Do I wake or sleep?

Had an absolutely exhausting week last week. Soccer company scheduled me for three days in a row out on Randall's doing the select clinics, the first time I'd ever done that many days doing those clinics in a row. The money's great because you're racking up the hours but last week there was some sort of problem with the permit. Normally we do the clinics at the fields directly under the Triborough Bridge but someone else had the permit last week so we had to move to different fields. Which were NOT under the bridge in the shade, but out in the 80+-degree sun.

I had brought water of course but I've never spent that much time outside in the sun and really did not realize how much more water you needed to drink when you are directly in the sun. By Tuesday night I had a raging headache that simply would not go away. I realized I was technically overdosing on ibuprofen since I'd taken more than the recommended 6 tablets per diem regimen. And the headache wouldn't stop. I was weak and trembly and confused and just EXHAUSTED every night (like seriously, I had to nap before I went to bed, if that makes sense) and honestly wondering if I shouldn't go to the ER. Finally Thursday morning I started woozily thinking about it and it occurred to me I'd hardly gone to the bathroom at all out on the island, despite the water I was drinking. And how when I got my motorcycle license, the instructor (who spent all day out on the course) guzzled water--whole cups of water--every chance he got. Then it hit me--I think this is severe dehydration. So I tripled my water intake and just kept drinking throughout the day, every chance I got. I didn't really recover until Friday or so and the headache crept back a bit but today I didn't feel it at all. Yay! Lesson learned.

So this happened.

A few weeks ago my stepmother sent out an email to my two stateside brothers (Bart and Erik) and me, inviting us up to MH to spend the 4th. She and Dad even offered to pay. I replied that I wasn't sure if I could get off the time, given that I was starting a new job, but I would definitely try. By last week I knew I would have off at least that Saturday (the 5th) and emailed back I think I can come, just working on the logistics. Didn't hear back anything.

Sunday I watched the USA/Portugal game and live-tweeted my reactions on Facebook, and used profanity (at one point I posted "HOLY FUCKING SHIT"). My Dad posts "Nice language" and this irks me for several reasons. 1) He's used language like that on many occasions, he is no choirboy, 2) I'm an adult, it's inappropriate to scold me, especially in a public forum, 3) it's passive-aggressive, and 4) it's a GAME. People get excited. It's not as though I talk like that all the time. But I'm trying to keep it light, the last thing I want is a public fight with my own dad so I post back something like "I know I've heard worse from you! Age has its privileges."

My friends are commenting on my various posts about the game and then someone else voices her opinion--a friend of my stepmother's whom I don't know at all, some older lady, but she friended me awhile back. She has never ever said anything to me before this--not online, not in person. This is literally the very first thing she ever says to me. And she posts something pretty awful, like "Ignorant. Your deplorable vocabulary and shameful ignorance is apparent in what you post," something awful like that. THIS is how you introduce yourself? The hell? I wrote back "Excuse me? Who are you and why are you being so incredibly rude?" And then blocked her/unfriended her.

Dad then posts this LONG post about language and how it's different online. Basically it's okay for him to swear in conversation but not for me to swear online because "it's different." And how employers might find this post and yada yada yada. I mean, it went on. Oh, he also brought up Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic rants as an example of how speech could be used against you. Uh, there's a big difference between swearing while you're excited watching a game, and what Mel Gibson said. Seriously, there is no comparison. The reason Mel Gibson's words continue to held against him is because he's ANTI-SEMITIC. Not because he called a cop "sugar tits." MG also has a history of anti-Semitism, from his creepy interviews where he endorsed his dad's weird AS views, to his movie The Passion of the Christ which set off many people's triggers.

I refused to engage in a long riposte to my dad because I thought the whole thing was a complete overreaction. It's a GAME. A moment of excitement in a GAME. Jesus. It was all basically a joke, I'm making fun of my own excitement. Which is what I said.

My friend James K. from high school posts "wow, your dad wrote a book!" and I couldn't--just could not--resist responding "no shit!" which frankly still makes me laugh. I'm sorry, I shouldn't've poked the bear but I did think that was the perfect coup de grace.

