Raleigh Ringers in my weekly Ticketmaster newsletter email

Like wow, I am totally geeked-out excited by that, how cool! :)

Had a fabulous weekend out on tour with The Raleigh Ringers. We played a concert Saturday north of Baltimore in Maryland, and one outside of Richmond, Virginia on Sunday. The two were both great experiences!
Friday night on the way up, one of our members ended up trying to help a lady break into her car with a hanger... we sacrificed another lady's costume hanger for this, but weren't able to open the car before we had to get back on the road... luckily, someone was on the way to help her.
Saturday we played at a church, to a crowd of ~600 or more. They were very enthusiastic and responsive! I talked to several sweet older ladies afterward ... one was like "I was watching you, I play your same bells. You're really good!" Another said "I'm 83 and I've been playing bells for 4 years now and it's so much fun!" I said, good for you for picking up a new hobby, that is awesome! Some girls came up to me as I was taking inventory of some of our sales stuff, and one of them said "They say I look like you!" I said, true, we both have the long blond hair, etc.. it was cute! We heard that parties had come from Youngstown, OH, as well as West Virginia to attend this Maryland show!
Sunday we were hosted by a church, and the concert was in the neighboring high school auditorium. The hosting church was so sweet, served us a sit-down lunch of fried chicken & awesome vegetables, blackberry cobbler mmm, we almost wanted to go into food comas instead of go perform after that! There were some really sweet people, everyone enjoyed the show so much. The sweetest thing was after the concert, when we let anyone from the audience who wants to to come up on stage and talk with us, see/play our music and instruments, and ask questions, etc. There was a mom with her two daughters, and one of her daughters was in a wheelchair. That girl was named Anna and she was getting each of the Ringers to sign her autograph book. At the end, she was talking to a few of us and made us count several times to make sure she had gotten each one of our signatures. Her mom said that she is so into us, and that everyone who comes to their house has to watch one of our videos on youtube because Anna says "this is so amazing, you have to see this." Her mom said that she had just lost her job two weeks ago and wasn't sure she'd be able to buy the tickets to the concert, and how she didn't know how she could tell her daughter that they couldn't go, but that then she won 2 tickets on the radio and so she only had to buy one, so she said "I guess God wanted us to come to your concert!" It was... really touching! Talking to all the people who love our music and getting to do what I love to bring joy to people makes me feel so blessed to be able to do this. It's an amazing thing, and I hope to enjoy it for as long as I can!

So excited! The weather outside has been gorgeous. Duke is going to the Final Four (even if I'm lame and I'm not even though it's in IN)! Meredith is here, and things are going well with her with work and with friends! hehe. Things are going great with me with friends etc.! It's Easter this weekend, always a wonderful time to remember! And Melissa is coming with her fam the weekend after that!!! :) So excited for all this great stuff, I'm very fortunate!

Pride & Prejudice still has its place, but I now think that crack-for-women is watching your boyfriend work on a car in his work shirt... sweeet! 8-)

How do you practice handbells at home without your own set?
Well, let me tell you. When you are a newbie to a crazy-good new group and feel the expected trepidation, you take home your music, copy it, highlight all over the copy, and get an mp3 file to listen to from the recordings guru. Then it's time to sit on the floor and practice with spoons. Currently, laid out around me on the floor, I have:
4 big spatulas
1 plastic whisk
1 plastic spoon
1 large flat cake spreader thingy
1 serving spoon
1 regular spoon
1 serving fork
1 regular fork
I then sit and listen over and over and stop and start and correct and beat these various implements on the floor and my shoulders and wave them in the air like I'm really playing. It would be a pretty strange scene to walk in on unawares.
Each of these implements represents a specific piece / instrument that I am expected to keep track of and play at just the right time... Usually at any given time I'll have 3 of the above things in my hands. No pressure, though...
Oh, and this is just one song of an approx. 20-song lineup that we're learning for April concerts. Let the peeing of the pants commence.

