In grad school, I called this “focus” and “drive.” And it definitely helped me accomplish my goal and get my degree amidst a lot of set backs and long days.

Then I transitioned into being a workaholic. It seemed like a safe place to channel my energies. “seemed” being the operative word in that sentence.

These days, I mostly channel it into my lectures and my singing at church. I get super-high student eval marks for enthusiasm, and other profs are telling me that they are “hearing good things” about my courses from students. So, enthusiastic lecturing seems like a good place to channel it.

But I still seem to have a lot of leftover energy, and this week, I fell into the trap of channeling that intensity toward a guy I was interested in. Why was it a trap? Because when it wasn’t reciprocated, it definitely became a problem.

I sigh.

I think that for right now, God can handle my intensity better than any human being that I know. I actually made this decision yesterday, but it was confirmed today. Thus, I really let it go today at church. I sang lead vocals on our opening song with all of that pent up emotion, passion, and intensity that has been bottled up inside of me. He can take it, for sure. That intensity carried over into our other songs pretty well too. I’m not sure how the congregation feels about it exactly, but they clapped a lot and we got some “amen”s. So, I guess they are okay with it.

there was a phrase in a song today that captures some of it “… your spirit is within me….”

Also, the new bible study I’m in is based on Romans Chapter 12 and there is a verse that spoke to me today.

Romans 12:11 (NIV) “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.”

That seems to be what I’m doing: serving the Lord with lots of fervor.
I truly believe it is pleasing to Him when I praise Him in song with passion and intensity, so if it bothers anyone else, well, they can just start attending the earlier traditional service.

- our school (work) Christmas party was Friday. I bought a great new dress at Dress Barn for $40! Accessories cost more than the dress! I’ll wear it for Christmas Eve and get someone to take a photo of me that night and post them on Flickr.

- The party was a lot of fun. I realized just how many people I know at school now! I know a LOT more than last year at this time! I also had an opportunity to talk to some people about music and I may be in a new band/group now as a vocalist. We’ll see how that pans out.

- I went to see the touring production of Beauty and the Beast on Saturday! It was amazing! The vocals were just perfect. The set pieces/staging and design were really intriguing. The costumes were fun and gorgeous. I took my binoculars this time, so we were able to get a really close view of the costumes.

- I haven’t upgraded my camera or purchased any accessories for the 6 years that I’ve had it. Until now. I was thinking about buying the most inexpensive speedlight (flash) that is available. BUT I found out that it is strictly an on/off flash and doesn’t have the ability to do TTL (through the lens) light monitoring. I bit the bullet, splurged, and bought an SB-700 from Nikon. It is an AMAZING flash. I’m still learning how to use it. So my photos are in a bit of a transition state right now. It will be good to have this break to try to learn more about it.

- I used it for the birthday party for my nieces who are now 2 and 5. I also used it for the children’s Christmas program at my church. I never would’ve been able to get the photos I captured at the Christmas program without it.

- speaking of church, I sang a solo yesterday. “Precious Promise” by Steven Curtis Chapman (from his Music of Christmas album). I sang it in my soprano voice instead of my low alto/tenor range, which is always a little trickier for me. But this song called for it, I think. Anyway, the first verse was a bit shaky, but I closed my eyes, tried to think about the message of the song, said a mini “God help me do this!” type of prayer, and the 2nd verse, bridge, and third verse really turned out well. I may try to record it later once I finish grades.

- also with church: I’m on an email list for a daily scripture and interpretation. These last couple of weeks have been really amazing. A few of us have started some email discussions about some of the passages and how they speak to us, or where we struggle with them, and it has been really good for me spiritually. My faith journey and my spiritual growth sort of goes in fits and starts, it seems. This year, I’ve been on a steady rate of growth (and at least have not been flat), but this past month or so has been a bit more accelerated. So, that has been really noteworthy. I’m glad. They are also starting a new bible study at church in January which is finally going to be on a night that would work for me. So, I’m going to try to find out more about it! Yay!

Okay. I guess I’d better start going through this last stack of assignments so that I can finish grades.

In part, singing is my form of prayer. I have known that about myself for some time. In fact, when talking to people about my personal discomfort with praying out loud (with other people around i.e. “leading prayer”), I’ve often said that I’m much more comfortable praying to myself or leading people in prayer (through song) than I am at leading people in verbal, vocal prayers. I’m getting better at praying out loud verbally, but it is not something that comes easily to me.

But back to the part about singing.
So, singing is my form of prayer; we’ve established that. No big surprise there.

