Entries tagged with choir

Entry tags:

choir,
pp

Hallelujah, our performances are done

I'm done with choir for the season, and I probly won't come back to this particular chorale until fall 2007 when they do Messiah again, but we'll see. I could use another music group to play or sing in, I think.

Tonight's concert definitely went better, although it may have been in part due to these microphones that were set up EVERYWHERE for taping. I was sitting front center, literally right behind the soloists, and it was sort of intimidating. Erik had a coughing fit halfway through Part 1, though, and I'm sure that got picked up on tape. Oh well. The acoustics were better and the crowd was better, but the location sort of sucked and I was 15 minutes late getting there because I got lost in Woodinville. Oops.

bpr and his hiking partner showed up and watched the concert after snowshoeing all day, which was really nice of them. I had been looking out in the audience hoping to recognize someone, and I *thought* I saw him, but I wasn't sure, until he came up to the front and waved after Part 2. So, yay. Brian gets major cool points, and Eli gets secondary cool points for at least planning to go and calling me about it.

Also, apparently the choir raised quite a bit of money for the food banks, so I feel pretty good about that. It'd be great if I could always combine performing music and doing service projects at the same time.

I'm worried that I've started actually playing Puzzle Pirates again a little bit -- like I actually get on boats with people and puzzle and stuff, rather than just doing shop stuff or occasionally logging in to chat. It's sort of nice because I haven't really done it in so long, but at the same time, I don't really want to get hooked back in like I used to be. Thing is, it's cold out, and there's no baseball games, and everyone's busy busy with holiday stuff, so I sort of find myself without a lot of stuff to do, because I actually have nothing to buy or plan for the holidays -- this is sort of how I got sucked in in the first place.

Entry tags:

choir,
food

mid-day updatey thing

So, I had a stuffy head and sore throat on Thursday night and couldn't get to sleep, so I took some NyQuil. Next thing I know, my room is hot and stuffy and wakes me up in the sunlight... at noon on Friday. And the throat's still sore. Ugh.

So I stayed home for the day, tried to do some work on my laptop but both the laptop and my head weren't cooperating. I drank an entire half gallon of orange juice and ate a bologna sandwich and laid down for a while, reading books and stuff.

As a side note about the sandwich -- I've been eating very little other than bologna sandwiches for the past week, since on Monday when I went grocery shopping, they had bologna on sale buy-one-get-one-free, and buttermilk bread cheap too, so I bought a whole loaf of bread and two packs of bologna. Thing is, that's 32 slices of bologna and not significantly less slices of bread, and I didn't want either to go bad. The frightening thing is, they won't, because I've literally been averaging 3 slices of bread per day and 5 slices of bologna. I've eaten salads for lunch at work, and that's about it. I can't decide if this has been a good thing or a bad thing -- on the one hand I haven't spent much at all for food this week. On the other hand, I'm not sure I'll want another sandwich for quite a while.

Anyway, I had to go sing in the Messiah concert last night, so I doped myself up pretty good on DayQuil and headed over. It actually went fairly well, although I didn't sing particularly loudly at all the entire night, except for, of course, "Their Sound Has Gone Out", "Let All The Angels of God Worship Him", and "Let Us Break Their Bonds Asunder", because GODDAMNIT NOBODY ELSE IN THE SECTION CAN SING THOSE still. You know it's bad when the REST of the section also starts calling some of those lines "Deanna's solos".

Of course, nobody I knew showed up for last night's concert, and they left my name out of the program this year, too. Sigh.

I guess if you manage to read this in the next three hours and feel like heading to Woodinville, you can hear my "solos". Or something.

As it is, I got about 11 hours of sleep last night, waking up at noon today, and my throat actually feels worlds better than it did yesterday, although I'm still going to Quil up before heading to tonight's concert. I've just basically been goofing off for the afternoon -- writing checks to pay the bills, cleaning up a little bit around my apartment, and hanging out on PP for a little while, and relaxing. Hopefully tonight's concert will go well too. Whee.

