Day 123: Sanders Theater

There was so much to do this weekend that I did not really have any idea how it was all going to get done.  So instead of fretting I did the sensible thing and just tried to DO things.  Today that entailed waking up early enough to go grocery shopping, make cookie dough (tried it with vegan "butter" this time, and it seemed to go alright! tomorrow we'll see...), going costume shopping with our two "cops" for the play at Garment District, and then getting the pleasure of finally meeting the newest members of E's family -- two BEAUTIFUL twin girls born late at night on June second.  The bike ride out to meet them at their pad in Belmont with E.E. himself was quite pleasant.  Their names are Eva Penelope (EE the second) and Amalia Rose, and both are as sweet as can possibly be.  They look a little like my youngest sister did upon her arrival into the world -- mostly due to the shock of nearly-black (but not quite) hair gracing their little noggins!  Oh dear.  Must not because nauseatingly baby-oriented.

Anyhow, they had quite the visit, with I believe five extra adults around for the evening (all Espada brothers and some compatriots).  Upon our exit, it was time for me to go home and get ready for the upcoming performance at Sanders Theater with the Mercury Chorale, which I was pretty pumped for.  We all knew we could have done with more rehearsal time, but honestly we peaked tonight, which is a good sign for any performer.  (Such a waste to have ever done it better than the night you perform, right?)

E. and several of D's friends came to the show, and it was really a treat to perform in that theater space.  The rest of the evening was a big treat as well -- with B. still in town, we had a nice little crew for tearing it up at karaoke at Courtside (what I suspect will be my last venture out there for this stint in Cambridge -- even said my good-byes to Mark the Shark!), and paid a small social call to our director from Mercury.  Really nice experience singing with them in the past couple of weeks.

Day 122: The Max and Irma's of vegetarian food

Down the street from my house lie many restaurants and bars, most of which I have tried several times and few of which remain a mystery to me.  However, one of the newer places to nosh in Central Square, Veggie Galaxy, was a first for me this evening.  After work was our final dress rehearsal for the Mercury Chorus at Sanders Theatre, which was pretty cool.  Got to see a bit “behind-the-scenes”, and singing from the stage was great – it’s got a very interesting lay-out, and the building is beautiful on the inside and out.

I was starved after practice, and D. joined me to wander the streets looking for tasty fare. When the first place he suggested was closing (we realized it was already after 10p), I asked whether that veggie place might still be open – and it was.  Its interior is darling – 50s-style diner, done very tastefully.  We sat in one of the booths placed right in the center (the kind that would drive T. wild, with no side of the booth to the wall).  Even though D. was on-record as not being hungry, he still managed to finish half of  the veggie pot pie that I ordered (which I thought was delicious).

After dinner, I headed out solo to Charlie’s Kitchen to meet up with a group that had convened for T.’s birthday festivities.  Didn’t stay too long, but it was a good scene at another of the diners nearby.  It’s a rare occasion that we experience the diner atmosphere as we usually choose to sit in the beer garden outside in the summer, but it was raining tonight, so the corner table upstairs did us just fine (one of my favorite little spots in Harvard Square – many a nice evening with friends spent there).

Day 120: Boss-ton

 Today was a special day.  A friend (let's call him "D-money") was in town from NYC -- he's the reason I met D. originally and it's been about three years (!) since I last saw him, so I was particularly excited.  In honor of the occasion, Bruce Springsteen decided to play two concerts in Boston this week (or at least, that's my interpretation).

I only recently became aware of the greatness of the "Boss", so I was hoping to be able to snag some tix to the concert. D-money was to arrive just before the concert would begin, and D. and I had chorus [chorus #2 that is - the group singing with the Mercury Orchestra] until pretty late, so it wasn't clear how all this would play out.  It's been quite the treat singing with the Mercury Chorale, and today's rehearsal brought us again to the Masonic Lodge in Porter Square, for our first combined orchestra + chorus performance.  It was a bit of a bust, unfortunately -- the fans attempting to cool the huge room made so much noise it was difficult to hear anything, much less the three other second sopranos singing in front of me.  But hearing the orchestra for the first time was (unsurprisingly) amazing -- it's at least three times the size of Calliope's orchestra.  Made me realize how desperately we need more strings.

Anyhow, I'm now getting to the important part, which is that after chorus, we bike into Fenway, where the Boss was playing. [And in fact he was actually playing on the field -- only super-awesome people get to do this, I was told, and therefore I decided to use this as further evidence that Bruce Springsteen is great. Though still, I will contend, not as great as the Coug.]

D. and I attempted to score some tickets by asking people coming out for theirs and squeezing in, and I think if I had been a little more upbeat and willing to be chatty with the security guards, we would have made it.  But we were content just chilling outside and listening from behind the ballpark, and we met up with D-Money after.  Veggie burgers at Miracle and then some jamming on the keys were in store for us after, as can be witnessed from the above picture.  I think that was some Billy Joel action going on.

