Handel's Messiah

Nothing brings home the impending arrival of Christmas as the singing of Handel's Messiah. Last night I drove to Tryon (45 minutes away) to participate in the "do-it-yourself-Messiah".

You see I love choral singing. Before we moved I belonged to 2 area choruses. Schola Cantorum (the Norfolk, VA one) had around 25 singers, did smaller works, lots of acapella, really challenging to sing with. Cantata Chorus was the large chorus, around 50 people and always did large works with small ensemble accompaniment. Cantata Chorus did a concert every year of the Messiah, getting the best soloists in the area, and at least 10 instrumentalists. In Virginia Beach, there was always a Messiah singalong with hundreds of people and a full orchestra.

Here I'm singing with a chorus in Hendersonville, but that's a decent drive, but the music is very worth it. There used to be a county chorus, as well as a county orchestra, but the chorus director decided to retire (he was in his late 80s afterall). The orchestra lives on, but not the chorus. Maybe someone will revive it.

We shall see.

new car (truck)

Alas, our old truck is costing too much in repairs to keep any longer, and a new truck has been purchased. It comes with satellite radio, I think that we won't renew the intro offer. Amazingly around here we have 2 college stations (you never know what you'll hear), 2 public broadcasting stations (1 has classical, 1 has everything else) an independent AM country station (oldies), and at night we get WSM. There's even a station with old music that my Grandmother would have tolerated. I can hear anything from bluegrass to big band to old blues to folk with very little or no commercials. And come to think of it my morning commute isn't ruined with all the traffic reports, cause... there isn't any! (suck on that you big city traffic cloggers, ha ha).

I grew up in the suburbs of DC, driving the Beltway as a teenager; lived (and commuted) in Seattle; while living in Portsmouth, VA battled I-264 traffic way more than I would like to remember - so I can enjoy peaceful drives now.

Monday musings

I keep thinking I'm getting old. My youngest is in high school. I have aches where I didn't used to. I think I forget stuff I should know. My parents are old.

I read a review of a book about the Wright brothers. Sometimes I forget that only just over 100 years ago was the first flight. And compare that with now.

But then I reap the benefits of getting old. I don't need a babysitter when I go somewhere. I was in the Coast Guard long enough to get a military pension, and I only work part time. If I'm really tired (and bedraggled looking), I can go to Hardee's and they think I'm old enough for the senior price on coffee. I can be one of those people that give driving directions by landmarks that aren't still there.

And Wednesday is a holiday - Veteran's Day.

And the husband gets to come home for a week - can't wait till June when he finally gets to retire and come home for good.

There's a bright side to everything.

November?

Holy mackerel, is it already the middle of November. Yes, there's a touch of frost in the morning, but long sleeve t-shirt by the middle of the day. The leaves are halfway done, but there are some maples left with leaves running the whole spectrum from green to yellow to brilliant red. Strange though, the dogwoods are the first leaves to change (to deep dark red), and the last leaves to fall. so cool.

And they had to try and ruin the fall with the blasted daylight savings time. Those of you that don't mess with that folly are lucky. We were stationed in Hawaii in the late 80s and they don't mess with it. We were also stationed in Seattle (they did DST), but it's so far north that the winter days are short enough that it really didn't matter. Maybe someday we'll get away from that Nixon-era folly.

Had a full moon last week. I'm always amazed just how bright it can be, I can almost read a book. Living out in the country now, I really see the difference between full and no moon nights. Love it.

And all the stores have Christmas stuff in already, some had it before Halloween. Hoping to jumpstart the economy, I guess.

Things could be a lot worse.

Feeling better

I'm feeling much better today. Last Saturday I felt the telltale tickle in the throat, and new it was time for the first cold of the winter. I drive a school bus for two Pre-K schools (4year old kiddies), and usually I get a couple of colds per winter. All this past week I've been driving, and nothing else. Today was a lazy wash dishes, rest, read the paper, rest, etc. day. I got a lot to catch up on. And I need to go to the grocery store.

The weather has turned out nicely, we've already had a couple of frosty mornings, and today is in the mid 70s with a little breeze, got the windows open. This is definately the weather to start feeling better in.

I can also justify sitting and crocheting, I have a shawl that I really need to finish.

I do have to feel lucky, the swine flu has a lot of folks in my area sick, even the school kiddies. I just had a plain head and chest cold.

Such is life.

Doggie alarm clock

Today’s gonna be a good day. I got to sleep in til 6:30 (instead of 5:00). Now let me explain. I have 2 dogs. And those of you with those evil creatures know that they are nature’s little alarm clocks. Mornings are usually the alarm at 5, feed them and me, let them out and back in, and leave for work by 6. Of course usually by 4 they are licking , scratching and making other disgusting noises so I am ready for the radio to turn, which is the official alarm clock.

However today I was having some really strange dreams which is my brain’s way of saying that I’ve been in bed too long. And so I grudgingly crawled out of the warm bed to attend to their needs. Such is life. They are really sweethearts otherwise. That’s unless they’re digging in the yard for who knows what.

Fall has finally fallen. We’ve had rain (lots of rain), cool days, now we have cold mornings (40F this morning). The grass seed hubby put down last week is finally sprouting. The furnace still works.

Things really could be much worse.

recycling thoughts

It's kinda strange to start reading the story in the middle, but it's also strange starting writing in the middle of things.

We moved from Portsmouth, VA to the middle of nowhere last summer(Aug 08). the hubby is in the middle of retiring, so we decided in summer 07 to put the house on the market Feb 08 and to move while the getting was good. but you do remember the housing bubble popping, that was about the same time. We had only 3 people look at our old house (spring 08). The financing fell through for one, the second wasn't really looking, and the third was just right. The house in NC, the people really needed to sell or get foreclosed on, and our bank was really squirrley and almost didn't approve the loan because of the road maintenance agreement (private road). So here we are. I did get a job driving school busses, and the son likes the high school here. I'm just getting my feet settled, now I'm tired of hearing myself expound on things, so I'm gonna start writing them down. Maybe I should have tried to write for the paper, but who wants to listen to me. ha ha.

NC legislature just passed a law requiring the recycling of plastic bottles. Great idea. I've seen our county landfill and it's very large, and any reduction of stuff going in is great. Being out in the county, we have to take our trash and recycling to one of several trash collection sites (transfer stations) ourselves. They have bins for trash, plastic, glass etc. They even have drum for used oil. The building that I sort of work out of now has big boxes to collect plastic, so the folks that empty their dumpster won't have a cow about them.

Of course when we lived in Seattle (early 90s) they had one whale of a recycling program. We were so amazed when we got there. We were allowed one 30 gal can of trash a week, and if you had more it cost $5. per bag extra. But we had this huge recycling bin and they took just about everything - alum, glass, cardboard, paper, tin cans. Inside the house we had two trash cans. Cereal box - the liner went in the trash, the box in recycling. Tin can, label in recycling, can in recycling. Junk mail, paper in the recycle bin. When we moved to Portsmouth, it almost hurt to trash all the stuff we had to recycle in Seattle. Just shows what could be done all over.

And my favorite motto: "It could have been a lot worse"

Welcome

I'm such a geek, or just getting old. I finally looked into Facebook and ended up with several friends (mostly relatives) and realized that it's not a place for discussion of differing viewpoints, and is filled with fluff comments (that's nice, wonderful, so right etc.) that I don't want to look at it anymore.

So instead of writing in a little book, I'm going to flatter myself and bore y'all with it.

I think that everything works out in the end, but we have to work at it so it will.

I walk around with a smile on my face usually, and always find the bright side to everything (which annoys some people I know), and am generally an eternal optimist.