Final exams.

What is it about stuffy, airless old buildings that makes me nostalgic? As some of you know I recently hightailed it outta my old life and plunked myself down in a brand new one, which today finds me squatting in another librarian's office, sweating profusely and trying to find a window that opens. Across the hall, in the big auditorium, the Royal Conservatory is using our space for its annual exams. I'm listening to a slightly off-kilter piano as I eat my lunch and this feeling is rushing back to me, of being thirteen and just as sweaty as I am now, sitting in a stuffy hallway at Mac and waiting for my turn to go in and dazzle the adjudicator with a truly wretched version of some sonata or modern arrangement of Hungarian folk song. I was a kid who loved (and hated) pressure, so exams and recitals were right up my neurotic alley. As my mom reminded me not long ago, I'd never admit I was nervous, I'd just keep getting crankier and crankier, tugging away at the edges of some lovely hand-sewn flowered dress until I pretty well ripped off the seams. I think I still cope in the same way.

Funny how even the most tension-addled, nervous memories of childhood are just as warm and fuzzy as the good ones, sometimes.

Real updates coming soon, I promise.