Day 117: Suburban foraging

Sunday practices in Georgetown are now a regular part of the week, and I find it quite relaxing to get up on the early side for a Sunday, pop into Toscanini's for a coffee top-up, and swing by to grab various members of the crew for the drive up 93 and 95.  On the occasions when D. is with us, these mornings often bring foraged goodies into our lives during Act 1 (his character only shows up in the middle of Act 2).  Today we were in for a treat - may apples.  Rumor has it they are somewhat elusive and difficult to find around the Cambridge area, though apparently the suburbs of Georgetown were more forgiving; fact has it they are extraordinarily sweet. To eat them, you squeeze and suck out the juicy innards, which are so saccharine they remind me of Gushers (those things are like crack).

Treat #2 of the day was that the old-school members of the GTW (see the sign behind the may apples in the above pic?) were throwing a picnic complete with swimming pool and bocce ball (which S., our director, and I threw down at).  I could only stay for a bit because I had to high-tail it back to Cambridge to get to the second practice for the Mercury Orchestra chorus, which was being held at the Masonic Lodge in Porter Square.  So neat all the places being in this group is showing us!

The afternoon was complete with a bit more urban foraging in the form of nabbing some peaches (and pears, I believe) en route to a friend's place for dinner, where others had foraged some mushrooms for dining (S.B. made an amazing casserole with chicken mushrooms - was to die for).  Rounding out the evening with some guitar sing-along-ing made it a pretty much perfect Sunday.

Day 116: Keezer's Classic Clothing... and empty desks.

Today started out with a bit of relaxing and then the beginning of a quest for a tux.  I find it amusing that I can buy a long black $10 skirt at TJ Maxx or Marshall's or whatever and it counts as "concert black formal", but men are required to acquire something that is priced in the hundreds of dollars even for a rental to achieve the same bar.  It must be the only place in the system where fashion financially favors women (whoa, lots of alliteration there).  Anyhow, I felt it somewhat my responsibility to assist in the tux-searching process since I had coerced D. into singing in the Mercury Orchestra concert, and somewhat less so to join Calliope, both groups requiring fancy concert-wear.

Thus I stopped by Keezer's (cool name for a used tux store, eh?) by myself this morning and had a lively chat with a gentleman who was working there.  It was a pretty kooky and fun place to go, and I sort of wished I got to wear a tux myself.  It's like men just strap these things on and there's a transformation -- I feel like I have to pinch and pull at myself forever to get real change.  It turns out that buying a used tux at Keezer's is oodles cheaper than renting one, and it also turns out that I didn't really need to do a scope-out because they had oodles of tuxes.  And shirts.  And suits.  And other paraphernalia.  It's an adorable place!

The silliness of the tux store (let's admit it; tuxes are pretty ridiculous) was balanced out by the sadness of cleaning out my MIT office this afternoon.  Decision-making is often a difficult process for me, as I like to always choose the best thing, but it's even worse when the thing you are choosing is what to get rid of.  Some of the books will stay at BCS for whomever wants to use them, a few came with me, a couple sold back to Amazon.com, some gifted to Max (who bought me dinner at MoS in exchange -- see Max's story-telling salt and pepper shakers above, all within the territory of hanging out with developmental cognitive scientists).

Day 110: BSO behind the scenes

Never thought I'd be the type of person to wake up at 8am on a Sunday bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but it's happened.  Sundays in Georgetown for rehearsal are fab-o, and we stepped it up a notch today.

Rehearsal itself was a bit sluggish today compared to last week.  Our first attempt at running through Act 2 off-book was not as glitch-free as our first attempt at Act 1 -- and most of us had to resort to using scripts.  But it was great to get everyone there for Act 2, as we had spent less time on it thus far.

The second part of the day involved a foray to Crane Beach in nearby Ipswich -- my take was that it was nice, but next time I'd just drive a bit farther and go back to Ogunquit/York beach (this was pretty close to Georgetown, in its favor) -- free to park there and fewer folks around. Again, nearly none of us had brought bathing suits, but BNap saved the day by having a car full of dirty laundry -- one piece of which was the t-shirt I'm sporting above, touting the same radio frequency as D's (different cities, though; funny).

Part three of today was great.  I was stoked to find out earlier in the week that Mercury Orchestra, a local/community-based group that is quite a bit larger than Calliope, was looking for choristers to accompany the orchestra for Daphnis et Chloe, Ravel's longest piece of music and only ballet (it's short for a ballet, only about an hour).  The choral accompaniment is stunning -- and apparently REALLY HARD!

The first cool thing about the whole ordeal is that my name was on a list with a security guard at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, allowing me to enter its under-belly and poke amongst the scattered music stands that are always floating around where there are orchestras.  Got a big twinge of .... -- well, something more pleasant than food poisoning -- being in that atmosphere again, the basement of a symphony hall.  Felt like a big production and reminded me of singing with the Kokomo Symphony Orchestra as a kid in the KCC -- we would always accompany their biennial rendition of the Nutcracker.

The second cool thing about this schtick is that the conductor is fantastic.  Whole different style from what I've become used to -- and it's always nice to start with chorus only before trying to put the whole thing together.

And the coolest thing is that the music and the singers are beautiful -- and we get to perform this beauty in Sanders Hall.  This blog -- and this summer -- have turned into a sort of feschrift for the arts, and I like it.