But why does singing in the band at church feel SO different than just singing in my car? And why do I NEED to do it? What is it that is so different?

And I was just reading something in a book, and it finally dawned on me what is happening.

When I’m singing in my car, or I’m singing at band practice, I can feel prayerful, BUT there is almost always a part of my brain that is analyzing and critiquing my singing.
“Is that really the best harmony note for that chord?”
“Will we be singing the song in this key so that I can hit that note really strongly? Or will it end up being too high? Too low?”
“Do I need to take a bigger breathe when I’m starting that phrase so that I can support it better?”
“Would this be a song where I ought to play the tambourine?”
“We haven’t done this song in a while, I wonder if we’ll do this one anytime soon.”
“We’ve never done this song at church, I wonder if I ought to bring this up as one we should try?”
“Would this song sound good with just keyboards? or does it really need the full band?”
and on and on.

This is also why the more “routine” a song becomes for me, the more meaning I can get out of it. After hearing a song for several days, weeks, or months, I can shut off my litany of analysis of my singing ability MUCH more easily and really just focus on the words, and the meaning of the song when I’m in the car or practicing. But it is still hard to block out some of those last questions in the list.

And THAT is what makes singing in worship services SO different than singing in my car or in practice. Before the service starts, we always pray that God will work with us and through us and we give it all over to Him; our mistakes, our flubs, our missed notes or missed entrances, ANYthing just becomes peripheral.

During worship, I stop analyzing. I stop thinking.

I’m IN the moment.

I’m focusing on the words and the meaning.
And I’m praying, praising, and literally
singing my heart out
to God and for God.

In that moment, I feel so close to Him.
And it rejuvenates my spirit.

And THAT is why I sing at church and why I NEED to sing at church; to be close to God.

I’m so grateful to the church and the band for allowing me to have that opportunity. I pray that I can grow to feel that close to God ALL of the time when I sing – when I’m in the car, or my apartment, or at practice, or wherever.
But for now, it is good to be able to have this insight into myself and to be able to finally put it into words so that you can understand this side of me too.

I’m mulling some things around in my mind about faith, divorce, marriage, and relationships right now. It will take me a while to formulate my ideas, more time than I have right now. But I think that I’ll be writing something about it within a few weeks. Right now, what I can say is that I’ve been praying for something for almost 20 years, and it has finally happened. Hallelujah! However, it wasn’t at all in the way that I was expecting, and I am still processing it.

The good thing is that I’m taking next week off, OFF. I will have plenty of time to mull. I, of course, have a to-do list of things that I want to accomplish. But I also want to spend some time in reflection. I know that if I do anything related to work, it will be to clean up my office and figure out my schedule for the scientific conference that I’ll be attending in early June.

Once mid-June gets here, I’ll be back up and running doing summer research with an undergraduate student until the end of July. We’ll spend time getting the lab space cleaned, unpacked and assembled. I hope that we can get some decent experiments done this summer. I’m still trying to get the equipment I need for my experiments. But, I’ve made some progress. Then, I’ll have a week or two to prep for the start of classes in August.

In the middle of the summer, we are taking a family trip to the Texas coast again. I’m really looking forward to all of the vacations.

For now, even though my tea is still not finished, I think that I ought to finish getting ready for work and then write some exam questions.

Summary of events:
Break was really rejuvenating. I had time to sleep in and read books (aforementioned) a little bit. I also watched some movies, something I hadn’t done since the summer. I missed my chance to see Harry Potter before it left the theaters. Texas Seestor and I were trying to coordinate time to see it and just never managed to do that before it left. Oh well. I’m sure someone will buy it on DVD when it comes out again and I/we can borrow it.

I spent a BIG chunk of break trying to design my Genetics labs and write the lab manual. I’m using some of the lab exercises that I’d done in MN, but I’m trying to use some of the labs that have been done HERE in previous years too so as not to reinvent the whole wheel. I managed to write up the first three weeks of lab exercises before the binder needed to be printed for the students. They’ll get the rest as I finish editing/writing the others. I did look over all of the exercises for the semester very carefully, and I tried to coordinate them/time them with lecture topics. That can be rather challenging, since the info they need for about the 4th week in lab is chapter 19 in the textbook and I had hoped to go through the textbook mostly in chapter order. But I’ve got a plan; now, I’ll see if it works.

The first lab this week was half good and half bad. I had intentionally planned for the first part of lab (1st exercise) to be a “fun” one. And I think that it was. I’m bummed about the second half, but it was one that I’d borrowed from the person who taught it before, and that doesn’t always work very well. I think that they will still learn something from it.

