tuesday
- 6 AM Bikram yoga (wake up 4:45)
- breakfast
- e-mail Mo music majors' and minors' addresses
- print hard copy of Choir Etiquette handbook and make 28x
- print roll for USingers
- copy 21 of two pieces
- 1 hr 4 voice practice

tuesday evening
- 1 PM soprano sectional
- workstudy (copy voice repertoire, overhaul binders, and label Pop binders)
- proofread articles and e-mail ed. Man, oh, man. That was an hour-long exercise in grammar. I would be rich if I had ten cents for every time a comma was unnecessarily used...
- Introduction to Sacred Scriptures - read third assignment (Readings 4, 5, and 6) thoroughly and take reading quiz on Blackboard Made a 90, which isn't too bad, considering that I'm falling asleep.

wednesday
- Christ and the Moral Life - read third reading Skimmed it. Going to read it in earnest tonight.
- 8:10 AM Christ and the Moral Life
- 9:10 AM Introduction to Sacred Scripture (ask if I can leave 5 minutes early)
- 10 AM first voice lesson of the semester!
- 11:10 AM theory
- 12-2 PM free time (lunch, finish tne boys' cards)

Several of the past mornings, I've set my alarm to wake me up early. However, I often got up, flipped open my phone to stop the alarm, and promptly rolled back into bed. Not this morning.

Although part of me couldn't fathom being up as early as 4:45 -- as I walked through the lobby at 5 AM, I couldn't believe there were still people studying... it's only the second week of school! -- and part of me started to think irrationally, wondering what would happen if I turned back when I was already 15 minutes into the walk to the studio, I felt wonderful especially at the end of my practice.

The sun had just risen, and after final Savasana, and everyone else had left the room, I sat, stretching as the sunlight filtered in through the blinds. While the sidewalks had been dark and silent en route to the studio, it was as if the world was waking up as I walked back home. I felt a spring in my step and felt ready to take on the day. I was so pleased that I didn't feel the need to listen to music on the return.

Riffling through my new repertoire for voice just now, the translation of Mendelssohn's Morgenlied, op. 82, no. 2 seems appropriate:

Awakening in renewed strength,
I greet Your light, God,
and I turn my happy face
toward Your works.
How splendidly the sun sends its beams upward,
awakening life's loud chorus!

Songs of jubilation already resound
in fields, bushes, and sky,
and from the forest's halls
the morning's fresh fragrance pours.
Little birds shake off the dew,
fly up, and sing in the bright blue.

The sun is already hovering higher
in its victorious course;
all that lives breathes rapture,
and all that slept awakens.
O God, in Your sunshine
how splendid it is to be alive!

So I didn't go to ear training this morning. *shrugs* I wanted to take my time at breakfast. Peter and Walter informed me that we have a test on Thursday on the reviewing we've been doing, on intervals, scales, etc.

I got a lot accomplished this morning in terms of workstudy tasks, but what I was really concerned about was conducting my first soprano sectional. My piano skills are nascent and I was pondering how I'd come across as firm yet loving, poised yet not supercilious. We worked on plainchant, a hymn, and sort of [jo jo]-ed our way through the Kyrie. I found there was a glint of unsolicited vibrato, vowels in need of uniformity, and an affinity for ritard-ing at the end of every verse in a hymn. Hm. It was a good first sectional, though, and it made me realize that I don't have to be a concert pianist to conduct one.

One word of advice I wanted to stress was that listening to the Mass constantly and spending at least 10-15 minutes at the piano with the score daily will be invaluable in getting the music in their bodies. I about floated off the ground when we finally got to sing the Kyrie, and our director was pleased with the sopranos' sound. "If the top ain't right...," begins a familiar choir cliché. But today it was, for the most part. We moved to the Agnus Dei and touched two pages before we moved onto another piece, William Mathias's Lift up your heads, O ye gates. It has divisi and some A5s towards the end.

Copied new repertoire, overhauled the studio binders (e.g., took out the people who graduated/left and shifted the singers to their new lesson days), and labeled the Pop Singers' binders over the course of about 2 hours this evening. I think I'd already known during choir that I wasn't returning to yoga this evening, not merely because I was tired, but because there was little to no way I'd be able to reconcile the time it takes to practice Bikram in the evening with the amount of workstudy tasks PLUS my homework for tomorrow. Not to mention, um, my first voice lesson this semester. Bikram will always be there; I can always go twice in a less hectic day, like Saturday, perhaps, instead of today.

Dinner consisted of a small Caesar salad with honey dijon dressing, a fruit cup, an orange, and grapes. And too much bottled water. I didn't think it was possible to eat too many fruits and vegetables, but now I know better. I had a slight hankering for unagi, but I wasn't willing to take the time to get myself to the sushi grille.

I got to talk to my mom for the better part of 36 minutes, and it was good to check in with her. My family visited a leading technical institute for my brother today and enjoyed the campus, although my brother's first choice remains a leading non-technical institute. I really hope he gets to attend his first choice school because he's bright, and that would mean we might get to be in the same city during the school year.

So. I've got two readings and some theory (mmm) to cover tonight. Or eaaaarly tomorrow morning. Methinks the theology will come first, since I have a reading quiz at 8:10 and need to finish the second quiz before I go to sleep tonight. Toodles.