The weekend Thread

[NWBasser]

Once you get into wooded areas it's much better, but the visibility isn't the best due to snow lingering in the air. BTW it's midday in these vids; best drive only during the day when there's a few hours of 'sun' available, although it stays so low it's almost like evening all the time.

Dee,that looks like lousy visibility through the forest. Don't you have to worry about hitting moose?

[deeaa*]

Dee,that looks like lousy visibility through the forest. Don't you have to worry about hitting moose?

Yeah, or, actually they're Elk here...same animal but the horns slightly different. Higher north also reindeer of course, but those are like under or at 100kg or so and not nearly as dangerous as hitting a full-sized elk that can weigh well over 300kg and they're just perfect height that when you hit one, you sweep it off your feet and get all the mass thru the windshield into the car...very lethal.

It's not bad during the middle of the day like in the video but in the dark it's really a big danger when you can only see what's directly in yer headlights; I've almost hit one myself 3 times and seen some near the road a few more times too...I try to keep it down to 80 whenever it's dark.

[Brian Krashpad]

Brian, that stinks that your daughter couldn't hear the bass. When I'm told to turn down by people outside the band, I'll turn my amp off and pretend to play. Invariably that brings a smile to the requestor and I'll hear something like, "that sounds so nice now." Arrgh.

Since I don't play in church, this is usually the key to put the bass down and get to the beer.

Maybe I'm a bit sensitive on this, but it seems there are lots of musicians that seem to want a bass player....but don't want to actually hear the bass.

The PA we were using was very "edgy," particularly for bass. I had the bass going directly into the power amp, bypassing the mixer, and at one point in the volume sweep it was very low and then within a couple millimeters was too loud. The Music Director's last-minute interruption made it almost impossible to get a perfect level. Hopefully it was hearable in the church, we were behind the mains and there were no monitors so all we could hear was whatever bounced off the back of the room to us.

As it turned out someone took a pic during the song we did as an athem and posted it on facebook, my daughter is obscured by the singer though. You can see her hair behind him, and her headstock. Also in the foreground is my "ghetto" PA:

[NWBasser]

Brian, you went bass< power amp?

That seems like an odd approach. Why not use a mixer channel for more control?

[Brian Krashpad]

Brian, you went bass< power amp?

That seems like an odd approach. Why not use a mixer channel for more control?

There were several reasons. One, the mixer was apparently more made for vocals, and hi-z inputting, than for 1/4-inch inputs. Although each mixer channel did have both types of inputs, I had less success with getting a good level using the lo-z inputs (I used one of the mixer channels for my 12-string and mandolin run direct), and I'm still not sure why.

Also, I did want to use the mixer's reverb on the vocal channels, but when I turned any individual channel's effects pot all the way down, if I had the master effect up for the vocal channels, I was still getting some reverb bleed on the channels that had effects individually turned down. While that was acceptable for the guitar/mando channel, I wanted the bass signal dry.

Another thing is that the "power amp" I was using is in fact is actually a bass head, rather than a traditional PA power amp. (I told you it was "ghetto," haha!) It has 2 totally separate channels, with each channel having it's own tone (bass and treble pots) controls. I wanted the tone at the power amp set one way for the "mid-to-high range" channels, but not necessarily the same way for the bass. So even though by going through the mixer with the bass I would've got an extra set of parameters, I would essentially have been using them to nullify my power amp tone settings, so I wasn't really gaining anything by using the mixer for the bass. It was actually much "cleaner" and less involved to keep the bass out of the mixer and set its tone on the second channel of the bass head/power amp independently.

That probably makes no sense at all on a cold read. But it seemed to work in practice, at least until our genius Music Director decided to stick his nose in at the last second.

[NWBasser]

Oh, this makes so much more sense. I thought you were plugging a bass into a Crest CA9 or similar, which would be strange to say the least.

Come to think of it, I don't think a pure power amp will take an instrument directly without some signal buffering.

