An awesome way to spend a Saturday

Last Saturday I was in San Francisco singing the choruses of the St. Matthew Passion.

If you don't know it, you must start this video while you finish the rest of this post:



It's awesome stuff!  Really gets the blood pumping.

Every year the American Bach Soloists put on a free choral workshop.  They always pick music that has something to do with their current season (they're doing the St. Matthew Passion at the end of February), you sign up in advance, they email you the music, and then you get to spend six hours singing Bach in a gorgeous church with 250 other people.  Their Director/Founder is awesome, PLUS he's from Pennsylvania (like me), so I bonded with him talking about pretzels.  What more can you ask for?

The organ of the church where we sang

Also, I have to give a shoutout to my 4square app because it helped me find a really good sandwich place in Little Saigon.  And the tips even warned me that the proprietors didn't speak much English.  Another win for social media!

And you know what I love?  I love that the San Jose airport has a meditation room.  Every airport needs a meditation room, as I first discovered last spring when I was in a rental car shuttle in Oakland and saw a baby who was exactly the same age that Baby T would have been, and when I got off that shuttle at the airport, all I wanted to do was go somewhere quiet to cry, away from the Auntie Anne's and the magazine stores.  I went to the end of the airport, to the furthest gate, buried my head under my jacket, and cried until it was time to board the plane.  I thought then that every airport needs a quiet place for people, and San Jose has one.  Even though it's a little further from my office than Oakland, I'm going to fly there from now on.  Plus, you can get to the car rental area without having to take a bus now.  Rock on, San Jose.

Hey, I'm starting my weight loss journey again.  I kind of hit a plateau and quit there for a little bit, but not anymore.  We're taking a little more time off before we try to get pregnant, and I'm going to use that time to lose another 20 pounds.  I was reading Fitness magazine yesterday, and there was this bit about how, if you spread out small treats, you don't feel the need to binge.  That makes sense to me, I think.  Then I read the example:  "have a few squares of dark chocolate every other day, to stay satisfied," they say.  Seriously?  How big are these squares??  You think a few damn squares of dark chocolate every other day are going to keep me from going on a binge?  My God.  Who are these people who are satisfied with a few squares of dark chocolate every other day, and what do I have to do to become one?  Do people like that even exist?  Or is it an urban myth, perpetuated by Fitness Magazine, to make me feel bad about myself because I gotsta have me my Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches?  Seriously, do a few squares of dark chocolate every other day even count as a sweet?  Isn't that, like, your daily requirement of dark chocolate antioxidants? 

Anyway, I'm down 1.4 pounds so far this week.  Go me.  Yay cabbage.  The other day my afternoon snack was beets.  I'm not kidding.  Beets.  But then I step on the scale and it's down 1.4 pounds, and I think, Ok, I can sacrifice some cake for beets, I suppose.  

The calm after the storm

I'm having an incredibly peaceful end to an also-pretty-peaceful week. Hubby is gone for the weekend, so I'm having girls time. Just me and the kitties. We're rocking out to Owl City, and, when feeling schmaltzy, Peter Cetera. We're making popcorn and watching chick movies and playing video games. Seriously, it's heaven. To add to the fun, it's snowing, and I've got a fire going. Seriously, what else do I need?

I was up in san mateo at the office sunday night through wednesday. I got super lucky and rented a car that had a sunroof. Part of me really wants to buy a new car with a sunroof now. Monday I was in an all day focus group in san jose for a vendor. That evening I wanted to do something fun, so I took myself out on a date. I plan good dates. Especially when I'm the only person I have to think about.

To start with I drove myself - with the roof open and Lady Gaga blaring - to the Albany Sauna. It's a spa type of place that rents hot tubs - and it's super cheap - like $22/hour. And the best part is that, while you get a private room with your hot tub, there's no roof, so you get to feel the breeze while you're in the tub. It's awesome. I have a little bit of a history with that place. 14 years ago I took a road trip to California and met up with this guy I'd been talking to online. He wasn't really a boyfriend in that we didn't date. But we kind of messed around, the way you do in college, and he took me to the Albany Sauna. I remember thinking it was super-cool, but even with as much time as I spend in the bay area, I haven't been back. So I took myself there and got a hot tub and had a blissful time.

After that I went into the city to City Lights bookstore. That's another place I've been meaning to go for, like, ever, and just got lazy. I'm saying a giant FU to laziness these days. It's nice. So I went to bask in a literary landmark. I bought a book of poetry - I'm not a big poetry reader - I don't like pausing long enough to read and absorb a poem. It's good practice for me to slow down.

I've decided to take myself out on more dates.

There's a skunk outside eating the food I put out for the feral cats, but I'm not shooing him away because it's snowing, and if he's brave/hungry enough to come out scavenging for food in this weather, he deserves whatever's out there.

So next I'm going to work on my nanowrimo book, and then my podcast. Must do my podcast this weekend for sure.

And I'm going to england in 2 weeks. Life is good.

Airports

I'm hanging out in the san jose airport. In the past six days I've been in the following airports - Atlanta, LAX, Ontario (California - not Canada), Charlottesville VA, and here, San Jose. I swear, I should get a job as a flight attendant...

I like airports because I'm in this world that's kind of like a video game or Second Life or something. It's semi-real - the stores are recognizable, the people look human, the bathrooms are usually clean, and the environment is a super-sterilized version of the normal world. At the same time, everyone in an airport is in their own world, coming and going, wishing they were somewhere else, anywhere else besides a sterilized airport. I like looking at the departure screens and imagining all the places that I could go. I could accidentally stow away on a flight to Singapore, and the next time I smelled fresh air, it would be Singaporean air.

A few years ago I was in Norway, and after a horrible week that included the worst heat-wave they've ever had (in a non-airconditioned hotel, of course), sickness, and a ridiculously busy work schedule, I was in the airport, which looked like an Ikea showroom, and got ready for the second half of my work-trip, in the UK. I was boarding a flight to Heathrow, which, under any other circumstances, would have made me ever so happy. But all I could do was sit under the departure screens staring at the flight to New York, longingly, wishing more than anything that I could be going home. And the funny thing was that the gates were next to each other. Going down one gangway would have taken me to Newark. The other took me to Slough (the most miserable city in the UK according to a recent study).

I like airport time, and plane time, because I'm pretty much un-get-a-hold-of and the world moves in slow motion for me. Plus there's expensive sodas and Cinnabon, which normally I would never go near, but Airport Calories don't count (they apparently get taken away when you go above 30,000 feet). So it's a good day.