Entries tagged with debatable choir

Entry tags:

random bits

My new cell phone has a camera, as previously mentioned. Some genius thought it would be a good idea to let people take pictures with the phone closed. (Why? You have no viewfinder in that case. Just open the phone and frame your shot!) I have read the documentation and attempted to send email to the manufacturer, but thus far I have not figured out how to stop taking pictures of the inside of my pocket. Whee.

A coworker is trying to place some puppies (black lab mix) rescued from the middle of a road. If you're local and interested, let me know. (This and a photo is all the information I have.)

Since my session of the Melton class was cancelled this year, I was able to return to the SCA choir that practices on the same night. This is a good group, and I'm happy with how quickly I'm picking things up (or back up) again. We'll be performing at an event in a few weeks; I hope the merchant who is making me garb in one of the mandated colors delivers in time. After that, it looks like we'll start working on the Rossi Kedusha -- yay! It's a pretty piece, and it's been lingering in the files ever since a previous director requested a typeset version and then didn't use it.

After the first couple days we've had good sukkah weather. The final holiday of the season starts tomorrow night, Sh'mini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. Sh'mini Atzeret is, err, a mandated holiday without any real "stuff". The rabbis later added Simchat Torah to this holiday, when we finish the annual torah reading and start right up again. It's meant to be a big party. I haven't yet been to a congregation that really gets the "dance" thing; we kind of manage a somewhat-bouncy skip around the room (while carrying torah scrolls). Perhaps this year I will take advantage of the fact that traditional congregations do Simchat Torah a day later, and see what I can find Thursday night. Or not; I'll decide at the last minute. (A couple years ago there was a big party on a blocked-off street near my house, but we were on our way somewhere. It wasn't there last year.) To be clear: I'm not dissatisfied with my congregation; I'm just curious.

I'll be reading the first aliya of B'reishit (Genesis) both Wednesday night and Thursday morning. That should be fun!

Entry tags:

classes

This year, for the first time, AJL is offering a class in biblical (not siddur or conversational) Hebrew. Wow! Better late than never, I suppose. :-) It's being done in conjunction with a local synagogue (and being held there); I don't know the instructor but my rabbi has heard of her and didn't say anything bad. The class is 20 weeks and 1.5 hours a week, so that's substantial. At $150 (so $5/hour), that's also way better than I could ever achieve via tutoring. (No idea what class size will be like, of course.)

I already know a lot of the material, but there are reasons to take it anyway. First, the teaching approach is different, and complementary to, my favorite textbook; that should help. Second, this could develop into a second-year course. Third, I want to encourage classes in this space by helping to ensure critical mass. So I'm doing it; if you're local and interested and didn't get the AJL catalogue (web site is out of date), ask and I can pass on the registration info.

Speaking of critical mass, I got email from the coordinator of the Melton program today saying "you might have noticed I haven't cashed your check...". They did not make minimum registration for the Monday-evening class. :-( My choices are to take a too-early Sunday-morning class (without my favorite instructors) or wait and try again next year. I'll be doing the latter. On the bright side, this means I can sing with the Debatable Choir for the coming year.

Entry tags:

Pennsic

( long )

Entry tags:

last few days

Friday night my synagogue had its once-every-two-years "adult b'nei mitzvah" (I still hate that name, but I'm a pedant). There were six women this time, one of whom actually did not read torah Friday night because she wanted to do it Saturday morning instead in the informal service. They did a decent job overall, and I made note of two who seem to be interested in reading torah again in the morning group. (Three, counting the woman who did that this time.) So we'll see if that pans out.