[Brian Krashpad]

Oh, this makes so much more sense. I thought you were plugging a bass into a Crest CA9 or similar, which would be strange to say the least.

Come to think of it, I don't think a pure power amp will take an instrument directly without some signal buffering.

Yeah, it was wrong of me to call it that, but I find that being at least a little delusional is helpful when cobbling together what one finds in his garage to do things they sometimes aren't at all meant to do. So if I just "picture it in my mind" as a "power amp," maybe I can use it for one, haha!

[Brian Krashpad]

Folks came into town Thursday, got here late after being run off the road and down an embankment in Georgia. Fortunately they were OK and the car just had cosmetic damage from scraping a fence.

Friday: slept in some, pumped up dad's tire that'd got a slow leak in the accident, went and fetched mom from the tire shop later while dad insisted on waiting on his car. Folks left in the afternoon. Went with the Missus to a small dinner party at our friend Jean's. Unfortunately my taste buds are starting to go from the chemo, and the wonderful food all tasted like cardboard. Left for home when the party then went into it's second phase of going downtown to listen to some bands play on the bandshell until midnight. Went home about 9:30 and crashed.

Saturday: drove down to Orlando to my brother's, with my son (my daughter has some senior year thing with schoolmates, and my wife was doing last minute planning for a UF course she's teaching and picked up at the last minute to help with my medical bills), to see my side of the family, since I'd missed our big Thanksgiving-slash-Christmas (we do Christmas early on that side of the family since, inter alia, my wife's birthday is on Christmas) due to neck surgery. Got there about 10:30 or so. Watched a Man United football match, had some lunch, then watched the Gators beat Penn State. GO GATORS! Got home about 7:30 or 8 p.m. Watched some more football and crashed. Here's me with my folks and siblings out by the pool in Orlando (I'm the oldest of the kids):



Sunday: got to church about 9:30, set-up amp and got tuned up, ran through 2 songs we were doing for 11 a.m. service. Played service, went well, both songs ended with some lead outros by me, so that was fun. We got some compliments, which was good, since the kids spent a whole day the prior week doing a PA re-wire. Saw my friend Laura, who's in a wheelchair, and can only come to church every couple weeks due to her work schedule (she's a nurse or something). A couple weeks before Christmas she'd lost a good friend to suicide, and the night before a different friend had attempted it. She went from church to visit her in the hospital. Got home and rested, did some office work, and watched NFL all day.

[Duffy]

Drove down to N. Carolina from North Central Pennsylvania for a few days and came home on Sunday.

Had a good time visiting Charity's son who is getting out of the Army as a First Sargeant in the one hundred and first airborne. He just got back to his family from Afghanastan. He is done; and will retire now. I guess it gets that way when you have been "over there" seven or eight times. Twenty years and out at thirty nine years old with the decent retirement and major educational benefits.

Took my Michael Kelly cherry sunburst flammed maple top with Rockfield direct mount pickups and my Vox DA five. Re-bonding with the DA five reminded me of how cool that little amp is. Basically a little "Chromie" and kindled in me a desire to get a Chromie VT fifty watt or hundred watt or the AD60VTX I have been wanting and can get at an outrageously low price of two hundred dollars, NOS, at a Guitar Center not too far from here.

Then I got thinking . . . . Thinking yielded some probably good and gaseous thoughts . . . . Why not just get a modeling pedal instead of a new amp. I have a few great new amps. Use the amp and pedal modeler with any amp I want or my PA.

The above line of thought led me to ponder and investigate the Line six HD series modeling units. I have a one hundred dollar off coupon I can use, so I went on the hunt. Found a HD300 and tried it out with an Epi plain top LP, a nice guitar in its own right. Played it for a long fifteen minutes - definitely not long enough to form a good opinion. Going back tomorrow to further explore this basic unit.

Preliminarily, the factory presets held a "few" great patches that I thought were really good, but a lot of the presets were odd ball science fiction sounds, all bovine waste material aside - actually sci-fy and alien models that sounded just that, plus some other totally odd ball patches that would need to be changed around to be cool or useful.

