The meme I do every year in the first days of January. (Except I keep tinkering with it to make it more relevant to my life, adding questions and deleting others and rephrasing some, so it never ends up being the same meme two years in a row, quite ( Read more... )

( Choir Tour to Japan: Day 2, part 1 )

So! Due to many requests, I finally sat down and started writing about the trip. Scribbling at great length about my tiny adventures in Chile this past summer actually turned out to be an amazing way to process all the stuff I saw, and I think I ended up learning and remembering much more as a result. So I'll try to do the same for Japan ( Read more... )

Tomorrow's my last day of rehearsals before going to JAPAN.

It hasn't quite sunk in yet. All I can think is that 1) maybe on the 14 hour flight my horrible insomnia will go away (I haven't slept more than five hours a night in four days, and I am DEAD) and 2) once we're there we won't be rehearsing all the time. Four hours of choir per day plus ( Read more... )

Because there are six hundred and eighty squillion other things I should be doing right now... here's the beginning-of-semester post. Which apparently some of you actually read. Why on earth I have no idea, but here you go.

( House )

HAH. It's official. Finally.

Macalester Choir is touring to Japan next winter.

I am mightily psyched.

Every winter a local church, the House of Hope, which has for a long time had some kind of a vague partnership with Macalester, hosts something called "Macalester Sunday". This rather hilarious tradition (of many decades standing) is distinguished by five things ( Read more... )

So the rest of choir tour was fun, if kind of exhausting. We saw Chicago Lyric's production of Die Fledermaus, which a hilarious and impressive romp -- all singers concerned win major points for being willing to throw themselves all over the stage for a laugh. Also 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which was extremely cute. (Mum, was it the ( Read more... )

I've apparently become a morning person. Even with the lingering cold (which I think, having only gotten a small toehold, has decided to give up and back down, but it's being grudging and slow about it), I was up at 8:30 and ready for... well, actually, ready for painkillers, as I had terrible, nauseating, startling cramps. Ow. Ew ( Read more... )

I have been a bundle of social activity the past few days. Including making dinner for the alto section yesterday (plus a lone beloved soprano who is one of three honorary altos). Price of making lentil soup, salad, herb-cheese bread, and gingerbread cake with maple-cream sauce for 11 people: approx. $40-ish + 3 hours of cooking + an immense stack ( Read more... )