Three Shows and a Late Night

Was woken up yesterday morning at 8:30 by B, calling to let me know she'd left her costume at home (yes, the one I told her to put in her bag last night). So, DH got home from dropping her off and had to turn around and go right back to the ballet school.

She danced in (and we watched) the pre-ballet show at 11:00 (she's one of the teaching assistants), then we had burgers for lunch and took her back to the ballet school for the 2:00 show.

Voci concert tonight from 8:00-10:00, then a bunch of us went out for some well-deserved food and drink. I finally arrived at home at 12:40 am--it's been a long time since I've stayed out that late!

Outdoor Performing

Current mental soundtrack: "The Coolin" by Samuel Barber

S&P sang last night at the Temescal Street Cinema. It was an interesting concert. After a week or more of warm, sunny weather, we ended up performing on a foggy, windy day. I dressed appropriately for the weather: long underwear (top and bottom), T-shirt, blazer, dressy scarf, fleece jacket, hair in a ponytail to keep it out of my mouth. I felt really silly putting on my long underwear in June, but was very glad I had done it. The only part of me that was cold was my hands, and everyone in the choir had the same complaint. By the end of the performance, we were all having trouble turning pages with our frozen extremities, and my fingers didn't stop tingling for an hour afterward.

Outdoor performances are always entertaining. We had sirens, a helicoptor, wind blowing the conductor's music, and kids riding bikes in front of the "stage." We made an unusual number of mistakes (probably because we were half frozen): at one point, we lost the entire always-reliable alto section for four measures of the "Geographical Fugue." Every performer has those occasional lapses, but nothing gets the adrenaline going like the realization that the other four singers in your section had the same brain lapse, and there is no one left on your part! Overall, the performance was okay. The audience seemed to enjoy it, and there only a few REALLY "interesting" moments. :-)

Hei, jäkkä däkkä düüdi aadi oodi aadi üüdi ambo

Current mental soundtrack: "Announcement III", by Jaako Mäntyjärvi

Long day is finally over! DH is in Crete this weekend (he finally made it there after having his original flight cancelled because of a transportation strike), so the kids and I got to travel together all day today.

We left home at 10:00 this morning to get B to the pre-ballet class she TAs for. While she was in class (10:30-11:30), M and I had coffee and breakfast across the street.
Next stop was M's fencing class from 12:00-1:30. B and I ran some errands, and picked up lunch at Costco.
At 2:00, we returned to the ballet school for B's afternoon rehearsal (2:00-3:00). I also got to stay and watch, since I'm one of the stage manager crew, and we were instructed to take notes today.
We got home at 3:30, fed the dogs, packed our bags, and were out the door at 4:05 to meet up with my carpool.
The three of us, plus two other singers from my choir, made it into the city pretty quickly. We met up with two other singers, and had dinner at Taqueria El Castillito, our usual stop before San Francisco concerts. The "super nachos" are enough to feed a family, and very tasty.
Concert warmup began at 6:30, and the concert at 8:00. It went quite well today--the, um, "interesting" things that happened in yesterday's concert didn't recur. The kids had their own role: Mäntyjärvi's "Announcement IV" refers to unaccompanied minors in the audience, so at the appropriate moment in the piece, the entire choir pointed to M & B, who fled the room! They had a great time acting this out:

Under health and safety regulations, unaccompanied minors are not allowed in this performance except by written permission from the composer. Unaccompanied minors will be removed and may be destroyed.

The encore was Mäntyjärvi's "El Hambo," which satirizes Swedish folk dancing, the Swedish Chef, and who knows what else. I brought a wooden spoon to dress rehearsal on Wednesday, since I just couldn't imagine the Swedish Chef without cutlery ("bork bork"). This evolved into banging the spoon on a pot held by my neighbor, since we weren't able to do the clapping written in the score (no time to memorize the piece).

For the post-concert reception, I made a lemon poppy seed bundt cake. My fellow carpooler baked a lemon bundt cake, and someone else brought lemon bars. I guess we were all in a lemon mood!

Hot, Hot, Hot

We're having a heat wave in the Bay Area right now. Even chilly San Francisco was in the mid-80s today. At B's afternoon ballet performance, it was so hot that the light board overheated, and lights started to turn off and on at random times. The second half of the program was performed with very dim stage lighting, because that's all that would work. Tonight's S&P concert was quite warm, too--the church we performed in is one of those where the sanctuary is upstairs. Concert went well, and it was nice and warm outside when we left at 10:00 pm. Come hear us tomorrow in Berkeley!

Coffee and Chocolate

Concert weekend is over--those of you not in the Bay Area missed a FABULOUS Mozart Requiem performance! Now it's time to get back to regular life again.

For the post-concert reception, I experimented with coffee buttercream on chocolate cupcakes. The cupcakes themselves were from a boxed mix, but the icing was a success--M thought it tasted just like coffee ice cream. I topped each cupcake with a dark-chocolate-covered espresso bean.