Sometimes, I wonder what in the world is really going on in my subconscious mind... last night I dreamed about catheter-related bloodstream infections and walking to France. In the first section, I was at a hospital with a group of people and I think that we were going to watch a procedure on or talk to my friend's dad. However, the doctor informed us that he had a catheter-related infection and was not doing well and so we could not see him. In something that would only make sense to my Cook friends, I asked him if he used a Spectrum catheter and he said no, he used some other company's antibiotic coated catheter, as opposed to this antibiotic inpregnated one. He said it was cheaper and I remember actually screaming at him that the Spectrum catheter had a 2 mm zone of inhibition (I think my dream made that up) with no resistance developed in any of the literature studies (I think that part's real) and that if it could have prevented this, it would have been worth the extra money. Why do I dream about things like that?
Later after this eventful visit, I dreamed that I was going with my friend Betsy and some others to France, where she's doing her study abroad, only... we were planning to walk. I was confused by this and how we were planning to get there the same day, and was kind of cranky because I figured we'd be pretty darn tired from all that walking. Somehow I learned that there was a place up north where France was really close to the US, and that we were going to cross there over a bridge or something (what the heck?!?), but that still made me cranky because we were going to have to walk up the whole East Coast in one afternoon and that sounded like hard work.
So strange...

So, everyone who knows me knows that I am a geek for science, math, guys in glasses, owls, all things Chi O, and handbells. Today I'm humbled and excited to share that I auditioned for and got a spot for next year's Raleigh Ringers, which to me is pretty much the top group I could be in! I've known of this group since I was a little girl and watched their television Christmas specials on PBS. My handbell directors & teachers always spoke of the Raleigh Ringers with esteem, and if any of my groups ever tackled a really super challenging song, chances are it was commissioned by/for Raleigh Ringers. When my bell group was gearing up for a tour in Russia, we went to go see RR in Indianapolis, on their week-long summer tour! I never thought that I'd end up here, in this area, and actually be able to have a spot in this group!

I know it's going to take a lot of time, and I'm going to have to work hard to get to the level of the veteran members of the group. But I'm excited, and ready to work hard! I'm still on an emotional high tonight. It's been a great week!!
www.rr.org - we could be coming to a city near you this year!!!

After an often frustrating day and first week of the new year, tonight I reached for the good stuff... no, not hard liquor... the crack-for-women of all chick flicks, Pride & Prejudice. It doesn't matter that I know the fictional story and idealistic romance is unrealistic and even unhealthy... sometimes it is just what you need.

I usually consider that I'm a fairly patient person. I will stand in the line at the store for ages behind a difficult person with their price check or returns and never get snappy with the cashier... I was a math & science phone tutor for 4 years for heaven's sake ... I don't know if anything else has tested my patience in quite that way. Yet when it comes to the condition that is being young and single it is a constant struggle for me to be patient. No matter how much I can direct myself with my logical side to not worry or care, that 'obsessing' or worrying is detrimental, it still hurts my heart sometimes and I guess I've just been acutely aware of it in the past week or so.

Do you know, it's an interesting thing that moving to an area with many educated young people, as this Triangle is, should open the doors to more opportunities, and certainly I think that's true. It's also true, though, that the 'competition,' if you will, is tougher. A nice guy can actually meet a girl at a bar who's a gorgeous, outgoing, med student, or PhD candidate from some Ivy League school. We can't just assume that things will go well by virtue only of our not being bimbos, here.

On a better note, I'm really lucky and fortunate to have wonderful friends here and also in places far away. I got to talk to Krystal last night (yay, Krystal) which was great. I got to catch up with a ton of Indiana friends, and family, over my wonderfully long Christmas break, and that was wonderful! Ultimately, these things are lasting and are the most important things, and I am deeply grateful for all of these friends and for my family. January, I suppose, is always just hard.. cold, the holiday lights come down, it's always dark... :) But that's why they make chick flicks and warm blankets.