Much Ado About Nothing...

Howdy virtual land, all who are bored enough to take a moment and read my silly posts. ;) I haven't posted in a while, so just thought I would come and jot down a few quick notes.

My life is boring as usual. I am at home with the kids, studying, singing, same old same old. So this is truly yet another much ado about nothing type of post.

But I have been introduced to a new website that is pretty fun. Singsnap.com lets you create your own little karaoke songs! :) Anyone who wants to sing, just need a mic and some way to hear the music. And away you go! I haven't had a chance to actually record anything there yet, but you can look for me there as....big shocker....blondesoprano.

Also, another great new website for me is operakaraoke. Can't believe I've found a site that sells mp3s with opera backing tracks! Woot! Now all I need is a mixer, and I'm ready to stream live concerts into Second Life or make recordings to post on my websites.

Anyhoo, not much else to share, except a silly little youtube video. (If you like Star Wars and John Williams' music, you'll love this.)  Enjoy and have a fabulous day! :)

Anyone who has been involved in a virtual world knows that deciding how one's avatar should look is difficult, at best. Hmm..the legs should be long and lean, but not TOO long...watch out that the heaving bosom doth not heave too much,.....too much makeup, too little?

As I have become more acquainted with Second Life, I'm discovering that there's so much more to choose from than just what hair color or outfit my avi should wear. I'm amazed by the multicolored gossamer wings, the avatar that's the spitting image of WALL-E, or the gal that sports faun legs, much like Pan.

And a strange question has been brewing in my mind....why do we choose to make our avatars look either profoundly bland, or disturbingly eccentric, or perhaps somewhere in between? Here are some photos of my avatar in Second Life, Nicole. (And why did I choose to keep my normal first name?!!?)

     


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I am super excited to sing in the TCA again this year. It's a group that really makes very high quality music, but I don't have to spend a lot of out of the house rehearsal time. Eric treats the choral artists as well as the orchestral players in the same professional manner, and I really appreciate that too.

The start of our 07-08 season is swiftly approaching. In fact, I had the startling realization yesterday that our first concert is in only 3 weeks! And that means that our first rehearsal is in only 2 weeks!

Partly because I didn't get my new mailing address to the right person in TCA earlier, and partly because auditioning the choral artists took longer than they anticipated, I still haven't received my contract in the mail yet. So not only do I still not have an idea for which of our six concert runs this season I'll be requested, but I also don't have any sheet music in hand to begin to learn.

I have a sneak peek, though. I found out that I will be singing in the first concert of the season, at least, because Eric sent out an e-mail yesterday morning detailing the divisi assignments for the various pieces we'll be performing in the first concert run. And my name was listed in the first sopranos/first choir list.

So now I just need to get my music. Thank goodness I found some nice (FREE) recordings online at last.fm to aid in my preparation. I'll also have to spend a bit less time on this lovely electronic diversion, and cloister myself in the Freeman Studio a bit more often.

If anyone who reads this blog is interested at all, I can post some tiny video snippets of my preparation. The vocalists in my life would probably not be interested, and might even laugh at me doing that. But I'm sure that there are some who might be interested in seeing & hearing how a singer prepares music for a tough concert.

If I don't hear any comments, I might not bother. But it might be an interesting v-log, to see how I progress from the day I receive my music (hopefully tomorrow) to the night of our first concert.

Well, no more for now. It IS Sunday morning after all, and it's almost my turn to get into the shower! Thanks for reading!

I think I must have prayed a fervent and heartfelt prayer sometime ago, asking God to help me with the so-called "fruits of the spirit." For those unfamiliar, the passage is from the Bible, Galations 5:22-23

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." (NIV)

One of the things I've learned from personal experience over the course of my lifetime so far, is that one trite saying is also quite true. God always answers prayer, but not always in the way we expect or hope.

I figure I have to have said this prayer, because otherwise God would not have sent us our first son, Christopher James. CJ has ADHD, and his is the particularly intense, overly hyperactive, impulsive and inattentive combo-type. I love him more than life, and would never want anyone to think that I don't. In fact, what we go through every day with CJ is a labor of love, proof that we want the best for him, or else we would just give up and sent him to an institution.

This morning was a prime example, and for those who do not have ADHD in their lives anywhere, a great illustration of what most of our days are like.