In other news, my mac hard drive began deteriorating those days when I was prepping the lab manual; this was about 1 week prior to the start of classes. It was functioning, but randomly freezing and would require me to do a hard reboot. I was visiting Texas Seestor and family when I tried to reboot it and it wouldn’t reboot properly a couple of times in a row. My iPhoto wouldn’t load either. When I told Texas Seestor and Trainwreck about the issues I’d been having, TS convinced me to make an appointment with the Genius Bar at the Apple store in the nearby mall within the hour. THANK GOODNESS she insisted. It turned out that the hard drive was failing (it had 470+ bad sectors in it). It was working well enough for me to take it home and transfer all of my school files onto my school computer, but I didn’t shut it down for fear that it didn’t reboot. That ended up being a lifesaver, because when I shut it down before taking it into Apple to be repaired, it wouldn’t reboot again.

They would have replaced the drive in the store, but I told them that I’d had spotty performance on my DVD drive (officially called an optical drive) and USB port (one of the two). It got shipped off to the place where they do more intensive repairs. It came back with a new hard drive, optical drive, logic board, and optical cable. All of this was while it was still (just barely) under its 1 year warranty so everything was free. Labor alone would have been $310. Believe me, when I found out I could buy 2 more years of warranty, I jumped on it.

When it came back, we used my external hard drive to put everything back on it. It looks exactly like it did when I did my last back-up a day or two before the diagnosis. Time Machine, the back-up program for macs, is really amazing. Macs are cool. Having a place to go and get personal service without paying out the butt (like the Geek Squad at Best Buy) is worth any extra increase in cost, to me.

I go through all of this as a cautionary tale to back up your hard drive regularly. AND because it impacted my life quite drastically for the past couple of weeks. Working on my school laptop was really annoying – the screen is small, poorly lit, and the resolution is bad. It does what I need for lecturing, but I really don’t like working on it. Making powerpoints on it really wore my eyes out.

Otherwise, only a couple of other things occurred this month of note.

1) I got to see a high school performance of Les Miserables. It was really amazing. The friend of the family who had a role in it actually had a LEAD role and sung almost the entire second half of the show. He was just fantastic! All of it was really amazing. The depth of talent at the school is really phenomenal. Also, I’d never seen Les Mis before; I hadn’t realized that there is absolutely no dialogue – EVERYTHING is sung. Unlike opera, I could understand every word of it; their diction was also amazing.

2) Our school had a retreat right before the start of classes. I got to know another prof better who started this year who is relatively close in age to me (comparatively – she just turned 30 while I am 36, almost 37). Better yet, she is also single AND lives in my town! We are hoping to go out to supper together and/or maybe check out the night life in our town or in Austin. That will take some planning. But I’m excited to have the beginnings of a friendship here in TX. There are some potential people at church too who may become friends, but not much has come of that right now.

Speaking of church, I should probably get a few things done around my apartment before I head off to sing today. It is so easy for my place to fall into disorder; entropy is definitely at work.
Oh, and also thinking of church, with all of this computer mess, I was testing out various programs on my computer yesterday when I got everything reinstalled. In order to check my Flickr Uploader, I uploaded a photo of me that was taken for the church directory. I got a free 8×10 which I gave to Mom and Dad. The pic is on my Flickr account, because, it worked! yay! It is a good photo of me, I think.

I hope things are going well with you! I send a hug and or good thoughts in your direction.

During the days leading up to Christmas, Texas Seestor and my two nieces and I converged on Mom and Dad’s house. We spent a day making various types of cookies including: Swedish Spritz, sugar cookie cutouts, gingerbread, and snickerdoodle. We also took breaks to run and play with the girls outside, watch and wave at the golfers, and take the girls on a wagon ride around the neighborhood.

After the everyone else went home, Mom, Dad and I went into town to see the Christmas lights that were put up at the park.

I thought that green tree was an interesting way to do something useful with all of those clear plastic water bottles that are accumulating in our world.

Did you write your letter to Santa this year? Perhaps it ended up in this mailbox…

Ah! Here’s the gift!

Well, to be quite honest, here is the gift….

I guess some other people thought so too.

As to the party. I arrived when a friend of mine arrived too with her husband who lives in L.A. (Los Angeles (not Louisiana)) and commutes back and forth to visit. She is vivacious (she is in dramatic media) and fun, so it was great to arrive and have someone to talk to right away. She was also gussied up in a cocktail dress, so it made me feel comfortable to be dressed more formally. It was also fun to meet her husband for the first time. He is also in the entertainment industry.