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Coffee Buttercream
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening
1 lb powdered sugar
2 1/2 tsp coffee syrup*
1 1/2 Tbsp water

Cream butter and shortening together. Add sugar, syrup, and water. Blend until creamy.

*Coffee syrup: Dissolve 3 Tbsp espresso powder in 1 Tbsp boiling water. Stir until dissolved.
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Where Did It Go?

How did it get to be Wednesday already? Time has just flown by. Saturday was choir retreat, followed by dinner at a friend's house. The kids and DH cleaned house while I was at retreat. I started my share of the cleaning when we finally got home at 11:15 pm, and finished it up Sunday morning. A quick pickup rehearsal at my house, a playdate for B, and suddenly the weekend was over.

Monday the kids were out early, so I took them to get their annual physicals done. M is officially the same height as I am now. Both kids are continuing on their tall (75th to 95th percentile) and skinny (50th percentile) growth trajectories. On Tuesday I had a doctor's appointment, and today I got up two hours earlier than usual to take DH to the BART station (he had a morning flight to catch, and I couldn't both take him to the airport and get the kids to school on time). Tonight Voci is singing at a bookstore, so it'll be a scramble to get dressed and into Berkeley after M's piano lesson. I'm thinking McD's would be a good stop for dinner :-)

Concert

PWC had a great concert today--wish y'all could have been there! The weather was more appropriate for a June concert than a January concert--I'm one of those people who's always cold and never breaks a sweat, and I was definitely hot and sweaty by the end of the concert. It was nice to see Anna Banana and mundungus42 again, along with all the other singers. B and I had a smooth trip home, and we're all going to sleep in tomorrow.

Update: No wonder it felt hot--it was 78 degrees outside!

Almost Done

Three concerts and one Nutcracker down, one concert and one Nutcracker to go before the weekend's over. Next weekend is four Nutcrackers, then we're done for the month.

It's Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas...

Current mental soundtrack: "Psalm 122" by Arvo Pärt

The first holiday performance weekend is over with. Yesterday, B & M sang at the local tree-lighting ceremony with their respective school choirs, then the whole family headed in to Berkeley to attend the Voci concert.

Today (in addition to the usual laundry and raking and vacuuming), B and I hung the stockings, put up some outdoor lights, and wrapped the first round of gifts. I had put icicle lights on our white picket fence earlier this week, but B really wanted colored lights, so today we wound a couple of strands around a tree in the front yard.

When It Rains, It Pours

Why is it that everything is always scheduled on the same weekend? This weekend isn't going to be too bad (Voci concert, fencing class, ballet rehearsal, drop DH off at airport), but the following weekend is when everything hits. It would be really nice if things were spread out over a couple of different weekends!

Things we are going to do next weekend:

• Friday evening ballet performance (B)
• Friday evening S&P concert (me)
• Saturday morning pick up DH from airport
• Saturday morning fencing class (M)
• Saturday afternoon ballet performance (B)
• Saturday evening S&P concert (me)
• Sunday all-day fencing tournament (M)
• Sunday afternoon Voci concert (me)


Things we are NOT going to do next weekend, because we couldn't figure out any way to get to them:

• Friday evening piano recital (M & B)
• Friday night overnight field trip (B)
• Saturday afternoon birthday party (B)

Ships passing in the night

That's been my life with DH for the last two days. He's been involved in a board meeting, so he got up early and was out of the house before I opened my eyes. I, on the other hand, have been on a performance schedule, and have arrived home the last two nights after he was sound asleep (10:15 last night, 11:15 tonight). We had a thirty-second conversation yesterday evening as we exchanged cars & kids (I had the kids and the minivan, and he needed both to take his guests to dinner). Today's thirty-second conversation was in two parts: I got up early this morning as he was leaving, to remind him that I was dropping off M at his office in mid-afternoon; and about 10 minutes ago, when I got home, he woke up long enough to ask me how the concert went.

The concerts went pretty well, and my role as human pitch pipe wasn't as stressful as I was afraid it was going to be, so it looks like I'll be continuing in that role. Last night's concert was better, I thought--today a lot of us were tired, and as a group we simply lacked energy. We kept going flatter and flatter, even on pieces we had not previously had trouble with.

The flower cookies I made for the reception were very popular. I forgot to take a picture of them (yes, I'm a novice blogger), but they were little flowers with six petals, which I iced in pink, yellow, and blue. That's one of the reasons I was tired today: although I had planned ahead enough to bake the cookies Thursday night, I didn't start icing them until after last night's concert, so I didn't get to bed until after 1:00 am.

(This was actually composed on March 1st at 11:30 pm, but Blogspot wouldn't let me post it until now)

Welcome to my blog!

I have no idea why I decided it was time to start a blog, but here it is. Of course, I have nothing particularly interesting to say today. I had lots of stuff last week, but didn't have time to set up a blog :-)

For those of you in the Bay Area, come hear me sing this weekend: http://www.sacredprofane.org/concerts.htm.