Choir Gone Wild

Last night, the choir that I sang with until recently planned and event at one of the local malls, the Roseville Galleria. Back in October there was a major incident at the mall... a man walked in with a backpack, held up a store and set fire to the store. The fire raged out of control, amid reports of the backpack holding explosives. Long story short, there's still a significant portion of the mall that is not open due to fire damage. SCSO had planned to show up at the food court to sing the Hallelujah Chorus and then disperse to shop, eat, whatever. The goal was to bring more people to the mall and generate some revenue, while spreading a little Christmas cheer.

Apparently, a lot of people showed up. A lot. Reports range from a few hundred to five thousand. Needless to say, the mall was packed. Probably not what anyone expected. At one point, someone claims to have heard the floor crack and rumble (they were on the second story, near the food court). This was followed by a flurry of calls to 911. The mall was evacuated and shut down so that structural engineers could evaluate the safety of the foundation and flooring.

Now, I am the first person to tell you that I am 100% committed to safety. Do I think that it was right to disperse the crowd last night? Yes. Do I think they needed police helicopters and to shut down the entire mall? No. I also don't like the use of the term "flash mob". By definition, a flash mob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual act for a brief time, then disperse. Examples of this are when 200 people flooded the lobby of a Hyatt hotel in New York, applauded for 15 seconds and then dispersed, all without the hotel's knowledge. SCSO had planned this event out with the Galleria and had advertised it on their web site. To me, that's definitely not the same thing.

Mike and I had a discussion about this last night... If I own a bar and I invite a band to come play, I'm responsible for making sure that I don't have more people than I have capacity for. If I know the fire code says fifty people and two hundred show up, as the owner of that business, I am responsible for making sure that I maintain safety. I honestly don't see how the Galleria Mall situation is any different.

Here's the link to the Sac Bee's story.

In other news, take a look at director Don Kendrick in the pictures and video - he looks like he's in all his glory! What a cool thing, to have that many people come out to sing and listen! I love that people are so willing to share the Christmas spirit, even if it didn't turn out exactly how it was planned!

Update: now it's made it to CNN!

Recovery

Today was a day of recovery. One of yet another million signs that I'm not 18 anymore... after just two days of singing, I'm exhausted. Granted, they were a crazy two days, but still. The shows went really well. I was so excited that so many of my friends and family came out to see me sing. This year was a record - I had  six people at the first show and fourteen at the second! I can't even begin to describe how much it means to me to have familiar faces in the audience. I know that classical music is not everyone's up of tea and I know economic times are tight. It's even more meaningful this year. My favorite part of the show has to be the audience sing-a-long. They turn up the house lights, so I can actually see the people (normally it's dark and the stage lights are sort of blinding). Everyone seems to really get into this part and it's so cool to hear a thousand people singing back at you (I know, it's my nerdy version of being a rock star) and to see how happy everyone looks!

This morning I headed over to mom and dad's for breakfast (hooray for hashbrown cassarole and french toast cassarole) and then came up to Mike's. To apparently take a two and a half hour nap. I'm such a fun girlfriend. After that it was time for a little grocery shopping, followed by delicious chicken fajitas. Tonight is a night of football and Wii tournaments. Woo hoo!

All Hyped Up And Nowhere To Go

As poor Mike can attest to, when I get done with just about anything that I'm passionate about, I tend to call him on the drive home and babble on and on about how fantastic it was. It's like my own little personal version of drugs... go out and do something I love, then come home on a "high".

Tonight is no exception. You see, tomorrow is the Sacramento Choral Society's two Christmas shows for the year, so tonight was the dress rehearsal. After a long three and a half hours of singing, here I am at 11:30pm... nowhere near tired. Tomorrow is going to be another long day, so I know I should be sleeping now, but I just plain don't feel like laying down yet. While rehearsal wasn't that great (you know what they say - bad rehearsal, great show), it still got me all excited for tomorrow!

I do have to say, it's going to be a wonderful show. Christmas is one of my favorites. It's generally much easier music than we normally do, but it really connects with the audience. The audience sing-a-long is one of my favorite parts... it's so cool to stand on stage and have a thousand people singing right back at you. People just look happy when they're at the Christmas show! If you're interested in coming, there are two shows, one at 2pm and the other at 8pm. We're singing at the UC Davis Mondavi Center and you can buy your ticket at the box office!

I'm off to try to get some sleep!

Wow!

What a week! I seriously feel like I've been in a tornado for the last week and then tonight (just now) it spit me out. Now I don't know what to do with myself!

Thursday and Friday nights I had my dress rehearsals. They went pretty well. A couple of sour notes, but over all, not too bad. Adam and Eva and Oma came out on Friday night and the weekend went into full effect. We had so much fun!

First things first. Friday night when I get home from rehearsal the whole gang was there. Eva has what looks like a donut box. She tells me no Christmas is complete without Ginger Bibbys®. At this point a little light bulb goes on in my head. She spent all day on Friday making me the most amazing ginger bread cookies that were decorated like Mike Bibby. They're so awesome that I'm even taking one into work to show it off tomorrow. She went through a whole design process and had several prototype Bibbies until she got the perfect one. HOLY CRAP!!!



And she even made little Ginger Nanners® (my nickname) to go with the Ginger Bibby®!


