Rambling

Yesterday was a very full day.

I trashed somebody's document by accident (it is hard to not mess things up when the instructions and processes published and maintained by the company are wrong, out of date or incorrect).

I called the tech support people, and while waiting for the return call got a phone call from the security company for my sister's house that the alarm had gone off (about 15 minutes at top speed away). So, a mad dash up to Chelsea to make sure that nothing horrible had happened. Nothing had, but there are mysteries to be resolved. (So much for my plans to get on with my garden today.)

I had a long talk with my bank. As you know from an earlier post, I had deposited a substantial cheque to my account about a week ago, and then hit a shopping groove. I wasn't worried about the funds: it was a Government of Canada cheque. Then I discovered that my rent cheque had been bounced back (first time ever), because the branch where I made the deposit placed a hold on the cheque.

When I moved to Gatineau Quebec from Kingston Ontario I was going to transfer my accounts to the branch of my bank closest to me. I decided not to, for any number of reasons (mostly because they often outright lied to me about what could or could not be done--and I knew that because I had worked for this bank on and off since I was 18), and because in the age of electronic banking, it was not as necessary as it had been 50 years ago, when passbooks and statements were still all generated by hand.

The banker I talked to (same bank, Ottawa Ontario side of the river) about this return of my rent cheque said that this was a not atypical behaviour from the Quebec-side branches. A large percentage of the accounts they held were moved over to Ontario around the time of the last referendum, and these branches are starting to resort to bullying clients by making it impossible for them to do any business with the branch until all that client's accounts have been moved to that branch. (This explained a lot of the garbage I have been through with the Quebec branch I have been dealing with for over 11 years.)

Last night was the last in our dance series for the season: Les Grande Ballets Canadiens de Montreal. Both the almost-ex and I were really looking forward to this (and not only because of the cookies reception for the entire audience that was to be held following the performance). Past shows of theirs had been great. Last night's was a disappointment: the choreography was OK, the music (Shostakovitch Suite No. 2 for Jazz Orchestra) for TooT was marvellous and the piece was mildy amusing, but the dancing was sloppy. Not what we had come to expect from this group. The second part of the program, Noces, had deeply annoying music and was essentially uninspiring. The audience was incredibly moderate in their reactions to both, and got 'bullied' into applauding more than they wanted to by the guy manning the stage lighting and the obviously formula curtain call routines the troupe had. (At one point it was kind of sad: the dancers knew that the audience did not want to clap any more, and they were almost all off the stage when the lights that had dimmed were turned up and the company was sent back out to finish the curtain call routine. I felt kinda sorry for them.)

While we were eating our cookies afterwards, we started talking about our subscriptions for next year. For the past couple of years we had been finding the series A events (which are presented in the premier venue, Southam Hall) very hit and miss. Some were spectacular (Alvin Aliley American Dance Theatre, The Forsythe Company), others (like La La La and Les Grand Ballet this year and a Belgian company Rosas from a couple of years ago) ranged from OK to boring/icky. The presentations in the smaller Theatre have been more uniformly engaging.

Our theory is that the A series bookings for Southam Hall are those most likely to attract a broad audience (over groups that would appeal more to the modern dance aficionados, like the B and C series); a triumph of brand recognition over substance. We are thinking of being a little more selective about which A series performances we get with the subscriptions (an idea prompted by the presence of Les Grand Ballet on next season's A series schedule). I even managed to get the almost-ex seriously considering a couple of classical ballet performances from the CANRIL Ballet series: Royal Winnipeg Ballet The Passion of Carmen and Les Ballet de Monte-Carlo - Monaco Le Songe (A Midsummer Night's Dream). We finished our cookies, and decided to think on for a bit before we made our decisions.