It is the first snow fall of the winter. It is those big fluffy flakes that you can watch fall slowly to the ground.
I don't know why I am so excited by this. I don't actually like the snow, but this seems Ok.
I'm in a warm house, drinking my tea and watching the snow. And the ground to still warm so that the snow can't stick.
It is all very surreal.Snow in the air and Leaves on the ground.

I seem to be mostly over this nasty head cold. Thank goodness. the nasty part of the cold wasn't the sweating or the congestion, of which I had very little, it was the cough. the racking cough up a lung kind that would happen if I did anything too strenuous. Like walking.

The part that really got me was, when I would start coughing as I was trying to go to sleep. It is very hard to sleep when you can't breath. And it is hard on T who was trying to sleep next to me. and I may have scared the cats a couple of times too.

But that is over and done with. On to a voice once again and singing. Although I kind of liked that I sounded like Loren BeCall. Very deep and chesty. I never sound like that in real life.

That's right, this time I really have a NEW computer.
It didn't cost an arm and a leg, but alas it is not a notebook.
But it has the biggest monitor I have ever worked with, it is fast and silent and has internet.
This pretty much has be my problem in the last year when my cute little mac ibook died.
I had internet but it was slow (my mother claimed was the same speed as her dial up).
or I had another machine that could run every thing I wanted but... didn't have an internet card. (not going there.)

I am joyfully downloading all the juicy programs I want.

Best part of all this.... is every thing looks right on the monitor.

Ah, fall; the time of the year that the little vermin come down from their hidey place and start to hunt for food for the winter by raiding our yard of every little drop of food they can find.
I don't really begrudge them. No really. Better they eat what all the pine and oak trees drop. I know I wont.
What made me stand up and take notice this year was there was one cute red squirrel that had more balls then brains.
It was during one sunny day last week when I was on a pie baking roll, that I saw him. A little red squirrel was trying to pick up this huge pine cone he would pick it up with his little paws and wrestle it until he had a good grip then he tried to run, only to have the pine cone fall. He did this a couple of times until he solved the problem. He stuck the tip in his mouth and then bounded off for the tree line. and I do mean bound.
I ended up laughing here was this little squirrel with this too huge pine cone jumping up and down. I couldn't even image how he got it up the tree. He did this all afternoon, every time I looked out the window the little guy had a new pine cone in his mouth.
Now mind you we have cats, wonderful hunters and catcher of little red squirrels. I don't know for sure, but I have not seen the squirrel since. Maybe he has just found a better, safer source of pine cones. Maybe.

In the last weekend of August, my mother and I went to our first big sacred harp sing out of state.
We drove to the most north western part of MA.  4 and a half hours. We started at 5 in the morning and it was raining, so, through darkness and rain we drove. Happily we made it with only getting a little lost, (bad street signs) and we made it with time to spare. There had to have been close to 200 people there. People from all over the country, from other countries. People of all ages and back rounds.
It was a little overwhelming. I really have been in Maine too long that a mear crowd of 200 makes me feel... crowded.

But once we all sat down and started to sing, it didn't matter. I got to sing in the Treble section.
We sing the top line of music sometimes it is very high. Of late have been singing in the Alto section because it seems like we never have enough Altos.

I rather like the Treble section. although we are the high voices the section often has men singing in it but down the octave. As does the Tenor section, or the melody, has both male and female voices in it.

So there we were with 200 voices doing something like 6 part harmonies. It was amazing.

One thing I noticed that was different with this sing than our little local sings was they went FAST. I mean the music went fast, calling the leaders when fast, tuning went fast. I was hard pressed to just find the right page in time.  It didn't help that many of the leaders didn't call out the page number very loudly. With 200 people even if they are attentive they are still bound to be noisy.

If I heard the count right we did something like 120 songs. with 109 leaders.

Oh not only did we sing, we ate. I swear it seemed like if I wasn't singing I was eating and talking. More good conversations to add to my collection of people. Even with the rainy weather it was a very enjoyable day.

Then there was the drive home. I was tired and I know my mom was pooped, she let me drive.
But I told stories to her to keep her awake until then. We made it back to Maine around 7 and back home around 10. My mom had no voice and she had to sing in church the next day. She said she sounded... like a frog. :) Maybe there is such a thing as too much singing.