The patches I liked were, definitely, great sounding. I explored some of the dynamics of the ones I liked and found that they actually respond like a tube amp to your picking dynamics and made me wish I had more time before the place closed to find even better patches and sounds and test the unit even more, but the place had to close.

This was the base unit and I'm fairly sure, using the one hundred off coupon, I'd order the HD500 instead of the stripped down 300, like a lot of the smart buyers like Robert and Tig I think, are doing. It has features that are worth the extra money.

I played the 300 with the LP standard thru a brand new Fender Twin Reverb on the normal channel, very clean. All of my playing and listening was done with a friend of mine who is a great salesman there and knows a lot about a lot of gear. We didn't have the advantage of having read the instructions manual, so there were a lot of elements of even this base unit that we were unprepared to investigate. Tomorrow is another day.

I liked the sturdy metal build and high quality switches. The tap tempo footswitch is heavy metal but can easily be pressed down upon with your finger to achieve a rapid rate adjustment if you want to use it in a desk top location. I also liked that I can plug my Vox chrome reissue classic style wah pedal into a secondary expression pedal jack.

The usb jack lets you record directly into your recording program, which is something I would definitely do, as well as interfacing it with my portable Kustom 100 Profile PA for playback and possibly monitoring. You can run the 500 stereo into two separate amps or an amp and a PA which is an aspect I like the idea of. This could be cool. The connectivity is like nothing I have seen with a lot of selection switches and routing options, including an adjustable level mic input.

This unit runs deep, even in the base 300 and has reputedly taken amp and effect modeling to an integrated new level, which I am inclined to believe. I am anxious to explore the unit further and the salesman told me he would get the 400 out of the box and let me explore it. He does not, however, have the 500 in yet but it's on order. I definitely want to try the 400 but will hold out for a 500 for sure.

To me, with my amps and portable PA, I like the idea of getting this awesome pedal. I'm not sure if it will replace my traditional amp/pedal rigs, but it will be another tool.

When I got home I pulled out a Fender strat and my Peavey HP signature super strat humbucker guitar and played them thru my Tweaker rig into my four by twelve cab. The Tweaker is one awesome amp with a lot of tweakability and a tremendous sound.

How do you curb your gas on a pedal like this? . . . . . . I think I will channel it and think it out a little more and probably spend the extra bucks and get the 500 or none at all. At no point will I presume to be able to bring forth the fabulous playing of Robert, but I would expect to post some grooves to the fret via the usb interface. Something I never did with my RP350.

Not getting ahead of myself, my next steps are to play the 400, learn more about the series and eventually play the 500. Hopefully I will be able to get the most out of the units and be able to appreciate the features they have to offer and decide if I think this would make available a high quality expanded range of sonic options, for the cost of no more than a decent amp.

I wonder how many guys are pondering these items? It seems to represent a quantum leap in amp/effects modeling. It appears that line six really came up with something significant here.

Finished up the weekend with some much needed rest, putting stuff away, and enjoying that awesome feeling of being "back home". Playing with the Labradors was a delight for both us and the dogs. They are still following us around "real" close.

Happy New Year everyone! Best wishes to all.

[deeaa*]

Am definitely going to check it out, like I do with pretty much all such gear if possible. However I am also very very happy using Amplitube and I don't really have any need for a modeler just now. Not that it ever stopped me from trying them out or buying and selling 'em now and then...

[Brian Krashpad]

Back from church, evidently given that church bigwigs will be there tomorrow, our whopping 2-3 songs per service got cut to ONE! Grr.
Chilluns, don't get me started.

On the upside, it's a GREAT song [You Are Holy (Prince Of Peace), by Michael W. Smith], and here's the fun part. After the verses, it has one part that has either a chorus or a countermelody. First time through, we [congregation and band] all do the chorus, second time we all do the countermelody.

