Singing

Seeing Things

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The TV came today! Fortunately the delivery address was set for my parents, as I had to work. After work, Nienke and I had to go to singing class first. My last time, at least for now. It was fun, we did Tears in Heaven together like we’d been practicing since last time. It went really well. Then, I got to choose what I wanted for my final song. I really wanted to do Let it Go. But I can’t make it in the female way anymore. And I can do it in a lower version, but I always sing with the song. And since I hadn’t practiced this with music only, the singing itself went quite badly. So we decided to do this one together as well, since Nienke had been singing Let it Go by herself for a while now. Together, it went much better, and it was a good way to end 🙂

Then we headed back to the Station to go home where we rode our bikes to my parents first so we could use them to help with the TV. Except, of course, these days flatscreens barely weigh anything. So in the end, I carried it home while Nienke walked our bikes. Once home, I installed it, and we gave it a test run. It is very, very pretty 😀

Yesterday was an unaccustomed long day. I changed my free afternoon for the week from Wednesday to Friday, so I had to work a full day. Afterward I went to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier with Nico. It was very awesome. This movie is sooooooo much better than part one. The after credits preview scene for Avengers: Age of Ultron was good, too!

Gathering of the Tribe

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Yesterday was Mom’s birthday. I brought her presents in the morning and then left again to go to Singing Class. I told my teacher I’m quitting singing for now. It frustrates too much, and I was never truly happy with the every two weeks frequency of the lessons (both time and money-wise).

In the afternoon I went back to the Parents for the birthday party. In a surprise move, I found there all my relatives from the other side of the country. I knew they were around since they were spreading my recently departed great-aunt Veri’s ashes. But they never confirmed if they were gonna come by for Mom’s birthday, so I wasn’t really expecting them. I only had a few minutes to catch up as they were leaving again (it’s a long drive back home for them). As usual, the party was great, it’s always good to see family again, especially on birthday gatherings. I went back home early in the evening as I have a cold and wanted to get an early night.

Ooh, I almost forgot! I bought a new TV Friday. Nienke’s TV in the living room is of good size, but our living room is bigger and it is sometimes troublesome to see small things well from the sofa’s. I settled on a nice 40″ Samsung Smart TV which will be delivered next Thursday.

Today was a nice relaxing day. Got up late, had an Easter brunch, then played games, and worked on my ticketstump scrapbook (a very basic one). While doing that, I listened to a Doctor Who audio book, which was fun. But it did reinforce that audio books really aren’t my thing. It doesn’t feel like a book, it takes more concentration just to stick with the story (as opposed to reading where it sort of happens automatically). I can’t just sit and listen so my hands always have to do something, which then distracts from the story. When reading, since I’m holding the book then, I don’t have that problem. I will however subject myself to it again, as there’s also an audio play of Romeo & Juliet with David Tennant I haven’t listened to yet.

I did a quick trip to the Parents to retrieve birthday leftovers, as we do each year, and once back home I had cake and finished Sorcery and Cecilia, which is a fun book.

Long Weekend

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Quiet start of the free Friday. Kim came by later in the morning for tea and book talk/borrowing. In the afternoon it was time for singing class. I’ve been growing frustrated with singing the last few months since I’m on T. I definitely notice vocal changes and it messes with my ability to sing in that I can’t reach what I could before and in the lows it doesn’t do what I want it to do yet.
I finally expressed (some) of this during class. We decided to focus more on excercises and easy stuff to ease the frustration and such. We’ll see how this goes.

Even so, I’m not sure I want to continue with this beyond this year. I like singing very much, and I learn a lot, but I’m just not that invested and I notice I’m loosing my desire to sing. I don’t sing as much freely anymore, and when I do work on stuff for class, I’m so focused on matching the timing and such rather than being in the song. I’ve always liked either singing along with the artist, or doing it by myself without music best anyway. I’m in it for the lyrics mainly 🙂

Saturday morning Mom and I went to Uithuizen for groceries and some other errands. Bought some decorative stuff at the Action and various tasty things. Then we went to the florist to get a piece for my aunt and uncle’s fiftieth anniversary. We’d been invited to the celebratory dinner that evening. I also bought a beautiful fake floral arrangement. Big blue vase with various forms of greenery in the top and some twigs.

march29At the end of the afternoon, the Parents came back to the house to pick me up and we drove to Assen to eat at Yankee Doodle. It was a very fun evening. I hadn’t seen most of my cousins in quite a few years, so it was really nice catching up with them and trying to figure out which kid went with which cousin since they were wee ones (or not even born) when I last saw them. The youngest of the kids nicely had everyone dancing to her tune as most everyone ended up being face painted. Don’t I make a pretty tiger?

