Well, not quite midnight, but I’m still blogging late. Well, not quite that either. I’m sitting in my happily organized and neatified dorm room and writing something which shall be broadcast at a later date. Probably tomorrow afternoon before I go to meet the Dean.
Speaking of the Dean, a funny thing happened on the way to the commons. As a member of the welcoming committee, I decided yesterday afternoon that it would be a good idea to pick up my t-shirt, so that I would be properly and fully equipped with a bright green and largely unattractive shirt declaring “Welcoming Committee” in letters large enough to read but still small enough to all fit on one line. A delicate balance, to be sure. Anyhow, I go to the assistant dean’s (not going to capitalize the noun anymore—takes too much time) office and said, “Hi, can I have my shirt?” She goes, “Here’s XX dollars, go meet the pizza guy, give him this tax form, and make sure you get a receipt. If I’m not there at noon sharp, make them all pray and get busy being organized for when people show up. Oh, yes. Welcome back!” From thence on, I became the special minion to the deans, and enjoyed the heck out of myself running to and fro, being friendly, meeting people, talking a great deal more than is necessary, and taking many many pictures, for I am also the designated yearbook photographer person for the weekend. This makes me a very busy little bug.
The mostest funnest part of all, though, was last night. I got to help serve the port and sherry to parents and faculty at a reception, and all my old professors were there. Each one remembered my name, what classes I had taken from them, and all sorts of neat details about my person, such as the fact that I liked to laugh in class. At lots of things. It was a truly grand evening, ending with me being utterly tired out from walking back and forth and greeting parents and making name tags and pointing out professors and answering questions and replenishing the sherry (nasty, sticky stuff which I should never care to taste as it smells so dreadful) and consolidating the cookies…yeah. I had a good time. The cool part about the whole thing, though, is I have again made friends with the deans and we’re on excellent terms. (This morning, that enabled me to make a nuisance of myself with the camera and take nice shots of the dean talking to freshmen, and more nice shots of freshmen listening to the dean.) Great fun. However, tomorrow the camera goes back to A, who is the real brains of the yearbook operation, and he gets the job of photographing during Mass, something which I don’t particularly care to do myself, and which would be quite difficult as I’m singing with the choir.
Which is the other thing I did today, which I mentioned in the blog before but not in detail. Dr. P has decided that intonation and balance and tone and things like that are very important to a choir and must somehow be improved. Hence, a little book called “The Care and Feeding of Singers” has been brought off the shelf and we’re doing exercises with words like “zoooo zoooo zoooo” in which the sopranos and tenors sing a steady tone and the altos and basses (1st, 2nd, and 3rd bass) sing a moving line which goes down a minor third, back up, and then down a major third and you end up (ideally) with a major interval nicely tuned and balanced. It’s going to take some work. Of course, the fact that most of us have not sung anything of consequence all summer (I did, but leave that out for now) is factoring into the equation, and Dr. P realizes. For this reason, nothing above “nearly but not quite impossible” is on the list for tomorrow’s Mass.
Oh, yes. And there’s to be a dedication of a massive Crucifix which hangs in the library, tomorrow after Mass. With that, I go to sleep before some other sweet person comes in to chat with me and I again fail to become comatose before 1:30 in the morning. If I didn’t get up at 6:30 regardless, I have a feeling this wouldn’t be such an issue.
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