12:55 a.m. - 2002-10-09
Stirring the Soul
It was a regal day today.
The Queen of England is touring Canada as part of the celebration of her 50 years as monarch of the British Commonwealth. She still is the honorary head of state in our country although she is very careful to never interfere with anything of a political nature. We could do much worse for a national figurehead. I like her. So far, on this tour, she has officiated at the opening of the legislature for our newest Territory - Nunavut. In British Columbia she dropped the hockey puck to start the NHL's game in Vancouver. This is the first time since her coronation that she has involved herself in such an activity here. Guess she has the same attitude toward hockey as I do. Today she was celebrating with the citizens of Manitoba. She will have duties in Ontario that keep her busy until she leaves Canada a week from now. Must be a tough life always being on display and always being under a microscope. She manages it with grace and good humour.
The other woman of high estate that I spent time with today was Aretha Franklin. I picked up the CD "Queen in Waiting". This recording does do justice to her voice and the instrumental part of the recording was great too. A lot of the songs I don't remember from when I was growing up, but it does remind me of the type of music my Mom preferred. There was one track where the refrain was "got nothing to lose". I could have sworn I heard Nat King Cole's voice singing along but, of course, he wasn't there. There were tracks where memories of music by Brook Benton, Dinah Shore, Ray Charles, and Leslie Uggams floated into my mind. I loved the renditions of Walk On By, Tiny Sparrow, and Mockingbird. Fortunately for my co-workers I didn't sing along, although I was sorely tempted.
I also listened to Carmina Burana at work today. I love the crisp use of the human voice in this classical piece. The recording I have is Deutschgrammophon. Again the vocals and the instrumental work are nicely balanced. It is a very lively rendition of medieval poetry set to music. The lyrics are easy to follow even though neither German nor Latin are my first language.
The contract I'm working on is just about complete but it was kind of a strange day. I gave my supervisor the list of missing data I had pieced together from all our sources about 2 weeks ago - it was substantial and represents a significant cash/asset value - and he passed it on to our liaison about a week ago after the spreadsheet was revamped to meet the needs of the company as opposed to serving a data mangement perspective. Since then, in the last few days, I've been getting requests from the other records staff for those records for someone else. Apparently, the liaison hasn't told anyone about the list yet someone is obviously looking into the issue. Curious. Also there is a big meeting at the data mangement company set for Friday for all their permanent staff - no reason given. Either that is very good or very bad. I'm on contract - a choice I've made for the past 10 years because I like the flexibility and the variety, so I won't be there. Guess I'll just have to wait. My supervisor isn't back from his course until the 21st of October. I feel like I've been left hanging in limbo but I know that our liaison hasn't responded to him with respect to the next phase of the contract so he really couldn't give us any clear direction before he left. Patience Grasshopper!
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