TOSVA Christmas Concerts

 The 17th was the day for the Oratorio Society's two Christmas concerts!

If you really zoom in, you can see me!  I had a light shining on me the entire time, so I was quite visible!

They both went really well.  The only real problem occurred during the first concert.  We were singing one of the songs from Rachmaninoff's Vespers (which is a cappella) and there's a moment where all the voices drop out except the basses, which hold one extremely low note for a few beats before everyone else joins back in.  It's very cool.  But during this moment, a gang of Harleys or something went by the theater and it felt like the whole place was vibrating, it was so weird.  No one knew what was happening-- I wondered if we were having an earthquake-- and it threw us all off a bit.  So that was a shame.  It was a relief when that didn't happen for the second concert!  (Even then, some sort of siren went shrieking by, but we heard it before the song started, so we just waited a bit!)

The second concert felt just about perfect, and we managed to keep our energy up for both, which is hard to do.  I was really happy about it all.  Craig and Tom & Donna had brought all the kids to the afternoon concert and it's always fun to greet them afterwards.  They all went to dinner

Colton is very excited any time he can get a soda

and I stayed home and ate a bagel and enjoyed a little peace and quiet before I headed back to the theater.  

After the second concert, Leah and I changed out of our ugly (and by this time smelly!) concert dresses and got ice cream at Chaps, which has sort of become our tradition, post-Christmas concert.  Then we headed to the after-party at Kim Lauter's house.  This was the first time she'd held it since Covid, so that was exciting.  I don't usually love parties like this (I have finally figured out that I am very awkward at mingling with large groups that are standing around-- I do better with smaller groups, and I prefer to be sitting.  Otherwise, I spend the whole time worrying that people are probably trying to get away from me), but I figured I'd at least make an appearance.

After finally finding street parking, I headed inside and grabbed some snacks.  Once I'd found Leah I made a beeline for her.  She was talking to Michael and a few other people.  When Michael saw me, he laughed, "These two!  You can't separate them!  The world might explode!" and that was his joke the rest of the evening.  I was worried that maybe I'd latched too hard onto Leah, so a couple days later I texted her something about how Michael might have exaggerated how attached at the hip we are, just a bit, and she wrote back, "I know, that was funny.  We do have to sit next to each other though."  And that made me happy.

The party ended up being more fun than I'd anticipated.  I chatted with Holly (Michael's wife) quite a bit (she's a lawyer and knew my neighbor Rachel) and then Michael started playing Christmas carols on the piano and everyone joined in singing.  And let me tell you-- this was much better quality than your usual drunken party singing!  Unfortunately I checked the time then and it was nearly 11:30 and I had to do primary music at church the next morning, so I finally ducked out.  But I was glad I'd gone and relieved that I'd actually had fun.

I can do hard things.  Like going to parties! 😂