I missed the morning service, alas, because Dani and I went to the kingdom academy event in Erie. (Why do the good things all have to pile onto the same weekends?) The event was being held in a synagogue's school, and part of the agreement was that members of the congregation could attend the classes, so the folks in charge asked me to organize a track of classes on Jewish topics. That went pretty well overall, though the number of congregants wasn't high and dwindled over the day. We had an overview class taught by Eleazar ha-Levi (the person who wrote the Complete Anachronist issue a couple years back), a class on the Khazars which was very good, a class on Salamone Rossi and his music taught by lefkowitzga which was also very good, a class on Hebrew poetry, and a class on Hebrew manuscripts. The organizers had asked for some sort of round-table discussion, so I finished with an item called "being Jewish in the SCA". I left it fairly open so that we could talk about whatever people wanted to discuss -- choosing a persona, coping with feasts, tricks for attending events on Shabbat, and so on. None of the congregants showed up, though; it ended up being me, Eleazar, and Remus, who isn't Jewish but was just curious.

There was no formal feast but they had a buffet out all day (starting with the first break in classes). The food was varied and mostly low-key; I wonder if they did it as a quasi-pot-luck, with members of the host group each bringing something. Either they did not use the synagogue kitchen or the kitchen isn't kosher; that much I'm sure of. :-) So maybe the former; that would be consistent with the dishes that were there, all of which could stand up to being driven in from elsewhere. We've had events at sites where either there was no kitchen or we weren't allowed to use it; it's a challenge, but it can be done.

The event ended early and there was a dinner expedition forming, but Shabbat still had two hours to run so we had to decline. Pity the event didn't run later (and that it was held so close to the summer solstice :-) ). Oh well.

Since people were spread out I didn't get a feel for how many were there, but it seemed like a good turnout. I sometimes wonder if the academy events plan too many tracks of simultaneous classes for the number of people who come, but it seemed to have worked. I wonder if lyev got enough people for each class in his dance track.

This Wednesday Dani is heading off to a gaming convention (Origins). He has signed up mostly for games he's never played before, which is a good way to survey what's out there. I wonder how many he'll come home with this year. :-)

The choir had a discussion about Pennsic and beyond at the most recent practice. I'm not sure what will come of it. We will have a Pennsic performance, though the group is small and someone will be filling in as director. We won't have some of the material we were planning to have for it, but we'll have enough. Eh. It's not the performance we wanted to have, but it will do.

Entry tags:

random bits

Turnout for choir practice has been small for a while, and for a few months I've been the only person on my part. I'm actually enjoying that; I think I'm doing a good job with it, and it's easier for me to blend with the rest of my section. :-) (Sadly, we just lost

ommkarja, a fine alto, to the west coast. Hope your drive out is going smoothly!)

Sunday night we joined a crowd at Joe's Basement for dinner to celebrate Ralph's birthday. Mmm, good food. It turns out they no longer take reservations for the Pope Room and our party was too large anyway. I forgot to hunt it down so I could find out what the fuss is about. Given the level of kitsch in the rest of the place, it's got to be pretty impressive!

Sunday morning I was beginning to think thoughts about window air conditioners. Sunday afternoon the temperature dropped more than 20 degrees in one hour. Today brought frost warnings. Ahem. Someone failed to read the spec; this is not normative spring weather.

Someone I know just returned from an assignment in the middle east, where he encountered a peculiar weather phenomenon. He observed that there was a lot of dust in the air and that there was impending rain, and that the latter should take of the former. Well, yes and no -- it rained mud. :-)

I now have evidence that my intermittent "monitor" problems are actually graphics-card problems. I'm guessing the connection is a little loose, because I have found a reliable place on the side of the CPU case where a gentle rap fixes the problem. It's nice to know that the monitor I just replaced (for other reasons) is still in good shape, though. Eventually I'll sweet-talk Dani into carrying it down two flights of stairs and it can replace the definitely-flaky, smaller monitor on the file server. We have VNC running on it so it's not that big a deal, but still...

Entry tags:

last few days

Sorry; no big weighty thoughts tonight. It's been a randomly-busy week, as opposed to a contemplative one.

Tonight at a board meeting we were looking at some revenue/expense forecasts. I wonder how many people in the room actually read footnotes. (I do, always.) I silently noted, in particular, the entry labelled "SWAG" (actually "swag", but I decided not to correct him :-) ). I contemplated it, decided the number sounded reasonable to me, and concluded that anyone who might have been able to offer a better number had already been involved in the process, so I did not ask him to clarify the "S".

