Blatherings

I'm so grateful this ended up not being a bonkers week at work, because a bonkers week at work plus ALL THE PROCHOIR RECORDINGS, plus technical issues with this week's hymn file for my church gig, plus having 2 days to write the first huge scene of the theatre camp musical, plus two 2-hour camp meetings, plus 1 day to integrate suggested edits into the musical, would have added upt to WAAAAY TOO MUCH. As it is, it was was only "too much," but I made it, limping over the finish line though I may be.

Mr. 42 is on his way home from work and is picking up delectable comestibles from the pub on the way, the dogs and I had a lovely and lengthy neighborhood ramble that wasn't too hot and sunny because the June Gloom never really burned off for long, and my goal for this evening is to relax (but not too much) so I can be a good participant in filming this week's church service tomorrow morning. No idea if any of the theatre campers are going to take advantage of my and the other counselors' offer to help them write stuff for their individual/small group projects (due Monday), the content of which will determine how the final scene of the show will go. They are smart and creative, but it all depends on how much creation they're comfortable doing. I was also strongly encouraged by the powers that be to let another counselor who has written the show in previous years have a more active role in making the rest of the show (I pretty much created the concept and characters and wrote the whole opening scene by myself), which is 10000000% fine by me. I found out this week what they're paying me to be part of this camp, and I'm pretty freaking stoked. It's the most I've ever made on anything one thing I've written, at least up front. Still, the hours involved are not insignificant, especially over the space of a month, but at least it's all hours I can do from the comfort of my home. The distance of the host church to my home/work and the usual schedule of their theatre camp would otherwise preclude my in-person participation, so this is hay I shall make while the sun shines (or the June glooms).

In other news, I had a fun idea-bouncing session with my writer friend SS, whose work I've edited in the past and whom I like an awful lot. She's working on a sword-and-sorcery fantasy novel, and the two of us share a somewhat twisted creative sensibility, so I'm excited she's come to me for idea bouncing. And even moreso that she's writing again, after a work-enforced hiatus! I will probably ask her to return the favor once I'm out of musical-making camp and I can get back to working on turning my incomplete novel draft into something resembling an actual novel. And she did offer, so it's not like I'm being presumptuous!

Right. Mr. 42 is due home soon and I want to be there with beer in hand to thank him for grabbing the food. Funny thing--his paychecks have been way up because instead of only getting tips from working in the gift shop, his employer FINALLY implemented his suggestion to pool tips with the tasting room. So between that and the possible second stimulus check, we're having a good month. I'm boring, so I'll probably end up saving it for a rainy day (or if the leaky en suite bathroom finally requires immediate renovation...), but I'm deeply aware of our good fortune, and I'm grateful for it.

Here's wishing my gentle countrypersons a thoughtful commemmoration of Juneteenth, and sending love to all!

Mun42

Okay okay okay, the subject line is indeed a joke. I haven't really had any trouble telling apart the days of the week, at least not any moreso than usual.

It helps that I'm still working 8 hours a day at the usual time M-F. Monday night, I still have Master Chorale, albeit in a very different format, and Mr. 42 still teaches lessons in the evening. Tuesday, Mr. 42 still goes to work, Wednesday he still teaches, Thursday is still garbage day, and Thursday night, I still get together with church choir. Every week I still have music to work on for church services, and I even occasionally have ProChoir gatherings (yoga via Zoom) in the midst of all that. So while things aren't "normal," there's enough "normal" to keep me from feeling totally adrift, and I'll take that.

This week's news about not being able to sing safely together is still reverberating. I did a bit of grieving for it yesterday, firstly in listening to the Tallis Scholars' recording of Victoria's Requiem, which was balm, even if it stung a bit at first. And I shut down work a bit early and went downstairs to actually do a bit of singing. I worked on the Eric Whitacre virtual choir piece, which has some tricky intervals that aren't in my ear yet, so I'll keep working on that. And then I moved on to Mozart (Laudate Donimum from Vesperae solennes de confessore) and then some musical theatre favorites ("How Could I Ever Know" (Secret Garden), "No One Is Alone" (Into the Woods)). However, I quickly discovered that oh yeah, meaningful music can feel twice as meaningful in times of crisis, so I had to keep stopping to collect myself when I got to words that hurt too much to sing. So then I went back to Mozart (Alleluia from Exultate Jubliate) and thought "why the hell not" at the end, and successfully sang the first high C(6) in the context of an aria that I've sung in over a decade. So yeah, that was cool. Three voice lessons, people. That's all I was able to have with ET before all this went down, but I'm already seeing so much progress from continuing to apply the things we worked on in those lessons. I mean there's still SO much to work on (and to learn from ET!), and I wouldn't call the C6 reliable yet, but I was able to do it once and it didn't hurt. Clearly, that note and some others I thought out of reach are still in there. Time to reacquaint myself with 'em.

Zoom has been extra nice this week. Monday Master Chorale was fun, and we used the breakout room for something akin to sectionals. Adorable Assistant Conductor took the sopranos and altos, so I took advantage of the transition from mass Zoom to sectional to don my Glinda crown and grab my wand. So I got to work on Shawn Kirchner's "O What a Beatuiful City" whilst looking like the good witch of the north. AAC got a good laugh, at least. Wednesday, Mr. 42 and I joined a virtual 60th birthday party for our friend DL, which was wonderful and well-attended by folks across the country. Last night, following an entertaining post on RV's Facebook page, in which he shared a memory of a 7-11 employee who remarked that he only saw RV in either pyjama pants and slippers or a full suit and asked what he did for a living, I decided to go semi-formal for church choir. I pulled out my silver-sequin cocktail gown and fancy sunglasses and made my self an enormous cocktail to sip on throughout. I also shared the terrifying couture fundraiser mask my designer acquaintance made that looks like it's vomiting sequins, which made us all giggle. And I'm currently attending an online contemporary opera conference, which is pretty awesome so far. I am exceedingly interested in one of the panels that conflicts with chalk talk time, but I'm going to see if they'll let me hand off hosting to the chair and/or speaker so I can be there instead.

