Yesterday I worked very hard all day, except for a couple of hours when I went to have lunch with Janalisa (planned and enjoyable) and a chat with a police officer (unplanned, scary, but I didn’t get a ticket). Then, having written bunches of blog posts for various people and refined a client’s metalanguage and made the finance/tech guy’s post “more fun” as requested–

I like it that he asked that my post on rules-based systems for investment managers be redone for a higher fun quotient, don’t you? He also wanted a cool image. My neice who underwrites agri loans said not to use images involving money because those would make people think about how bad the economy is, so I sent him some cool techno stuff.

— anyway, at that point I went on to bell practice. I was planning on quitting bells, but it struck me that a) they might have thought I was kidding when I said that and be expecting me and b) two weeks before the Chrismas music program might not be the ideal time for the middle C to quit.

So I went, and floundered my way through the music, trying not to make any excuses. There is a lot of excuse-making done in bell practice. The sheer variety and originality of the excuses can be somewhat impressive, but it’s all still excuses.

So when Bigsax stopped and said, “Wait, wait! Did you miss the key change?” I just matter-of-factly responded, “No, I just played the C instead of the B.”

However, when we got to the chimes bit and the notes were all diamond-shaped, I was entirely confused and had to write in the notes. They didn’t look the same any more for some reason. And in the section where someone had written in “&” over half the notes, they hadn’t written in what the ands in question were the ands of, so I did have to get Bigsax to help me figure that out and write that in. And when he said to me, in a jolly voice, “That wasn’t very hard, was it? What do you think?”, I answered “Why are you asking me? I can’t play bells.”

But overall, I jsut soldiered on and tried not to complain. The Chemist said, “If you weren’t here, we wouldn’t have anyone playing those bells. That would be worse.”

Then came choir practice, which was fun, though someone needs to tell the woman who sat next to me that singing the alto line an octave below is not the same as singing tenor. “I’m going to sing tenor on parts of this,” she said, and then proceeded to shift octaves whenever she felt that we were too high. I told her she should just go sit with the tenors and sing with them, then. I said it in a pleasant and friendly fashion, too.

We began Martin Luther’s “Then Let Us All Right Merry Be,” and I like it quite well, but that is not the right song for today. Renaissance dance music is not what we need. Or at least not what I need, because I have all these papers to grade, and class to teach, and then a seminar on distance learning. I need a tune to hum distractedly while driving or searching for the right room.

“The Maker of the Sun and Moon” is a simple, pretty tune from the 20th century by Laurence Housman, suitable for humming to yourself. “Miss Fogarty’s Christmas Cake” is a silly, rollicking song, also suitable for humming to yourself. I guess it depends how fast you want to go.