I'm beginning to rethink personal investment strategy. I've always maxed the IRA/401(k), because you just do. The result is that most of my long-term money is in a retirement account that I can't touch, rather than mutual funds that I can. And I'm not convinced that the income tax rate at retirement beats the taxes I would pay now. Hmm. (This thought brought to you, in part, by the annual review of funds with the financial planner on Wednesday.)

Choir practice on Monday was small but functional. For the last few weeks I've been the only one on my part; fortunately, I can handle that. Unfortunately, though, the fact that we have to go to Toronto for Pesach on the Saturday before (not the Sunday before as I had been planning) means that we won't have part coverage for an SCA event we were going to sing at. Mind, the world doesn't end if we don't sing there, but it's still unfortunate.

The latest CD from the Austin Lounge Lizards, from 2003, has a song with the refrain something like "why can't we blow up Saddam?". Some topics are just riskier than others for the songwriter. I hope they got some mileage out of it. :-) (I had forgotten just how much I enjoy having a working source of music in my car.)

It's looking like the D&D group is going to cut over to version 3.5, with some adjustments made to avoid penalizing players too much on things that got drastically changed for the worse. Saturday night we're having a rules discussion before the game.

Entry tags:

short takes

Hey, LJ finally fixed the bug with ordering of memories. Memories are useful to me again!

Lately, a larger proportion of my spam is about enhancing body parts (primarily one I do not possess). The hot stock tips seem to be on the decline, though the various flavors of the Nigeria spam continue. I guess spammers weren't getting a lot of hits for investments in a shaky economy. I remain glad that I do not use a browser (or equivalent, like Outlook) to read my non-work email; spam is bad enough without flashing "porn porn porn!" in 72-point red letters while playing supposedly-appropriate background music. :-)

On Sunday Dani was arguing that we will have a mild winter because "tomorrow's weather will be basically like today's", iterate until done, and it was about 70 degrees on Sunday. I took the opportunity to mock him for this on Monday, when the temperature dropped nearly 30 degrees in three hours (and the day ultimately ended with snow). He's just got to learn the limits of simplistic logic. :-)

On the Mark is going to sound great at Darkover this weekend. Sunday's practice went very well. We have two surprises for our fans at the con, one positive. (The other is that we'll be taking a year off -- but we'll be back, so I don't want to call that "negative". It's just reality; people get busy and groups need downtime.)

Monday's choir practice was more focused than other recent ones. The director was keeping things on track, and a habitual "problem child" wasn't there (which I'm sure helped the director). I'm skipping the next several practices because I won't be at the next two performances (one in a week and a half and one in mid-January).

We went into last night's D&D game with a disagreement on the table about what to do next. I think one player is still convinced that we can do what three of us think is currently very foolish. The question was deferred last night, though, because one player couldn't make it, and we were not about to do something high-risk without everyone there to steer his own fate. So we got the outcome that I wanted, but not through the means I wanted. Once that was settled the game was a lot of fun. (My fun in the game is augmented by extra-game character-development activities, mostly achieved via email, private geeking with the GM, and the game journal.)

Conversation snippet:
Me: Does tartar-control mouthwash actually do anything useful, or is it just a marketing scam?
My dentist: It makes the tartar softer, which makes [hygenist]'s job easier.
Me: Hey, that's worth something. If [hygenist] is going to poke sharp objects at me, I'd like her to not be frustrated.

The salad bar has returned to the Giant Eagle across the street from where I work. And there was much rejoicing. :-) (Well, some rejoicing. In order to rate full-scale rejoicing they have to restore the yellow hot peppers.)

I almost had a chance to meet sanpaku, before he suffered car failure. Eventually I'd like to meet more of the people whose journals I read.

Welcome to LJ to zachkessin, an SCA friend who moved to Israel this summer. There is now a new SCA group in Jerusalem (he and kmelion are the people I know), and they're having their first feast tomorrow (Thursday). Good luck, guys! The parts of the menu I've seen look great. (No, no turkey, for anyone who was wondering.)

