On April 15th, Intel started having complimentary fountain soda, coffee and tea for regular (blue-badge) employees like myself. Since then my coworkers and I have been enjoying drinking ourselves into an aspartame and/or high-fructose corn syrup - induced coma. Yea! :-)

I was watching the tail end of a Nova episode on PBS; it was on the Huygens probe of Titan. Practically every person they interviewed was from The University of Arizona®. It makes me proud to be a Wildcat!

My alma mater is saving lives! The UA's Sarver Heart Center new CPR method has been shown to be more effective at saving lives.

Happy Easter!

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter. We had a very nice Vigil celebration at St. Cecilia's, and I have to say our choir sounded terrific. I still get very homesick for SSPP at the Vigil though, and I miss singing the Litany of the Saints for our catechumens and candidates.

I did get some sad news -- my friend Chris's mom (and my ex-gf Joanna's mom) Betty passed away this morning from complications from lung cancer :-(. Please pray for the repose of her soul, and for Chris and Joanna's and the family's consolation. They lost their dad a few years back (I guess it's been 14 or more, can't quite recall) so it's doubly hard that way. They are a little younger than me so both deaths were quite untimely :-(. Betty was a great lady, very kind to me and a loving mother. I pray she's at peace with the Lord now.

Wow, I am wiped out. Between the Adult Sectionals competition and Oregon Chorale concerts Sat. and Sunday night, I am totally exhausted. But of course there's work to do... ah well.

I'm still sick, too. Actually I feel a lot worse today. I'm sure it's because I was holding it off until after the competition and concerts, and now that that's over my body is saying "Enough!"

I'm famous! Check out this article in the Oregonian about my skating!

This is cool -- Mt. Graham's newest eyes are up and running!

Happy Leap Day!

I don't really remember what I was up to last leap day... it seems so long ago, and 1500 miles away.

In other news, my boss's boss's boss's boss (I think that's right) is in the news, and not in a good way... Microsoft emails reveal Intel pressure over Vista. I don't have any knowledge of this and wouldn't comment if I did, but it has to be damaging to Intel.

Happy Valentine's Day! And, happy 96th birthday Arizona!

Happy Ash Wednesday!

Sorry for not blogging in ages... life has been busy but that's no excuse.

Tonight our choir is singing for 6 p.m. Mass, then having practice afterward. That's cruel on a fast day, but we need the time. We are in the process of looking for a new permanent accompanist, since our last one was let go after our Epiphany concert 1/6. We are trying to take the time to write a good job description that captures what we are looking for -- not just someone to play for us, but someone to minister with us. Hopefully God will bring the right person to us soon.

In other news... I am preparing to do my first-ever skating program at the upcoming Pacific Coast Adult Sectionals competition March 8 - 9. The gory details are on my skating blog. It's a bit scary but I'm really excited about it.

Also that very same weekend (eeep!) is our next Oregon Chorale concert set. It's a Shakespeare program, complete with dancing and lots of Shakespearean songs and all kinds of cool stuff. I opted out of the 'extra' stuff since I will be skating that weekend.

We're still prepping for our summer tour of Ireland and Scotland. We've made 3 payments (out of 5) and it's now non-refundable. Between land costs, air fare, and miscellaneous extras the tour will be about $5000. It's a two week tour. Whee!

Work has been pretty busy, between actual work to be done and Focal (Intel's performance review system).

The weather has been.... cold. And dreary. Last week and the week before we had some overnight snow/ice/slush. It wasn't much of an issue for me but did make me cancel one of my skating lessons because I couldn't get to the rink early in the morning. I don't think it got much about 38 or 40 all week. This week it's rain, rain, rain, highs in the low to mid 40s and lows in the upper to mid 30s. Bleah. I'll be really, really glad when spring comes.

And another one... this one at least is Christmas-y!

Bwahahaaha! check this out, courtesy of Bojack's blog:

Merry Christmas!

It's snowing here! It's not sticking, but it is snowing lightly. Whee!!

Long time no blog! Sorry 'bout that.

Thanksgiving was good, was home for a quick visit with the family but no time to see most of my friends, unfortunately. Got back to a very hectic couple of weeks at work trying to get stuff out before the end of the year. This last week was a lot quieter though.

Christmas concerts for Oregon Chorale went very well, unlike last year I felt very well prepared and could just enjoy. A couple of people I knew (including my choir director from church) came so that was nice.

Speaking of which we've been having a lot of extra rehearsals for church choir... rather tiring but of course Christmas is almost upon us and we're still a little shaky on a couple of things, so we will have a looooong rehearsal tomorrow after Mass. We have a string quartet for midnight Mass! I'm really pysched about that, it's very cool.

In the news today ... Tony Blair has become a Catholic. Not surprising, really. God bless him!

Arizona Beats Oregon!

Woohooooooooooooooo!!!!!

So... Penryn is officially shipping now. It's about time! We'll see if our stock gets a bump out of it or not.

Bulletin -- I just got a call that my sister is in the hospital. It's a bit unclear, I was told that she was getting her blood pressure checked and that it was too high or something, so they sent her to urgent care and then the ER and decided to admit her. Please pray.

Update 11/8 p.m.: I couldn't reach her on the phone, but she left me a vmail that she was home; they had stabilized her BP but still don't know what caused it to spike. They'll be working on it but it's a bit scary still, especially since she lives 30 miles from town.

Things have been busy. Sunday was our Oregon Chorale concert -- this was a subset (23 people) of the Chorale, a special gig at St. Mark's Anglican church in Portland. We wanted to do this since we've not been able to attract Portland audiences to our concerts. It's a small church but it was probably 1/2 to 2/3 full and they seemed to enjoy our music. Very tiring, but fun.

Yesterday the sun shone! It was great. Work was busy, then choir practice. After choir our conductor (he's an astronomy buff) had brought binoculars and was showing people the comet that's visible right now (something Holmes?). It was very cool!

Whoa! Arizona beat UCLA 34-27!!! And I MISSED it! I set the Tivo but for some reason it did NOT record the game, dangit!!

So... life has been kinda busy lately. We've enjoyed a brief spate of what I guess would be called Indian summer (or whatever the PC term is now) -- highs in the mid 60s and sunshine, it's been nice. Of course, it will not last. Work has been busy but in a good way.

Singing is very busy right now. I'm singing in 3 ( or 4 depending on how you count them) choirs: Oregon Chorale, Intel Singers and church choir. I'm also singing a concert this Sunday with a subset of the Chorale, it's a benefit. So there's that concert 11/4, then Intel Singers has 4 concerts in the week and a half after that, then the regular Chorale concerts will be 12/1 and 12/2, and we're singing at the Grotto 12/10. Eeep!

I am going home for Thanksgiving. It will be nice. I was just there 6 weeks ago but it will, of course, be good to be home.

Today would have been my mom's 77th birthday. I would have teased her horribly about being so dreadfully old! I miss her more than words can say. I love you Mom, rest in peace and pray for me.