Done

Another carol sing-along down. Thank the gourd. We were again wonderful tonight, this time my children coming along and causing much grief, apparently, to Vlad, who was (it seemed to them) angry that they were so bored looking the whole time. Well, what do you expect? These are kids who have been raised by professional classical musicians listening to not-very-good renditions of sappy seasonal choral music sung by an octet of mostly untrained singers, their mother and Herr Doktor Professor being the only ones who sound in any way professional. My kids are honest to a fault, a result of my having told them in their extreme youth that they were more likely to be punished for lying about a misdemeanor than admitting to it. So I believe them when they say that I make Vlad sound bad in comparison. I�m not proud of it, and it�s not enough to make me leave the ensemble (this is one of the only shows in town, unless I start my own, which seems like way too much work), but I am certainly not going to start lowering my own standards of performance to try to �fit in�. Well, the mulled wine afterwards was fantastic, as always, and I definitely consumed way too many shortbread cookies and pieces of chocolate cake.

I had a nap this afternoon, which was good, but missed a funeral, which was bad. A German professor who took early retirement as a result of Parkinson�s disease died a little more than a week ago from the cancer that was also slowly working its way through his beleaguered body. I liked him very much. I like his wife as well. I even called the chaplain to find out if I could do anything, like sing at the funeral. She said she would find out and get back to me, and she never did. Hubby actually received a memo with the time of the service (I did not) but he was invigilating an exam this morning and came home so bagged that he totally forgot. So I feel a little bad about that. I feel a lot bad, but there�s nothing I can do about it now.

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