April 2019

Day after elections. The elections were interesting. Not. The results could be interesting. Or not.
This is one of those days when I feel so absolutely rotten I refuse to do anything at all. Just sit in sun on balcony.
A man walks buy--black hat, jacket, black briefcase, carrying a pizza.
There goes a long gray pickup truck, short bed with topper. A taxi. Another. A woman wearing long-sleeved black top and black slacks. It's rather hot for that. A silver station wagon with Learner sign on top. More cars, white and silver. A bus. Two black cars. A white van. More cars. A motorcycle.
It's too bright out. I need sunglasses. I've got my eyes shaded by pulling my scarf down to my nose.
Birds are chirping but I don't see them.
Truck, car. They never stop. The earth never stops either. Whether I live or die, everything just keeps going on. Without me. Do I exist? I'd like to do more than exist. Like be effective somehow.
 A man carrying a big box and pulling a little white dog on a long leash. Sometimes the dog pulls him.
A car with color! - neutralish metallic red. Most vehicles are white, black, or silver, so when there is a colored one, I notice. Now a brown one. Now a neutral greenish one.
There goes a woman wearing a long flannel shirt. Too hot for that. There goes a car with a sunroof. What are sunroofs for, anyway? And there's a young woman in a turqoise T-shirt and a white back pack. She has black frizzy hair like I have wished I had. Mine is too flat. But it is a bit fuller now after not combing it for five days. Maybe I should try dredlocks. Have you ever seen a 65-year-old red-haired woman with dredlocks?
Dad is in the kitchen eating munchies. I bought a bag for him and one for me. I'm saving mine for a special occasion.
There goes a delivery motorcycle. And another.
Lots of orange flowers across the way in containers. Down the street a Judas tree (redbud) in full bloom. Three more people wearing black. It's too hot for black, don't they know? Yet I've done it myself. Black is such a conveninent color for clothes.
For cats too. Speaking of which, my favorite street cat is back. She is black with specks of orange. She is a very sensible cat--always knows exactly what she is doing. She is a bit more relaxed now that she is not nursing kittens.
Okay, thirty minutes in the sun is more than enough.
But there goes an Amigo tour bus, turquoise, orange and white. And finally a very RED car.
Bye now.
Hey, I actually feel better now. Was it the sun or the RED car?

Chaos

I never knew rehearsals could be such chaos. Everybody talking at once, and the conductor changing her mind several times about everything. Then the last-minute rehearsal, right before the concert, was even more crazy. Most of the singers were forty minutes late, the conductor was angry, and the pitch was about the worst it could get. I couldn’t figure out what key we were in—well, actually, it wasn’t a key at all. So I tried to fit my note with the tenor, who I thought was probably pretty close to being right, but that didn’t work either. I thought, if this happens during the concert, I will cry.

And then I lost my music, and had to read off someone else’s, which just barely succeeded because it was the wrong distance for my bifocals.

Because we never got around to working out just where we should stand, we ended up way too spread out, and we couldn’t hear each other well. Or maybe that was just as well.

But somehow, by some sort of miracle, we carried it off, though I suspect it wasn’t very accurate. The last piece, a lively and complicated one, was well received. And the rest of the concert, for the most part, was very good—the Jerusalem Street Orchestra, some Klezmer music, Tomas Tulacek and others.

There were tables full of snacks to be eaten at intermission, but most of it was gone before we even started.

And now it’s 1:30 a.m. and I’m still wound up. I’m in the mood for some chocolate cake or something. Maybe I’ll settle for cinnamon toast.

Concert

A concert is today. I'm in a small choir, singing first alto. The rehearsals have been so chaotic, it's hard to know how well it will turn out. We don't have enough really dedicated singers. It's all volunteers.

After the choir is a lot of other music, including a solo violinist from Slovenia. It should be good. I just hope my energy holds out.

February 2018

It rained today. Flood warnings. I guess there are places in Israel where an inch of rain can cause major flooding. But I've never seen a flood here.

