Sort of a low-key day today. Played the piano a little (very badly), listened to some Shostakovich, baked cinnamon sugar biscuits which turned out rather well with the oven temperature lowered by 10 degrees, and started reading John Adams’ biography, Hallelujah Junction, which is starting out very readable and enjoyable.
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I’ve been accepted into CoMA’s Midwinter Composers Masterclass!!!! This is both deeply awesome and rather scary. Not having really received any feedback from other composers in about 15 years, it’s a wee bit daunting. As is having to write a string quintet from scratch by the middle of December, but I really feel like this is a big step towards whatever’s next on the agenda for my music. Scared but elated. The Masterclass is organised by CoMA, who are an organisation who promote contemporary (classical) music for amateur musicians, and the composer in charge of us composer-participants is Tansy Davies… who is the same age as me, which could be a little weird, although I’m hoping not. I really liked what I heard of her music on her website and, reading about her approach, she seems to use architecture as a launching-point in a similar way to how I’ve been using modern art, so it could be interesting. There’ll also be a composer ensemble, made up of whatever we selected composers can play. Not sure if/when we’re advised of what that is – the notes sent through recommend flexible instrumentation – who knows, maybe Deconstruct:Point, line, plane could get another outing? SO EXCITED!
Anyway, that was at the end of the day. Haven’t achieved a vast amount otherwise, but I was feeling I needed to get back to composing, but I’ve been finding the prospect a little daunting with so many people in the house, even if it is a large space and we’re not all on top of each other like we used to be in the old place – it’s just not the same as being on your own. Anyway, so I figured I needed to start doing something about it so I pulled out the music for Egg the Tenth, which I wrote earlier this year (it was the original interlude for the Whitman songs, but didn’t really mesh well there, so I put it to one side to be an egg, but never got around to putting the detail in the score) and dropped in appropriate accidentals, hunted out fonts and did a little layout on it, so it’s basically ready to go now. I also did a MIDI export because I was planning on reworking it in ProTools to sound a bit more like a proper performance than Finale can do… and then discovered that I don’t remember how to wire my tracks in ProTools to get it to use proper sounds, at which point I lost heart and had a nap.
And there was a baking experiment too. When I was seeing my nutritionist, she encouraged me to get hold of this natural sugar substitute called xylitol so I could avoid using sugar when I baked (if you’re new here, I have an insulin resistance – it’s not diabetes [yet] but basically the insulin my body produces forgets what it’s supposed to do with sugar it encounters – unless I exercise regularly, but having been crippled for coming up on a year now, this hasn’t really been happening, hence decision to experiment…). I was in the organic shop today picking up some bits and pieces, and thought that maybe I should give it a go, so I decided to make a crumble with the tasty-but-dry remaining nectarine and some lingering apples – I figured that at least if it was only in the crumble topping, then that could be abandoned if it was too awful. Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘awful’. I guess the flavour was kinda OK, but the texture was All Wrong. The crumble didn’t crisp and it certainly didn’t go chewy. But it wasn’t particularly sweet either (that could have been my fault). So basically it ended up like one of those worthy but tedious baked bars they fill with jam. But without the jam. Sort of bland and like eating a high-fibre pillow. There’s a bit left from the rather small packet, so I might have a go at using it up in a cake (possibly cut with some real sugar) and see if that fares any better.
And finally I started work on getting IE6 sorted out with the website layout while I watched Alice in Wonderland – turned out the problem with the fonts wasn’t anything to do with either fonts or code, it was to do with IE6 not applying styles to the new HTML 5 elements which were referenced in the cascade. So that’s sorted out now, which is a bit yay 
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Did quite a bit on the site today and had a bit of a breakthrough – I’d been exploring ways to get the latest blog post out of my WordPress blog and onto the homepage (which is a static page, not hosted within the blog) and finally I worked it out, thanks to various posts online, so now I have an auto-updating blog post on the homepage! Whee! Haven’t yet been able to get the Twitter feed working though, so I’ve hidden it for now. And I’ve got the navigation working correctly (highlighting the correct sub-navigation items) across all pages and I’ve added in a home link to the menu for pages which aren’t the homepage.
