September Stuff

We survived Orinda Idol--they didn't win (although they did the hardest piece and performed it beautifully), but the girls had fun rehearsing all summer. So much fun, in fact, that three of them (A has moved to LA) are going to keep rehearsing and learning new music. We (the moms) think that we can find them little performance opportunities once they learn a couple of songs, and it will be a lot less stressful for all of us than competing!

M has decided to join the Boy Scouts. All of his friends are Boy Scouts, and apparently there's a merit badge to be earned by recruiting another member, so they've been inviting all of their friends. M was amenable to the idea (we did warn him to keep his atheist thoughts to himself), so we went out and bought him a handbook and Scout shirt this weekend.

B has a role in the school play, and M is running the light board, so they will both be busy with rehearsals. The play is "Snow White," and B has been cast as "Duchess Dahlia." The plays are always double-cast, to give more students a chance to participate, and her counterpart in the other cast is none other than her best friend L!

I'll try to post a little more consistently from now on--the last week of Orinda Idol prep completely wore me out, and it took me another week to recover!

The Moms' Team At Work

Yesterday morning's Orinda Idol rehearsal with the girls turned into a protracted brainstorming session with the moms.

Last night, as soon as the announcement about equipment came out, I e-mailed the organizers about the mic problem, and was told that it couldn't be changed. This morning, we e-mailed and called some other people that we thought might be more helpful, but their hands were tied, and they couldn't help us. M's mom called our choreographer (daughter of the original contest organizer), and found that she was in the same panicked state that we were. She and five of her friends are competing in the next age category, and they had also counted on the four mics available at the audition.

We ran the girls through their choreography without mics in their hands, and we all agreed it looked really bad. So, the decision was made to make dummy mics: props that were big and shiny, and would give them something to hold in their hands, while the actual sound was picked up by mics on stands. Which then led to discussion about where to place the mics, as I have been very carefully balancing their sound this summer, and having them move around the mics was going to create problems. I started researching mic placement (asking people with show choir experience, since I only perform classical music), and other moms went to Michael's to start work on the new props.

In the late afternoon, we finally received some good news: the girls will be allowed to use the emcee's mic, so they are going to have four wireless mics after all! The girls' choreographer appealed to her mom, pointing out that while the high school girls were fine with the change, it wasn't fair to the "little girls" to make them change their choreography this close to the performance. (My daughter laughed at being characterized as a "little girl," because she is a very dignified eleven-year-old, but she agreed that whatever works is good!) It went up the chain from there, and now we have enough mics. Thank you, thank you, thank you N!

One, Two, Three, Four

B and her three friends have been practicing since May for the Orinda Idol competition, a week from tomorrow. A talented high school student did their choreography for them, I worked on music, and we've been assuming all along that they'll be using the handheld wireless mics they've used in previous years. We discovered tonight that they will only have THREE mics available this year (last year they offered us four, although we only used three), so they're going to have to rework some of their choreography. A week before the performance. Aargh!

Unexpected Sights

Two days in a row of unexpected sights while driving the middle-school carpool. Yesterday, as I was leaving the school, two log sections rolled down the hill into the street about twenty feet in front of me. Must have gotten away from the tree trimmers. Today, we turned onto G. Blvd., and saw a blizzard of white office paper lining the road, and a garbage truck with its blinkers on. M walked around the corner after I parked the car, and reported that the papers seemed to be packing slips and things. I later heard from L's mom that they were papers from some local businesses headed off to the shredder. The garbage company sent out a crew pretty quickly (one truck parked right in front of our house, but I didn't think to ask them what was going on), and cleaned them all up.

School's out, DH is in Beijing, and next week will be a flurry of Orinda Idol stuff: music rehearsals, choreography sessions, and, most importantly, dress shopping.

They're In!

Just got the announcement--B and her friends will be in Orinda Idol again this year. I've been waking up in the middle of the night wondering if they would get in, if I did everything I could to help them, if I should have steered them towards an easier piece, etc. Now I can go back to my more normal middle-of-the-night senseless worries :-)

Wait, Did I Remember To Put Sleeping and Eating In the Schedule?

