Today and every day for the next month, I’ll be practicing cello and piano. Why the sudden piety? Because I signed up a couple weeks ago for a weekend music workshop next month organised by the Chamber Musicians of Northern California, and was told last week that they were happy to accept my application, but unfortunately there were too many pianists and so I couldn’t play piano on both days, but would I like to bring my cello and play that instead on Saturday and then piano on Sunday?

So now I’m forced to bring my horribly rusty cello skills up to date - not to mention that I’ve been telling David that I’ll be sitting in front of the piano wondering just what the hell those black keys are for. This sucks: even though I put down being able to play both instruments, I was gambling on only having to play one of them at the workshop (and thus only have to practice one of them until then).

Mom is going to Vegas tomorrow. Wish I could do the same. But not in her company though - she’s going on some package tour with 11 other elderly Chinese ladies, and you can’t imagine the hell it is vacationing in such an entourage. (Yup: I was dumb enough to do it last year going to Oregon.)