Crazy weekend!

Sorry I'm a little lame about this blog, I'll try and do a quick update. Well, you know I joined a new choral group, mainly because they were doing the Bach concert (see earlier post). Basically I'm a Bach groupie. Some people follow the Grateful Dead, I just follow Bach around. Well, I had to stick with the group after the Bach concert, even though I wasn't too excited about this past weekend's concert, held at the Duke Chapel, on the Duke University Campus in Durham. The program consisted of works by Bruckner and Stravinsky, both of which I had sung before with NCMC, and Hindemith, which I had never sung and wouldn't mind if I never sing it again. That said, I must say I feel kind of like I'm being sucked in to this new group. I really really like the director, and the people are so friendly! They start rehearsals with backrubs, and introductions, and just generally chat awhile before they sing. Then they warm up for a good 10-15 minutes before starting in with the actual music. Who does that? Not that we Raleigh folks are unkind, but we just get right down to business and then book it home at the end of rehearsal. Because I'm not an extrovert, it took me a couple of years to make some good friends in the Master Chorale, but these Durham ladies act like they are so excited to welcome new members, and have been so friendly. Not to mention the performance space...while I like downtown Raleigh's Meymandi Hall, what could compare to singing in this place??

The below picture shows the side of the chapel that I entered, and had never seen how strikingly beautiful it is from this side. What a marvelous edifice! And singing in it was pretty amazing, kind of like singing in the shower, but with lots and lots of company. My one complaint, and it's kind of a big one, I had some trouble with my ears! At the really loud parts, being surrounded by loud sopranos, and the reverb from all the brass, one of my ears would totally buzz and it drove me crazy! I saw the doctor the next day and he said my ears looked fine, and that I needed to start my allergy meds again. I was relieved; I'm a little petrified about hearing loss since it runs in the family; my mom is getting more and more deaf all the time, it drives me nuts!
This past weekend was also the district pinewood derby, held at Crabtree Mall. Mason's car was up to race the others from around the area, since he won the whole pack this year (again!). It was kind of stressful and I was flying solo since Matt was up on Pilot Mountain with the Scouts. Anyway, watching the races, it was so hard to tell, since all the cars were fast! It looked like a three-way tie every time. So Mason and I had no idea who won. But the results came in and lo and behold, Mason won 3rd place! Not bad. Not bad at all. They had to call his name a million times, he had become distracted and made friends with some kid who had a remote control helicopter. But he got a trophy so all was OK in the end.
As if the weekend wasn't crazy enough, we had a food drive in my neighborhood, in conjunction with the church's food drive. I was pretty proud of myself for getting my neighborhood involved. Here's a link to the article about the food drive in general. My friend Lauren and I collected probably around 700 pounds of food from my neighborhood, then my dad took it over to the church.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/02/28/1018747/mormons-join-ncssm-for-food-drive.html


So, there's our weekend at a glance. I have to hit the grocery store and clean a couple of bathrooms, then practice a little, then haircuts this afternoon. It's a crazy life, but I wouldn't trade it for anything!