What the hell took you so long?

Sometimes, I really wonder why I should be proud to be part of a nation who's deeply rooted in bigotry, greed and inanity.
Do you?
This is just ridiculous.
60 years after the fact, the United States honors and "thanks" the Tuskegee Airmen.
A friend of mine emailed me an article about this, and all I could think was
"Well, I guess now is as good a time is any to reach out for that black vote".
Pretty cynical, huh? But can you blame me.
60 Fucking years?
Dad's gone now, with about 70 or 80% of the rest of them.
I'm not bitter. I'm not. I'm just disgusted.
They have been honored in many other ways, by many other dignitaries, with a hell of a lot more sincerity than this frat boy. But I guess Dubya's gonna try and get SOMEONE'S approval.
And 60 years later, G-dub gets to say "Thank you"??

Dude.

Toys!

Grown up toys are the best!
I got a Samsung Blackberry with Bluetooth headset (My leather case is late, but that's another issue)
I'm waiting on my iPod which should be here today (squee!)!

yeah, that's it.
Only 2 toys, but it's better than a kick in the ass!

WTF?

No booty AND no booty!!
((sigh))

stuff, things and whatnot...

So, Sunday was spent in Santa Rosa. The Choral Project had their first concert there in at least 5 years. It was very well received and appreciated. The day started with a nice "Alto" affair at one of our Altos homes who commutes from SF to San Jose every week to rehearse (Dog bless her). She prepared a wonderful brunch of fruit, fritatta, banana bread, scones, baked veggies, and real authentic and real Italian espresso (her husband is molto italiano). I think that was what really did it for me. That espresso was exquisite! We all took off after the wonderful brunch and chugged off to Santa Rosa. Took a bit more than an hour, but it was a nice drive, and I carpooled with people I usually don't hang with, so it was a new thing and pretty fun too! We kicked ass, took names, bob's yer uncle.

Looking forward to going home (as I am every day I'm behind a desk). I believe there is booty waiting at my door!
No, not that kind of booty....although, that would be VERY nice.
I believe I'll have at least 1 new toy to play with this evening. This comes at a very opportune time. I have a Monday off for the first time since the beginning of the year! My Mondays are pretty much 16 hour affairs. Not complaining, just a fact.
So, I'm really anxious to get home. I will be lazing about because my allergies have finally kicked in and they're kickin' my sorry ass. Head feels like a lead weight.

So, the day's almost over and out of the 7 people who are supposed to be here at the end of the day, I am the only one left in the last hour. We had 2 people call out sick, one had an even worse problem than a head cold and had to be let go, one took a half day, and the other 2 left early.

I should be working.
.
.
.
Meh.

Windfall...

WooHoo!!
Uncle Sam done got me some Moh-Nay!!

I won't divulge how much, but suffice it to say, I upgraded my phone, my iPod and my eyesight (Ophthalmologist appointment)!!

Very excited!!

Got bit by the bug...

So...
You ever hear of VGL? Well, go to the link and see about it.
I got to sing for VGL in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago.
You talk about f-u-n! I hadn't considered choral music for video games until this performance. They coincided their performance with a Video Game Convention in San Francisco, and Koji Kondo was there (for those of you who don't know, that's the guy who composed all that catchy Mario music), and it was just HAWESOME!! VGL does this differently though. You'd think it was a touring orchestra/choir deal. Apparently, they show up in a venue a month ahead of time, and get musicians from around the area to play. Give them music and a couple of weeks and they perform. We get scale, and go home. But it was THE most fun I've ever had on a gig. I've been thinking about and sitting on my experience for a long time, and have decided, I want in.

I totally want to get into the Video Game Industry (sounds like a bad essay, don't it?). If I wasn't doing this desk job, I'd be a guaranteed gamer. I've been up all hours of the night playing Final Fantasy. I've gotten a full blown migraine because my eyeballs were the only thing that moved playing Need for Speed Underground. I understand the geekiness of it all. And now I want to immerse myself in it's music. I know my chances are pretty ok. It's still young, and I think there's room for a real belty alto like myself. So, I'm making contact. I contacted some folks from that gig and some other people too. A couple of emails, andI have all the contact numbers, emails and web pages.
Right. On.

Very excited. Also, I get to work with Mr. Twix, Rodney Saulsberry doing some voice over stuff.
Dude.
Stoked.

Soooooooo....

After all that time I took to recover last week, I wake up on Monday, tired as hell.
Go figure.
I got a lot done this weekend, however.

Saturday was early rising. Actually I slept in, but I would LOVE to sleep in until 10. I woke up at 8. Anyway, I woke up, did a lot of net surfing, and got ready for my 11:30 voice lesson. She's 8 years old. It went fine, but I've reached a point in her teaching that I need to approach it differently. I wonder what I'll do? Hmmm....

