Recharging

My Very Busy Week started on Sunday -- I had two services (including the children's choir in one of them) and then an afternoon rehearsal to get ready for Easter. Today is my free day. Then I have dance Tuesday night, children's choir and adult choir Wednesday night, probably dance again on Thursday (I have a ton of classes to make up after being sick so much this year), Good Friday service on Friday, a Doctor Who watching party on Saturday, then three services Easter morning, with the choir reporting for duty at 7:20 in the morning. I suspect that after the last service, I'll come home and collapse.

There was a bit of fun with the kids on Sunday, and unfortunately the mom who usually records it wasn't there, so there's no video, but we had the preschool and kindergarten groups combined. The song was one where there's the chorus, then the verse, and then the chorus again, and then the end of the song. One of the preschoolers, who's one of those exuberant kids who's enthusiastic about everything, got so caught up in it all that at the end of the song he kept going to sing the verse again, on his own, with much gusto. It was rather adorable. The congregation was cracking up at the kid and the choir was laughing at my reaction. Then it became a running joke in the choir because we also had a couple of unplanned solos when people sang in what were supposed to be rests, so they just said this kid inspired them.

I let myself take it easy on Friday and Saturday to charge up the batteries. Friday night was the perfect cold, blustery evening for listening to the BBC radio drama of Neverwhere while knitting. Saturday, I alternated among reading, knitting and cooking. I had to bake something for the choir potluck breakfast on Sunday, and I made a batch of chicken and dumplings. I realized I hadn't made any this winter, and it was possibly my last wintery weekend. That's an all-day endeavor, but I think I've perfected the recipe.

I watched some of the special features on the Les Miserables DVD and skipped around in the movie to catch my favorite musical bits. Of course, that turned into just watching the movie, until I remembered that I had to get up early on Sunday. I need to find time to just watch the whole movie. I've also decided that Eddie Redmayne would be good casting for one of the characters in the book I just sold. I'm not sure entirely why because that character is very different from any character I've seen him play, but there were a couple of moments both in the movie and in the interviews in the special features where there was a certain look in his eye, and I thought, "Oh, that's him!"

My other weekend movie watching was finally seeing The Rocketeer on one of the HBO channels. I'm not entirely sure why I didn't see it when it came out, but I vaguely recall being at a party and some guy who really gave me the creeps asked me out to see it, and I responded that I wasn't interested in seeing it, so I guess I was forcing myself to be honest by not seeing it, even without him. At any rate, it was rather disappointing -- beautiful production design, great cast, intriguing concept, godawful script. I get that the hero was supposed to be rather naive and had to look like kind of a rube in contrast to the villain, but they went to the humiliating slapstick well one too many times in ways that didn't pass the "reasonable person" test. Any reasonable person, no matter how unsophisticated they were, would have known that those weren't smart things to do. It was like they were trying to do Raiders of the Lost Ark but ended up with Temple of Doom. I'm kind of glad I didn't see it in the theater because I would have hurt myself from cringing. As it was, I was cooking and knitting while watching it, so I survived. It would be interesting to see if they could take that concept and remake it using current effects technology and a much better script.

I also watched bits and pieces of the SyFy Saturday night movie: Chucacabra vs. the Alamo. As a Texan, how could I not? That may inspire me to revive my Stealth Geek blog to discuss it because, wow, was that bad, and not even really in a fun way.

Now to attempt the Day of Getting Stuff Done before my week goes insane.