The reception before the meal was the useful part I referred to earlier. I spent a while talking to a psych professor who is on sabbatical. Since he is not on campus, I’ve only ever seen him before at another party. He does research which is very, very tangentially related to mine, but he knows someone at another local liberal arts school whose research would be closer in topic. We talked about making a road trip to see that person so that I can have a local contact and maybe collaborator.

But that wasn’t even the most useful part. He gave me an idea for something that he has resorted to doing in his Intro to Psych courses to get students to read ahead of time that doesn’t involve me doing a huge bunch of grading! The usual method is to give a quiz. But that means that I (or someone) has to grade the quizzes! He told me that he cuts 3×5 notecards in half, and at the beginning of class he asks one question about the material that will be covered that day for which they should have read ahead. Just a really basic question that they should be able to answer if they even crack their book open. Then each person passes the card to a neighboring student, and that person grades it. He also switches around where they pass their cards so that they can’t make a deal with someone to give each other points or credit that isn’t deserved. He does that in lieu of longer quizzes. I think that I’ll try this and see how it goes next semester. I’ve got to do something to get them to read ahead of time! In addition, the coaches want to know the days that the student-athletes are absent (some of them have strict policies about their athletes missing classes), and I always forget to pass around an attendance sheet. It seems so high school to me that I tend to forget. Thus, this card system will also solve that problem.

Then the announcement was made for us to head to a different room for supper and to sit at our pre-arranged tables. I had fun talking to my friends in kinesiology and athletics and their significant others. The party was quite different than any I’d attended before barring a party associated with church, and here is why.

We started off with what was evidently a prayer – I think they called it a meditation. Then one of the staff sang a beautiful rendition of O Holy Night. It was very well done. We ate food and dessert. Then, after the meal, the faculty/staff bell choir performed about 4 songs. And then, this is where it became evident that I’m at a religiously-affiliated school, the president of the university (also happens to be a former pastor) read the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke while a woman played related pieces of Christmas hymns on the piano. The hymns included O Little Town of Bethlehem, Away in a Manger, and Hark the Herald Angels Sing. I’d never had that done before at a party, so that was really neat to me.

Then we transitioned into Silent Night and we all stood and grabbed the menu cards at our tables that had the words to Silent Night on the back. We sang the first verse of Silent Night in English, then Spanish, and then German. I I had a hard time not chuckling at my struggles to sing it in Spanish! The German was easy for me, because – get this – I grew up listening to the Christmas album – John Denver and the Muppets. On that album, they start off Silent Night by singing it in German – which was, of course, the original language of the song. Also, a lot of churches I’ve attended have sung it in German, so it was no big deal to me. But evidently, not many people there knew it in German, because the people at my table commented on my knowing it. Regardless, it was a really special way to end the party. It is times like these that it feels like a perfect fit for me to be at a religiously-affiliated school. It was nice to have the party include what everyone refers to as the real meaning of Christmas.

And yesterday, I finished my lab grades! Today, I have one more homework assignment for my Intro Bio class and I’ll be done with those too! I meet with my department chair on Monday to finalize them. He teaches one of the other sections of the course, and in the past, the two profs for the sections compare grades and make sure that they are sort of in line with each other. They are due Monday at 5 pm, so as of Monday at 5pm (and maybe sooner, if I can manage it) I’ll be OFF on vacation for the week!!!! yay!

I mentioned in my last post that I was going to be joining the Praise Band at my church in a few weeks. Part of the reason this became a fact, instead of a hope, is a series of events that began 3.5 weeks ago.

On that Sunday, 3.5 weeks ago, the pastor gave a sermon about prayer. It was so well received that on Tuesday, he sent an email to everyone on the church email list that he was going to continue preaching about prayer for the next two Sundays.

Prior to this email, I had spoken to the music director, we’ll call him N, about singing with the Praise Band. One of the things N had said to me was that if I ever wanted to sing a solo in church to let him know about the song, and they would fit it in when the message of the song and the message of the sermon were similar. Well, my intention was never to be some big soloist in church; I just wanted to sing with the band. I haven’t really worked to find songs that I’d be good at as a soloist. There are songs that I know, where I’ve done solos on the verses, from my church back in MN. But they aren’t necessarily ones that I’ve connected with the strongest.

