In Harmonium

Posted By Marc on April 7, 2009

I have been insanely busy since I got back from Monterey.  What has made the situation so frustrating is that the vast majority of the busyness is things that I have been waiting for to happen.  My body, however, decided that I needed a rest so, along with two of my bass colleagues in the Bach Choir, I came down with the “plague” (aka really bad cold moving to flu) 9 days ago.

Plague

Years ago, I noticed an odd thing about living in Ottawa – people would talk about really bad colds as the “plague”.  The first time I got hit with one here, and it converted into influenza, I understood why – they knock you on your back and force you to rest.

Over the years I have lived in Ottawa, I have wondered if people who live here haven’t adapted to this “yearly” phenomenon.  I’ve noticed that people who are working too hard have a tendency to get the “plague”.  In many cases, I am sure it is because their immune systems are depressed from stress and exhaustion but, in some cases, I’ve wondered if it wasn’t because they just needed a break and their bodies finally called a strike!

Another thing I have noticed about the “plague as strike” is that it tends to come right around exam time in school and other high stress times.  I remember showing up for one exam, sick as the proverbial dog, with a box of kleenex and ahomemade  “sniffer” (menthol crystals dissolved in eucalyptus oil).  I’m pretty sure that the proctor at the exam was convinced I had them there to cheat, but they couldn’t figure out how I was doing it.

Rain

I have been working, for some time now, on concepts of cultural evolution and, especially, on how such mechanisms would work.  That was what I wrote the paper for the conference in Monterey on using a couple of examples from the Mosul Case study and an irhabi blog.  For a paper put together in 3 weeks, it wasn’t too bad, but it still needs a lot of work before it gets published.  And this is where it is starting to pour…

I found out that all of the conference papers, or at least the invited ones, will probably be published in an edited volume sometime in the future.  I have also been using that material as the outline for a book, and now I am starting to get some pretty strong expressions of interest on that as well. This, as the saying goes, is a “Good Thing”.

At the same time, I am also getting a lot of contracts, which is also a good thing, especially since they are symbolically related to the same subject matter.  However, they are all showing up at the same time, and I am starting to think about building a large ark!  And, to put the cherry on top, the OBC has a major European tour coming up, several embassy engagements, a concert that is being broadcast on national radio, etc., etc.

Not that I’m complaining (much!).  Life is looking up, things are going well, and I am going to be busier than a politician caught in a Royal Commission investigation over the next year or so.

Of snippets

On a (vaguely) related note, one of my favourite science fiction authors, Eric Flint, uses his blog to publish “snippets” of his forthcoming novels, and I think I will be using mine in the same way.  We’ll see how it goes, but I have a feeling that it will be a very good exercise in writing discipline!

Category: Uncategorized, Working Ideas
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