Dad then posts another, even longer diatribe and here's where the issue really comes out. "Is it a joke when you post about Trayvon Martin? Or your anti-gun views?" AHA! I knew this had nothing to do with profanity--this is about my political views, which are very much to the left of my dad's. Sad to say as he's gotten older he is turning into the stereotype of the angry white male conservative. [And again, he is being hypocritical--he posts on Facebook some pretty creepy anti-Obama stuff. He used to send out a lot of emails like that--anti-Clinton, anti-Obama, etc. and finally I had to tell him "please don't send them to me, I just delete them. I'm not the audience you want for that." Notice the distinction--I did not tell him not to send them at ALL, just not to me.] And he's going on about how he's "worried" that employers are going to find my Facebook posts and judge me and I don't know what all. I didn't read it because I was getting pretty angry. I just posted back "STOP. Drop it."

Dad, allow me to educate you. You have been retired for over 10 years, and before that you worked at the same job for 30 years. And it was not any kind of "office politics" environment, you were employed because of your valuable skill set (he was a pilot). I on the other hand have worked many jobs over the past 20 years, and have stayed at one particular one for 14 years. I think I know the lay of the "office politics" land a lot better, and can negotiate boundaries much better because I've had to. I know exactly what I can and can't get away with. I'm not posting inappropriate pictures. I'm not bragging about running a meth lab. I'm using the occasional swear word. I don't even do it that often, that's what kills me! Generally speaking I don't swear that much. But I do sometimes when I get excited, it's a kind of deliberate over-the-top reaction. There is no company in the entire US that would give the slightest crap about someone who gets excited and swears while watching a World Cup, unless they were extremely religious or something. And may I remind you, I JUST GOT HIRED for a job, one that entailed a strict background check. So this is about my politics, not my language. Again Dad, I know more than you about this. The firm where I work, the office culture is definitely to the right of me. But we don't talk about it much. To the extent that we do, everyone is pretty respectful. My political views are not extremist in any way and for him to express "concern" is way out of line.

Allow me to educate you again--this time about Facebook. Dad does not understand really how Facebook works.

[As an example, last summer my uncle--Dad's oldest brother--had some kind of breakdown or something. Uncle's oldest daughter, my cousin Nancy, sent out a group Facebook email to all her aunts and uncles and cousins sharing what had happened. Every one responded with "that's awful, what can we do to help?" etc. I slept in, got up late, saw the email trail and was the last to respond. "That's awful, what can I do to help?" Dad goes onto Facebook, sees this email trail in his "messages" notification, reads it and for some reason thinks I'M the one who sent this out in the first place, and that it's a POST, not a private email. He then puts me on blast in full view of everyone, "yelling" as it were at ME for violating Uncle's privacy "where everyone could see it." AT ME. At fucking me. I was flabbergasted. One of my cousins emailed me separately like "wow, he really went off on you, sorry about that." Frankly I wish Nancy had straightened him out! I tried to explain to him that 1) it was not a public post "violating Uncle's privacy" but a private email sent to family members, and 2) I didn't send it. Uncle's own daughter did. But he refused to acknowledge he'd messed up. No apology, nothing.]

So yeah, that's one way he doesn't get how FB works. Here's another--I have strict privacy settings on my FB feed. I've gotten way too many weirdos trying to friend me, not here for that shit. My settings are so strict, it's actually very difficult to friend me unless we have a friend in common! So it's unlikely any company would stumble across my feed. Also Dad doesn't get that you can hide people's posts, you can "unfollow" them so their posts don't show up in your feed. In fact I think I did that already with him, because he posted too many anti-Obama rants. Love you but I don't want to read that stuff. He sees it as me FORCING my views down his throat. Then hide it, Dad. Not a big deal. I wouldn't be offended or hurt if you did that, not at all.

He thinks of FB as some kind of after-church social hour. It's not. It's another way to have a conversation, that's all. You can keep it light, you can use it as a social or political platform, it's pretty adaptable. No one's forcing you to be part of the conversation--you don't have to read what I write. But he'd rather get angry and insist "that's not what Facebook is for"--last summer he posted this angry rant about two weeks after the Zimmerman verdict where he threatened to start unfriending people if they didn't "calm down" and stop posting about it. I mean it was so nasty, so ugly. Can you imagine? Dad, I know you don't give a shit about that case. But I see that verdict as a profound miscarriage of justice. Sorry my social conscience bothers you so much. Go ahead and unfriend me if you need to because I'm not going to stop talking about things like that. Jesus.

So, to wrap this up, two days ago my friend Allyson sends me a link, a funny "here's a doctor's note to get out of work tomorrow so you can watch the USA/German game." I responded "FUCK YEAH GO USA!!!!!" Dad comments on the link "check your email." I do and he's sent me this angry email, DISINVITING ME to come up for the Fourth. He says he "can't have that around the twins" as though I were just some Tourette's person, swearing all over the place. And snidely comments that he hopes I don't use language like that when I coach soccer and work with little kids and he can't imagine how I got the job. It was truly unbelievable--unbelievable. I'm stunned he's reacting this way to a few f-bombs.

But that's my dad. He looooves being angry, he prioritizes his anger over family. He and my other uncles stopped speaking to all his sisters--all four of them--after my grandmother's death. [As I said to my Mom, "it must be nice having so much family that you can turn your back on half of it."] Over the years the aunts tried to reach out, make amends, but he refused even when it looked like my aunt Nancy was dying. Can you imagine? It's more important that he nurture his anger than try to come to terms with your DYING sister. [She actually did recover but we literally were told she had just a few more days.] He'd rather deny me the chance to spend time with my niece and nephew so he can tell himself he's right.

The irony is, my uncle (not the one above, but the other one, Son #2--Dad is very close to him) LOVES me. He has posted many times on Facebook how proud he is of me, how special he considers me to be, how he loves hearing about my soccer and my acting and my life in general. He's actually in town right now and he and his son (my cousin) and I went out for dinner Saturday night and had a GREAT time. Uncle is so much more supportive of me than my own FATHER is. Dad has always been incredibly hard on me, alternating between distance and contempt. Examples:

*Didn't come to either my HS or college graduations (and I'm the only female cousin to graduate from college).

*When I lived with them, it was a huge struggle to get them to come to any of my games. Like I think overall they came to maybe 3-4? In three years, over 3 sports. The most hurtful thing is that I was a great athlete--I was a select soccer player (on a mostly boys team--I was one of 2 girls) and I was also nominated for a major local award, the Louise Gale Scholar Athlete Award. Of course they didn't bother to come to the ceremony.

*Over the course of my theater career, overall they've seen only 2 shows of mine. Missed productions include the 2006 (free) production of Midsummer in Central Park when they were in town already. They were already in town but just couldn't bother to come to see the production their daughter slaved over.

*Still haven't seen my new apartment that I OWN. In fact they haven't visited any of my apartments except for one in the 14 years I've lived here. They've visited Bart on Long Island many times though.

For some reason he just does not like who I am. I feel like I have to justify myself to try to figure out WHY he is so hard on me. Dad, I'm a good person. I have good friends who love me and support me. I haven't messed up--haven't done drugs, haven't been arrested, haven't done anything illegal. I try to do the right thing, I try to respect people, I try to live a conscious, questioning life. Every time I see them I am without fail enthusiastic and supportive of their lifestyle, their beautiful house, how nice it is to visit and spend time with them. Why the hell do you have such a problem with me? Why can't you love me and show that love?

I just don't get it. Very sad and tired right now.

Ryan came over yesterday and we did brunch al fresco. Mmmm, mimosa-hybrids (orange/mango/peach juice) and omelets with onions and avocados and provolone cheese YUM.






Afterward we went to Central park to kick the soccer ball around a bit. Ryan wants to get back into the sport and I of course am encouraging him! We worked a few drills--one-touches, give and go, trapping, etc.--and had a great time. (Last night Ryan sent me the cutest text: "Today was so much fun! Thank you!!!") This was actually good practice for me because...


I have a new job! Up til a week ago my assignment at Lazard was actually three assignments and one of them (two days a week) ended because the woman retired. So I had to make up those extra hours. Originally I was going to send out my resume--and I did spruce it up and write some killer cover letters--but one of the other people I work with her suggested to me that I apply at a company where her daughter takes soccer classes. I applied, went through several rounds of interviews and observing classes (and being observed) and such and well, got the job! I was very worried about the age factor but it doesn't seem to bother them--heck, maybe they think I'm more mature :) So I'll be working with kids anywhere from ages 2 or so up to young teens, teaching them soccer skills and basically encouraging them and indoctrinating them in the love of the game. Doesn't that sound perfect for me? I'm going to give them a shot for a season or so and see if I like it and want to stay on. If all goes well shortly I should be making even more money than I do at Lazard--most of which will go to my Roth-IRA, my savings and my mortgage, in that order :)

The Preakness is this Saturday--Tim and I are gonna watch it at a seafood place near Rock Center. It's called City Lobster--it's kind of pricy but the crabcakes are really yummy. I have a soccer game tomorrow and then another one Saturday morning, plus softball that afternoon.

So I signed up for reunion and apparently everyone who signed up before some kind of deadline was entered into a drawing and I found out last week that I'd won the drawing. The prize is a set of four plates:



I think this is them. Aren't they lovely? All my friends were emailing and Facebooking me with congratulations. I didn't even know I'd been entered! Someone asked me if I was going to mount them on the wall--no way. I curate very carefully what I want on my walls, I'm going for minimalism. But I will definitely use them. Maybe I could host a dinner party?

Looking forward to reunion. I switched around my work schedule so I can leave earlier and get there earlier--I'm planning to arrive by 7 or so. PICTUES.

Oh, and I had an interesting dinner last week. When I sent in my registration forms, I also signed a non-binding letter of intent to name Sweet Briar in my will. As poor as I am now, when I pay off that mortgage I will be sitting on a pile of money. That neighborhood is only going to get better, and 20 years from now it will be worth quite a bit. And I don't have kids (although I do have two nieces and nephews and yes, I will cut them in ;) so I have to think what I want to do. And I love Sweet Briar, so I'm happy to name them.

I got an IMMEDIATE response--the director of development emailed me and invited me out to dinner (she was planning to come up to NYC). We ate at the Sea Grill 9very nice!) and she absolutely pumped me for feedback about Sweet Briar. What is my most lasting impression, why did I love it, how did it help me in my career, etc. etc. I realized that I actually had a useful platform. And when she was telling me I could structure the gift any way I liked (slush fund, 25% to theater, whatever), I started talking about the state of higher education. I said I'm very concerned about the spiraling costs and the race to the top with college costs. Especially for someone whose entire adult life is a paean to the humanities--when college costs are through the roof it restricts people's choices. It becomes ridiculously impractical to consider majoring in music or English or history when you're trapped under the burden of student loans. But college isn't vocational school--you shouldn't be trapped into having to major in something practical like pre-med or business. I said it's very important to me that we have a strong financial aid program with forgivable loans and merit scholarships (such as I had).

Anyway we had a great conversation. I think she was trying to work out who I was, because I definitely look much younger than most of my class. But, at the risk of sounding conceited, I think I impressed her.

