Crazy weekend/appreciating the little things...

I’m sorry – I really hate that I’ve only been posting about twice a week, and hope to get a little more time to blog this week. Last week is almost a blur as it went by so quickly, and the weather was nuts toward the end. I don’t think I mentioned that Friday was incredibly windy (40mph winds all day), the kind of windy that makes it difficult not to be blown off of a street corner while waiting for the light to change. I had to hold my hat on for the entire walk to work to avoid having it blown off of my head and into the Chicago River. By the commute home it was snowing more and just generally crappy…but after I got off of the train in Palatine and was waiting for it to move so I could cross the tracks and get to my car, I noticed a couple of small, perfect snowflakes that had fallen onto my coat sleeve. It was nice to look at them for a while before they melted. :-)

Saturday morning Trey and I judged a solo & ensemble contest, and had a really great time. Neither one of us was expecting to hear anything great, but man, was I impressed with some of these kids. I also got some nice comments from parents who were sitting in the room I was judging, especially when I gave positive feedback to the kids who weren’t so good – I had back to back freshman girl ensembles, both from the same school, one being great and the other being pretty bad, and while I didn’t give the second group a good score, I didn’t tell them they were bad. One of the moms in the room, after hearing both groups, told me that it was pretty amazing I could give the second group the few good comments I did. Well, 1) they were freshmen, and 2) they looked terrified so shooting them down would’ve have been very damaging to them. If they weren’t as prepared as they could have been, they certainly learned their lesson for next year. Anyway, we had a really nice time. My “Best of the Day” award – a new thing last year for the Illinois contests – went to a young man who did an incredible job on a 20th century art song. Holy cow! Most kids won’t go near those until college when their teacher makes them!

Saturday night we actually went out for a social evening with people our own age we weren’t related to. Hooray! We had a nice evening at the Yardhouse (yummy beer!) with Greg, who Trey used to work with, and his girlfriend Michelle. We’re looking forward to having them over for dinner as soon as our calendars work out again…

Sunday morning was my normal church service plus an extra mass when the noon cantor didn’t show up. For whatever reason, I didn’t really mind it this weekend. We also had dance practice last night, which hasn’t happened in a while. The group was small, but we had a great time. After that I confirmed that the dresses for my sister’s wedding are the correct color when I swung by my mom’s to pick up the fabric swatch – the dresses looked so light when I picked them up! Anyway, all’s well there so we were able to relax with some wine before going to bed.

That’ll be about it for now. Tonight I have to do laundry because it’ll be the only night either one of us will be home all week – tomorrow I’ve got my CSO chorus audition, and Wednesday night we’ve got our last opera of the year! Hope everyone’s having a good start to the week!