In addition to that, they gave me the gold Bibby jersey for Christmas... I LOVE IT! :)

Saturday was a day of fun. We woke up to go to Jazzercise, Eva almost ruined a poor little kid's dream of Santa because there was a Santa's workshop instead of jazzercise, we went to Target, had lunch with mom and got to see her awesome shop, and then went to the concert. It turned out really well (in my completely unbiased opinion) and I think everyone had a lot of fun. One of the coolest parts for me was the audience sing along. It was amazing to hear 3,900 people singing back at me!!! Adam and Eva were hilarious to watch - Eva was holding her music at the precise angle and they just looked like they were having a blast.

Today we did the lay around. Had a yummy breakfast and took a long nap. Holy cow, I was so tired from the whole weekend! Went to church, had dinner with a friend and here I am, blogging away. I think it's bed time now. Good night!

All in all, it was a great weekend. I had so much fun with the family!

Coupons, Concerts and Comas

First things first: Did you know that Target has a COUPON BOOK? Yes, you read that correctly. Somehow, one ended up on my desk at home today (my hunch is it came from Mom). It's about a quarter of an inch thick and has all kinds of goodies in it. Goodies that I probably don't need, but will now buy because I have a coupon for them. And, to make it even cooler, it's a flip book, so you can watch little Spot, the Target dog, do his thing.

On to the concert part. Tonight we got our music for our "Home For The Holidays" concert. HOLY COW. Amazing music. It's more like a Boston Pops show than anything else. I guarantee it will be amazing! Email me if you want tickets - I can get them for you without the extra fees! (Adam and Eva, see your email)

This ice/heat thing on the knee is getting old. In fact, the whole knee thing is getting old. After the broken foot fiasco, I'm getting pretty tired of having my right leg elevated. I want to run, darn it. Tomorrow I think I'm going to give swimming a try. We'll see how that goes. The saving grace there will be the spa, I think.

Finally, I have a funny snippet from an email a friend sent me (said friend will remain anonymous as I haven't asked permission). This cracked me up:

 

"I've decided that dating sucks so bad that we would be better off if we just went into a coma and waited for some guy to visit the hospital, fall madly in love, slip a ring on our fingers and we'd be engaged when we woke up. Think about it. Everyone knocks Sleeping Beauty and all those fairytales as anti-feminist, blah blah because the chick has to be "saved" by a man, blah blah. Actually...that's like my dream scenario. You have a big giant dinner, stuff your face, dessert, some wine, oops! prick your finger, fall asleep, and when you wake up some handsome prince is hovering over you saying "I killed the dragon, marry me". Sleeping Beauty didn't have to walk through grocery stores for most of her twenties feeling like shark bait clinging to a life-raft watching creepy dudes look at her. Sleeping Beauty didn't have to try and figure out which guys were more like Prince William and which guys were more like Scott Peterson, which of her first dates were married, gay, sociopaths, serial killers, etc. She wasn't accused by the Prince of "miscommunication" or "reading into things" because she was kind of... in a coma."

 

Seriously funny. Thank you, anonymous friend, you made my day!

Choir

Oh my gosh.

Everyone at some point in their life needs to join a 200 person choir. It's taken me the last 24 hours to collect my thoughts on last night's rehearsal. It was absolutely AMAZING! I have never sung with such a large group of people before and was amazed at how the director ran his rehearsal. No one talked in between when he was talking about changes and there was no plunking of parts. For those of you who don't know what "plunking" is, it's basically where you have to stop rehearsal to play one part out on the piano so someone can get it. Everyone just sight read (meaning it was the first time they had seen the music but were able to sing it correctly just by looking at it). Completely amazing. The biggest test is how quiet a choir can sing. It's very easy to get a loud sound from such a large group, but to get a quiet, in tune sound is much more difficult. This group was great. Let me put it this way, I could have sang louder by myself on the quiet parts than the whole choir did. Absolutely amazing.

Maybe I haven't collected my thoughts since all I can seem to say is amazing...

Massages, Auditions and Babies

What a crazy title, huh?

First things first. I had my first massage yesterday. It was AMAZING! No, they didn't put any of the scrub "there". The only slightly odd thing was that the girl who did it was a girl I went to high school with. Ahh, the joys of moving back to your hometown. Anyways, it was so nice to be treated like a princess for a little while! They gave me a warm footbath, then used the vanilla/orange sea salt scrub to make my skin soft and then massaged in the shea butter. Very nice. If I were rich, I would do it too.

After the massage I had an audition for the Sacramento Choral Society! I couldn't believe it... I had emailed the director earlier in the morning and he called that afternoon to see if I could come in that night. I sang one of my German arias and an Italian aria. He was impressed and invited me to join! Woo hoo! They do one big tour every year or so - this year it's to China! How cool is that!?

Finally, tonight I went and saw Billy's brand new baby, Samuel Aden. Holy cow, the kid is cute. I'm convinced he's gonna be a singer - he has a set of pipes! No really, he was absolutely adorable and Billy and Barb look really good. I was so happy to see them all!

After that I went to the gym and ran 4 miles. It's the first time in a long time I've been able to run like that. Not the greatest of times, but it was 4 miles none-the-less. I feel so much better when I run distance! I just find a pace that I feel like I could run at for hours and stick to that pace until the end. Then in the last minute or two I turn it up to a sprint. Seriously, it feels great!

Ok, I'm off to bed. Peace.