I joined a choir

When it rains, it pours.

It's almost as if announcing my intention to the Universe had this cascading effect of throwing lots of things at me.

Last week I was out for a walk with my friend Emily and she told me she was thinking about joining a choir. She described a choir that was very similar to a non-auditioned choir I was a part of before I met Dan, 11-12 years ago. I went straight home after that and signed up for Utah Voices. Emily and I carpooled to Bountiful (about 12 min north of where she lives) and joined the second rehearsal of the season, our first.

Boy, am I ever rusty. I don't know any of the Broadway songs and I certainly don't know Mozart's Requiem, but I am excited to learn them and learn to read & understand sheet music in the process. There were probably about 100 people there. The director is fantastic. The accompanist is amazing. I am really going to enjoy this. We perform in March (Broadway songs), May (Mozart) and July (?).

That drawing class I mentioned last week? That turned out to be a major disappointment. I arrived at my class on Tuesday after having spent another $75 on drawing supplies. The class was supposed to start at 6:30, and by 7:00, the teacher had not shown up and no one at the school came to tell us if she was still coming. There were two other new people too - what an impression to make! I left. She arrived, apparently, just after I left. I was so pissed off at having my time wasted like that, I decided to withdraw. I mean, I live with an artist for heaven's sake, it's not like I need to pay someone for instruction. So that was a good lesson for me. 

I emailed my complaint to the art center the very next morning and after three business days I have yet to hear back from them. So I'll leave an honest review on Google. I returned the drawing supplies I don't plan to use and at least recovered some of my money.

Meanwhile, there is the library. I got this great book on folk art with some accessible exercises. Most of them call for painting, which I'm not quite ready for, but I do have a massive collection of colored pencils, so I'm starting there.

And, since Dan is so encouraging of me pursuing music, he felt it very important to get a piano keyboard for when I practice, for tone control. He is currently learning about/building electronic instruments and would have eventually needed one anyway. But we are well on our way to having a recording studio in our home. (How did that happen?)

Today I went to the book store for a day planner and found this gem in the art section. It has ideas for things I would not have thought of doing, so I expect to show some of the things in this blog.

I don't have any major goals for this year of Art Exploration. I will have performances, so that's nice. I can't say I plan to have a show - maybe once I have accumulated some things worth showing I'll do that, but goodness, we are only in mid-January. One thing I would like to see though is having more art in our home, art we created ourselves.

And if all this wasn't enough, I started seeing a new chiropractor yesterday (she cleared a migraine I had had for four days!) and when I mentioned to her that I had joined a choir, she invited me to her bag-piping troop. Oh I was sorely tempted. I am very interested in bellows instruments, and apparently bagpipes only have nine notes. I love bagpipes. But I think I need to focus on what I do have right now.

The Dead Room

For the 4th of July weekend, my friends Emily and Alfred from the community garden invited Dan and I up to their family cabin at Bear Lake for the weekend. Offered to let us camp in the yard. Camping? Adventure? A part of Utah we had never been to before? A body of water? A weekend with people from the Violin Making School? Okay! Our only problem was that we didn't have a tent, so Dan ordered a truck tent online. It arrived the Wednesday before the weekend and we took it to Liberty Park to set it up to test it.

Not quite standing room for me but Dan managed okay. 

Ready for adventure!

Tons of land for sale in this valley.

Mr. Cupcake overlooking Bear Lake.

So the house belonged to Alfred's father who passed away a couple of months ago. He was an old school hunter, big game and small. As soon as we arrived, Emily offered to show us The Dead Room and we had no idea what we were in for. Turns out it was an entire natural history museum in a single room, with species not even Dan could identify. Mr. Cupcake enjoyed the photo op.

Outside now, obviously, but there was some pretty wacky art!

So when one goes camping in a truck tent, you could be all bohemian-like and have things like thermarests or air mattresses, but we just didn't want to spend the money. Instead, we spent the money on a piece of OSB which Dan cut to fit to serve as the platform, and we brought our bed with us. And the Persian rug. Like you do. Camping in style!

Mr. Cupcake watching Dan talking to Kevin from the Violin school. Dan is also a maker of fine instruments and had a lot to chat with Kevin about.

I'm about two drinks in here.

The inevitable jam session.

Dan brought two of his ukeleles and his canjo.

The place we were staying was just a short drive from the Idaho border, so we decided to pop across the line and see what kinds of craft spirits Idaho had in its liquor store. (Huckleberry shine and Grand Teaton vodka).

I misread the email about what we were supposed to bring and so we brought two dozen eggs instead of one. I think someone else did too because there were about six dozen eggs in the fridge for fifteen people. That's a lot of scrambled eggs, so we decided to make devilled eggs on our second night there. Dan makes amazing devilled eggs.

 I made a Greek salad.

 And a lettuce salad with greens from my garden.

While we were there I had a chance to go out on a wave runner a couple of times (Did you know they go up to 46mph?) and a peddle boat with Dan. That was fun, it was nice being on the water with him, though we wished we were sailing.

Another shot of the Dead Room.

View of the house from the beach.

We had a great time that weekend and it was really a lot of fun meeting new friends. We met a couple who live on the other side of our block! When we got home and ran into Yatzik, our neighbor down the street, and told him that we had just spent the weekend at Bear lake, he mentioned his friend who lived up there and gave the exact description of the family that is living in this very house. Such a coincidence! 

We took a winding route to get home, different than the way we got there, as we like to explore and see new things. Then we got home and were tired, you know how it is.