony 40. I haven't heard it live in years, and it really took me back to thinking about college days. I forgot how much I loved the second movement. I found myself thinking about how it was so amazing that Mozart could be going through such a shitty time, and yet have time to be so stylish and elegant and polite in his music. It makes the music so much more poignant to me. I also felt that special concert moment of feeling like life was elevated for a while out of my daily routine into something with so much emotion, grace and feeling. I should go to the symphony more often.
Tim Day is now playing with the symphony, and his wife is now the acting principal. I wonder when the flute auditions will be or if they've already happened. I'm so out of the loop.
The SF Symphony is sounding great. I used to complain about them and buy tickets for touring orchestras instead, but I think they're getting better. Maybe it was the conductor last night, Peter Oundjian. He used to play in the Tokyo String Quartet, but now he's conducting, and I think he really pulled a good performance out of SF.
Alma and the kids came up to visit. (pics) We made cookies (had to use some cake flour because we ran out of all purpose: made the cookies flat and chewy), watched Nemo and played with kittens. This time since the kids were on the kittens turf, the kittens did less hiding.
I cannot concentrate. I cannot get any work done. All I want to do is follow the kittens from room to room and pick them up and hug them, which they don't like very much. They're getting bigger by the day. Vince has lost his spock ears, so it's harder to tell them apart. But they've gotten more affectionate and now jump in my lap and purr. See the new photo gallery!