Writing Wrongs

Work was same old same old. One more run and I'll be able to turn in the script I've been working on.
Also need to document the classes I've taken from new company catalog, and share with my team.

Round Table for lunch, ate half a small pizza. Took the rest home.

Home after work, relaxed with the cats & watch the other half of Shark Tank.

Went to the Peninsulaires' 4th voice lesson. This time they did okay, hardly wasted any time, we got to sing a lot. Vocal exercises about different vowel sounds. They have their own theories about how vowels should be sung which are reasonable, but not as universal as they would like to believe. The example words they use show the theory came from New Yawk, where "long" and pronounced "lawng" - on the left coast it is mostly pronounced "lahng".

After the exercises, they changed directors and we got someone who has no clue at all how to teach 4-part harmony to a group. This is the third time we have run through You're A Grand Old Flag, but the last two times he only taught the melody and the non-intuitive "bass part" which is really a baritone part. The baritone part is all over the place and the tenor part is closer to soprano. They sing it way too high for me, and too high for any man who is not adept at falsetto or is a castrati. I did my best Milli-Vanilli impression. I tried singing it down an octave, but he said not to. :-(

Bottom line is he did not rehearse each part separately, so nobody really knew what they were supposed to be singing except the leads. The agenda said we would be broken into octets for this, but it never happened. Not a major issue because they did not have enough instructors to do that. They did have enough to break us into the 4 parts and teach us those separately, but they didn't think of that.

But still, better than the last 3 lessons combined.

On my way out there were flyers for West Valley Light Opera's Fiddler on the Roof which the first instructor is in, though he has not verbally mentioned it. I know the director and half a dozen of the cast, but this is a company which kicked me out of a show once, and the person who did the kicking produced this show, so I'm not going. Won't go to any of their productions. My other excuse is it's in a crappy facility in Saratoga which is a PITA to get to.

Home, dinner was a tiny Banquet dinner, watched some of the news but am so damned tired of the media hyping the government shutdown. Which would not have happened if the "news" "organizations" had not gotten obsessive about covering the idiots who caused it.

So I switched to The Voice where I saw he last two contestants, one of whom was so Country he had to scrape the cow poop off his boots before entering the theater. Excellent voice, though. The other was a single mom with a voice like a buzz saw. All four of the judges loved her, even though she chose a song with half an octave range and sang it was if it had no detectable tune. I think they all thought she needed their coaching. SOmething tells me that no matter how she does in the competition, she will be picked up by some record label, probably CeLo's, even though she chose Adam.

Then I channel surfed, Bones grabbed me because sexy redheaded doctor against he-thinks-he's-sexy no-clue detective. Way too much gossip and innuendo for a crime drama.

So here I am, wrapping things up.
   
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Meeting with mobile home manufacturer's rep.

But first the insomnia report. Milo curled up at the foot of the bed on the fleece blanket Domino parks on when she is in there. He undocked while I was reading to see how good a scratching post the book made, apparently not so good. He is a very long, solid and strong cat and he can gracefully leap onto the bed without me feeling it. All 16 lbs of him. Domino needs to pull herself up, and it's pretty obvious.

For those who came in late, Milo has a food tower, a water fountain and a litterbox in the bedroom.

I went to bed early, got to sleep a tiny bit early. At about 2 am I heard Milo burying treasure in the crystal-filled automatic litterbox. I thought yay! He's smart, figured out what that thing was. But then he was in there about every 45 minutes until at about 5 am he went totally ape trying to dig to the bottom of the box, but the crystals kept filling back in. I had to lift him out of there. He fled to the bathroom, but spent the rest of the morning under the bed.

I had the bedroom door closed all night to keep Domino out, when I opened it in the morning she went right for his food & water. He was back up on the bed by then, and he snarled at her, but she ignored him.

As far as I can tell he hasn't eaten or drunk or used the litterbox since he came here. Oh wait, he finished a tiny can of what the adoption center said to feed him last night.

He spends a lot of time grooming himself, he's a very clean cat. I'm tempted to change his name. He's Siamese and deserves a Siamese name. There is a famous Thai actor who is very handsome, and knows it, and plays strong characters (always the hero). His name is Sombat. Maybe...

I thought about naming him "cat" in Thai, but that's "maew" which would be cheating.

Maybe "nah-rock" which means love face. Handsome is "law" with a low tone, somehow doesn't click for me.

Finally showered and shaved at 8:30, nothing on the agenda till noon so I made breakfast out of sourdough slices and goat cheese. 

Football came on at 10, I watched whatever was on, not a local game, switching off with time on the computer. Milo came out to explore, he's not scared of Domino anymore, just wary. Domino still moans at him when she sees him, but she's not hissing or kneading the carpet.

Photo shoot was postponed half an hour. I left at noon, but it took 40 minutes to get there, which is fine, this guy's shoots never start on time. The organizer only stayed long enough to get things set up, he had a child's b'day to attend to, and left his assistant in charge. We started shooting half an hour later.

There were 6 photogs, one model, she had already done one shoot that morning. This group was very loud, the model chose horrible heavy metal as her background music (it sounded like Cookie Monster on steroids backed by a couple of electrical substations getting ready to melt down).  She came out nude, and the setup the assistant had arranged was a pair of silver reflector panels about 7' tall, with a large studio light right in front and a key light behind. Very limiting, awkward. The model is a total hard body, small blonde with bolted on breasts which ruined it for me. Another thing the 0% body fat did was really show her hysterectomy scar. She has a great smile with her lips closed, but uneven teeth. Pretty eyes, variegated but mostly brown.

Long story short,we shot for 3 minutes each, then changed some minor thing in the setup, then another round,  by the second to last round I had had it, everyone was shooting at once, I had to back into a couple of the other guys to get my shots. Well, I didn't have to, but they were in my way. I bailed before the last round. It was so nice to get outside away from the metal noise and the loud voices. Out of the 200 shots I took, maybe 6 are worth keeping. I won't be posting any of them.

Stayed home long enough to see the 49ers score the winning TD, then grabbed a wedge of Brie and a roll of Ritz crackers and a calendar and my camera and drove to the home of the most obnoxious person from the Anything Goes cast, for her 50th birthday party. Turns out most of the food was gone, but I managed to have a couple of conversations with people in the cast I liked, and then wandered to the front room which has a little stage and a grand piano, and watched (and took pictures) of B'day girl's friends and relations in various attempts at singing. There were some fine singers. And some really good accompanists. And some downright awful screechers. And some children of theater friends who tried real hard but just don't have the pipes.

I think it was telling that none of the production staff showed up. The director has an excuse, her baby is overdue.

Never saw my brie again. Or anyone else's. The event was catered, and the caterers hid everything the guests brought.

The invite said 2-6:30, by 5:30 things started to wind down and I snuck out.

Home, opened the bedroom door, and eventually Milo came out and snooped around. He came into the office and glided up onto the windowsill, not recognizing Domino's set of steps. He didn't need 'em. I made some mac and cheese and franks for dinner, and replayed the end of the football game. Somewhere in there Milo managed to get tangled in an electrical cord and pulled the fan off its stand, which toppled a heater I don't use, and sent the cable modem to the floor. It made an impressive crashing sound. Milo zoomed back to the bedroom and under the bed. He was back on the fleece blanket soon enough.

I uploaded the photos to the PC, and took a look. I'll need to work on the party pix before I post them, most were taken in available darkness.

Bottom line for Milo is he's working out just fine.

Plans for tomorrow:
9 am team meeting
more automation work
Football
BASFA