Entry tags:

weekend

( miscellaneous )

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interviewed by tangerinpenguin

( 5 good questions )

The Rules:

Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
You'll update your journal with my five questions and your five answers.
You'll include this explanation.
You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

Entry tags:

Pennsic (long)

This is the long Pennsic entry. ( Read more... )

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last few days

Tonight for the first time the choir sang "Hashkiveinu" all the way through and approximately correctly. Yay! I really like the sound of this piece; the chain of suspensions at the end is especially cool. Rossi had some odd ideas about harmony in places, but this one works.

Sunday dinner featured a small grilled turkey with rosemary and apricot coating. (Ralph says there was also garlic, though I didn't detect it.) This worked really well! I wonder if I can simulate this in an oven, perhaps with chicken. (Though this turkey was small enough that it wouldn't produce ridiculous amounts of leftovers.)

After dinner we played a variant of Carcessan (which I've probably misspelled) called, I think, Hunters and Gatherers. I've only played the original game once, so while I recognized the game system, I didn't really know how to play. I wasn't doing a very good job with long-term strategy, though I was doing ok with short-term tactics.

Sunday afternoon we went shopping to replace the wall-to-wall carpet in the basement guest room that destroyed by the rain invasion a couple weeks ago. First we went to Home Depot, who advertised installation services, but it turns out they don't install indoor-outdoor carpet, only the regular kind. So we ended up at a carpet place, where we ordered the carpet and someone to make it all fit, which is supposed to happen sometime next week. It's an L-shaped room with some cabinets and stuff to work around, so there was no way we were going to do this ourselves. They have a fixed price for carpet plus installation, based on square footage of the piece of carpet you have to buy (which is larger than the space it goes into, especially in this case). Charging for installation for the part of the space they don't install into seems wrong, but they didn't ask about complications like cabinets so it probably works out in the end.

Saturday night we went to a party hosted by friends who had recently returned from a trip through wine country with, shall we say, excess potables. I had a red that I actually liked and that wasn't ridiculously sweet, though I failed to record what it was. (I can find out, though.) There was much good food, including several very nice cheeses. I'm going to have to go in search of good cheese locally. And, of course, much good conversation as well.

I spent some of Saturday afternoon continuing to work through the Torah portion. I'm pretty comfortable with about two thirds of it. I hope to get the rest soon. The rabbi wants to hear me chant it before he leaves for camp and I have an appointment with him next week for study anyway, so that would be an obvious time.

I'm not fluent in Hebrew, but I know some words and of course I read through the portion in English. As it turns out, the trope often provides additional clues for emphasis, significant words, and so on. It's pretty nifty. Not surprising, of course, but this is the clearest example I've seen so far. This is an action sequence, which works better for that sort of thing than the laws of the sabbatical year. :-)

Friday night was the first service with our new cantorial intern. She's good, and very friendly. It sounded like she was a little nervous; I assume that will pass. At the oneg Phyllis (the administrator) introduced us and she recognized my name; fortunately, that was only because she'd been told I was the chair of the worship committee, and not because of some nefarious reason. :-) (We'll be working together on two upcoming services.)

The fireworks were on Friday, but on Shabbat I have other places to be. I would have liked to go to Ray and Jenn's party, but the logistics just didn't work out. Some other time.

Entry tags:

short takes

Some have the custom of changing batteries in the smoke detectors when they change the clocks twice a year. We don't do that, but last night I inadvertantly tested the batteries, so I know they work. The oven's self-clean isn't all it's cracked up to be; I forgot that opening windows is necessary.

The choir started "Haskiveinu" (Rossi) last night. Yay! This is going to sound good. It's nice to have enough tenors to support two lines.