BUT since I KNEW the topic of the upcoming sermons, I was inspired to try to find a song in my repertoire that fit with a message of prayer. And voila! I found one of my favorites! The song is a prayer to offer one’s life up to God to do His will, and to be led by Him; it is called The Potter’s Hand.

I emailed N and the pastor to offer up my willingness to sing this song. I sent them the key phrases that were about prayer, and that spoke to me. I suggested that perhaps I could sing it for them so that they could “decide if they wanted to incorporate it” into the 3rd service on prayer; this is code for “you can judge my singing and see if I’m good enough to sing at church.”

Well, I stayed after church on that 2nd Sunday of the prayer series, which was 1.5 weeks ago, and I sang it for and with N. At the end of running through it a few times, he told me that he thought it was ready to go and he’d tell the pastor as much.

Now, it was just a matter of seeing if the pastor thought the message of the song fit with the message of his sermon, and I needed to wait to hear from them.

Well, last week, I never heard from either of them. So, I assumed that it didn’t fit with his sermon after all. I was okay with that. I was mainly excited that I’d be joining the band soon (Aug 22)! I got ready for church, like usual. I showed up about 5 minutes before the service would start, like usual. And when I was walking down the aisle to go to my see, N was at the front of the church and walking toward me waving at me to come talk to him.

Our conversation was something like this:
N says “Hi Danielle! I’m so glad to see you! I lost your phone number and wasn’t able to reach you. Would you be willing to sing with the band today?”
Mind you, they had just finished practice and the service was about to start.
My eyes widen and I pause and say “uhhhhhhh….. sure.”
“Because we are planning on doing the Potter’s Hand.”
“Oh!” pause “Did you want me to sing lead vocals?”
N says “Absolutely!”
I say “uhhhhh… sure!”

And then we had a hurried 3 minute conversation discussing the logistics. My biggest concern was that when we had practiced it the week prior, I discovered that they did a different order of chorus and verses once they got through all of it once and were doing the repeats. I had these visions of my being ready to sing another chorus when the band was going back to a verse! But he reassured me that the powerpoint was correct and that the person running it would switch the slides in time for me to be prepared for the next part of the song.

And then, we prayed. And the service started!

The opening songs were great. It felt wonderful to be back up front singing and helping to lead the worship music. I felt right at home. Albeit, I was still adjusting to the sound and microphone some.

The pastor gave the children’s message, and I knew The Potter’s Hand was up next, and my mouth was getting a little dry from nerves. I drank water, ate a mint. And then it was time for me to lead everyone in singing the Potter’s Hand!

Once I got up front, and the keyboardist started playing the song, my nerves went away with the familiarity of it. N started introducing me; I was listening to him until the vocalist next to me started humming the song. When I heard her, I realized the key was VERY different than what I’d practiced. I realized, or at least I thought I realized, that singing it at the high octave might make it too high when it got to a later part of the song. And singing it at the lower octave might be too low. But I didn’t have time to try it out, because by then, he was done introducing me and I needed to start singing!

oh dear!

I decided to sing it low. As I was going through the first line and approaching the second, in my head, I did one of these “oh crap! I’m not sure I can hit the next notes, because they are so low!”, but I kept singing. And I hit them!

To give you a sense of what I’m talking about, I recorded me singing it at the approximate key where we’d practiced it and then the key that I (think) I actually sang it during the service.

Note: In order to a) use the equipment that I have – which is only an HD video camera that has audio too and to b) continue to not show any pictures of me and protect my anonymity, of sorts, the recordings just show my computer screen of the words while I’m singing.

Oh and I’m, of course, singing it acapella, since I don’t own or know how to play keyboards. And I was behind the camera so that I could see the words on my computer screen and have the camera recording the computer screen. But it has decent sound, I think.

Here is the key that I did in practice:

And here is most of the song in the (approximate) key that I sang at the service. Note that I did it in one “take” and discovered after I’d uploaded it to Flickr that Flickr only accepts videos of 90 seconds maximum. My video was 1:48, so the last line is cut off. I didn’t want to re-record it, or edit it, since it had already taken me a while to get it all set up and then to upload it. But again, you can hear a decent chunk of it; I cut out the 2nd verse, as it stands.

I’m also a little nervous about putting this out there, because it isn’t perfect by any means. But well, perfection is overrated, right?

And there you have it!

It was well received. People in the band were very complimentary and surprised (in a good way), judging from their comments. I felt good about it. N told me it was good.

And regardless of how it went, I sing in the band on Aug 22nd!

