Thursday, September 18, 2008

15 seconds

My choir is on YouTube! You can finally hear what we sound like. Someone posted a video of parts of our performance of Gabriel Faure's Requiem from last Sunday. The sound quality is better than the visuals, I promise. I am up there on the stage, somewhere in the middle of the first row. Go listen!

Monday, September 15, 2008

update

Sorry for the long silence. I have been silent because I have felt especially boring lately - nothing to report. I have been obsessing over a mystery series (by Julia Spencer-Fleming). That type of obsessing is always a little embarrassing, so I try not to obsess directly to other people or, say, here. So I won't. Instead, I just admit to the obsessing without going into details.

Mom and Dad were here for a couple of days, dropping off lots of boxes of My Stuff From Their House. In the unlikely event that they brought it all, I am now officially out of their house, all grown up. It only took 35 years. I haven't yet opened any of the boxes, since I have no place to put any of the stuff, but I now have all the books and mementos of my childhood that I am ever likely to have, along with some dishes and glassware from my ancestors. Not sure which ancestors. Great-aunts, mostly. So not really ancestors. Anyway, I have no place to put them.

Mom and Dad drove out from Maryland with all these boxes, and were here for less than 2 days. As Mom said, it's the journey that's important, not the destination. I'm the destination. Now they are on their way to Oregon to see Mom's sister, and then will start back east. They have had a nice trip, and we had a good time yesterday. My choir performed at the big fancy concert hall (Benaroya) in Seattle, as part of the Day of Music and Art, in honor of the10th anniversary of the hall. Everything was free (mostly), and we sang in the middle of it. Faure's Requiem, which we performed in May as well. It was very nice. Mom (or maybe Dad) said that when the singers (that was us) opened our folders, the lights on the stage reflected off our music and up onto our faces. We all glowed. How nice. After the concert, we had a big lunch at Elliot's, the seafood restaurant by the water, and then braved Pike Place Market in search of croissants (mmm, the French bakery). Then we braved the even scarier ferry terminal, which was filled with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sad Seahawks fans. The Seattle Seahawks had just lost their second game of the season (football). The ferry terminal was full of depressed blue-clad people, with a couple of sedate (but secretly ecstatic) 49-er fans. Once we got on the ferry, it was very nice. We sat up top in the wind and the sun, and breathed in the exhaust from the engine house. How lovely.

Now Mom and Dad are gone, and I have called in sick to work. I was planning on calling in sick anyway, but I actually have a sore throat and was achey last night, and am generally pooped, so I feel somewhat justified. And I'm a little blue, as expected. It is loud here - my apartment building is getting new siding and new windows on the back, both good things and loud. It is a beautiful day - a nice day to work outside and put on new siding, I would think. Perhaps I should go move plants away from the wall on my deck. Yes, I should.