Ironically, yesterday we met with CJ's psychiatrist, and CJ met with his counselor. CJ started a new medication today, Concerta 27mg, which is supposed to last longer (12 hours, we hope,) than the Ritalin LA that he was previously taking. This morning, 1/2 hour before school started, I had a meeting scheduled to discuss CJ's 504 plan with his 2nd grade teacher, the special ed. specialist  and the "resource teacher." So the plan was that we would wake CJ 30 minutes earlier than usual, so that he could come with me and play with his friends until school started.

Unfortunately, CJ had other things on his mind this morning than getting ready early and heading into school. He sat at his sister's place at the breakfast table, causing a huge uproar because he was eating "her" food. He wouldn't get dressed, instead running around the house chanting some silly thing he was repeating from a pre-school show, Little Bill. He wouldn't focus on Mike or me for even a moment to listen to the directions he needed to follow. We were lucky to get him to put his clothes on, forget about brushing his teeth or washing his hair. He became very angry over the fact that I expected him to repay us for a toy I bought for him at Target the other day, when he forgot to bring his allowance with him. (I guess he thought it was a gift, even though we had discussed the fact that I was just loaning him the $ till we got home...) Then CJ proceeded to use his fantastic aim and considerable strength to hurl diecast Thomas trains at me and my husband. (My hand is still red and a bit bruised from one direct hit.)

So, am I learning patience? Well, I'm trying!! Self-control? I don't say nasty things to my son that ruin his self-esteem...does that count? Gentleness? I guess so! I may be fiesty in spirit, but we try very hard not to use physical pain as a punishment tactic, even tho sometimes that seems like the only way to keep CJ from seriously hurting his siblings. I just don't know if I am learning the things I'm supposed to to make those fruits a part of my daily personality.

Does dealing with difficult people really build patience in a person?

I think I'm going to have to revisit this question in about 10 years, as CJ becomes a young adult and prepares to leave our home (hopefully! ;) ) I am not sure I have the perspective at this moment in my life to say that yes, this experience helped me "grow my fruit." It's like asking someone who is going through the excruciating pain of having burned skin removed so that healthy new skin can grow, "do you feel like this is helping you to heal and feel better?" I'm certain that poor patient would say "Heck no!" But ask him 2 years later, and she might have a different opinion on the experience.

I guess I will just have to muddle through this parenting experience, and hope that the fruits, whenever they might arrive, will be as luscious and delectable as the sweetest peach, picked straight off the tree in late July.

Hello HIM 101 students, if you're reading my blog...

Trying to get the word out in as many different places as I can; the end-of-quarter survey IS now available at TCC. I guess the IS folks just needed an extra day to get things all up and running.

Ok, here is me singing. A tiny portion of Bist du bei mir, and all of Quia respexit from Magnificat, both by Bach.

These are unaccompanied, they are unrehearsed, and the audio quality is just so-so, esp. when I sing loud and/or high.

But it's me! Hope you enjoy!

This is also on youtube. I am blondesoprano8 there, and this is my only uploaded video so far, but you can also see my fav's there (also some silly fav's of Mike & the kids.)

Our assignment: "In your Live Journal blog, write a posting that summarizes your experiences with this course. You do not have to analyze each tool; just choose a couple that you found the most useful and why. How would you apply those tools to your school and professional life? Has your relationship to technology changed over the last 8 weeks?"


I am amazed at how many new skills I've learned in this class, and excited by all the ways I can use them in my life in the future! I'm particularly excited about the google reader, because it's a huge time-saver to not have to go to many different websites every time I log on. I really like the news-reader part of that, since the noise level of our house makes it hard to hear the news most of the time on the television!

I am also excited about this blog! At the moment, it's the only blog I have, so it's used for both personal writing and assignments for class, but I could imagine in the near future setting up separate blogs for different subjects and audiences, and using it as a place to gain constructive criticism of my research papers or personal writing.

I enjoyed this class, because I learned many new skills and feel like I've taken 10-15 years off! Suddenly I'm part of the younger generation, and I'm "in the know" again! Thank you Char and Geoff!

Ok, so here's a scenario that's played out in my life, and in the lives of many other opera singers, quite often.