Entry tags:

choir,
volleyball

Ow ow ow ow ow ow

Holy carp, I've never so much in my life wanted a backrub as I do at this moment. I played volleyball for a couple of hours tonight after three weeks of not going to the gym at all, and not only that, we had barely any people show up -- 7 total at our max, 5 or 6 for most of the time, so we were playing a lot of doubles and triples. I was playing well -- extremely well, actually, if I do say so myself -- but I think I may have thrown my back out -- a few hours later now my arms ache to hell and back, and it's actually uncomfortable to lie down flat. I was originally planning to go back to the gym tomorrow night to lift weights and run, but I think that'll be contingent on how crappy I feel when I get home from work.

I've been sorting and scaling my Key West pictures for the last hour or two, and I'm finally done. Yay. Now I just need to label and thumbnail them... I've been trying to write my LJ entry about the trip, but there's a lot of things I don't want to say in a public entry, or even an entire friends-list locked entry, so it's tough. I wish there were tags so you could tag parts of your entries as private/etc.

In the meantime I'm listening to Messiah and singing along (does that count as reviewing my music? heh), and thus I am inclined to remind you all yet again to COME TO MY CONCERTS THIS WEEKEND, because you all love Handel's Messiah too. Right?

I'm singing in the tenor section of the chorus, and I stand in the front row right behind the soloists, so you can totally spot me this time.

http://nwchorale.org/

Friday December 9th, 7:30 PM
Location: Prince of Peace Lutheran Church -- 14514 20th NE, Shoreline

Saturday December 10th, 7:30 PM
Location: Woodinville Community Church -- 17110 140th Ave NE, Woodinville

Admission is free, but we do pass around a hat before the intermission for a free-will donation to Northwest Harvest, one of the local food banks. The choir is a non-profit organization, we pretty much just sing for the fun of singing and to raise money for charity, basically. But, seriously, since it costs like $50 to see the Seattle Symphony do Messiah, you're still getting a pretty good deal even if you only donate $5 or $10.

As I said before, I think the Saturday place has better acoustics than the Friday one -- also, my guess is Friday's performance may be a little wacky. But come anyway!

After Saturday I will suddenly have a lot more free time. Whee.

Entry tags:

choir,
work

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

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.

Entry tags:

choir,
gym

The more things stay the same, the more they stay the same

Right, so in addition to not going to Capture the Flag this weekend, I also did something terribly uncharacteristic for me tonight: I skipped a They Might Be Giants concert. Even weirder, I skipped a They Might Be Giants concert occurring on my half birthday. (I have been to three or four TMBG concerts on my birthday or halfbirthday in my lifetime, among the... I dunno, 25ish TMBG concerts I've been to? Many of you from CMU were at one of them, even -- November 7, 1997, when they played in the University Center.)

Sadly, it sounds like I skipped one of their better concerts -- I've seen them play like 5 times since I moved to Seattle, and this one was at the Moore, and I was tired from Puzzle Hunt, and I figured I just saw them at their in-store in Queen Anne 6 months ago... and I had choir rehearsal and the gym is closing later this week for a few days and... yeah. So signs pointed to "don't go to the concert, Deanna", but from all reports, it sounded like it was pretty cool -- they were even "the opening band" for their own concert, apparently.

It happens, I guess. I won't miss Great Big Sea when they come here. That is all.

It's funny, with PH over, I'm trying to figure out what I'm looking forward to. I guess there's my trip to Pittsburgh and Key West over Thanksgiving and the following week. I want to see eeeeeeeeeveryone in Pittsburgh (I'm there from the day before Thanksgiving until December 1, so you have no "I'm out of town" excuse). And then what? I don't know what I'll do for the holidays, if anything. I'm not sure I feel like travelling this year, and I'm not sure I know anyone I can convince to come visit here.

Oh well, that's something to worry about another time.

Anyway, today I got to work late because I overslept, which wasn't surprising. Work was okay. After work I went to choir, where I ended up almost entirely in the bass section, which was pretty funny. After choir I went to the gym. I ran for 5 minutes today, which I think is up a half minute from last week. I got home and wrote a book review. Now, I should sleep.