I've now heard a second recording that seems to use "ushbor" (not a word, near as I can tell) where the modern text uses "haseir". Maybe it's really a word; maybe it's really a scribal error on Rossi's part; maybe it's nonsense but I should go with the majority; maybe it's an error in a secondary source that they're all using. Or maybe I'll just leave it alone. We haven't gotten to that word yet, so I can still change it. (My only source for Rossi's text is a French transcription that had enough oddities and errors in it that I re-typeset it for the choir.)

We went to Dave & Buster's after choir last night, but I didn't stay to play Pump It Up because I still had some Pesach prep to do. Drat. Next time for sure! (I'm guessing that I can catch a ride home from someone if Dani doesn't want to stay.)

Tonight: D&D. My character has learned a new spell that should be loads of fun to play with (polymorph self).

Entry tags:

short takes

I took Erik back to the vet last night to have more blood drawn. I went armed with questions about the tests (thanks,

spiritdance!), and got lots of information. We will know a lot more when these next results come back, but one of the tests takes a few days so I might not hear until next Monday. With luck, though, this time I'll hear something a little more conclusive than "ok, I know which other test to do now". I hope.

Embla was hiding in the attic this morning. This is unusual; she generally comes running when I get up. When I walked downstairs I realized that the carrier was still out from last night, so I put it away. She was back to normal tonight when I came home from work. I guess she was worried that it might be intended for her. :-)

Choir last night was missing some of the regulars, but we also picked up two new people. One,

ommkarja, has been in the choir before; the other is a member of the choir at Ray and Jenn's church. They're both good; I hope they stay. (And one is an alto! Yay!)

Our newspaper delivery has been rather spotty for the last few weeks. (The problem pre-dates the recent weather changes.) The service hasn't been good in a while, really; the carrier seems unable to put the paper on the porch or even, often, on the walkway. I've found papers in bushes, papers on the street in front of the house (that's not even trying), and recently, far too many missing papers.

I think I finally have the attention of someone who might care, though; tonight was the second time in a week that I've gotten a call asking if service has improved. And today I did get a paper on the porch without asking. But it's still annoying. Not quite as annoying as the thought of regularly reading That Other Paper, though. :-)

In the "at least they're making gestures" category, I now have a stack of coupons good for free coffee at 7-11. Maybe one of my local friends would find them useful.

Entry tags:

short takes, in reverse order

Tonight we watched the first two episodes of a new Tv show, "Mister Sterling". It has real potential! I enjoyed both episodes, and the style is reminiscent of "West Wing" -- fast-paced, crisp dialogue, strong characters, and a sense that things are going to be done a little differently with these folks. I didn't pay attention to the credits, so I don't know if there are any familiar names there. (For the most part, I probably wouldn't notice.) I'm looking forward to seeing more. I wonder how it's been doing in the ratings.

(Next up: "Sports Night".)

I came home today to find that our contractor has finished in one attic room and moved everything into there so he can paint the floor in the other room. Part of "everything" is about 15 bookcases that started out in that room; he moved them with a dolly, books and all. I hope he put them back in the same order; I forgot to check. The floors look good, and he was able to patch the holes and wobbly spots before painting.

Today I pinged half.com, because their rep said (on Saturday) that he was going to poke the seller for me. I actually got a quick reply this time (one person at half.com understands customer service, at least), and he said that after discussing it with their abuse department they had decided to just refund my money and deal with the seller in some appropriate way. Yay! (Apparently the seller hasn't answered their email, either. Unwise move.) So I ordered the DVD from Amazon and had it shipped directly to my father. I tried to leave feedback for the half.com seller, now that the transaction is "complete", and couldn't because he is not a registered user. Good. Pity that I didn't leave feedback while I could affect his score (I assume the suspension is temporary), but oh well. Now what I want to know is: is there some way that I can get this same rep if I ever have to deal with half.com support again? (Derek good, Tracy bad...)

Last night's choir practice had low turnout. We've got to get some altos. (I am looking forward to Jenn's return!) In an odd twist, we're actually strong in tenors, which is a real change from a year ago. The new Rossi piece we're going to start soon is SATTB, because we can. :-) (I gave my transcription and transliteration to Gail to proofread last night. She's got the best Hebrew in the choir.)

