Retreat & Pandora's Box

It was another busy week! My first rehearsal for the Salt Lake Choral Artists was a week ago Tuesday followed combined mutual Wed. which I (technically the Beehives) was in charge of. Some of my girls had been begging me to teach them how to twist balloon animals so I decided to make it into a combined activity. It took a lot of effort, planning and patience, but the girls LOVED it and we all had fun.
Thursday night I had to pack for my weekend Singers retreat to Bear Lake the next day. I had to be to work (with all my stuff) at the crack of dawn in order to get everything done before we left the school of music at 2:00. My carpool arrived at Bear Lake around 5:00pm and we all met at the Bear Lake ward building where we had dinner and rehearsed for a few hours before playing "I Never" and having happy hour which included virgin margaritas and appletinis, music and yes, dancing. I must say, after singing in an ensemble where I was the only member of the church, it is SO refreshing to be in a group that is about 90% LDS. Don't get me wrong, I LOVED the diversity at ECU, but it makes my life SO much easier not to be the only "Mormon girl" in a group like this. As you can imagine we went to bed late and had to get up early so no one got much sleep and Saturday was a long day. After breakfast at 8 we rehearsed for several hours and discussed some of the details of our Eastern European tour in May. We broke for lunch, then rehearsed for a few more hours before going outside to play some games.
After that we rehearsed in the chapel what we would be performing that evening for our impromptu concert for the Bear Lake ward and any interested locals. I have never learned so much music so quickly and performed it in concert the same day!

Dr. Allred said it was a first for any group of his to learn so much music in such a short amount of time and be ready to perform it within a week of school starting. At least 3 of the pieces on the program we had seen for the first time earlier that day. After dinner we all changed and gave an hour long concert. It was by no means a packed house, but the audience was very gracious and receptive, and it gave us an opportunity to see how well we could come together and sing under a little bit of pressure.

(I don't know if anyone but music nerds would find this funny, but this picture is hilarious to me! During Dr. Allred's photo shoot for his Bio, he actually took one making the musical "gang sign", a 'messa di voce'. So nerdy, so funny.)

Everyone, including Dr. Allred was extremely surprised and impressed with just how well it went for something so off-the-cuff. We all went away feeling like this is going to be a great year of music making considering just how much we've been able to do in only a week's time.

It was a long and exhausting weekend (as you can tell by all of our faces here), and a lot of work (12 hours of singing!?), but I got to know a lot of the singers and it was very fulfilling to get a taste for what the year will be like. After the concert, many people drove back to SLC. The rest of us went back to our cabins and watched movies. In the morning, a group of us went to church at the Bear Lake ward which was HUGE! The funniest part about it was who happened to be sitting a few rows in front of us and to the right. Its not a face I ever expected to see at church. It brought new meaning to the phrase, "Speak of the devil". There in his Sunday best was Satan himself, Michael Ballam!
Talk about WEIRD! He made a very hasty exit after sacrament meeting, which is totally understandable considering that he probably can't go anywhere without being called Lucifer. Its funny that my first reaction isn't, "Oh wow, Michael Ballam, the famous opera singer/movie star/professor at Utah State/youngest person ever to get a Doctorate Degree in Music at his University!" Oh no, my first reaction was definitely Beelzebub in nature. Poor guy.

After sacrament meeting we drove home, arriving around 2pm. After unpacking and a quick nap I made fast Sunday dinner and Layne and I set to preparing the house for Oscar, the floor guy.
It feels like it's been a complete uphill battle trying to get back to normal after our little flood, but we finally have our house back! Sunday night Layne and I spent a good deal of time moving all our furniture to various locations around the house so that everything would be off the floor when Oscar arrived first thing Monday morning. Somewhere between moving the couch and the entertainment center I tweaked my lower back which has been angry at me since. Unfortunately Oscar had a family emergency and had to fly to Florida so our living room remained in our kitchen all week until one of his other workers could come do the job yesterday.
Last night Layne and I put the house back together and cleaned and dusted everything. I'm just so glad its all over. Now if we can only figure out how we're going to pay for it all...

It was tough jumping right back into work and class after such a full and tiresome weekend. We got our memorization schedule for Singers on Monday. For every day there is a new section in at least 3 pieces that must be memorized which we're tested on every day. No rest for the weary! For anyone interested (mom and dad) who has a facebook account (sorry mom and dad, maybe Dane will let you use his), someone took a little video of a run through at one of our regular week day rehearsals and posted it on facebook last weekend. It was shot probably the 4th day of school as we were running through a piece for only like the 2nd time. It's not high quality (shot with a digital still camera), and the piece is rehearsed at about half the tempo we performed it at on Saturday night, but its a little inside peak at the group and what rehearsal is like. At the end of the video it cuts off the part where Dr. Allred was asking if we had it close to memorized. Yeah, first week of rehearsal. Anyway, here is the link.

Yesterday was the first day I've had in a while that I would call an all around "good day". At work I was able to ship a box of completed arrays to Germany which was a huge burden off my shoulders. We had a great rehearsal in Singers. The floor was finally being done. I finally had a night where I didn't have anywhere to be or any responsibilities. I had to work till 6, but I didn't even mind. On my way home I took a new route down 800S. due to highway construction and just past 1300E. the road suddenly drops out of the sky and there is a huge hill. Well, having never been down this road before, I didn't anticipate the sudden acceleration and by the time I realized I was even on a hill, a stupid cop on foot had tagged me with his radar gun and was holding up a stop sign and waving me into a parking lot. There were 2 or 3 of them doing this and the cars were piling up. When he told me that I was going 5 MPH OVER THE SPEED LIMIT, I thought for sure I would just get a warning. Well, I was wrong. He took my liscense and registration and wrote me a ticket on the spot. 5MPH OVER! Thats 40 in a 35 zone people!! I was so mad. He kindly explained that 5 over won't hurt my insurance much, but that I had 2 weeks to pay the fine. How nice. Maybe I should have shown him my temple recommend. I wonder if that carries any weight with the SLPD. I guess it isn't possible these days for me to have one completely good day without anything bad or expensive happening to us. I know I should just try to smile & shrug it off, but its getting harder and harder to do that these days. If having a sense of humor in these situations is indeed the best medicine, I'm quickly begining to feel like I must be in the placebo group. Anything else in the box Pandora?