New acquaintance asks: So what are you studying, or what do you do?
I say:   Oh, I'm a SAHM with three kids, a Health Information Management student, and an opera (or professional) singer.
New friend: Oh cool, SING SOMETHING FOR ME!
Me: Uh...stammer, blush...uh...right here, right NOW?!
Friend: Yes!
Me: Uh....

Just so everyone knows, the stagefright aspect is still there for most of us opera singers, most of the time. It's very hard to just whip into song on command, and not either: totally cack, because I haven't properly warmed up, or become a nervous wreck, cuz I REALLY value your opinion and don't want to blow it.

Now what's really interesting to me, though, is that I would rate my fear much lower if I'm on a stage in front of hundreds, even thousands of people, than I am in front of just my closest family and friends.

SOOOO..Here's a way that I can demonstrate what my voice sounds like, and what my level of ability is, to all those who haven't heard me and keep begging me to sing for them, without being as fearful. Sometime in the next week or two, I'll make a little video with my new webcam of me singing something. I might not be on camera, you may just hear the voice mostly, cuz I'm not sure exactly how to set this all up yet...Or it may end up just being a audio clip or something...but I'm sure you'll be satisfied to finally know what I sound like.

Please know this isn't a PR thing, an audition or a chance to show off. If I screw up, I screw up...but I hope that I can answer the question that my new friends ask, without being quite so nervous! So keep an eye on this blog, and I'll post it soon. Or I might put it on youtube, just for kicks: I'm blondesoprano8 there, so you can keep an eye out there too. Either way, I'll blog when it's up.

Have a great day everyone, and try to do something nice for yourself and super-sweet for someone else... :)

I have been balking a bit on this assignment...here are the two articles we were to read and then blog about: Read me first, and read me second.

First, I'm really bad at being concise. So I'm going to try really hard to just keep this short and sweet. Second, I had a hard time coming up with much to say this time that wasn't already addressed by the articles.

So what I am going to do instead is offer the result of a tiny experiment I did. I went to my facebook account and searched under hospitals. I was a bit taken aback by the lack of individual hospitals that had their own facebook accounts, and the sheer volume of groups with titles such as: "I hate hospitals," "Bring smoking back in hospitals," or "Why do hospitals smell so wierd."

I guess the author of these articles is right about hospitals not utilizing social media, at least in regards to facebook. And it's too bad, because there's a terribly negative image of hospitals out there that needs addressing. If we don't work on changing Americans' attitudes about health care, (such as: "Insurance companies just want to rip us off," "Doctors are rich, why do they have to charge so much?" "ER waits in hospitals are terrible, they just don't care about us and our pain.") we won't be able to pass effective legislation to actually remedy some of the problems with our country's health care system.

Hospitals can't be expected to bear the brunt of shifting the attitude adjustments of millions of Americans alone, but if they at least tried to do some more PR work, via such vehicles as Facebook or MySpace, what could it hurt? And it certainly might help!

After having enrolled my 7 year old son in a great charter school here in town, and having purchased almost $200 worth of uniforms, (and we're not done yet...) then my son's counselor (He has ADHD) sends us information that would have been great EARLIER!

First, quick background on my son..he's extremely intelligent, charismatic, funny and friendly. He's also astoundingly talented in the "creative" department...he can build/draw WALL-E from any medium, from memory with no photo to assist, (legos, paper, other toys put together...) he can draw, sing, write..amazing. But he also has lots of behavior issues and it's nearly impossible to get him to focus on homework most days. He will hyper-focus on his arts and "creations" as he calls them for hours, but can't seem to remember where he put his shoes and they are on the floor next to him.

So here comes this brochure for a new charter school: TALA, Tucson Academy of Leadership & Arts: "the first truly comprehensive arts charter school in the state" some benefits: small class size, free tuition, on-site social worker (my mouth dropped open,) music director Doug Tidaback of the AZ Jazz Acad., after-school programs taught by renowned artists, emphasis on leadership through positive discipline and the arts!

DANG! Why couldn't this have arrived in say...April?!?!  Or even June wouldn't have been too late. But now, school starts on MONDAY! and we're a bit too committed to back out now.

What is it they say about achieving your goals in life...there's a certain amount of talent, a lot of hard work and perseverance, but also that stroke of luck, to be "in the right place at the right time?" SIGH! Well, I guess all we can control is the hard work! :)