Sunday dinner was pleasant. Ralph makes good brownies! (The rest of the food was good too.) Ralph and Lori have the cats confined to a few rooms while they paint upstairs, so we hung out in the family room after dinner and evaluated the effects of kitty drugs (catnip). Their cats are much more entertaining drunks than mine are. (Well, I've never given catnip to Embla; my catnip experiments ended before I got her, when I concluded that Baldur gets mean.)

And now, it is time for me to go take another stab at sorting out who said what about when to say the evening Sh'ma, because my next Talmud session with my rabbi is Thursday.

Entry tags:

weekend so far (mostly SCA)

Friday night was another dinner for the 20s/30s group. Attendance was about the same as last time (around 25), but there were some new faces, including some people who are checking out the congregation. It was a pleasant dinner. This time there was fish in addition to meat, which I appreciated. (They didn't use a kosher caterer, so last time I ate lots of pasta and salad.)

Yesterday after I got home from services we went to kingdom 12th night, about an hour north of here. We got there just as a court was finishing; I hadn't known there would be more than one. There was an artisans' exhibition, but there was very little time to look at anything before I had to go to my first meeting. (I thought the meeting was later. Oops.) This was very much the day of long meetings, and next time I end up with multiple meetings at a single one-day event I will choose one to attend and not attend all of them.

The choir performed before court (the later one, I mean). I could actually hear the tenor parts! (This has sometimes been a problem with our choir, I'm told. I'm usually in the choir, but not for Christmas music.) The altos and sopranos were down in numbers compared to the tenors and basses, and each of the upper parts had one weak singer, so balance was a little off. Aside from that, though, and one piece that really suffered from this week's rehearsal being snowed out, it sounded good. The environment wasn't really all that good for performances, unfortunately. (There was one large room with lots of background noise.)

The site for the event was a little strange. They were using a high school, so most activities took place in one large room (the cafeteria), which was plenty big enough to accommodate that. But changing rooms and meeting rooms were separate, and they were far away. (This event would have benefitted from a published map.) We had to walk quite a way to get to the changing rooms, and had to go to a different building to get to the meeting rooms, yet we walked past many suitable classrooms on the way to those destinations. Was the school unwilling to let the SCA use rooms that were actually close to the cafeteria? How odd. I felt sorry for the people who have trouble getting around. (Oh, and pretty much all of the parking was a good distance from the building, too.)

The feast was good. Starch-heavy for vegetarians (few veggies), but that's normal. I guess I should start packing raw veggies when going to events. (I am not complaining about the cook here; most feasts have this issue, for various reasons.)

A lot of people took off right after the feast. I had planned to spend that time schmoozing with people I didn't get to see during the day because of meetings, but had limited success. Some of them will be at today's baronial party, for which I'll be leaving soon.

dagonell and Cigfran got snowed in, so they didn't make it down after all. Pity.

Entry tags:

short takes

I'm working on typesetting and transliterating another Salamone Rossi piece for our SCA choir. I'm almost done with the music, and then I'll start on the text. I'm looking forward to singing this one. No, I'm not working from facsimiles; I wish I had copies of that. I have a modern edition that was published in France, and they transliterated the Hebrew in ways that undoubtedly make sense for French speakers, but (1) that set does not include me and (2) I have discovered errors in the transliterations (ones that have nothing to do with French vowels). So I'm redoing it, but the easiest way to do that is to typeset the music myself and then add lyrics. (Besides, the music typesetting in this book wouldn't cope easily with a couple more passes through a photocopier.)

It's funny: I'm using their transliteration to figure out what they probably meant, and then going back to the text (psalms, prayer book, etc) to get the actual Hebrew, and then transliterating that for the choir members who don't read Hebrew. Kind of round-about, but it works.