You can guess what third time is, both together (at least for the band, the congregation will sing the chorus). The kicker is, we have 4 singers, one lead and 3 backing. Obviously (if any of you have ever heard me "sing," haha), I'm one of the backing. Our lead singer will sing the countermelody on the third run-though. Meaning the congregation, which will sing the chorus on that run-through, will be following the 3 of us.

Here's the kicker though, although technically it will in fact be the 3 of us, effectively I'ma hafta step up on that third run-though. Yep, ol' Krash leading the congregation singing, haha. THERE's a scary concept.



Here's why I hafta be da man. Of the other two backing vocalists, one is a girl. She's one of those breathy, whispery singers. Couldn't belt, or even sing at all forcefully, if you put a gun to her head, bless her. The other guy, bless him, is singing in public for (afaik) the first time! He's been taking singing lessons from one of our choir members, his teacher decided he needed to sing in public, and apparently the poor guy is scared shitless.

So, tomorrow should be interesting to say the least, haha!

Plus we are doing a bunch of songs during lunch after church, across the way over in the fellowship hall, and two of them are extreeeeeeeeeeeemely cheesy countryish ones, so I get to "sing country" for my backing vocal on those. Country-punk baybee! What's really fun is that one of them I'd never heard before, so my backing is natural harmony (or as close as I'll ever get to harmony, haha) because my subconscious hasn't been polluted with the melody yet. (As a beginning harmony singer, I find it extremely difficult to not sing melody most of the time, but on this one essentially I just pick what I guess the melody would be from the chord progression, and since my guess is not the actual melody, voila!)

If that makes any sense.

It's fun to really be looking forward to going to church! Plus I talked my daughter into playing bass both during the service and during church, and it's always more fun playing with her.

[Eric***]

What's really fun is that one of them I'd never heard before, so my backing is natural harmony (or as close as I'll ever get to harmony, haha) because my subconscious hasn't been polluted with the melody yet. (As a beginning harmony singer, I find it extremely difficult to not sing melody most of the time, but on this one essentially I just pick what I guess the melody would be from the chord progression, and since my guess is not the actual melody, voila!)

Cool stuff. When I was singing in a choir several years ago, we were supposed to just figure out our parts, and I would just sing the melody 98% of the time. As a bass.

It probably took me a good month before I got the harmony, so I can relate. Some people have an ear for it, but not me.

Hope everything went well today.

[Eric***]

My weekend started a bit early, as I went home from my last week of work at 10:30 on Friday. This was our last week at work before being laid off, so the final day was just hand-in-your-computer-and-severance-agreement time.

I don't think it'll be too big of a deal. I already have one likely job starting next week and just heard about another opening.

That being said, my wife and I went to Minnesota (my homeland) this weekend to surprise my mom for her 60th birthday. My sister, brother-in-law, and niece were there too, so she was pretty happy to see all of us.

Now back in town for some playoff football and goofing off before next week starts.

[Duffy]

Eric,

Didn't know you were from Minnesota. I grew up in Little Falls, discovered girls and live music there, much to my delight.

Watching the Eagles vs Green Bay right now. Important game no matter how you look at it.

Started out the weekend very well with the help and support of Charity: picked out a beautiful Ibanez AF125 hollow body in beautiful amber burst quilted maple top back and sides with awesome details, like extensive abalone, and beautiful flammed maple wooden binding everywhere - top, bottom, back, neck, etc. Plus regular white black white binding under the flammed maple binding. Awesome sounding custom 58 gold plated humbuckers and great tone with real nice electronics, including very useable volume and tone knobs and a three way switch that covers a wide range of complimentary tones within each of the three pickup selections. Awesome five piece neck with beautiful binding and awesome abalone and mother of pearl inlays with smoothly polished frets and low action. The tailpiece is rosewood with a brass bridge and another rosewood bridge in the case if I want to put it on. The tuners are the modern grover style with pearl tuner buttons and they work smoothly and hold tune very well. Had a set of stock D'darrio 11's installed and had it set up at the shop. It plays and sounds as good as it looks. Included is a beautiful grey Ibanez custom hardshell plush lined case. The salesman, a friend of mine, threw in a free set of strings and a ten foot planet waves real nice guitar cable.

