Peeking Through the Fog

It's a spooky, foggy morning, perfect for the start of Halloween week. I'm sitting at my desk, looking out the sliding glass doors that lead onto the balcony, where normally I have a view of the lawn, the street and the small office park across the street. Today I can see the lawn, the brick wall surrounding the lawn and some hazy outlines of the trees running along the street. The street is mostly visible because it's at ground level, but I can barely see the buildings across the street. It's better than it was when I first got up. Then I couldn't even see the street and there was no sign of the buildings across the street.

I've seen this episode of Haven, and it doesn't go well. I may not go outside today, in case the weather lady is really pissed off (she must be a St. Louis fan).

Not that I was planning a lot of excursions today. It was a busy choir weekend, with a dress rehearsal most of Saturday and then a performance Saturday night. It's a very challenging work to sing, and although I sing the second soprano part, I was still spending a lot of time above the staff. So today I'm a little raspy. But it's a lot of fun, and I love singing stuff like that. Even more fun was that some of my friends came, and we then went to Dairy Queen because I desperately needed ice cream.

I was proud of myself for resisting my usual scream and jump tendencies. Saturday was the first time we'd practiced with the brass and percussion, and since the piece is about war and peace, there's a lot of percussion used to simulate gunfire. There's one movement that's a capella with just the men, doing a Gregorian chant type thing, and at one point the singing stops, and in that rest, there's a loud hit on a drum that sounds like a cannon going off. In the rehearsals so far, that's just been a moment of silence, so Saturday was the first time we heard the drum. It made me scream and jump. But since I knew it was coming, I braced myself and did not scream during the performance. I think my friends were disappointed. The rest of the startling loud drumbeats all came right before I was supposed to sing a loud, high note, so they were less of a problem.

Now we get to start practicing music for Christmas. The nice thing about doing a major choral work in late October is that it means we aren't singing Christmas music in September, but we will have to work hard to be ready for Christmas.

In the meantime, I think this may be a tea and book day, especially if the sun doesn't come out.