... That's where I am right now. No particular reason, except my dial-up connection at home is really slow, which can be annoying sometimes. OK, all the time, but usually I just put up with it. So, I brought my laptop with me when I went to chorus rehearsal tonight, and am blogging from a nearby hotspot, wondering if people driving by me on the street think I'm weird. But honestly, this can be almost as frustrating, because even though I'm like 2 feet away from the hotspot, the connection seems shakier than me trying to walk in f!@&-me pumps. Anyway, my friend Amy from one of my sometimes-jobs wrote and told me that if I wanted her to visit my blog I'd have to write more, so Amy, this one's for you.

Yes, about chorus -- I used to sing in community choruses all the time, or a lot of the time, when I lived in Maine. Went through junior high and high school and college (both times!) singing, then after I got into the grownup work world, sang for a few years with a group in Bangor called the New Renaissance Singers. I think that was my favorite, because I found the music very, I don't know, evocative, or something. Anyway, it spoke to me. Or rather, sang to me. And it gave me my first (and only, except for one verse in a production of "Godspell") solo, in one of our concerts (I think it was in a piece called "Pavane") and my first (and only) paying singing gig, as part of an octet that performed somewhere locally that Christmas season. (That smaller group also performed at Cumstock Hall at the Theater at Monmouth -- be still my heart! What a gorgeous and prestigious venue! Amy, I know you must have heard of that place.) None of which is to suggest that I can actually sing. I can contribute solidly to an alto section most of the time, but I'm way too unable to project, and breathe in all the right places, to reliably solo.

So anyway, since a few years before I moved to NH, I haven't sung in any kind of formal group at all, unless you count the Band of Five during an alcohol-soaked gathering of TopFive.com contributors in Vegas in like '99. But that was hardly formal, and was barely a group, and I only did one song, and I thought I knew that better than I actually did, so we don't count that, but someday I will have to put vanity aside and watch the tape. I think I cut out the singing when I started working at UMaine in '93; not sure if that's accurate, and if so, why, unless it's just that it always made me tired and work started early the next morning. But in any case, once I moved to NH and became an independent contractor, the work schedule was too unpredictable, and my personal life too drama- and depression-ridden, for me to be able to carve out time for a choral group.

But now that I'm minimally employed, I've got all kinds of time! So I've joined the Hampton Community Chorale. And joy of joys -- we're even singing one piece I've sung before, maybe even with the New Renaissance Singers -- "Lo, How  a Rose E'er Blooming." (Tonight, we also sang another -- "Gloucester Wassail" -- although I'm not certain it will be permanently in our repertoire.) So that's nice, as is the fact that someone I knew from my previous life as a correspondent is in the group. The rest of the music also is lovely, although some of it is verrrrrry difficult, and/or in foreign languages like French (such as a piece that also has "Pavane" in the title, although it's not the same piece I solo'ed in) and German! My previous directors would always have us hum the melody first before making us add the words in foreign-language pieces, but this director does not do that, so I find myself defaulting to the English line, catching myself and having to force myself to look at the foreign line. So far, I'm enjoying it, and I told someone tonight that as long as I can afford to put gas in the car to drive up here, I'd like to continue with the group. In other words, kind of a week-to-week thing.