Right! Gonna go grab a snack and settle in for some composer talk.

Smooches to All!

Mun42

Got an email from the Pro Choir manager this morning with updated concert/rehearsal dates/times so I can keep my tentative dates with them current.

It was signed "Miss you!!"

Aw.

I confess, I cried a little bit.

Writers, let us always remember how much kind words can mean to someone who needs them. Hell, People, let us always remember that.

Today is my fourteenth wedding anniversary, although Mr. 42 and I have been together for even longer (twenty-one years in May!). Though we saw it coming, I don't think either of us are going the gift route, though I've written him a bit of a fourteen-line poem (y'all are shocked, I know), but it's both silly and thoughtful, so it suits. Though the final couplet kinda sucks, so I'm letting that percolate and will fix it on the bus ride home. He's teaching lessons while I'm home between work and rehearsal, so I won't see him until nearly 10pm tonight. At least I got to wish him happy anniversary before I left for work!

The weekend was a mixed bag. I was up bright and early on Saturday for the Master Chorale retreat and was more than a bit grumpy about it. My mood was not helped by a bit of residual green-eyed monster, since being the obsessive I am, I went through the French Baroque roster that I'm not on (and still somewhat nettled about it) and looked up the member profiles of the new (and new-ish) sopranos I didn't know. This enabled me to be privately judge-y when one of them lamented to me that she'd been out til' 4am the night before and was sooo tired. This was before rehearsing Brahms for 3.5 hours, followed by another long rehearsal of sight-reading French Baroque music for those on the roster. Dude. I can't even muster any schadenfreude for that. Something tells me they didn't have the most efficient or artistically fulfilling rehearsal. On the bright side, I discovered one of the basses has mad kitchen skills and brought home-made whisky truffles for treats. And JR brought his unspeakably adorable 4-year old son to the retreat, and he was wearing a superhero cape and issued hilarious commentary for the first hour or so of rehearsal. Props to JR for awesome parenting, since there were They Might Be Giants references.

However, between the influx of sugar and vocally exhausting rehearsal, I went home aftewards and took a badly-needed nap. The girls woke me up at 4pm, after which I had a light lunch and took them for a meander at Fiesta Island. Unfortunately, our usual parking area was fenced off and full of trucks and RV trailers, since there were power boat races going on all weekend on Mission Bay. Thus, I had to park in an unusual place and herd the dogs into the fenced-in area, since I foolishly didn't have leashes with me. Thankfully, neither of them wandered into the road, so we had a lovely walk, albeit in the opposite direction we usually walk. The weather was gorgeous, what few other dogs were there were all nice, and Clara even did a little bit of gentle playing with a sweet little curly-coated terrier mix. D'aww!

Unsurprisingly, given my general energy levels, I didn't feel up to doing much on Saturday night, so Mr. 42 and I had dinner at the pub, where they were having their local wet hops beer festival, and we enjoyed a couple of flights' worth of local fresh hop beer, many of which were superb, though one or two were not yet ready for prime time. This is the adventure of brewing with fresh hops! When we got home, we discovered to our delight that the 2005 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is now on Netflix, so we watched the first half until my eyelids started drooping. Unfortunately, the dogs were restless and kept jumping off the bed to look out the windows, which meant that sleep was not great. Fortunately, there was enough of it that I wasn't it terrible shape for the morning service. In fact, I sang pretty decently. However, I was still pretty tired, so I had another nap between lunch and call for Evensong. It took my brain a bit of time to come back online after the nap, but physically, I felt pretty good. Evensong went largely well, though someone new is making the bulletins, and a mistake in that led to a minor SNAFU, but other than that, we sounded pretty good. But I think RV was feeling kind of low, too, since he didn't really even conduct us on the final hymn, despite having JMM assisting on organ. Thankfully, there was a festive reception with port, sherry, and shortbread afterwards, which was a nice way to finish things. Plus RV told me a fun Evensong story, which made me laugh.

Our friend DL is in town and invited us for a beer tasting yesterday evening, but it was exactly during Evensong, so Mr. 42 went in our stead. Thus, after Evensong, I went home and treated myself to leftover spaghetti, a couple glasses of rosé, and watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens. After that, I took the girls for a walk, and was fast asleep by 10pm. Clearly, brain and body were clearly in need of some serious sleep. But I must say, getting to bed that early has made for delightfully present brain today, which is something I hadn't realized how much I'd missed. And while writing an anniversary poem isn't the same as writing the story I've neglected for the past week, darn it, I opened my damned word processor and wrote something. A needful step, that.

Perhaps all it took was getting caught up on sleep. Or having some me-time to recover from this absolutely bonkers summer. But whatever it is, I'm feeling more on an even keel than I have for some time, and it feels really good.

OK, gonna get some editing done on the Recruitment Document of Doom. It's another "Justify Your Existence To Chair" document, but at least I was able to lift the form and a number of sections from the previous one, which was Justify Your Existence To Chair: The Big Lecture Series Edition. And my boss has been so impressed with these documents that she's asked me to integrate comments from the other chair's assistants so we can all use this checklist for the upcoming recruitment cycle, both so the people in charge have a clue as to what it is we do to support recruitment and so everybody knows what's expected when. Not a bad goal, though of course, during recruitment, everything can and will go pear-shaped at least once or twice. Bracing for that particular impact. One more week 'til the official start of this academic year. Don't wanna, but also *shrugs* I do work at a university. You'd think I'd be used to this by now...

Smooches to All,

Mun42