Projects completed this week (besides the usual work, chauffeur duties, grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, and rehearsals for S&P and Voci):

• Two Peter Pan rehearsals at B's school (co-music director)
• Attempted retrieval of M's cell phone, which was confiscated on Monday when it rang in French class. The school has instituted a new rule that confiscated phones have to be picked up by a parent. Of course, when I showed up on Wednesday afternoon, no one could find the phone. M did get it back yesterday.
• One rehearsal for Annie at M's school. I helped out in costumes--none of the other moms on duty that day could tie a tie. I only had to stay for the first hour or so, but when I went to pick up M at 6:30, I had to wait until 7:10 before he finally appeared. Fortunately, Voci rehearsal is only five minutes from my house, so I still made it on time.
• Two dozen cupcakes baked, filled, and frosted last night. Four will be included with a dinner I'm bringing to some friends [see below], and the rest are for S&P retreat on Saturday. (Vanilla with raspberry filling and buttercream icing.)
• Apartment in Rome booked for July (had to dig out the fax machine that's been stored in our garage for the last four or five years)

Projects in progress:

• Making dinner tonight for a friend who's just had surgery. I will make potato soup and pick up a loaf of bread this afternoon before taking B to ballet class.
• Organizing B's group to audition for Orinda Idol. The signup deadline is next week, and B and her best friend L (who sang together in the last two competitions) waited until this week to decide they wanted to try again. L's mom wasn't thrilled by the idea, but B really wanted to do it, so she's going along with it. After several phone calls between the girls, they finally decided who they wanted to join them this year. They talked with their friends yesterday, and I finally had a spare minute last night to e-mail the moms. Both moms got back to me within half an hour with positive responses! (It appears that a lot of moms are online between 10:00 and 11:00 pm.)
• Picking suitable music for the Orinda Idol group. I have been collecting pieces for the last couple of months, but not knowing who would be singing, I have some SSA and some SSAA pieces. Now to figure out what will work with the group we have.
• Baking (scheduled for tonight after ballet) and decorating (scheduled for tomorrow night after retreat) B's birthday cake for Sunday.
• Putting together the treasure hunt for B's birthday party on Sunday. Most of the clues are prepared on my computer, but not yet printed out. Two clues still need some work before Sunday. I have no idea if the clues are too easy or two hard for these girls.
• Prepping for S&P retreat tomorrow. I'm temporarily the alto section leader (until D returns in the fall), so I have to run the alto sectional. As assistant conductor, I get to run the SA sectional that follows. (At least the cupcakes for lunch are already done.) Retreat is 10:00-4:00, which pretty much wipes out the entire day.

Feathered Friends

Another Orinda Idol has come and gone. This year, B and her friends did a fabulous job, and we really thought they had a chance at winning the K-5 Group category. After hearing the dress rehearsal and performance, we knew it was going to be between them and the Wicked Girls. Alas, the Wicked Girls won the prize this year, but B isn't too upset about it, as she agreed the Wicked Girls were very good. L, however, is quite put out at "losing to second graders."

Here are the girls in their feathered glory:

S, L, K, & B

The Sound of Silence

DH is in Australia this week (and going straight to Washington DC tomorrow for another week). B is on the second day of her three-day field trip. It's not my day to drive the middle-school carpool, so I won't see M for another 4.5 hours. Even the dogs are being quiet today!

I'm working at home, enjoying the quiet, and occasionally moving loads of laundry around. I should probably visit the grocery store this afternoon, as M would like me to make him dinner :-)

I'll enjoy it while it lasts. Tomorrow B comes home, then her Orinda Idol group is rehearsing here at 5:00. Yes, she's been talked into Orinda Idol again. She didn't think it was that exciting last year, but her friends talked her into it. They'll be auditioning on Saturday morning with "The One Feather Tail of Miss Gertrude McFuzz/Amazying Mayzie" from Seussical. S is reprising her role as Gertrude, L is singing Mayzie, and B and K have been recruited as Bird Girls. Should be fun! They've had one rehearsal so far, and they sounded good. I'm going to try to convince them tomorrow that they need to focus more on singing with the mikes (handhelds), and not so much on running around the stage!

I ordered the accompaniment CD from Amazon, and had fun using Garage Band to edit the accompaniment track. Auditions are limited to 2 minutes, and the full piece is 3.5 minutes, so something had to go. Simply cutting them off at two minutes resulted in the Bird Girls getting to sing about three notes, so S's mom and I did some creative editing at the previous rehearsal (while I was sitting at the piano). The intro is gone, several measures of the interlude between the two pieces are gone, and they're only doing the middle third of Mayzie's song. I was impressed with how easy it is to edit this stuff in Garage Band. I had already worked out at the piano the measures to delete (had to do it in a way that made sense harmonically), and DH couldn't tell when I finished the first draft that anything was missing!

Saturday will be crazy. B is going to be dropped off at L's house around 10:00, so L's mom can take then both to their 10:50 audition. I'll be at M's 10:30 fencing class in Richmond. At 12:00, M and I leave fencing class. We drive back home, hastily throw B and Poppy in the car, and go to the 1:00 obedience class in Oakland. At 2:00, I drive home, fling everyone out of the car, grab my concert gear (hopefully not forgetting anything important), and drive back to Oakland for a Voci concert. Call is at 2:30, I'm hoping to be there by 3:00. Come hear a fabulous concert!