Yesterday a huge storm blew in, with sheets of hollywood-style rain and wind that was tipping the tops of the trees down. We were snugly wrapped up on the couch, and Eve came over with Ariana, Jeremy & Aidan, and we watched the SpongeBob movie. I do enjoy SpongeBob Squarepants.

Luckily, I had mowed the lawn on Saturday, because if I hadn't, you might have confused our yard with some kind of jungle wildlife sanctuary. After cutting the grass, I saw that the backyard grass is quite blotchy. I put down some grass seed, but today I noticed that most of it had been washed away. Or perhaps the birds had a feast. Our bird count is 'way up from last year's, even though the flock of robins never did appear this year.

I also made some lamb stew.. the recipe had its beginnings in our "Real Stew" cookbook, but of course it morphed into something quite different by the time I was done. I chose lamb because of the season. It's a bit radical for me, because we do tend to cook the same basic ingredients over and over, and lamb is not on that short list. My sister said she cooked some GOAT this week, which would be momumental if we ever did that. Don't hold your breath!

Here's my recipe for lamb stew:
Heat up some olive oil (freshly pressed from Wendy & Marty's trees up in Napa) and put a bit of butter in there, too. Put in the lamb cubes and, since you didn't buy enough, you might as well put in the chicken-apple sausages, too (this turns out to be the secret ingredient and maybe the best part). Brown that, and then take the meat out and put in an onion and 4-5 cloves of garlic. After that's good and brown, you can add back the meat with the rest of the stuff - I put in some carrots and potatoes, a can of tomato paste, a lot of chardonnay that had been sitting in the fridge for some time, and some water. Salt and pepper were the only spices. Oh, except for the bay leaves. I am wondering if my bay leaves have any flavor in them at all. I have had that package for so long, and the leaves are so dried out! I don't know why I bought such a big package of them.. I'll probably have that same package the rest of my life.

Suzanne over at Life in the Suburbs has provided me with five interview questions. I feel compelled to answer, since I did ask for it.

Here are the Interview Game rules:
1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below saying "interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions - each person's will be different.
3. You will update your journal/blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.


1. Have you ever had braces on your teeth?
No, I never had to wear those zipper type braces. However, at one point in jr high school, the dentist thought that my molars were too spread apart, and fitted me with one of those terrible devices that has a head strap and a wire device outside the mouth that attached to the molars. I was supposed to wear it when I slept, and while watching tv. It was awful, and it made me drool a lot while I slept. Come to think of it, I still drool a lot while sleeping. I am just happy to say that I never had to be seen in public with that medieval torture device on my face.

2. How do you best enjoy fresh asparagus prepared?
I have an electric steamer that I use for broccoli and asparagus and so forth. Got it at a garage sale, and I love it. I am famous for my savory side dish of asparagus that I always bring to Passover. Steamed asapargus, with just a little balsamic vinegar drizzled on top, and sprinkled with pine nuts.

3. If you own an automobile, when was the last time you washed it?
If you don't own one, what is your usual method of transportation?
My little red Echo named Zora (vanity plate = REZOUND) gets washed in the summer when it doesn't rain. Right now, I wish it would stop raining so that I could take her in for a bath. The dog has been sitting in the back seat and it's getting hairy back there. I like to take it to the full service wash, so that they will vacuum and wipe down the interior for no extra charge.

4. Would you ever want to be a contestant on a reality show? If so, would you choose to be on Survivor or Fear Factor?
Watching Survivor is my guilty pleasure. I haven't missed a season yet. So I guess that would be the one, if I wanted to, which I don't. Why? because I can't start a fire or spear fish, and I can't understand why people still show up for that show without having mastered those skills! I mean, come on! you know you'll have to do it. Fear Factor? ugh. Eating bugs and so forth is not what I would choose for my leisure time activity.

5. What do you love about your job?
I love that I work in a beautiful environment, in a gorgeous building on a remote ranch. I love solving database puzzles and designing software interfaces. I love helping people and I love it more when they appreciate the help. I love getting movie screenings for free and being connected with the movie industry.

The regional weekend is an annual exhaustion-fest. We usually go from Thursday all the way through Sunday with only 3-4 hours of sleep per night, and in between there is plenty of singing, walking in uncomfortable shoes, stress, excitement, drinking, laughter and tears. This year was no exception, and the roller coaster of emotions was even wilder than usual.

My chorus came in first place, but Mission Valley came in a very close second place. This felt right somehow, since our quartet comes from both choruses, and all four of us needed the boost of a good score and a tight finish... after the disappointing 7th place that L'Attitude got.

Saturday night was one of the most fun times I have ever had. First of all, the quartet got to perform all over the hotel and at the afterglow, and we felt we sang strong and performed well. Then, the four of us partied in our room til the wee, wee hours. In our case, the partying was mostly laughter. We laughed til ribs hurt, knees had to be squeezed, eyes damp. Story telling, gossip sharing, martini drinking, petit four eating, you just had to be there. We are just so happy to be in this quartet together.