Had church band rehearsal which went of smoothly, then met another potential student after that. She's about 22 and going to sing in a wedding for family and wants to be sure she can pull it off. Because she's so eager to get it sung right, she wants to double up on her lessons and have hour lessons...Ok by me. Mo' money, mo' money! She's thinking she'll just quit when she's done, which is fine, but we'll see.

Then, I headed off to mom's. Apparently she had an extra ticket with which to see Chanticleer, so I went with her and my brother. It was a wonderful concert, and they always sing so perfectly. It's almost annoying how well they sing. But it was nice. Concert was preceeded with chinese food. Mmmm.

Sunday was good. Woke up, took a shower, did my har, got ready for church, and really wailed on Sunday morning. Interesting backstory: The church I sing with is in peril. They may be disbanded and they have a "consultant" to help with finances and hopefully get the church back on it's feet (we are currently 'homeless'). Anyway, some of the talk was about letting me go since I'm "hired help". So, I figured, let's let it go since I probably won't be here much longer anyway. Well, after Sunday, let's just say I secured my job! ((tee hee))

After that, I took the afternoon off and went knitting!! See, I was originally supposed to accompany my friend and her mother (I call her MomBoss) to a Rinde Ekert Concert, "Slow Fire" which I had seen before, but at the time (5 months ago) thought it would be fun to see it again. Recent and current "busy-ness" kept this from becoming a fun venture for me, and I ended up backing out at the last minute. I felt bad, but haven't had a lot of good down time, so I took advantage of the opportunity. So, I went to Purlescence and knit my little bootie off! What joy I find in yarn!

After that, JCT had a rehearsal to go over some new tunes, and to solidify some old ones for our 2nd recording session at Fantasy Studios in May to clean up some tunes we recorded in February. After reherasal, we invariably hang out, drink wine and perhaps have dinner. Last night, I sprung for pizza. Goood Pizza from Pizz'a Chicago. Good stuff, Maynard. I ended my Sunday wtih a trip to the hospital. A friend/knitter/singer has some lower abdominal issues and she's been in the hospital since last Friday. I didn't think I'd get the opportunity to see her, but fortunately, the drummer in JCT knows her as well, and he had called ahead to see if it was OK. So we went. She looks much better than the initial reports where she was sallow, eyes sunken in, the whole bit. She was watching a movie on her portable DVD when we arrived and was quite pink in the cheeks, so thankfully, she's on the mend. Unfortunately, they don't know what it is that happened just yet, but hoping they find an answer soon.

So, all in all, on my Sunday "day off" I was pretty busy. But I loved it.

All in a Day's whatever...

I'm finally making progress in life, knitting and everything else. It's been a long haul, and even though I have a long ways to go, I'm getting there. Trust. I sing jazz and clasical music and am involved in the study of Voice Over. I work at "a-local-first-rate-medical-teaching-school-institution", I'm knitting several garments, work out, teach voice, sing in church choir and what else...hmmm I'm working on finding out how much money I gotta spend to start swimming now that the weather's nice ($150 to join and $49/mo just to use the pool?? I dunno). I've been a big girl my whole life. Had a period where I lost 100 pounds, and then gained it back in 3 years. Very stressful times, makes you care less about working out. Thankfully, my mind's back in the right place, and walking 3 miles a day helps too. Need just a tad bit more help on the foodstuffs, but have a better handle on that than ever, so as far as I'm concerned, 'sall good.

To find the balance in all that I do is key, and isn't completely easy. I wake up early so I can catch the train to work, and it takes me an hour to get here. So 2 hours on commute time, cuts into your "off work" time, which kinda sucks. Sure, I could look for a job closer to home. Have actually considered it. But at the same time, I'm not really trying to have another desk job. I'm going to make my voice work for me and have lots of gigs and working on voice over opportunities. That's where my heart lies. I will make money with my voice. So. This makes things hard. Lots of risk involved, but totally worth it. Such is the life of an "arts" person.

Holy Crap...

I don't know what's wrong with me.
I'm just a blog slut, is all. I don't know how many of these things I have now, but apparently I have to have at least 4 of them to feel like I matter in the world. So, I'm going to systematically get rid of the other 3 (of the 7) I have, so I can feel normal again. Sheesh!

Anyway, I had a blog that was more of a random thought blog, and it didn't go over well amongst my people, so I had to get rid of it. Hoping to meet a new audience as well. I have a knitting blog (since I knit) and a regular other blog, but this is going to be my bitch blog. Also, an attempt to hone my writing skills because, well, I don't have any. So, as the blog says, WTF?

Ok, Official Blog #4. Here we go...