The weather in the Hudson Valley has been springlike this month, and the daffodils and some of my perennials are starting to come back as if they expect it to stay warm. I don't know what this bodes for spring when it really comes next April, but I hope that the plants will not be adversely affected.
I'm OK with the unseasonably warm weather as I have a long commute by car and hate driving on icy roads, especially the demolition derby venue known as the Taconic State Parkway. Also, dog walking is a lot easier and more pleasant when it isn't too cold and when there's no salt on the road. And our driveway and the road in front of our house are especially susceptible to icing up because of drainage problems. By this time last year, we had already had a big snowstorm.
I have been keeping up with my working out and with the sensible diet. Weight loss is agonizingly slow, and this is somewhat discouraging. I am hopeful, however, that the dietary changes I have made will help me to keep any weight I lose off. I am making what I hope will be permanent lifestyle changes rather than going on any kind of special diet just to drop weight more quickly. On the encouraging side of the ledger, I find that my clothes are looser and some of my conspecifics have remarked that my appearance is changing. Could it be that I am gaining muscle mass and that this slows down my apparent progress? It's hard to imagine that I could add significant muscle mass in so short a time, but I really don't know how it works.
We have been having extra practices in the run up to the Christmas Eve services in which the choir plays a major role. I have a couple of solos and will be playing the recorder, along with others, on a couple of pieces. In rehearsal Sunday afternoon, I really stunk. It was almost as if I had forgotten how to read music. I had an unusually hard time finding my notes. It doesn't help that the tenor section has been reduced to two men, one of whom has become hard of hearing and who has trouble finding his pitch on account of this disability. I'm not good enough musically to lead the section, and I hope that we will get back to full strength for Lent and the Good Friday and Easter performances. And I am hoping at least one other tenor will show up on Christmas Eve. The beauty of being a tenor is that you get invited to join choirs and choruses without the need for a whole lot of talent and sight reading ability, but this also means a lot of hard work to keep up with the more talented sections.
The choir has a lot of very talented singers and musicians, especially among the ladies, and we are expected to get by with what I consider minimal practice. I have been taking my music home and working on it on my own. I have to do this if I have any hope of keeping up. In my younger days, I could memorize the lyrics and my parts easily, but this is out of the question for me now. I did get new intermediate vision spectacles that allow me to read my music AND watch the director at the same time, and this has been a big help.
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Our weather is just the opposite in the Bay Area. Record cold, freezing temps. They interviewed people at SFO who just flew in from NY. They were shocked.
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