I also started testing properly in IE6 and I think I’m going to need the JavaScript fix Bruce Lawson talks about in Introducing HTML 5 to get the CSS to apply itself to the new HTML 5 elements that Our Friend doesn’t recognise. I was pretty amazed to see, though, that it’s picked up the fancy font, thanks to Font Squirrel’s easy-peasy generator… although, oddly enough, it has a problem with the blockier font. It’s nothing to do with the position of the definition – it doesn’t make a difference whether I move the blocky font definition to the top of the file, or whether I even remove the fancy font, it doesn’t show up in IE6, so I’m thinking it could be something within the font file itself. Not too disturbed though. After all… IE6 (although obviously I’ll have to see what it does in other versions of IE and that’s likely to do the same thing, I guess). Tossing up whether to put in an IE6 disclaimer. It might be a good idea. Just so that IE users know that what they’re seeing isn’t the actual design. While in general, I feel I should support any browser that is commonly in use, in practice, it’s getting ridiculous to still be fully supporting such ancient technology, when there’s a better, more semantic way to achieve things, so I’m thinking the hybrid approach – ensure all content is accessible, include a note letting IE6 users know that it’d be a better experience if they upgrade – is the best way to go.
Oh, and I made a cake. Chocolate, with chocolate ganache topping. And came to the conclusion that the oven thermometer my mama brought over with her has serious fail. I’m sure the oven’s running hot – it’s been burning everything at supposedly the correct temperatures. So I tested it out with the cake today – I cooked it at the official temperature on the oven dial, as always (because I know it works at that temperature, although it overcooks if you don’t keep a close eye on it) – 180 C, which the oven thermometer then said was only 160 C. Grrr. Might have to invest in another oven thermometer to see if it can do better.
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Today I baked bread I pulled out my new pain de mie tin and The Bread Bible and baked up some bread. Unfortunately I suspect that not only does the oven have fail, but the oven thermometer my mama brought with her has been so long unused it’s forgotten how to properly thermomet. By the time it read the 425 F the recipe said it should be for baking the bread, the dial on the oven was up to about 225 C (should be about 217 C) and while the bread has turned out delicious and with a great texture, it IS somewhat charred on top. Think I may have to get another oven thermometer and compare and contrast.
Apart from that, I didn’t achieve terribly much. Made Nigel Slater turkey burgers for dinner. Did a little gentle grocery shopping and accidentally bought Calamity Jane on DVD for £3 which we watched over dinner. Which then led us on to That Touch of Mink. Might need to make tonight a Doris-Day-free zone for the sanity of my mama.
Did a little bit more work on the site, but no huge breakthroughs.
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… and that brings to a close the individual composition pages… or at least the ones currently in existence as it seems there’s a couple that haven’t even made it onto the current site. And one (which I’ve just fixed) which was in as one of its movement-titles instead of the work title as a whole. Whoops. And I even found a FONT tag. Ouch. That hurt but glad to see those done (barring the bits that need reviewing, but I’m sure I’ve elaborated those previously and you don’t need to read it again).
So what’s next? The WordPress template for the blog is something I really want to get sorted now, but it’s possibly a bit silly to look at this before I’ve sorted out the PHPing of the navigation and seen if I can reuse anything from the site proper. Which leaves a contact form (will need PHP but I can nick the code I’m using currently so shouldn’t need a book for that), works list page, CV (maybe – a little undecided on that one)… Um… I’m sure there should be something else in there but too sleepy to go and look it up.
Went to a fantastic concert of Hindemith and Dutilleux music for two pianos/one piano, four hands this evening at the Opera Bastille. Really gorgeous music and fantastic playing. But now I’m itching to get back to my harmony/counterpoint studies… except I can’t because I’m in Paris and it’s in London and I won’t be back till Tuesday night and unable to do anything before Wednesday. Really wanting to be writing some music again too now, but as I’m having to stay up to stupid o’clock just to get any alone-time at all and work on my Creative Pact, this is extremely unlikely to happen. Grr.
But the really exciting thing about today was that I completed a quest I’ve been on intermittently for about 10 years – to find and buy a bread tin with a lid – pain de mie in French, a pullman tin in English. Today I both found and bought that tin – gourmet homemade square bread, here I come! Can’t wait to try it out!!!!
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HUGE leaps forward today. Djeli assembled both the CD and DVD mini-bookcases and the full-size Billy bookcase and I populated them with the relevant media, emptying about 5 boxes in the process – YAY! Unfortunately it seems we’re such media junkies that we actually have overflow from all three media types’ bookcases into the not-so-useful bookcase in the loungeroom. And all this in only 5 years… Must… exercise… self-control. He started trying to assemble the bed too, but discovered that one of the sides has been drilled wrong, which is VERY annoying because it means we need to hire a car again tomorrow night to take the offending part back down to Ikea and wait in the returns queue for hours 
But it will mean that I can hopefully do the remaining errands there while he waits without having to face the horror of buses.
And we ordered the futons to go into the unassembled bedframe so the parents will have something to sleep on.
And we clarified that the poster I’d been thinking of buying (a great one of Battersea power station from Habitat) wouldn’t really go with the new red bookcases, so we saved ourselves £25 on that and will probably get a photo blown up instead.
