"I want it to be mezzoforte, that doesn't mean I want it to be WIMPY."

[dr4b]

Work was like a ghost town today. It probably will be tomorrow, too. I talked to my boss though, and I think he gave me a good project for me to work on remotely while I'm in Pittsburgh (basically a parsing project that he doesn't have time to do right now). So that's good.

I went to choir tonight, but my throat is still residually sore from coughing up a lung after DDR yesterday. The sad part is, half the section still doesn't know a lot of the choruses in part 2. I decided that today was "Ignore Everyone Else and Just Sing the Right Part Day".

There's a blind lady in the alto section, and she brings her seeing-eye dog with her to rehearsals. This dog is insanely well-behaved. It just sits there under her chair for the whole rehearsal and never barks or moves or anything. It also is fine with half the choir coming up and petting it during the break. As for the lady, I can't imagine what it must be like to try to follow the music with the braille book.

Anyway, incase you aren't already aware, our concerts are on December 9th at Prince of Peace and December 10th at the Woodinville Community Church. We're performing Handel's Messiah -- the whole thing, not the abridged one we did in 2003 -- the concert itself is free, but we pass around a hat for donations, and all the proceeds go to Northwest Harvest and other such organizations for feeding the poor; I think we raised several thousand dollars for them last time. So please come see me sing in the choir, if you are in Seattle and were thinking of going to see Messiah somewhere anyway! I'll post this again in two weeks I'm sure.

After choir I would usually go to the gym, but rehearsal went a little late and plus I was feeling pretty dizzy afterwards -- probably a little lightheaded from oversinging some of the parts. So I decided I could excuse myself from the gym and go tomorrow, as long as I was going to get useful things done. So, I started packing for my trip! I packed emergency clean clothes into my carry-on laptop bag, hopefully assuring that my luggage won't get lost, and I got my Key West costume stuff together (including putting my tricorne in an Amazon box so it won't get crushed, heh), and got a stack of clothes together, and I'm ripping my Messiah CDs onto my laptop so I can practice music while I'm away.

I guess I feel vaguely productive.

Also, today the Mariners apparently signed the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks catcher Kenji Johjima, which isn't really a surprise. Shame I'm not much of a Hawks fan, I guess.

Comments

[damienroc.livejournal.com]

That'd be neat to see. I think I saw an abridged version of the Messiah back when I lived in England. I'd like to see the whole thing sometime, but I won't be able to this year. Perhaps next?

[cellio]

Guide dogs are trained really, really well. I don't think I've ever heard one bark or see one get agitated, even when confronted with stupid commuter tricks on buses and small children at gatherings.

How does the braille music work? Is there an encoding for music notes (the way there is for letters), and she has to follow text and music at the same time? Or is she really learning the music by ear and using the braille for the text?

[sorakirei.livejournal.com]

I find it interesting that she lets the choir pet the dog during breaks. Usually their harness says "work dog, please ignore" or something like that. Though I guess the dog knows... Singing = be quite & I get some affection

In anycase, seeing-eye dogs are the best. If I ever considered getting a dog, I'd look into getting a retired seeing-eye dog because they are so well trained. ^^