errands of the day

[calimac]

1. Picking up a prescription renewal at the hospital pharmacy. They've given up the policy of only handing out a half-prescription if you pick up a renewal in person, which was intended to encourage patients to use mail-order. I prefer in-person when I can, partly because it's faster (a relevant point if on the verge of running out), and partly because of the strange things our mail carriers sometimes do when they find the package won't fit through the mail slot.

2. Unsuccessful search for a Goodwill donation truck. The nearby shopping center that used to have one is now under construction, and the truck is gone. Goodwill's web site shows a truck at another nearby shopping center, but there is no truck.

3. Post office, to mail little holiday packages to B's numerous relatives. I offered to let the woman behind me in line at the self-service machine, who had only one package and who also had a squirming toddler, go ahead of me, but she didn't understand what I was talking about (possibly an ESL problem). So I just tried to work quickly. The toddler stood underneath and gazed up quizzically as I did so.

4. Dentist, for a cleaning and checkup appointment postponed from when I had a cold. As I sat there being buzzed at, the inhouse sound system was playing jazz versions of the Nutcracker Suite and Peer Gynt. Not just an arrangement, but an alteration of the notes and their value and pitch and number: jazzing it up. Look, I kept wanting to say, if you don't like the Nutcracker then don't play it, but there's no need to demonstrate your disdain by mucking around with it like that.

5. To market, to market, to buy a little chicken to cook for tonight's dinner, made with a delicious but (alas) discontinued curry sauce I found at one of the upscale grocers.

And so, stomachs satisfied (the cats' too, at least momentarily), to the computer for the evening perusal.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Are jazz adaptations (like those by Ellington) of The Nutcracker selections inherently different from variations by classical composers like Rachmaninoff's rhapsody on a Paganini theme or Vaughan Williams's use of "Greensleeves"?

-MTD/neb

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Yes. The aesthetic and the technical approach are utterly dissimilar. One of many, many examples disproving the notion that "it's all just music" or "there's only two kinds of music, good and bad," unless one is willing to stigmatize all jazz as "bad" which I don't think was the intent here.