Explain to me why the New York Times reader takes forever to load when Manybooks.net can download the entire War and Peace in under 20 seconds to my computer. This is why newspapers and music distributors are dieing, they are unable to effectively transform themselves in a radically changing environment. 

Well that’s off my chest. 

Ran across the above site. If you click on the pic, it will take you to a 20 minute video that teaches about the futile chain of production and waste in our world. I watched about half of it and thought it was cool.

Mondays continue to be the day that the backwash of silly stuff like my own lack of abilities and others’ behaviors runs through my head. This is not pleasant. 

My wife could not muster attending church yesterday. I told her later it was a good day to miss because the many of the people in the choir were anxious and grumpy and oblivious.

Anxiety seems to turn down people’s ability to pay attention. I also had several people who have missed many rehearsals come in and ask obvious questions that I have answered over and over. I also have people who will ignore the fact that I am the director and trying to do stuff that requires a bit of completion before I can address their concerns. But this is all the usual stuff. What’s different is that I have lost patience in the midst of my own burn out and stress. Hopefully it wasn’t the controlling factor yesterday. But I know it was showing. 

I came out of the stressful pregame and didn’t play the prelude piece, “Rhosymedre”  by V. Williams, as well as I can and have on other occassions. But the rest of my playing was pretty good. I do like playing hymns. I think its a matter of something I can do but am not totally drawn to.  The anthem (Tree of Life by V. Williams) went pretty well. My pregame rehearsal helped it I am sure. But I am not happy with the blend of the choir. People skip rehearsals and then sing loud on sunday morning. It could be worse because they don’t sound as bad as your usual church choir. But there is no sense of over all choral sound to my ear. 

The postlude was the musical highlight of the day for me. It was the first time I had performed “Bryn Calafaria” by V. Williams and it is a lovely piece really. Of course it was a bit hard to hear because I refuse to completely over register it on my small little organ. But it was still nice.

I came home and made a Mother’s day meal for my wife and Mom. I cleverly used a bunch of food we had to take from Mom’s old apartment. This is good because she had a lot of easily prepared stuff like frozen corn, frozen chicken cordon bleu (for her and Eileen), and weird microwave brownies. I also made rice and had my own veggie fast food: a pouch of red bean curry. The best food was the potato salad I had made earlier in the morning before going to church.

My Mom’s ride to church didn’t show so she called me and I took her to the Presbyterian church.

I asked her to say hi to God for me because I didn’t think he was talking to me much these days. Today I have to run my Mom to the doctor and attend a Worship Commission meetingat church. I am thinking of driving to Grand Rapids and buying an electric adaptor for our England vacation. 

I am sincerely hoping I can stay plugged in to the Internet while we are there.

One person this week responded to my comment that he could find the lectionary online that he was not addicted to the internet. I cheerfully replied that I was. I found this extremely ironic because the man is a retired professor. I guess he has opted not to utilize the enormous online resources.

Ever since purchasing my silly little treadmill I have gotten up early and walked for 30 minutes not including a 5 minute warm up and a 5 minute warm down. No heart attack so far.

I did manage to practice the difficult Messiaen piece I am planning for Pentecost yesterday.

Also have another meeting with my friend Jordan tomorrow. Nice to have a bit of sanity planned. 

Of course I get on the plane Wednesday to get the heck out of Dodge. I’m still a bit too numb to look forward to it yet, but I know it will be good.

I am planning to do some ascerbic reading on my vacation. Pondering reading some Irvine Welsh or Martin Amis. Who knows?