So the concert actually went quite well. N**** came over Friday night and we drilled the living hell out of her shaky parts--we drilled so long I was worried I wouldn't have a voice the next day. Girl just does not read music and isn't really that musical (like she does not have the instincts of a singer. Some of this is knowledge and some you're just born with). I figured out at one point she was adding counts because she thought that the fragmented measure that accompanies a cautionary key change (when there's a new system and the key changes, the composer will add a key change at the end of the previous system to alert whoever's playing/singing that the key is about to change, like this:



She thought that was its own measure and was adding counts. Anyway so I worked her through this and DRILLED. (I found out from Donna the next day that she'd basically told Donna she could read music and work on her own which obviously was not the truth. Donna was pretty annoyed.) She sounded okay on Saturday--still a little shaky (from nerves more than anything) but she didn't blow it. I felt very good about my music even though I'd kind of risked it since I'd been unable to turn down a soccer game that morning (although I forced myself not to yell). (And oh my God! I brought some oatmeal and ate it on the train and stuff the container in my bag which of course overturned on the way to the game and vomited oatmeal ALL OVER my stuff. Nice.) But it all went well and Donna was telling me that she'd heard some nice reactions to my soli. (I will admit, I know how to nail Come Away Death and The Willow Song.)

And my aunt was in town! One of my Dad's four younger sisters, my aunt Clarissa--and she's my godmother as well. After my game I ran over to Penn Station and picked her up and we took the train up to Inwood for the performance. So she got to hear me sing! Afterward she treated me to a Broadway show and we decided to see The Bridges of Madison County. I haven't read the book or seen the movie and dozed off *several* times during the first act. So perhaps some of this escaped me but I had a hard time figuring out why she had this affair when she wasn't really unhappy in her marriage. Clarissa explained some of it to me but I think perhaps the movie would do a better job--I think movies are better for communicating intimacy. I don't know. The score was certainly gorgeous and the guy who played Kincaid was terrific (and he was the standby! I think he went up on the lyrics during his last number but he was still great). Kelli O'Hara has an absolutely lovely voice but I did think she was a little mannered portraying an Italian (the hands).

Criss also gave me some family artifacts like--this is wild--my Dad's teddy bear from CHILDHOOD. Daddy gave it to her when he went off to boarding school and asked her to keep it safe for him--she has kept it all these years and now gave it to me. It is now thoroughly battered and well-loved. I put him next to Paddington and they can be friends. She said I could either return it to Daddy or keep it--I think the latter, I'm worried he won't take it from her (my Dad and his brothers are in the middle of a huge feud with my aunts. They haven't communicated in years).

So I'm doing this concert of Shakespearean songs for Donna and there's a ton of music, some of which I already know. No problem, Donna's stuff is easy enough to read. There are two other singers on the bill--one is a guy named R** who's pretty good, and the other is a girl named N**** who has a beautiful voice but has a hard time with the music. For the last two weeks Donna has been making the girl's tracks easier and easier (or giving them to me) because she just isn't getting it. She turned one duet into a solo so at this point I have FIVE soli! Wednesday night we had our "dress rehearsal" and N**** did pretty badly--worse, actually, than she's been doing in rehearsal. She was obviously very nervous. One of the biggest hurdles is this section in the "Lullaby" song (from Midsummer)--for the most part the song is in 3/4 time but in the middle part it goes crazy. 3/4 to cut time to common time to 3/4, all within one staff. It's tricky even for me--this poor girl is just at sea. Donna thinks she just needs to run it but we've done that and she's still messing up. So I asked her if I could help her, she said YES. I sat her down and talked to her about time signatures and how to read them, what cut and common times mean and then I went through the music and marked how to count, with 1, 2 etc, above the notes. I said don't be embarrassed to do this, I do it myself if the rhythms are tricky. And then I told her tonight you need to go home and sing this and clap/count. Get this passage into your mouth--let your muscle memory help you. do this 20 times tonight, and then ten times tomorrow morning. Tomorrow night, another 20 times. We made plans to get together tonight to go over the stuff and she was thrilled. I'd taped a lot of the group numbers with my iPhone so I said I'll convert these to audio files and send them to you.