I still have every intention of posting my “Fun Outings with Mom and Dad – part 2″ to follow-up on the part 1. But currently I’m uploading HD video to Flickr which is sucking up all of my bandwidth and my patience for navigating around the internet. Thus, it will have to wait.

Now, WHY am I uploading video to Flickr, you may ask?

Well, as it turns out, today is my Dad’s 65th birthday! Yes, this is the milestone that is allowing him to retire in a couple of weeks! wooooooooooooo hooooooooooooo for Dad!
And it won’t be long until Mom and Dad live here and I see them quite regularly; or at least, I hope to see them regularly.

Happy 65th Birthday, Dad!!

======

In other news, the kinds of things that are going on with me:

1) I’m trying to compile all of my research needs (i.e. supplies and equipment). Right now, I have an excel file with at least 6 sheets, and the total is at $45,000 spread out over 3 years. To give you a point of reference, some schools will offer $25k to $75k as start-up money for a new faculty member’s research without even knowing what you want to buy. Instead, I’m not getting any start-up money, and I’m writing this up so that our development office can go out and ask private donors for money.

After talking to a mentor of mine at school who has been around the school for quite some time (and received the no-strings-attached start-up money) he suggested I go ahead and ask for new versions of some of the ancient stuff that we already have. This would be things like a new -80C freezer (around $12k) and a new microcentrifuge.

When I was looking for a refrigerated microcentrifuge for spinning down small tubes in the 1.5 ml range. I found this woooooooooooooooooooonderful new centrifuge by Eppendorf which can do small tubes, as expected, but can also, surprisingly do 6, 15 ml or 50 ml tubes. And with alternate rotors, can spin down microplates, PCR plates, PCR strips and just on and on! It is intended to be an economical alternative to buying two separate centrifuges; usually, a lab has to have one centrifuge for big tubes and one for small tubes/plates etc.

OMG. I really, really want that centrifuge.
How many bake sales would it take to buy this centrifuge, I wonder? hmmmm…. probably too many.

My mentor’s suggestion is that the worse they can do is say no and that I might as well ask.

2) Now I have to write a cover letter/case statement for why I need this stuff. It is nothing like writing a real grant, but it is still time consuming. Once I write it, my mentor suggests that I get input from everyone in the dept (all 5 people). Which, again, is easy, since it is only 5 people. But that will also require at least 5 meetings during a time when most people are on vacation.

3) In the meantime, I’m feeling the pressure that I ought to be working on my syllabi and first days of lecture. Classes don’t start until the 24th, so really, I have quite a bit of time. Last year, I went on vacation to Port Aransas just prior to the start of classes. Consequently, I wrote my syllabus 3 days before classes started; it turned out fine. So, I’m trying to console myself with that.

4) I have exciting news on the music front! In a few weeks, I am going to join a really awesome Praise Band at my newly-found church! Joining this band has been a bit tougher than what it would be if I’d gone to one of the other churches that I’ve found down here. Other churches have sort of been desperate for vocalists. The church that I’m going to be singing at has really high standards and more than just me who wants to join it. So, I had to prove to the director that my voice is good enough, my spirit is in the right place (so to speak), I’m better than the other people, and I’m responsible enough to be in the band. He has gotten burned in the past by someone who wouldn’t show up for church every now and then when she was scheduled; thus, my being dedicated is a significant part of his willingness to let me join. Well, that and my voice, of course.

I’ll sing solos every now and then, maybe duets, but I’ll mostly be doing back-up harmonies. Since I looooooooooooooove singing harmonies, I think that this will be a perfect fit.

And, better yet, the pastor is awesome, awesome, awesome. AND it is UCC (United Church of Christ).

I grew up Disciples of Christ which merged with the UCC quite some time ago. Anytime I’ve moved, I’ve always hoped to find a UCC church that has good music and good sermons, but it has been a bit hit or miss. I’ve ended up at at a Methodist church and, most recently, a Lutheran church, instead.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the UCC, it is pretty much the most liberal Protestant denomination out there. They were the first to ordain female ministers, the first to allow openly homosexual ministers to be ordained, and they have always been at the forefront of ways to be accepting of all people (hence the “united” part of the name). This fits with how I view what Jesus was trying to accomplish in his own ministry when he was here on Earth; so it is a better fit for me than any other denomination.

Well, I think that is enough for now. I ought to get ready to go into school and work on this cover letter/case statement. And maybe I’ll work on my syllabus when I need a “break” from it.

Happy Birthday, Dad!!!!

Right now, I’m really thankful that I do not have HBs cold that is making his voice hoarse!