(oh, also, I stopped by Best Buy on the way to choir, and I noticed that memory sticks are really expensive -- Oren, where was that site you showed me all the really cheap memory sticks on? or does anyone else have recommendations? I'm looking for a 1 GB or so keychain USB memory stick.)

Entry tags:

Fortunately, it's also clear - that everybody goes down well with beer!

Today was Tuesday. I stayed at work late and went over to the 5th Avenue Theater to see their production of Sweeney Todd. Man, every theater should do Sweeney Todd at Halloween... it's just so appropriate. Anyway, the lady who played Mrs. Lovett was really quite perfect, and the guy who played Sweeney Todd was pretty good as well. Believe it or not, I've never actually *seen* a production of the show -- so in my mind it's Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou and Victor Garber and all. It's funny, I guess I'd never realized how much of an... opera, it is, really? There's not much speaking between the music. Of course, it's all very very Sondheim; I especially noticed how it had a lot of musical similarities to Into the Woods, which I'd never thought of until I saw the Johanna character singing Green Finch and Linnet Bird, and suddenly I thought: "Holy crap, it's Rapunzel!" (And of course I couldn't help but think "I bet that kid played Jack recently" when I heard Tobias sing)

Anyway, it was very good, especially "Try the Priest"; I was surprised by how few people were laughing during it, honestly.

Also, the theater had a deal in the program that said if you come back with a paid stub from a Sweeney Todd performance, you can see it a second time for just $20, sitting anywhere in the theater. I might be tempted to do that, because I'm crazy. (PS - as a note, maybe

dvarin will care, I noticed that the theater has mp3s of some of the songs from Princesses on their archive page.)

And goddamnit, I still have to go back to New York and see Wicked sometime.

Man, I've seen a *lot* of Sondheim. I've really been in a "Company" mood lately, too.

Yesterday was Monday, but I don't have a lot to say about it. I didn't bother wearing any sort of costume to work, which is good, as I don't think anyone else did either. I didn't give out candy because nobody trick-or-treats in Seattle and my building doesn't allow it anyway. What did I do? I went to choir and kicked ass, and I went to the gym after that and despite a sore left arm, did lifting anyway. I also ran/walked for 15 minutes, and I got myself to run for 4.5 minutes straight, up another half minute from last week. I ran into Jen from volleyball again -- her knee is still too hurt to play, but she goes to the gym almost every day to do other stuff anyway. She had some advice for me on running with my bad knees, which was good.

In Puzzle Pirates, I've spent 225k in the last few days on portraits. No, I'm really not kidding. Since October 22nd and the "New Clothes" portraits, I've bought 15 portraits. Oh well. It's not like I have anything else to do with the poe. And I probably put WAY too much effort into coordinating amusing titles, outfits, and locations, but ah well.

Entry tags:

OMGWTFPUJOLS

Monday, I had choir. We had a "website demo" as part of rehearsal. It was sorta dumb, but at least now I know that our concerts are December 9th and 10th. Whee. Also, Part 3 isn't as much fun as Part 2, although you can really hurt your throat singing all of chorus 53.

Went to the gym afterwards as usual, and lifting was fun. I upped my weights for cable row and cable press. I also did running for a bit. I ran for 3.5 minutes straight in between walking; my former best was 2.5 minutes. Go me.

I also learned that Oren was right -- he lent me a TV antenna, and suddenly, I can see red people! That is, the Cardinals. I saw about 20 minutes of the Astros-Cards game before going to choir, which means that I missed the awesome 9th inning - but isn't that what baseball fans live for, those moments? One strike away from the World Series, and suddenly Eckstein bloops a single... Edmonds walks... and Pujols hits a home run to somewhere in the vicinity of Proxima Centauri? Sigh. It's too perfect. I did write my latest "The Postseason" humor piece, this time making fun of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, eliminated by Chicago on Sunday. I guess whoever wins the NLCS is next up for the ridicule.