Well, last night I'm trying to convert these iPhone videos to sound-only files and trying to use iMovie. It's not easy at all--iMovie is a great moviemaker but it's almost too complicated. There's actually a really easy way to do this (save the video to your desktop and then open it with Audacity, my sound editing file--Audacity only captures the sound portion of the video so then you just save it as an .mp3)--but I didn't figure out this easy way until after midnight. I'd literally been working at this for several hours, trying to convert these videos so N**** could listen to them and get the whole sound of the number into her head. Finally I'm done and ready to email the files to N****. I don't have her email address but Donna sends out SO MANY emails, I can easily get it from them, right? In fact Donna had just sent out another one at 11:30 (where she gave me MORE music that should've been N****'s so that's a last-minute change I have to incorporate--good thing I'm so reliable, right?!). The thing with Donna's emails is that she gets really weird about whether or not people have received them and always asks for confirmation. So there's this constant round of emails, followups to emails, replies to emails, confirmations and replies and it's just a LOT of emailing. It clutters up my mailbox and I get annoyed at having to reply "yes, I received your email" after EVERYTHING she sends. Anyway so she sent one at 11:30, I open it up, dutifully reply "got it," hit send and then I look at the "To" line, expecting to see Ray's and Nadya's emails.

There's nothing, only Donna's email. She emailed it to herself and bcc:ed us. I don't have Nadya's email.

I go through all of Donna's MANY emails. All of them were bcc:ed.

WTF WHYYYYYYYYY? Why does she have to make it so complicated? Why, for God's sake? Why would she hide our emails from each other? What possible reason could she have for that? I emailed her IMMEDIATELY asking for Nadya's address--remember, she'd emailed me just 30 minutes before and she (of course) asked for confirmation. I didn't hear from her so I texted her at 12:30--nothing. Finally at 2:00 am I emailed DONNA the fucking sound files and asked her to forward them to Nadya. I was super-annoyed at the whole thing. Donna, I am doing YOUR cleanup because you didn't realize this girl can't read music. I am doing this not because I need to--hey, I know my stuff--but because I want us all to sound good. It kills the vibe when someone's up there sounding terrified, and I want my friends who are coming to see a good show. Furthermore I really don't have time to do go over this with N****--my aunt is coming to visit tomorrow and staying with me and I'd really like to clean the place and just relax. Donna has talent blinders on sometimes--she just doesn't realize how BAD some of these singers are. Oh my God, some of the talentless guys she's had in her concerts--I was insulted to share the stage with them, frankly. This girl is not really bad--she does have a lovely voice--but she can't really read music at all, which means you need to work with her a lot more. And Donna should've realized this and made sound files, drilled her, whatever. It shouldn't be my job.

Having said this, since I am doing this, the least you could do is not hide our effing contact information for no reason! I just don't even get why she would do that. She sent me this rather defensive reply this morning--Donna, go ahead and get defensive because you need me a lot more than I need you! I am far and away the best musician *and* singer in this little concert (Ray isn't bad but I am better) and well she knows it or she wouldn't be throwing me MORE stuff (as a direct result of this girl's inability to learn the music) at the last minute.

She think that actresses who experience the casting couch "court that sort of thing."


FUCK YOU

I can't really post this on Facebook because it'll come off as passive-aggressive. But I have to say--if you don't want to see/read spoilers. STAY THE FUCK OFF SOCIAL MEDIA. It really is that simple. It is exactly what I do during the Olympics--I stay off Facebook, I avoid the news, I take responsibility for my avoidance. I just--a major event happened last night on Game of Thrones and people are posting about it. They're excited, they're horrified, they want to talk about it. Which is basically the point of social media--to enable conversation and connection. Cue a flood of outraged viewers who didn't watch last night and are now bemoaning people talking about it. STAY THE FUCK OFF SOCIAL MEDIA. You don't HAVE to spend hours on Facebook, you know. Avoid being spoiled by not going where people are talking about spoilers! People complaining about spoilers on Facebook is like walking down a hallway, hearing a conversation through a closed door, and then opening the door and telling the people in the room to stop talking. It just annoys the living shit out of me. My friend Dave wrote "The king is dead!" a fairly cryptic comment. Immediately some idiot wrote "If that's a Game of Thrones spoiler...shush! I haven't watched it yet." Fuck you! Why ask for confirmation that it's a spoiler? That MAKES it a spoiler, moron! Which is what I finally wrote back after this person came on again and demanded that everyone "stop talking about spoilers!!!!!"

