In Scotland!

I know I said I was going to post my observations on the Chorale's blog but I decided some of them are too personal to be of general interest so I'm posting here after all.

Yesterday (Friday) I got up at 5 a.m. after about 4 hours of sleep (bleah) and Amy came to get me at 6 and took me to the airport. A very long dull series of flights (our flight attendant on the PDX --> PHL flight was a hoot though!) and our group arrived in Glasgow at 9 a.m. this morning, got to the hotel and eventually got to check in. Took a shower and changed (wow, did that feel good!). Then we went on a brief bus tour of Glasgow and got to see the (Presbyterian) Cathedral. Of course it was originally a Catholic cathedral; but unlike so many others (the Nieuw Kirk in Amsterdam comes to mind) it wasn't entirely gutted/looted during the RevoltReformation. It still made me sad though in the way that all the lost treasures of our Catholic forebears makes me sad. It was beautiful. We sang "The Glory of the Father" in the main church and "Good News" in the crypt.

After that I rested a bit, then went to the vigil Mass at the (Catholic) Cathedral. It was nice but a little sad. The Church in Scotland doesn't seem particularly strong. The music was, unfortunately, schlocky American music for the most part, with no cantor and a really loud organ (but hey, it was a Saturday vigil, not Sunday a.m., and in the summer to boot). It included such favorites (not!) as "Seek Ye First", "On Eagles' Wings" and "Be Not Afraid". Bleah. But the priest (a missionary priest from South Africa) was terrific. Attendance was light and the people's responses timid. Strangely enough, after communion we knelt for the final prayer, blessing and dismissal -- how odd.

I had some time to walk around downtown in the afternoon; there were a lot of people walking around (a lot!) and it was cool. There are a lot of beautiful women in Glasgow! Wow!

I keep working on my Scottish accent, it's getting pretty good :-) but I worry I will use it in front of a Scot and offend him! It's too cute though.

The weather was cool earlier but has turned cold and rainy... and it's almost July. Sheesh!

I've been up for about 31 hours straight now so I am going to get ready for bed. We are leaving at 9 tomorrow for Inverness!

Tour Blog!

One of my fellow Chorale members has set up a blog for our tour... so I will blog all my tour stuff over there. Check it out here!

How sad... the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) is leaving Yokosuka, to be decommissioned at Bremerton. She's served for 47 (!) years and is the last conventionally-powered aircraft carrier in the US fleet.

Other news of interest to me... once again my alma mater is making me proud! The University of Arizona ® is leading the Phoenix Mars Lander mission. Way to go UA!

I attended the Hillsboro Symphony concert tonight. It was a Pirate theme (yes!) and the special guests were Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbucket, founders of Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept. 19th!). It was really a lot of fun, and a pretty full house too!

My apologies for not blogging more often ... life has been busy! Choir tour in less than 6 weeks! Eeep. I'm all paid up for that except for some incidental costs that we don't have a total for yet. I'm very excited.

From the Oregonian -- Intel starts to think outside the cube. Fortunately I was only in a cube for the first 6 or 7 months I was at Intel, then I moved into our lab once the remodeling was done. Still, the new pilot (it's called TWWW, The Way We Work) is... interesting. Some people seem to really like it, others hate it.

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!!!!!