Making a joyful noise again!

Posted on 2013 Jan 09 by Kat

I retired from my church soloist job at the end of last season for a number of reasons. We planned to be out of town for several Sundays in September and October, (a time when it’s almost impossible to get good substitutes), I wanted the option of spending holidays with out-of-town family or friends, and I thought it would be fun to occasionally sleep in on a Sunday morning.

So, I sang my last solo on 4th of July weekend, my section members threw me a terrific retirement lunch, and I spent my first summer in decades NOT hunting up and learning new solos for the following year.

My husband and I traveled in Turkey September 13–October 1, visited his brother in NYC, went to his 46th high school reunion, and spent time with my aunt and some Ohio friends. For the first time since I was 5 years old, I didn’t sing in a choir for Christmas Eve services. It felt weird, but it was nice to have a chance to listen for a change.

But, I missed singing.

Missed it a lot!

So…now I’m back with the Third Presbyterian Church choir, singing as a volunteer this time. The music is still glorious. The people are still interesting. And I’m having loads of fun!

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My Mount TBR 2013 List

Posted on 2013 Jan 08 by Kat

With hundreds of books on my ToBeRead shelves, it has been hard to select 24 for this challenge. Mysteries, science fiction, history, classics, philosophy, religion—which ones should I commit to reading this year?

Some of these books have been on my TBR shelf since before we moved to this house 20 years ago; some are relatively recent. Some I inherited from my mother. Others were gifts. Some were purchased new, others from library sales, garage sales, or thrift shops. I’ve settled on these, in order of publication year.

  • A Modern Utopia, H.G. Wells. 1905. (The print edition I have is a hardcover edition from 1910, but that book is too heavy for my arthritic thumbs. I’ll be reading an ebook edition I downloaded in 2011.)
  • The Eye of Osiris, R. Austin Freeman. 1911. (hardcover)
  • Nicholas Goade, Detective, E. Phillips Oppenheim. 1929. (hardcover)
  • The Starship and the Canoe, Kenneth Brower. 1978. (hardcover)
  • Chop Wood, Carry Water. Rick Fields. 1984. (paperback)
  • Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card. 1986. (paperback)
  • Xenocide, Orson Scott Card. 1991. (paperback)
  • Spiritual Journey, Anne Bancroft. 1991. (paperback)
  • A Word After Dying, Ann Granger,. 1996. (paperback)
  • McNally’s Puzzle, Lawrence Sanders. 1996. (paperback)
  • Children of the Mind, Orson Scott Card. 1996. (paperback)
  • The Bone Collector, Jeffrey Deaver. 1997. (paperback)
  • Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible With Jewish Eyes, John Shelby Spong, 1997. (paperback)
  • Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, Edward O. Wilson. 1998. (hardcover)
  • Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, Bart. D. Ehrman. 2002. (paperback)
  • The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, Marcus J. Borg. 2003. (paperback)
  • Cat vs. Cat: Keeping Peace When You Have More Than One Cat, Pam Johnson-Bennett. 2004 (paperback)
  • The Lincoln Lawyer, Michael Connelly. 2005. (paperback)
  • Ender in Exile, Orson Scott Card. 2005. (paperback)
  • A War of Gifts, Orson Scott Card. 2007. (paperback)
  • The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, Richard Holmes. 2008. (ebook)
  • Seeing Further: The Story of Science and the Royal Society, Bill Bryson. 2010. (ebook)
  • The Lens and the Looker, Lory S. Kaufman. 2011. (ebook)
  • Use All the Crayons: The Colorful Guide to Simple Human Happiness, Chris Rodell. 2012. (paperback)

A nice mix, I think. There will also be a few books for my book clubs, but I’ll be borrowing those. These have been on my shelves (or taking up space on my nook) for a year or more.

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One month from today

Posted on 2013 Jan 06 by Kat
What do you hope to have accomplished one month from today?

from ThoughtQuestions.com

That’s a hard one. I’m used to thinking on very different time scales, usually driven by project deadlines. I have Next Actions for each project (thank you, David Allen/GTD). I have long-term life goals (go back to Turkey before I die). “One month from today” doesn’t fit my customary pattern.

One month from today, I hope to have:

  • Finished the first project for a new client (work)
  • Finished a new section of my business website, for two workshop series I want to offer over the summer (work)
  • Taken down ALL the holiday decorations (household)
  • Weeded out enough old files, currently stored in our 3rd floor guest room, so I won’t be embarrassed to have guests actually stay there (household)
  • Rejoined the choir where I used to work as a soloist, this time singing as a volunteer (personal)
  • Read two books from my TBR shelves, and started a new book for the Sisters in Spirit discussion group (personal)
  • Lost another four pounds (personal)

Next step: Set a reminder for February 6 to check my progress.

 

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Oopsie!

Posted on 2013 Jan 05 by Kat

Looks like I may need another way to display my photo-blog posts. Since the last updates for WordPress/JetPack/my theme, I’m having a devil of a time uploading photos, assigning featured images, and inserting images in posts. This is NOT going to stop me, however. The Sunday Scribblings prompt for this week is “Defiant,” and I’ll find a way past this!

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Larks vs. owls

Posted on 2013 Jan 04 by Kat

I’m a lark. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve awakened at dawn. Although, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gained the ability to—occasionally—roll over and go back to sleep,  early morning is still the highest energy point of my day. I hit the ground running, and the whole day slides downhill from there.

This is not an uncomplicated virtue. Most people are owls, dragging out of bed in the morning with great difficulty, and not really feeling alive until they’ve had their second cup of a hot caffeinated beverage of their choice. This means, for most of my life, I haven’t had anyone to talk to at breakfast. Most workplaces don’t open for business until 8:00 am or later, so (until I started freelancing) I had to waste the best part of my day waiting until someone unlocked a door.

Until he started teaching high school, my husband was an owl. Although he had to face carnivorous teens at 7:30 am, I’m convinced he doesn’t wake up until almost 9:00. It’s almost like someone, somewhere, flips a switch. His eyes suddenly brighten, his voice changes timbre, and he becomes capable of carrying on an intelligent conversation.

Me? I sing in the shower at 6:30 am. Every morning. I still don’t understand why I wasn’t murdered in my freshman dorm.

The other end of the day is problematic for me. My brain shifts into neutral sometime around 5:30 or 6:00 pm, and unless I take a nap, forget about any evening activity. Even with a nap, it’s difficult for me to focus on anything requiring creativity. After dinner is a great time for me to proofread, for example, because my brain is incapable of gliding past grammar or punctuation errors to the sense of the sentence. It stops. Dead. And refuses to move on to understand a concept until the structural problem is fixed.

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