I'm about burnt out with sitting at the computer. But over the last several months, and especially the last three weeks, I got all my music notes in order. About 1500 pages' worth. Each page has a few scribbles on it, sometimes the first line of a tune, sometimes the whole thing. But most of them are worthless, and some unreadable. Eventually I narrowed it down to about 300 that are worth looking at again, and most of those I have put on MuseScore. Of those, about 80 are looking promising. Occasionally we try singing one, and the moment we do, I find errors. In spite of all my careful proof-reading, there are still errors. A "ka" instead of a "ke" in the transliteration. A "ba" instead of a "va." Too many beats in the last measure. Wrong chords. Sometimes wrong words. Wrong verse numbers. Wrong formattting. Formatting is what takes the most time. And it's addicting.

I haven't yet found the perfect font. Some fonts are good in the lower case letters, but the capital letters and numbers look funny. I finally decided on Cambria for my English lyrics, only to find that the "f" always looks funny. Before that I used Free Serif, which looks nice, but on MuseScore it has some difficulties.

Something has happened to my taste buds. I now drink my de-caf double strength. Sometimes I even add milk and sugar. My eggs now taste best with garlic and black pepper. But I still eat the same old bread, something like Borozinski. It makes great toast. And it's habit-forming.

Apartment life is a drag. But we have a nice apartment for getting work done in. Annoying, though, is the variety of weird smells. This morning I smelled a very strong chlorine smell in the bedroom. Car exhaust, cigarette smoke, sewer smells and cooking make their way into my apartment. The cooking smells can be really good--sometimes brownies, garlic chicken, almost-burnt toast, and barbecue. But freezer-burn chicken is not so nice.

Ecclesiastes

Barnes sums up a passage from Ecclesiastes well: "Unforeseen events come from God; and the man who is always gazing on the uncertain future will neither begin nor complete any useful work: but do thou bear in mind that times and circumstances, the powers of nature and the results to which they minister, are in the hand of God; and be both diligent and trustful."

Refreshed 2017

After spending 3 weeks in the U.S., I have come back refreshed and with a little different view of things. I have a regular home-making type thing to do (finishing a quilt). I am following a more or less regular sleep pattern, and have somewhat less stress than the last few years. EXCEPT for one horrible evening of restless leg-arm-everything, which was caused by taking a nap too late in the day, so the evening was messed up. If you look up RLS on the internet, you don't find good explanations, but I can tell you it is something horrible.

And EXCEPT for Independence Day, when just below my window several men were all talking at once loudly for several hours--until 2:20 in the morning!

Then they went inside, and we had our last (I presume) rain of the season, which lasted for 30 seconds. Now it isn't going to rain anymore, so that means it's summer. Or it's summer now, so that means it isn't going to rain for several months.

All is quiet now, except for a loud boom I heard yesterday right outside my window. It wasn't a gunshot, such as when they blow up a suspicious object, and it was a clean boom, not a ragged one, so it wasn't a bomb. As it turned out, a bus blew a tire.

The only other notable noise is a large dog that barks occasionally, which to me is a sad sound, because the poor dog is probably a bit bored, and because dogs go with homes and families and they remind me of the good days that are past.

Beginning of 2017

Long time since I posted. Does that mean nothing happened? Does anyone care? What a small speck my whole life is. Yet at any particular moment, it seems like it's very important.

Looking back at my diary, which I write in only sporadically, I remember from January that a chiropracter solved a problem with my left hand cramping. A five-year problem solved in 2 minutes! After that appointment I went home and started playing the piano and I couldn't stop. I've had about 3 adjustments since then, and I think I'm about due for another one, though it's not as bad as it was before January. I probably ruined my neck from several years of playing violin with in ill-fitting shoulder pad.

I have found quite a few good sermons on sermon audio. Often I pick them at random, or because of their interesting titles, or something I am curious about. Other times by the speaker. Sometimes I think I will recommend to someone a particular preacher, but not every sermon of that man is good. As soon as I recommend Adam Adams, or whoever, Adam Adams will have a sermon that is just not that good. And if you happen to listen to that one, you will go away thinking Adam Adams is not a very good preacher, and I am not too swift for recommending him. But really Adams'es's's' sermons are mostly very good.

Actually, I suppose I could recommend Voddie Bauchman, Alister Begg, Konrad Mbewe, and Spurgeon. There are many others. You can tell from the different sermons that each is preaching to a different kind of audience, who have different backgrounds. Something of the flavor of each location comes through, though the basic truths are applicable everywhere.