Moving right along....

I'm feeling too distracted and scattered to write much, but here's a brief rundown.

I've almost quit smoking; I've been letting myself have one cigarette a day. On the one hand, my voice and my coordination while playing guitar have had dramatic improvements, so I have powerful incentive not to smoke much. On the other hand, I deal with withdrawal symptoms better if I tell myself that I can't smoke "right now" rather than "never". Self discipline for the rebellious...When I diet, I need to allow myself a meal in which I indulge myself one day a week, and the rest of the time, I'm good. Anyway, I've gone from 30 cigarettes a day to one cigarette a day, which I still think is pretty good. I'm trying to decide how long to wait before starting voice lessons.

The earliest that I could get a dental appointment was at the end of September. Oh well...I had hoped to get the work done before we were back in the middle of a release cycle. Instead, we'll be at the peak of the cycle. (A while back, they told me that I needed my wisdom teeth out, but I never got it done. Potentially, I could be out for a week. Maybe I could schedule it for January.)

The vet said that Random was exposed to a mosquito infected with heartworm, but that he doesn't have a worm. Don't ask me how he got exposed, but at least he's okay. I forgot to ask whether I should have my other cats tested.

I had to get up obscenely early for a class on Thursday and Friday, so I hoped I use that as a start on getting up early, but I still wound up staying up late last night. Going to the gym and the other stuff that I'm doing is conflicting with getting up early. Not sure how to resolve that.

I read a terrific book called A Soprano on Her Head by Eloise Risted. It's about psychological blocks in music. It's led me to ask myself what I got out of not singing all these years, but I'm feeling too scattered to write about it right now.

Carmel Bach Festival

Meant to mention...there are several music festivals in the area this weekend. Most of them are jazz festivals. I haven't been listening to jazz, although Erik just got me listening to Dave Brubeck. However, the festival that interested me was the Carmel Bach Festival. (Check out the pic of Bach with the sunglasses. If they sold t-shirts with that image, I would buy one!) So I was looking through its schedule, and saw a listing for a violinist playing Bach and a couple of other Baroque composers in a smallish church--in candlelight. I decided that I absolutely had to go to that.

Then I read the date again, and realized that it was last weekend. Drat. Major drat.

So one of the things that I want to do this weekend is to create a web page that lists the seasons and links to the various groups that perform during that season. (Choruses alone will keep me busy.) Hopefully then I won't miss as much.