Danielle Blog

Mini-solo

I almost forgot to tell you about my mini-solos at church, but then I saw Squirl’s comment on my previous blog post.

It was about 50% great and 50% okay.

Basically, I nailed it during practice and during the first service. Then, during the second service, the parts of the verses that were in my upper range (head voice) just ended up really weak. Thankfully, my mini-solo ended in my chest voice. So, at least I ended well.

I think that what happened was that I oversang in all of the songs between the first and second service and wore my voice out. I actually could tell that my voice was getting rough by the time we hit the sermon in the second service where we leave and go hang out.

That makes me frustrated. *sigh*

After the first service, the music director and his wife (who is also in the band) said that they should try to have me do more solos. Well, we’ll see what they think after hearing me in the second service. *sigh*

Well, I knew it wasn’t in a great spot in my range. But I’d hoped to overcome it. And I DID overcome it for the first service. Just not the second.

I guess there is something to be said for pacing!

Feelin’ good

Remember that list of things I was hoping to do over these 4 days? Well, I was a bit derailed by my head.

I ended up with migraines on Thurs and Friday. At first on Thurs, I thought it was just a headache and it would get better. But just before I needed to go to the salon, it really intensified. I still went – I just wore earplugs and didn’t talk to anyone. And when I got home, I took my super-strong medication and rested, and tah-dah, it went away. But when that happens, I’m pretty much house-bound with reading and minimal computing.
Then the same headachey feeling came back on Friday!? This reminded me of what happened a month or so ago when I stopped using my humidifier (because it needed to be cleaned). This time, I’d stopped using it, because I couldn’t seem to get it working. However, HB came to the rescue. Before he left for work Friday morning, he got it working.

Today, after sleeping with my humidifier again, I’m headache free.

I usually don’t like to talk about my health, but this whole humidifier thing has been rather eye-opening. Minnesota must be particularly dry or something. It is odd, though, because I don’t have this problem in TX when I visit there (and don’t use one). Puzzling, I say.

Anyway, yesterday, I went ahead to the movie theater and saw Earth. It was really good. They did a really nice job of starting in the Arctic in January and then progressing through the year and the globe and ending up again in the Arctic in December. It had its usual sad predator-prey moments, and another sad moment (I won’t say, in case you watch it), but it had a joyous ending. I got chills watching parts of it. Some of the shots that they got of migrations were just incredible. I don’t know how they manage to be up in the air at just the right time and place to film them – particularly the birds. They had some shots of birds trying to migrate over the Himalayas that were just spectacular.

As for my other plans, today, I may or may not weed. I don’t want to stir up my allergies. I need to have a clear head and throat to sing that mini-solo in church tomorrow.

I did call the garden center and they said that the official last frost date is around May 20. And she said not to plant anything before Sunday, because someone there had told her that there was a frost warning between now and then. So, my annuals will wait a little longer. That’s okay. I’ll have them soon enough.

That is pretty much my excitement. I just finished the last book in a Fantasy fiction series that my friend from my post-doc got me started on. It is the Summoning series by Robin D. Owens. It was good.

This week, my copy of Hearts and Bones arrived and so did the Spymaster’s Lady. I might read my library books first, though, and save them for later, since my library books have due dates. We’ll see.

I’ll keep you posted on how they turn out.

Grading – done!

As you can see from the title, my grading is done. I just finished yesterday in the late afternoon and submitted final grades last night.

whew!

Now, I’ve got a couple of details to wrap up this morning (department duties and such). But then I’m free, free, freeeeeeeeeeee today, tomorrow and the weekend! After that, I’ll need to start prepping for my summer research.

Today, I get my brows plucked and hair cut (relatively boring, but will be nice to get it done). Then, I’m going to go see the Disney movie Earth. It looks like it has amazing cinematography. So, I’ll let you know what I think after I’ve seen it.
I also plan on reading and reading and reading.

Oh, and maybe I’ll do some weeding. I really hate weeding. But it is a necessary evil of home ownership with nice flower beds.

On the flower note: I’m not sure if we can plant annuals yet. It has still been pretty cold at night lately (low 40’s). I’ll probably call the greenhouse and see what they recommend.

On another flower note: I bought a bouquet of flowers to keep me company while I graded. I think that they are still in good enough shape to spend some time taking photos today or tomorrow.