This guitar sounds great played thru my Delta Blues with the fifteen inch speaker and my HD500 in between. I am also playing my Cherry Burst Squier strat that I put great sounding Fender Fat 50's pickups in. Thru the HD500 into the Delta Blues the Cherry Burst single coil strat has no hiss, even when turned up; it sounds like a humbucker guitar. I'm very happy with my current rig.

Next I'm going to set up my Kustom Profile 1 PA system and a microphone so Charity can sing thru it while we have fun jamming to some favorite CD's. I'm trying to get her to play along on the Conga drums. She should have a natural ability since she is a very good dancer and has excellent rythym and can sing soulfully well.

Spent the rest of the weekend installing new woodwork around the doors and windows upstairs. Made the trim out of pine that we custom cut with our table saw and stained golden oak.

Last night we designed and built a beautiful four foot long shelf in the bathroom using a twelve by one inch shelf board screwed into a two by eight backing board underneath it, supported by triangles of two by eight cut at fourty five degree angles on our miter saw and screwed to the shelf and back boards for real good strength. Stained it golden oak and mounted the old towel rack directly under it on a backing board screwed with three inch screws into the studs, like the shelf; onto which we screwed the old towel rack, centered under the shelf. Picked up some twin claw hooks to screw into the shelf's back board for hanging clothes and towels off of. The shelf will give us way more storeage for towels and wash cloths. It will be nice to be able to hang clothes and towels off the hooks as well.

We are also working on a new bathroom downstairs with a bathtub, no shower, for luxuriating.

The woodstove we put in during the fall has paid for itself and its stainless steel thru the roof chimney system and wood already this year and Winter is just beginning. Plus we get a thirty per cent tax refund for the purchase price for installing an energy efficient wood stove.

Our inside projects will keep us busy for the rest of the Winter.

I will spend the rest of the weekend with the woodwork and playing guitar.

[bigoldron]

Back from church, evidently given that church bigwigs will be there tomorrow, our whopping 2-3 songs per service got cut to ONE! Grr.
Chilluns, don't get me started.

On the upside, it's a GREAT song [You Are Holy (Prince Of Peace), by Michael W. Smith], and here's the fun part. After the verses, it has one part that has either a chorus or a countermelody. First time through, we [congregation and band] all do the chorus, second time we all do the countermelody.

---

It's fun to really be looking forward to going to church! Plus I talked my daughter into playing bass both during the service and during church, and it's always more fun playing with her.

Hey I love that song Brian! I had the youth band working on it a while back but 2 of my singers quit, so that sorta knocked it in the head for now. But it IS a cool song!

I hate that about getting cut to one song too. We stopped playing for the whole month of December. Finally got started back practicing last week, but I wasn't even there today for our first performance of the new year.

But I was thinking about you this morning. We took College Girl back to school yesterday and spent the night there last night so we could go to church with her this morning. Our former pastor attends a very, upright "high church" Baptist church only a 1.5 miles from her dorm. So, my wife wanted us to go there to "check it out". I knew what was coming...

Sure enough, it was about as "old school high church" as it gets. It was a flash back (a bad one...) to 25 years ago at our church. The ministers all wore black robes with white stoles and all the music was very high church. One young girl (one of the FEW young ones) sang a beautiful song, but again it was a classical number. And NOBODY dared clap when she finished. I was really uncomfortable there. I knew it's story, but an usher came up to us before church and told us the story about how the church had split a few years earlier and built a second "vineville baptist" across town where all the "young folks" go.... I knew right then we were in trouble... LOL

Anyway we got my daughter situated and we got back home a few hours before the rain and sleet started. Kinda messy here. Rain, snow and sleet are all over Georgia and the rest of the Southeast. So tomorrow will be a fun day...

[Brian Krashpad]

Sounds like everybody had a good weekend!

Duffy: congrats on the guitar! Pics!

Eric: Yeah, I still mainly sing unison. