And today ...

Some of the things on my plate:

• Scona Chamber Singers have done their first concert of the year, good crowd and great music. I've also been working on our new webpage for this group. There is still work to do on it, but at least we are now "live" and on the air. (Speaking of which - I love iWeb - easy web designs on your Mac!)
• Speaking of my Mac - I now have an iPad. Downloaded the app ForScore and have started to import some music. The nice thing is - it allows you to put up any PDFs, but it works very well for music. Allows annotations, and will even link music from iTunes if you want to listen and follow. Good teaching, practicing tool I think. I still need to play with it a bit more, but it seems to be a very good app. Especially for only 5 bucks!
• Next week, I'll be singing on center ice at the Oilers home opener! Well, "singing" is a bit of a stretch, as it is of course pre-recorded as all big stadium shows are, but we will LOOK like we are singing "O Fortuna" from Carmina for the big dramatic opener. Fun!

And today .... is my Birthday!

Happy Michaelmas!

Tomorrow, September 29th, is the Christian Feast Day known as Michaelmas.  Otherwise known as the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels.  It is also one of the few feast days which has the suffix "mas".  The other two being Candlemas (February 2nd, aka Groundhog Day) and the much more popular and commercialized Christmas.

During the Middle Ages, Michaelmas was a far more popular feast day.  It coincided with Autumn harvest in much of western Europe.  

In England it was customary to east a goose on Michaelmas to protect you from financial ruin. 

In Ireland, if you found a ring in the Michaelmas Cake, it would mean that someone was likely to be married that year.

It also coincided with the election of the new mayor and chief of police, and for a period of time on Michaelmas, there was a "lawless hour" where there was no law enforcement.  A symbolic gesture of this was to throw cabbage at people.

In Ottawa, Canada, in 1971, on Michaelmas ...

I was born.

Happy Michaelmas Everyone!