Dartmouth researchers have been looking into the way that a song gets stuck in our heads.

In a study titled "Sound of silence activates auditory cortex" published in the March 10 issue of Nature, the Dartmouth team found that if people are listening to music that is familiar, they mentally call upon auditory imagery, or memories, to fill in the gaps if the music cuts out. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity, the researchers found that study participants could mentally fill in the blanks if a familiar song was missing short snippets...

...The researchers say that this finding extends previous work on auditory imagery and parallels work on visual imagery, which both show that sensory-specific memories are stored in the brain regions that created those events.

There is never a time, waking or asleep, when my brain is not producing music. Barb says her brain is always talking, but mine is always playing or singing. This article mentions that songs with lyrics are "played" in a different region than instrumental pieces. I think my lyrics region is not as busy as the other region, because usually lyrics are the least of what I hear - sometimes whole orchestras and at the very least, complex harmonies.

Last year, I blogged about our singing competition:

What I learned this weekend is that the competitive spirit and the desire to win is NOT what propelled me ahead. Instead, it is freedom from all that - releasing myself from the competition. How to do the release? Well, in this situation, we thought we had nothing to lose - if we did well, great, if we didn't, too bad - but either way, the same results: the quartet was retiring. This gave me a sort of permission from myself, that whatever I put out there would be okay. I wanted it to go well, but I didn't put myself under any pressure to make it happen. The big question is how to keep this feeling with the new group? I tried to memorize the feeling on stage, that confident, strong, performer's attitude.. and I have a feeling that I can re-create it.

After a year of rehearsals, L'Attitude will hit the stage. We were talking the other day, agreeing that "whatever happens, will happen" and other philosophical statements, and then I said, "really, I want to win!". Well, I do want to win, but mostly, I want that feeling of release like I had last year. And I think I can achieve it - because when all is said and done, we have prepared well, we have a great sound, we know how to put on a good performance, and we don't have any control over what the competition will do. I can't control any of it, so I might as well let go.

Pressure is the enemy - too much pressure in the voice, too much peer pressure, too much pressure from my own ego, all of this causes the tension that is not what music is made of. Music floats, it is a release of emotion and energy into the world. It floats like a kite string, bridging the gap between the listeners and the performers.

Photo Friday's theme is "faces" this week - this is a theme?? It just doesn't say anything to me. My people photos are all of faces, it seems. I guess I absorbed just a little bit of my dad's philosophy on photo-taking, that there MUST be person in ALL photos. My asparagus photo below notwithstanding.

It has been a busy week, with dress rehearsals for our upcoming quartet and chorus contests on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. At work, I'm converting files to a new software format, which makes me think about the word convert vs. the word converge.

con·vert (k?n-vûrt') To change (something) into another form, substance, state, or product; transform: convert water into ice. To change (something) from one use, function, or purpose to another; adapt to a new or different purpose: convert a forest into farmland.

con·verge (k?n-vûrj') To tend toward or approach an intersecting point: lines that converge. To come together from different directions; meet: The avenues converge at a central square. To tend toward or achieve union or a common conclusion or result: In time, our views and our efforts converged.

At work, there is a whole lot of both going on. I'm converting files, and departments are converging. Whether or not a union will be achieved, as divisions merge and hierarchies are re-defined, is up in the air.

In fashion news, a beautiful new outfit was designed and made by our seamstress for our quartet to wear at contest. You could call it a jacket or a duster, but Mary describes it as a magical robe in which we will sweep onto the stage!

The geek update is that I have discovered RSS feeds, and now have a feed at Bloglines to which you can subscribe. If you come here often, you may want to try this out.

Some say "watch for the first robin", or check for the greening of the willow trees. Allergies start up when the acacia blossoms, and the yellow and purple wild flowers start appearing on the hillsides. The roadside daffodils give way to the iris, and the calla lilies are in bloom again. But for me, spring has REALLY arrived when I see this at the farmer's market:

I have just finished quite an interesting novel, called "Cloud Atlas". Barb gave it to me for valentine's day, and it was a very entertaining read. Each section of the book is written in a different style and about a different time and place, and yet there is a thread that holds them all together. The middle section of the book goes so far into the future that it becomes science or speculative fiction.

We also saw a wonderful movie the other night, called "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill". Some of my friends laugh at me because I like to recommend unusual documentary films (like Genghis Blues). What I really liked about this movie is that the human story is just as compelling as the story about the birds. Transformative and uplifting, the stories are beautifully and skillfully illustrated by the photography.

I think the boys have finally gotten over their obsession with trading cards. For Jeremy, it was baseball cards, and Aidan had to have yu-gi-oh cards. We must have spent hundreds on the darn things. I like how in this picture you can see the obsessive glint in his eyes.