The night is far spent

During Advent, at some point we usually hear these words from Saint Paul:

...let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. (Rom.xiii.12)

In that spirit, I've decided to update my template. I've cast off the dark layout and put on a somewhat lighter one.

Actually, I had to. I opted to migrate to Blogger Beta, just like all the other kids seem to be doing. I knew if I didn't migrate now, Blogger would do it at some point automatically, without my say-so.

In order to take advantage of Beta's features I was gently ordered to update the layout to one containing new coding. I could have used one that looked the same as the Minima Black style I had before, but when I saw this white-brown-grayish one, called Rounders 2, I threw caution to the wind. The deciding characteristic of Rounders 2 for me was the nicely offset brown typeface used for blockquotes (see above biblical citation). One wants to make sure that the words of others are attractively distinguishable from one's own.

Yay, yea, and yeah

For awhile I've been reading emails with a misspelling. This must stop.
People keep typing, "yea," when they mean, "yeah."

"Yea" sounds like "yay." It's an adverb used in oral voting, expressing "yes," or used to introduce a more emphatic phrase. It can also be a noun meaning, "affirmative vote."

"Yeah" has the same short "a" sound as the word, "bad." It's an adverb meaning, "yes."

Please don't type, "yea," when you mean, "yeah." It looks dum.

Musician's bellyaching

What do musicians bellyache about? Among other things, bad gigs.

I have to sing in a concert a week from tonight with an amateur chorus as a (low-)paid ringer in the tenor section. I’m glad to have a nice, cheerful holiday concert to sing in a pretty church, especially since I have no Christmastime Messiah gig this year or the earnings that go with it. But preparing this concert is proving to be a bigger hassle than I’d feared.

On the program are Amahl and the Night Visitors and Respighi’s Lauda per la Natività del Signore. We'll sing the Respighi in English, printed in the score in awful, teeny-tiny letters beneath the original Italian.

At Tuesday night's rehearsal I learned that Amahl is going to be semi-staged (something the conductor who hired me neglected to tell me) and I have to put together part of my own costume. Plus, we will perform the opera off-book. That means I have one week to learn 14 pages of very random, wordy text. I won’t be able to hide in the background and lip-synch, because the rest of the tenors, including one woman who's "helping out" (a bad sign), sing too inaccurately to carry the part on their own.

I’ve already stayed up past 2:00 a.m. two nights in a row working on this music, which I’m being paid birdseed to perform.

Never mind. I’m sure some good will come of this. Somehow.

One-sentence Thursday

Since Andy, one of my blogging idols, has added Käseblatt to his roll of "Amazing Blogs," I'd better repay the compliment by actually making this blog "amazing," or at least, more trenchant than it's been.

zip one one one zero two

Look at the "About Me" text appearing elsewhere on this screen. It used to say that I live in "New York." Now it says that I live in "Astoria, Queens : New York City." Your eyes do not decieve you. This native Manhattanite has done the unthinkable and relocated to one of the city's so-called outer boroughs.

So far, I'm delighted. My Manhattan chauvinism ebbs away daily and my fondness for Queens grows. Astoria is a cozy -- but not un-invigorating -- neighborhood with speedy above-ground subway service to Midtown. (That last sentence was certainly a jumble of paradoxes, n'est-ce pas?) In fact, my new Midtown commute is as fast as, or faster than, the commute from Harlem where I lived during the past year. I don't feel in the least marooned or isolated from "the action" of the city. I simply live in a different wing of the mansion.

My apartment, shared with the radiant but beleaguered Mr. Supersweetie, is comfortable, well laid-out, and welcoming despite being a forest of semi-unpacked boxes. Storage and organization remain problems to be gradually solved. But I have high hopes and -- a rarity for me -- optimism!