Joy!

Finally: At music practice last night, the director asked me to do a 1 verse solo at the beginning of one song (ballad). It is mostly in my chest voice, which is awesome. But there is this one note in the very first phrase that is right at the edge of my chest and head voice. I’m going to see if I can keep it in my chest voice, because it is so hard to switch for one note. And when I tried switching, it came out more warbly than I’d prefer.
Overall, I’m excited to be asked and to do it. However, it is a little off-putting to have the instruments back out and just have my voice out there all on its own (which is how they are doing it). But if they think it sounds okay, then I’ll go with it. Maybe I’ll get an mp3 of it after I do it so that I can share it with you. It requires some extra work by the sound guys, so we’ll see if they are up for it.
Overall though, we are doing 3 of my favorite songs this Sunday. They are the ones with really great harmonies.

weight is lifted

Yesterday, all of the finals were handed in around 10:30 and I got to breathe one big sigh of relief.

I had a chunk of time to figure out where all of the materials are that I’m going to borrow to do Westerns at the beginning of this summer. The one thing is that this is an older set up where you have to pour your own gels. Not that pouring is so hard, I used to do it when I was an undergrad and they pretty much always solidified, but some of the chemicals themselves are kind of nasty and hazardous until the gel solidifies. So, we might go with pre-cast gels. The only problem with that method is that the rig that holds the pre-cast gels is handled by the guy that wasn’t around yesterday. So, I’ll have to work on meeting with him – which gets tricky, since I’m going to try to limit how much I drive up to school in the next week or two.

The best part of my day was that I had set up a last-minute lunch with my friend – another “young female” faculty member. We’ve really hit it off. Last semester we started a standing schedule of having lunch on a particular class day every other week. This semester, our schedules didn’t mesh and we just did lunch a couple of times. But yesterday! Ahhhhhhhhh, just thinking about it makes me smile, we basically left for lunch around 11:45 and didn’t go back to work until about 3:00. It was awesome.
We hung out in the lunch room/cafeteria for a while, and then decided to wise up and hang out outside in the sun (out of the wind). We ended up on this curb in front of our building, which I’m sure appeared kind of funny to the students passing us by, but it was a nice spot.

I think I should keep some of those fold-up camp chairs in my trunk for these kinds of situations.

It also made me think of something else, wouldn’t it be nice to have meetings in the summertime outside instead of in stuffy conference rooms? Of course, it gets harder to keep track of papers….

… but one can dream.

The rest of the day was getting some lab details figured out – freezer and fridge space, lab bench space, checking out the incubator – which appears to need to be repaired. There is an odd noise that sounds like a fan issue. That part is scary. I’m worried about the cost of that repair. The department has pretty much spent our budget for the year and we don’t get our new round of money until July 1. I really don’t want to pay for the repair out of my own grant money, but I’m wondering if it is going to come down to that. *sigh*

This would be the difficulty of doing research at a small school.

But hey, we just got a nanodrop spectrophotometer. That should come in handy. I’ve never gotten to use one before.

And now, I’m off to see if I can schedule a lunch/afternoon with my friend from my post-doc lab for tomorrow. yay!

finals

Well, I give one final today at 3:30-5:30 and the 2nd one tomorrow at 8:00-10:00. Yes, 8:00 am. I think that means that I have to leave the house around 6:15. Which is do-able without too much rearrangment of my schedule – but will still suck.

THENNNNNNNN – yes, then. Ah, the weight that will be off of my shoulders.

I already have dreams of playing Wii, reading the first book in the series by Margaret Lawrence, going for walks outside, watching the new Star Trek movie in the theater. Watching Wolverine in the theater.

And of course, lots of grading. But grades aren’t due until the 18th. So, it isn’t like I have to kill myself to get them done.

I’m still planning on getting them all done in 4 days (3, if the students answer the questions concisely). But I’m not going to work on the weekend to do them.

*happiness*

I also attend graduation with gowns, hood and all on Sunday (Mother’s day). It will be the first time I’m on the “other side” of graduation. Should be interesting. I hear, rather boring too. But well, novelty usually helps keep at least some of the boredom at bay.

Well, time to go work on writing that final for tomorrow. *sigh* Going to be a long day today getting that one done.