Notes

A few notes about goings-on.

• Margie and I went over to the house of the accompanist last night to practice the Evensong music we’ll be leading on Wednesday night. When we first accepted the invitation to lend a hand with this, we were thinking it would be plainsong sort of chanting, which is relatively easy, infinitately transposable, and something you can walk into relatively cold.

  Well, it turns out this is mostly actual (gasp) music, and, lacking my Mom’s perfect pitch and ability to sight read, it’s been a challenge for me (and Margie, too).

  We were able to rope Doyce (kicking and screaming, I tell you) into watching Kitten while we went over to practice. At the last moment, we realized that we would probably benefit from a tape recorder, only to discover that we had none in the house, which was something of a shock. A quick visit to OfficeMax later (thanks, Doyce), and we had a little digital something to tape the accompaniment.

  The practice went well, but we’ll be doing some practicing ourselves tonight, as well as right before the service.

  Which, of course, answers the question of what we’ll be doing on Wednesday night, which beats the hell out of seeing which network new anchor can sound the most profound.

• In other pre-911 news, I’ve been slowly gathering together over the last week links to some particularly moving articles on the subject, which I’ll post in one swell foop tomorrow and be done with it. I’m also building a special edition of my daily quotations mailing, which I’ll also post here.

• We’ve been having problems with our van’s power door, in particular with it not shutting on electronic command. So I took the van to the office today, and in about an hour I’ll be dropping it off at the local dealership to fix the fricking thing.

  So, of course, I reengaged the door once I got to the parking lot and tried it.

  And, of course, it works nearly flawlessly. {Mutter mutter mutter.}

• It’s raining here, a soft, gentle rain all night, with temps today in the 70s and ongoing chances for thunderstorms. Fall is i-cumin in, as they say. Nice, and heaven knows the garden can use it.

• Charity folks should be coming today to take away the last of the debris from the garage, which means that tonight, both cars should be parked inside, the first time that’s happened in a year or so. Huzzah!