Ow.
So my grand, ambitious plans for Saturday evaporated as dew from grass. Largely because, as when dew quickly evaporates from grass, it was hot as blazes on Saturday, and Chez 42 is not air conditioned. The smallish heat wave that was predicted for the weekend has turned out to be a larger and probably more protracted heat wave than expected, and much of the state is affected by soaring temperatures, miserable humidity, and rolling blackouts. Fortunately, we're in that blessed <10 miles from the coast zone that means our heat index was in the upper 90Fs on Saturday and not in triple digits like much of the county and state.
So I observed the heat wave by doing very little (dishes... laundry... ). I didn't attempt to record, which involves shutting off all the fans and closing all the windows, because that would have been miserable. But I did sit down at the piano to figure out how to play "Too Darn Hot," which is much easier than I thought it would be, after which dug out my Beethoven sontata book and played through the first movement of Pathétique. I have lost much of the muscle memory (I had the movement nearly memorized at one point), but a lot of it is still there, and it was fun to revisit!
The weather was so gross the dogs didn't even complain too much about getting short walks. Although there was a mishap on a bonus walk that Hildy punked me into giving them, which was at least partially my fault, that led to two of my fingers on my dominant hand getting a bit shredded by Hildy's extendable leash (I was untangling said leashes when Hildy lunged at Friendly Neighborhood Cat, I grabbed the leash, and she kept trying to give chase, and she is STRONG), so that sucked and will take some time to heal. In retrospect, I'm quite glad I decided to practice Beethoven just before the accident, since it may be a couple of weeks before the fingers are up to attempting it again.
Thankfully, Sunday was nearly ten degrees cooler and pleasantly breezy. Our friend ML came by to drop off some beer I'd asked her to order from The Bruery for me, which led to us hanging out inside (masked and distanced), taking a walk, and hanging out under the trees out front, which was wonderful. After that, I put on my big girl pants and got the audio for Master Chorale's virtual choir project recorded. Woo hoo! The best part? The main section of the tune ends on a big ol' sustained fortissimo Bb5, and while I had to record it like six times before I got one I was happy with, not only did all the takes feel and sound decent (one had the best Ab, one had the best Bb, and I spliced them together), I felt great afterwards and not at all vocally tired. So double woo hoo for healthy vocal production!
Mr. 42 and I celebrated by taking the dogs to Fiesta Island, and while the dog park was weekend-normal-busy, the rest of the island was SLAMMED. It was cars and RVs and trailers parked practically bumper to bumper nearly the whole perimeter of the island. There were so many boats and personal watercraft buzzing about that we saw something like four different harbor police craft assisting or pulling over other boats and towing jetskis whose engines had flooded. And even worse, when the sun went down, everybody who'd been hanging out all day decided to leave, and the one-way road around the island was so backed up that it took us 20 minutes to get back to the mainland. Fortunately, the dogs had a lovely time running around and making doggy friends (C was quite taken with a Neopolitan Mastiff, which is unusual; her usual M.O. is barking off larger dogs) and were content to snooze on our laps on the longer-than-usual trip home.
When we got home, I had a shower, Mr. 42 made fajitas for dinner and squeezed me a lime and a half for a large and delicious margarita (shredded fingers = no citrus squeezing for me until the wounds scab over), and after dinner, we watched a couple of episodes of Legend of Korra, and I enjoyed one of the lovely beers ML procured for me. I had a vague notion that I might record the video portion of the virtual choir piece last night, but the humidity meant that my wet hair didn't dry in time, so it was nice of the universe to give me permission to relax.
Today is suppose to be quite hot, but thankfully, we've got some cloud cover keeping things cool for the nonce. I've put on makeup in anticipation of recording the video today and starting on my video editing journey (heaven help me...) to replace the video's audio with my prerecorded track. However, I can't do anything just yet because I'm supposed to wear my choir uniform top, and it's in a bedroom closet that's currently blocked by the old mattress, so I need to wait until Mr. 42 is up and about to get his help moving things. Fortunately, I have until 11pm on Tuesday to submit my video for the virtual choir.
In other happy singing news, I'm "on" this week for church, which means I get to record two of the hymns in person with RV on organ and me standing 20 feet away at the choir desk. So that'll be happening tomorrow or Wednesday, and I need to practice the hymns (and, okay, learn one of them...) so we can try to get the hymns in as few takes as possible. It's going to be AMAZING to sing in an acoustically live place again, and with actual live organ accompaniment? Joy!!
ETA1: Mattress moved and choir uniform top achieved! And we were finally able to put away our luggage after our vacation! (Yeah, the mattress has been there for a while...)
ETA2: I have just done something very smart: I loaded the reliable tenor + accompaniment track into Audacity and lined up my recorded audio to match up EXACTLY with it. I had some concerns about the soprano + accompaniment track, especially in the break-it-down section at the end, so I matched my track to JR instead, which is never a bad idea. Plus, it also gave me something good to record the video with. Time to fire up OpenShot and see if I can get the audio lined up and see how good/bad I am at lip synching!
ETA3: I have learned that OpenShot gets grumpy when you fiddle excessively trying to line up video/audio tracks that start at different times, but I made it work, successfully synched my prerecorded track to the video I shot, and have submitted it. It's not perfect, but it'll certainly do! Wooo!!! And I got an instant reward, too: the new blackout office curtains have arrived! Aaaaand they fit the windows and actaully close all the way (YAY!), and they're already doing an awesome job of blocking both light and heat. Okay, walkies calls. But I'm so pleased!