And I baked. I like to have something to nibble on while I travel and I’m not that fond of commercial treats in general – since going on the deprivation diet a couple of years back I find I can taste the preservatives used in so many commercial biscuits and cakes, which kind of ruins it. BUT I found a fabulous recipe for homemade Oreo cookies and made it up this evening – just the cookies though, because I’ve never been a fan of cream-filled biscuits (although I did fill one pair for Djelibeybi with the leftover Mexican vanilla buttercream from the cake I made for work last week), and WOW. Really brilliant. And SO easy.
Oh, and we washed my teddy bear so he’s ready for my parents’ visit next week and they won’t look at him and go “ewwwww!”
Enough capital letters for one night. Signing off to file biscuits in their tin
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So after chatting with Broken Haiku last night about baking, bread and cinnamon rolls in particular, and after he introduced me to a Japanese Animé series called Yakitate!! Japan, I figured that perhaps now was the time to have a go at making my own cinnamon rolls. I’ve always avoided them because of the high sugar and fat quotient – really not great for someone with no gall bladder who has an insulin resistance – but I’ve been wanting to get into bread baking a bit more while I’m off work and it seemed a fun place to start.
So this afternoon after my physio appointment, and craving a little sweetness after the agony of having her remove a TON of tension from my feet and calves (apparently I store tension in my feet. My masseuse says I store tension in my shoulders. My osteopath says I store it in my back. The scary thing is that I think they might all be right!) why not give them a go?
I was quite surprised to find that Rose Levy Beranbaum actually doesn’t have cinnamon rolls in her inimitable The Bread Bible – shock! horror!! – but Nigella Lawson came to the rescue with the Norwegian Cinnamon Rolls in How to Be a Domestic Goddess. And they were surprisingly easy, really. I mean, bread is a lot easier than a lot of people think, but this was super-simple. And with a limited rising time (25 minutes, then 15 minutes) the whole thing was actually pretty fast to produce. The main surprise was just how sticky the dough was. Nigella talks about “kneading” it, but really it’s a case of prodding at it and wondering how the hell you’re going to get enough off your fingers later to actually be able to cook! But the result was well worth it and with the judicious application of plenty of flour when rolling out, it all worked a treat.
I do suspect I may need an oven thermometer though as the tops burned quite quickly. Not totally charred, but darker than preferred, and definitely darker than the ‘slightly caught edges’ Nigella indicated may happen. But the inside was quite perfect – light and buttery and not too sweet. Scarily moreish. I have packed up most of them and deposited them in the freezer to prevent instant snacking…
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Tomorrow is the last day of my contract at LBi. I’m really sad to be leaving – absolutely love my colleagues to bits, have had an awesome time with the team I’m on, done a bunch of work and learnt soooooo much, as I do every time I’m at LBi. On the flip side, though, I’m looking forward to having a chance to rest and mend the ankle properly, work on some personal projects (finishing caitlinrowley.com, finishing writing my book and turning Deconstruct: Point, line, plane into an orchestral piece for starters) and hang out with my parents for a few months. Anyway, it wouldn’t have seemed right to have left without some sort of baking extravaganza, so last night I made brownies (because a largish chunk of Team ID seem to be taking long weekends this week and won’t be in tomorrow) and tonight have made a vanilla butter cake with Mexican vanilla buttercream frosting, to be decorated with sparkly red edible glitter I think that makes for a suitable farewell cake!
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Baked some brownies tonight to take to work tomorrow for my second-last day (because a bunch of lovely colleagues won’t be in on Friday) and while I was waiting for them to bake, I found a link to a video of a live performance by Tripod posted to YouTube. Which of course set me off watching a bunch of other Tripod videos, which ultimately got me thinking that I hadn’t seen any Doug Anthony All Stars clips in far, far, far too long. Which I quickly rectified. And so should you (Disclaimer: not if you’re a sensitive person, a PC person, in any way likely to be offended by pretty much anything. Oh, and if you’re at work, it might be best to give them a wide berth too… genius, but nobody ever said genius needed to be tasteful! That said, this one’s pretty tame for them…): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71cEL7v1WGc&feature=related. To give a little context, these guys were HUGE back when I was at school. They used to be on every week on a stand-up programme called The Big Gig. Invariably childish and offensive, invariably brilliant. Great voices, stupid jokes. (I loved them so much, I even took to wearing a tiny plait in my hair in homage to Paul </confession> so it’s fabulous to find they’re just as funny as they ever were)
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BIG-time. Don’t ever recall having this much of a struggle before. But gradually the work’s getting done. And in the meantime, oatmeal biscuits have been baked and a fantastic new dish – a Jamie Oliver roast cherry tomato and sausage bake thingy – tested and given the thumbs up for future experiments.
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