I get really sad these days because people keep asking me about various Japanese players.. not because they care, but because they are trying to think of who else they can speculate on the MLB teams signing next and making a huge profit off of. People go on for hours and hours about whether Daisuke Matsuzaka will get posted, or whether Kenji Johjima will decide to sign with an MLB team, and when I go "So what did you all think of the PL Playoffs? Hell of a 5th game there... talk about clutch, did you see Satozaki's 2-run RBI in the 8th?" the response is "What? Who's that? Lotte? Never heard of them, do they have any players we might want to sign here?" I'm worried there won't be any decent baseball players left by the time I get back to a game in Japan. I know it's not really true, but... I'm working on an essay comparing it to the downfall of the Negro Leagues, though I might be stretching a bit far there.

Anyway, today I was braindead, which sucked. I came home from work and played Puzzle Pirates, since it was Squid Pillage Night, although this week I renamed it "Barr Trek: Brig Space Nine". I'm actually pretty psyched for the Key West Parrrty, given the new housing arrangements that might be happening. It sounds like it could be really really really bloody fun, and maybe I won't even have to feel so bad if I can't come up with anything for the banner contest. It's sad, because I'm a fairly creative person (well, or at least *I* think I am), but I'm really drawing a blank on something I can actually *make* for this.

Katy came over for a bit in the evening and we chatted and I gave her a ton of my moving boxes. It's good because I get to help a friend AND get rid of some of the boxes, since they were taking up space that I didn't really have for them.

I've just sort of been relaxing the night away, which is to say, vegging out. Kevin Shiue's supposed to visit town for the second half of the week, so that'll be fun -- or at least it'll be an excuse to go out for sushi, which I have done surprisingly infrequently as of late, and hopefully an excuse to play cards, which I also haven't done at all lately.

Entry tags:

This subject no verb

I think I'm in that part of being sick where it's not horrible, but it's persistent. Like one minute I feel all crappy, then I feel great the next.

After spending most of Sunday just hanging out at home trying to relax, I went downtown to hang out with some people for dinner; Jason's cousin Donna was in town so we had dinner at Jason's place, those two, Drew, and me. Drew gave me back my Flogging Molly CD that I lent him "for a night, right?" a month ago. (The upshot is that lending it to him got it out of constant repeat in my car, and instead, I've had Belle and Sebastian's album "Dear Catastrophe Waitress" on constant repeat for the past month instead!) I was really very out of it and doped up on cough syrup, but we managed to play a game of Alhambra anyway, which I somehow won. We also solved this 5x5 soma cube puzzle thingy that Drew had custom-made. It had letters on the sides when you solved it properly, and spelled something, but I shouldn't give it away in case he makes anyone else I know try to solve it.

Today, I went to work, and now Jack is sick, but he says that he probly caught the cold from someone else, so I shouldn't feel bad. I was still kind of brain-fuzzy but I did get a few things done.

After work, I decided I might as well go to choir because even if I couldn't really sing, I still needed to find out what changes he was making to the music. I sang at half-strength for most of the rehearsal, except when they did "Their Sound Has Gone Out", where I couldn't help but belt a lot of the tenor solo lines. It just feels so *good*, if you know what I mean.

And after choir, I went weight-lifting anyway, but I also took it easy there -- didn't do any cardio, and skipped one or two things, and didn't up the weights on the cable row and press like I'd meant to this week. I ran into Eddie from the weekly volleyball games, as he was also lifting. He commended me on my fashion sense.

And now my throat feels a little sore. I think I'll take it easy tomorrow.

Entry tags:

"Go through the king"

An interesting way to say "Take a deep breath and sing *through* the line, you idiots," but it worked nonetheless.

Choir was decent tonight. We picked up another tenor and another bass this week. We finally rehearsed "Their Sound is Gone Out", and I kicked butt, at least compared to the rest of the tenor section. I also kicked butt on "Let All The Angels" or whatever it's called, because, well, I can hit a high A in full voice, and enjoy it, too. It's funny, I was at first sort of scared about doing all the choruses in the second section because we didn't do them last time, but I'm familiar enough with the music and can sight-read well enough to handle it. Get it? Get it? I can handle Handel. Ha! I kill me.