Saturday is (SCA) kingdom 12th night and it's nearby, so we'll be going (after I get home from Shabbat services). Sunday we are having a local 12th-night party, just down the road at CMU. The latter is free and pot-luck food, so tonight I made a couple of cheese/onion tarts to take because I don't want to deal with it late Saturday night. I want to bring something that can be served cold and that doesn't require me to provide non-disposable containers and utensils, so I don't have to deal with kashrut issues. So much as I would have otherwise made something more substantial (maybe even meat), I don't want to deal with trying to take my crock pot to keep something warm. Too much risk of contamination.

Saturday night

dagonell and Cigfran will be crashing with us. It'll be nice to see them again. They get to inaugurate the new version of the guest room.

The cable reception is much better with the fancy digital setup than with what we had before. We watched West Wing tonight (from tape, obviously) and the picture was crisp and clear -- best I've seen from a videotape on this TV so far. But I still don't think it's worth an extra $35 a month. We just don't watch that much TV.

The DVD is still AWOL. I sent half.com a polite letter of complaint today for their part in this; I wonder if I will get a reply.

Current Mood: full

Entry tags:

debatable choir

mail call, and food

Today's mail brought a lovely card from

browngirl (the "happy everything" card), along with a completely-unexpected card from

lyev. Thanks, guys! (In case you hadn't figured it out, I use "guys" in the gender-neutral sense. :-) )

Today's mail did not yet bring a couple of DVDs I ordered nearly two weeks ago. Sigh. Fortunately, we are getting together with my family the weekend after Christmas, not the weekend before, so there's plenty of time yet.

The choir dinner was tonight. Wonderful food and pleasant company, and I left with fewer cookies than I arrived with. I brought home some assorted dairy cookies that I couldn't eat tonight with the meat; I'll ration them over the next few days. :-)

Fran roasted a turkey. They were away for Thanksgiving, and apparently she missed doing it. The turkey was good; the stuffing was wonderful. I'll have to get her recipe at some point. It included apples, raisins, and chestnuts; I've never cooked with chestnuts before (or knowingly eaten them, actually).

It's enough that Fran and Alan let us invade their house every week when neither of them is even in the choir. And then they feed us in grand fashion once a year. I guess we don't sound too bad. :-)

Entry tags:

short takes

Working backwards...

It looks like we're going to go see Harry Potter tonight. I'm not an adict or anything (haven't read the books), but I do want to see it and it's probably in my best interest to see it before Thanksgiving (fanatic family member on Thursday, then an SF convention for the weekend).

Last night was the D&D game. I thought my character might advance to 7th level last night, but we came up about 300 points short (target was 21,000). Oh well. Next time for sure. :-) (Well, nothing is ever sure; she could die or lose a level or something annoying like that. But I really hope not.)

Monday night the SCA choir started doing Christmas music, so I'll be taking a break until after the performance at 12th Night. I actually enjoy the little break each year; I think some people in the choir worry that it inconveniences me (and the two other people who are reluctant to do that kind of music), but sitting out one batch of music per year doesn't bother me at all. Monday we spent half the time on "regular" music and half on the seasonal stuff, and that might even continue for a little while (didn't ask), but it's more of a pain to attend half a practice, and it's not like I'm going to be behind, or behind for long, on any regular material they cover in the next month and a half. I'm pretty good at learning and/or sight-reading parts.

Speaking of music, On the Mark is getting ready for our performances at the previously-mentioned SF convention (Darkover, in Timonium MD). This will be the 12th year for some instantiation of the group (wow), though the first for our new members fiannaharpar and lrstrobel. Should be fun! Ray is also starting to write songs for the group, which is very cool. Up until now we've had a bunch of people who can write music (to varying degrees), but we've been weak on writing words. (We had a past member who could write words, and we were able to turn one of her poems into a song before she ended up moving to a different city and thus leaving the group. With luck, Ray and Jenn aren't about to move to DC. :-) )

Sunday we got to see dr4b and eub at Sunday lunch, which replaced Sunday dinner so they could make their plane back to Seattle. Seeing them again was nice!