ETA4: All this industry has inspired Mr. 42 to hit up Home Despot for window screen to replace one of the dog-shredded ones in the bedroom, so we now can have BOTH sliding glass doors open without getting invaded by mosquitos. Wooooo!!! BRING ON THE CROSS BREEZE!
Smooches to All!
Mun42
So I observed the heat wave by doing very little (dishes... laundry... ). I didn't attempt to record, which involves shutting off all the fans and closing all the windows, because that would have been miserable. But I did sit down at the piano to figure out how to play "Too Darn Hot," which is much easier than I thought it would be, after which dug out my Beethoven sontata book and played through the first movement of Pathétique. I have lost much of the muscle memory (I had the movement nearly memorized at one point), but a lot of it is still there, and it was fun to revisit!
The weather was so gross the dogs didn't even complain too much about getting short walks. Although there was a mishap on a bonus walk that Hildy punked me into giving them, which was at least partially my fault, that led to two of my fingers on my dominant hand getting a bit shredded by Hildy's extendable leash (I was untangling said leashes when Hildy lunged at Friendly Neighborhood Cat, I grabbed the leash, and she kept trying to give chase, and she is STRONG), so that sucked and will take some time to heal. In retrospect, I'm quite glad I decided to practice Beethoven just before the accident, since it may be a couple of weeks before the fingers are up to attempting it again.
Thankfully, Sunday was nearly ten degrees cooler and pleasantly breezy. Our friend ML came by to drop off some beer I'd asked her to order from The Bruery for me, which led to us hanging out inside (masked and distanced), taking a walk, and hanging out under the trees out front, which was wonderful. After that, I put on my big girl pants and got the audio for Master Chorale's virtual choir project recorded. Woo hoo! The best part? The main section of the tune ends on a big ol' sustained fortissimo Bb5, and while I had to record it like six times before I got one I was happy with, not only did all the takes feel and sound decent (one had the best Ab, one had the best Bb, and I spliced them together), I felt great afterwards and not at all vocally tired. So double woo hoo for healthy vocal production!
Mr. 42 and I celebrated by taking the dogs to Fiesta Island, and while the dog park was weekend-normal-busy, the rest of the island was SLAMMED. It was cars and RVs and trailers parked practically bumper to bumper nearly the whole perimeter of the island. There were so many boats and personal watercraft buzzing about that we saw something like four different harbor police craft assisting or pulling over other boats and towing jetskis whose engines had flooded. And even worse, when the sun went down, everybody who'd been hanging out all day decided to leave, and the one-way road around the island was so backed up that it took us 20 minutes to get back to the mainland. Fortunately, the dogs had a lovely time running around and making doggy friends (C was quite taken with a Neopolitan Mastiff, which is unusual; her usual M.O. is barking off larger dogs) and were content to snooze on our laps on the longer-than-usual trip home.
When we got home, I had a shower, Mr. 42 made fajitas for dinner and squeezed me a lime and a half for a large and delicious margarita (shredded fingers = no citrus squeezing for me until the wounds scab over), and after dinner, we watched a couple of episodes of Legend of Korra, and I enjoyed one of the lovely beers ML procured for me. I had a vague notion that I might record the video portion of the virtual choir piece last night, but the humidity meant that my wet hair didn't dry in time, so it was nice of the universe to give me permission to relax.
Today is suppose to be quite hot, but thankfully, we've got some cloud cover keeping things cool for the nonce. I've put on makeup in anticipation of recording the video today and starting on my video editing journey (heaven help me...) to replace the video's audio with my prerecorded track. However, I can't do anything just yet because I'm supposed to wear my choir uniform top, and it's in a bedroom closet that's currently blocked by the old mattress, so I need to wait until Mr. 42 is up and about to get his help moving things. Fortunately, I have until 11pm on Tuesday to submit my video for the virtual choir.
In other happy singing news, I'm "on" this week for church, which means I get to record two of the hymns in person with RV on organ and me standing 20 feet away at the choir desk. So that'll be happening tomorrow or Wednesday, and I need to practice the hymns (and, okay, learn one of them...) so we can try to get the hymns in as few takes as possible. It's going to be AMAZING to sing in an acoustically live place again, and with actual live organ accompaniment? Joy!!
ETA1: Mattress moved and choir uniform top achieved! And we were finally able to put away our luggage after our vacation! (Yeah, the mattress has been there for a while...)
ETA2: I have just done something very smart: I loaded the reliable tenor + accompaniment track into Audacity and lined up my recorded audio to match up EXACTLY with it. I had some concerns about the soprano + accompaniment track, especially in the break-it-down section at the end, so I matched my track to JR instead, which is never a bad idea. Plus, it also gave me something good to record the video with. Time to fire up OpenShot and see if I can get the audio lined up and see how good/bad I am at lip synching!
ETA3: I have learned that OpenShot gets grumpy when you fiddle excessively trying to line up video/audio tracks that start at different times, but I made it work, successfully synched my prerecorded track to the video I shot, and have submitted it. It's not perfect, but it'll certainly do! Wooo!!! And I got an instant reward, too: the new blackout office curtains have arrived! Aaaaand they fit the windows and actaully close all the way (YAY!), and they're already doing an awesome job of blocking both light and heat. Okay, walkies calls. But I'm so pleased!
ETA4: All this industry has inspired Mr. 42 to hit up Home Despot for window screen to replace one of the dog-shredded ones in the bedroom, so we now can have BOTH sliding glass doors open without getting invaded by mosquitos. Wooooo!!! BRING ON THE CROSS BREEZE!
Smooches to All!
Mun42