No, this wasn't directed at me since (because I hate dealing with that type of people) I wrote my status update so carefully, you had to have watched the episode *and* known that I'm a G of T fan to have understood what I was talking about . (I didn't even identify the show!) But that sort of camp-counselor bullshit just winds me up.

ANYWAY. The weekend was good. My Dolphman team had a game Friday and we won handily, 3-0. I scored the last goal, right between the goalie's legs :) It was a great game, we played very well. Afterward at the bar one of the other players in the league was doing pushups on the floor--he got to about 30. then Brian, one of my teammates, did his own set but he was doing extreme pushups--tiger pushups, one-handed, etc. He did about 25. Then I started and I did over 50--54, I think, but the crowd had stopped counting at that point. Afterward one of the guys leaned over and said my new nickname would be "Fi'tty Pushups" which made me laugh :)

YAISSSSSSSS SUNNY BEAUTIFUL WEATHER THIS WEEK SO HAPPPPPYYYYYYYY

Of course we have rain today and tonight and I have a soccer game so there you are. THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS.

Had a busy Saturday. I signed up for a Meetup soccer game in my neighborhood with a group I've played with before. The field was at 128th and Third Avenue so I trotted up there--it was spitting a bit but nothing we couldn't play through. AT FIRST. As the game went on the dampness started going right through my bones, especially my feet. Between my nearly-flat feet and the horrible bunions, rain can really do me in and by the evening I was in so much pain I had to stay off my feet completely. But it was worth it--I scored five goals and assisted on several as well. NICE assists too, some really clever goals ;) So glad spring is here, I have two games scheduled already this weekend!

I also had a rehearsal with Donna for an upcoming concert Shakespeare songs. These are gorgeous actually--Donna is a weak lyricist but she really knows how to compose for Shakespeare. She emailed us the music last week but typically I did not get around to looking at it until I got there. She complimented me at one point and I sheepishly admitted this was the first time I'd looked at it--this is when it's great to be an excellent sight-singer! (And it helps that Donna generally composes according to voice-leading principles. She might play around with the tempi a lot but her melodies are easy enough to sight-sing.) Or not great, maybe, since it encourages laziness. I then regaled the other two singers with stories of how I developed my sight-singing skills as a child in church. I said sopranos always have the melody and with a 4- or 5-verse hymn, you get bored singing that over and over so you start reading the alto line, then the tenor...This is why I can harmonize with so many Xmas carols :)

Anyway the concert should be lovely and I'm actually going to invite people to this, since I have several songs. Oh, and my aunt Clarissa (who is also my godmother!) is visiting that weekend!!! So she will be able to attend, and then she wants to hang out with me afterward. I can't wait to show her my beautiful new place.

Ryan was given a couple of comps to La Boheme at the Met so he offered me one. Ryan hasn't seen many operas--I think this was his third--and he's never seen Boheme before so I discussed it with him. As often as it's done, I don't think it's an ideal intro to opera since so little happens in Boheme. If you don't already love opera, I don't think that one will change your mind--Carmen is better, more exciting, the main character is MUCH more interesting than Mimi and everybody already knows the music since it's referenced constantly. If you've ever seen Flashdance, the Music Man or The Bad news bears, you know some Carmen. (Especially the latter which utilizes the entire score.) Anyway Ryan did enjoy the production which is legendary--the reveal of the Café Momus set is gasp-inducing.

I saw that the Met is doing The Death of Klinghoffer which I'd really like to see. I haven't seen too many modern operas and I enjoy the ambition of modern music. At Sweet Briar I think I was the only music major who liked twelve-tone music--I liked how intellectual it was, it felt like listening to a puzzle. I enjoy the mathematical aspects of music (which 12-tone certainly explores!) and get kind of bored when it's all just pretty melody after pretty melody. At any rate I'd like to push myself to see some more stuff like that--I used to see a lot more ballet when I first moved to New York and I'd like to start going again. It's pretty easy to see arts on the cheap here if you're willing to stand or wait on line or something.