The beta release did go out on Friday (after I left). My manager seems to be pleased with the results. I am spending this week doing damage control -- finding all the spots where we crammed in something quickly and inelegantly, and fixing them.

Entry tags:

misc

If you're in the SCA and interested in persona development, check out

sca_persona. It's an interesting experiment.

Tonight was fiannaharpar and lrstrobel's wedding. The local SCA choir was doing processional and recessional pieces, combined with their church choir. It went well, and all reports are that we sounded good. The accoustics of the place helped; so did having about 30 singers. (Our choir has around a dozen; the rest were from their church.)

Ray and Jenn had asked me to sing a psalm (in Hebrew). I ended up doing Psalm 29 ("Havu l-Adonai...") I was worried that the melody I know (which seems to be pretty common around here) would be too boring/repetitive, but when I tried it out on Ray and Jenn they liked it so we went with it. It went well, and I got a lot of compliments at the reception. I am also pleased that I did not need to use a microphone to make myself heard in the largish room. (Accoustics, support, and, um, natural loudness at work...)

Dani helpfully pointed out that most of the people there didn't actually know Hebrew, so I could have sung anything I wanted and no one would be the wiser (except lefkowitzga, I pointed out). Don't worry, Ray and Jenn; I didn't listen to him. :-) (Actually, we had this conversation at the reception.)

I got to meet celebrin at the reception. It's always nice to put faces and names together! I also got to meet Alper, finally. (I hope we didn't scare him off.) I also saw sk4p there; he read Psalm 27 (in English) during the ceremony. I don't think I've seen him since Don's new year's party last year, so it was nice to see him again. rani23 seemed to have the food under control. (Thanks for the fruit and veggies to offset the sugar!)

Wednesday my rabbi and I started on Tractate B'rachot. It was great! My rabbi absolutely rocks. Maybe I'll write more about that later. Anyway, partly because of this tractate, I decided that it was time to re-read Donin's To Pray as a Jew (well, reread some and skim other parts), so I started to do that this afternoon. My rabbi is right: the part about the evening (ma'ariv) service originally being optional, and never requiring a chazan's repetition of the Amidah, is in there. I missed it when I first read the book about four years ago.

My rabbi is on his way to Jerusalem for some sort of solidarity mission. I pray he returns safely. I'm somewhat saddened to realize that if he were going to DC a week ago, I wouldn't have made that comment.

Entry tags:

quick takes

Very quick. But I have a few minutes before Shabbat due to making unexpectedly-good time home.

At choir on Monday we had two new people. I hope they both stay; they are both nice people, and near as I can tell they are both good. One came out for dinner with us afterward, which is a good sign. The new alto was picking things up very quickly; I infer sight-reading skill.

Tuesday Dani and I went to the first meeting of a group of SCA dancers who are going to get together a couple times a month and work on harder stuff. I stopped going to dance practice years ago, in part because we never did harder stuff, so this is appealing. We spent about two hours working on one dance (Gracca Amorosa, 16th-century Italian) and had it in decent shape by the end. (Part of this time went to learning 16th-century Italian steps, which were unfamiliar to many of us.) We need to work on it more, but after a little more practice (and some memorization work) I could dance this at an event. Neat. We had seven people, which was about right (I think).

I don't know if I'm going to go to all of the meetings -- I don't want to constrain my schedule too much. However, if I skip all the ones that are going to focus on English country dances (which are pretty uninteresting to me), that will probably be about right.

Enterprise Wednesday: what was that tripe? The actors should sue for being forced to associate their names with such drivel. Porthos (the dog) was the only redeeming feature. I want my 53 minutes back. (West Wing was kind of "eh", which for that show is disappointing. At least one of the Twilight Zone episodes was very good.)

Last night I went to part of the choir practice for Ray and Jenn's church group, because the SCA choir is joining them on songs for R&J's wedding. (Aleluia Psallat, Deo Gracias (not Deo Gracias Anglia!), and Exultate Deo.) Their choir has about 20 people, I think, so with our dozen this should make for an impressive sound.

And now it's time to turn down the oven and light candles.