Thursday

I have begun to save to go back to Europe again. Not sure exactly where, because although there are so many things I haven't seen yet, I always miss Venice. But I'm thinking Paris...

Yesterday was an intense one with a big work meeting that completely wore me out...two hours later, I was sitting at my desk brain-dead trying to remember my own name. So I have a lot to catch up on today. I don't know if I've ever said that in the summer before...weird. Why do I have work to do? This is annoying.

My new strategy for avoiding eating lots of snacks in the evening is to eat dinner later (brilliant, I know) so I took my time recovering from the work thing and folded some laundry like a good little wifey. Oh man, I made the best chicken fajitas last night. Wow. I have to say, Joe is a lucky man. :)

Then it was back to the grindstone, and by grindstone, I mean, I have a ton of work to do on music for an upcoming recital and my recording. It's really getting totally out of control. I started putting binders together, and have a system for learning my new aria...a long bel canto thing that still tires me out by the end. I think it's really only that I've just been tired in general, and by the time I get around to practicing, well...yes, twelve pages worth of chirping and arpeggios and high ds will do it for you. So I always start at the end when I am feeling fresh, and work my way back to the beginning. At some point I will have to start singing it in order to get my stamina going, one of these days. The good news is that I think the aria is WELL worth the effort and will be an unbelievable show case for auditions that has lots of excerpt-able bits for when they don't want to hear it til the bitter end. And it's FUN, with some comic action. Lord knows lyric sopranos have enough sad music to deal with, so you need to break it up. My teacher told me to watch Will and Grace's Sean Hayes for ideas for the character and comic timing! As if I don't already have all the episodes memorized! Oh, and is it ever wordy. So I am doing that thing now where I say the wordy bits over and over to myself at intervals all day long-- in the shower, walking to work-- yes, the crazy person talking to herself walking up St. Paul is me, people.