Today I slept in and finished the little explosion book I’ve been making of Tessa. I wanted a photo book of her for myself too, ever since I made Mom and Dad the giant ass one I gave them for St. Christmas. But instead of doing another print on demand thing, I decided to make one and settled on the format of an explosion book. This is made from three squares of paper and ends up being this cleverly folded thing. There’s an excellent tutorial in my pinterest pins somewhere. Ah, here. Watched The Little Mermaid and The Emperor’s New Groove while working on it. The Emperor’s New Groove was funnier than I was expecting, good movie.

Sound of People. And Music

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Had the day off work today so I was expecting to sleep in and lounge about the house today. Managed only one of those as around 8:30 the housing cooperation started drilling into the wall that separates my house from the neighbours’. And let that wall be my bedroom wall, where my head is… Suffice it say I was not pleased >:

I’m thinking I can expect more shenanigans like this in the next week or so. New neighbour is about to move in (that’s why the housing guys were here, I think, fixing up stuff so he can move in. It seemed like they were doing rather a lot though) so I expect more noise as his stuff gets placed.

I did the rest of my waking up on the sofa with the trusty laptop and some Facebook games, then went to play Warcraft. It’s Midsummer Festival in the game so lots of special, temporary, things to do. Then the housing cooperation called me to make an appointment for someone to come by and look at the garden door. I’ve mentioned it before, Neighbour Nienke and I closed off our backyard with a door to stop neighbourhood kids from using it as a short cut to a play field; and now another neighbour is complaining about it because he is convinced it actually is a path and not our yard. HC guy let through on the phone he doesn’t really buy that, but feels he should see it with his own eyes rather than from the pics behind his desk 😀 I don’t blame him, and it will finally settle this mess so Nienke and I, hopefully, won’t be forced to keep the door locked just to stop the kids from using it still. We set an appointment for coming Wednesday so we’ll see what he has to say.

Shortly after this Nienke came home from work and we decided to take a trip to the supermarket where I still forgot half I wanted to buy :S Eva mailed me this great recipe for a low-carb chocolate mousse thing and I wanted to get the stuff for it. The only thing I came home with from that list was the whipped cream… I did buy carrots and chicken and new eggs. I’ve been doing a no/low carb and high(er) protein diet thing since two weeks or so to help me loose weight. So far it’s going well, it’s a kind of thing that still let’s me eat a lot of stuff I like (chicken!) However I use a lot more eggs now (they’re full of protein and as such an excellent way to make you feel full) so need new ones regularly 😀
Cooked 8 eggs this morning, and there’s only one left. To be fair, Nienke and Eva had some too.

Eva, who’s doing the same diet thing, came by today. Of course we first had to discuss the finer points of our respective journeys along the dietary path. Then it was time for dinner. Eva had brought hers along, and with a few minutes at Nienke’s stove to prepare her meat, she was all set. I needed some more time since I still had to make my salad. It turned out great: lettuce, egg, french cheese, a bit of dressing and grilled chicken. Nom, nom, nom 😀 I stole the idea of an eat-book from Eva. Not just a book to list your daily food in (I tried that before and I never manage to keep that up for more than two or three days) but also for numbers, notes and ideas/comments about the food as well as inspirational things and stuff. Kinda like a cross between food diary and regular diary. I found an empty book and wrote the first page today. It does need decorating though, otherwise it’ll be boring and I’ll still forget it after a few days. I’m hoping I keep this up.

In the evening we ended up making music. Eva on guitar, me vocals and Nienke as the silent companion and occasional moviemaker 😀 At the end of the evening we did manage to FINALLY! get Nienke to actually sing!!! This after she figured out that when she has notes with the lyrics, she has a much easier time singing. With just the lyrics she can’t get the melody and with a melody she can’t remember the lyrics. It turns out she has a really pretty voice! After Eva was gone Nienke went on to say she would sing You Raise Me Up at Christmas 😀 I wrote it down into my book and am so keeping her to it 😀

And now I need to crash.