This was also a food-and-socializing week, so I had some food and tried socializing. Of course, I have absolutely nothing in common with anyone in the choir, so I got to listen to everyone's stories about performing Verdi's Requiem last season.

I lifted weights after choir. I decided it's better for me to lift weights after choir late on Monday than to lift on Tuesday, since then my arm will be sore for playing volleyball on Wednesday.

Also, I'm thinking of going to see The King And I at the 5th Avenue Theater sometime this weekend, most likely either Friday night or sometime on Sunday. If anyone's interested in seeing it as well, let me know. I'm *definitely* going to see the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Sweeney Todd, which is the next play in the queue.

Oh, and I finally bothered writing some words to Scutaro (to the tune of "Sussudio"), because, like, Marco Scutaro is awesome, and he deserves a song. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the original song on any of my tapes, so I can't quite tell if it scans the way I hear it in my head.

Also, Eli informs me that I am a Sea Slug.

Entry tags:

choir

All we like sheep

Hey, does anyone want to sing Handel's Messiah this fall season? I went back to choir tonight (the Northwest Chorale, they do Messiah every other fall, I sang with them in 2003 but haven't since), and we could totally use more people. Mostly, we need basses and tenors, could use some sopranos, have too many altos but would take more if people were interested. Rehearsals are every Monday night at 7:30pm up in Lake City -- I'd be happy to carpool with people if they wanted.

I'm singing tenor again, which is great. Almost all of the other tenors are people who I remember from last time I sang with this group. (although, Lovecraftian scholar S. T. Joshi no longer lives in the area, so he and his wife are no longer in the choir.) We're actually doing the whole Messiah this time, not cutting out numbers 33-40 or whatever we did last time, so that's kind of cool. (Mostly, I just want to do "Their Sound Is Gone Out"; I could have happily skipped most of the stuff we skipped last time.)

My throat is pretty sore now though. And so are my arms, since I decided to go to the gym and lift weights after choir rehearsal. I don't know what possessed me, but ah well.

Tomorrow I take my family to the Mariners-Rangers game. Should be... interesting.

But, no, seriously, if anyone is interested in choir, let me know. The choir director is pretty religious, and he does pray at the end of rehearsals, but there are plenty of non-religious people (like myself, of course) in the group as well, and things are really pretty easy-going and funny, I really had a blast last time I performed with them too.

Entry tags:

Sometimes, downtime is good

Work today was really good! I worked on some scripts that were actually fun to work on, for a change. Whee. I still think it's funny asking Jack to make sure I'm "speaking the proper Perl dialect".

After work I came home, and decided to pop in and see if Squid's pillage was going on in PP. It was. Afterwards I had the brilliant idea that perhaps what might make PP a little more interesting for me again would be to swap up my main main and my main alt. So now Janthina is... the Gunner of the Yo-ho Yoyos. Right back where I was two years ago. Go figure. :) I moved Jandora into the Fifth Fist because I still love Cioj and Serle and Dori and Friday (AND SINLAESHEL, HINT HINT) and everyone... but I wanted a change. Given how infrequently I *really* play these days, it might not affect anything anyway.

I went to the gym for an hour after that. Lifted weights, and ran on the treadmill for a while. I think I've figured out what some of my goals are gym-wise, so maybe one of these days I will actually schedule time with a trainer. I can't wait until Heidi's able to come work out again, maybe that'd inspire me to work out a schedule with Megan again as well. Yet, I have continually surprised myself these last few months by being motivated enough to go by myself and work out, really.

Unfortunately, I've basically been wasting the rest of the evening. I did crop more of my Minneapolis pictures, and read up on a bunch of web pages. I found out that the NW Chorale started rehearsing LAST Monday -- oops! I hope they'll take me in on the third week of the season if I show up next week... the fact that I sang Messiah with them two years ago should get me some slack. I'm really looking forward to singing with a real group again, and I can think of it as charity work (since we do our performances to raise money for Northwest Harvest).

Ah well. I guess I'll have to work on cleaning the apartment for real tomorrow and Thursday, or something.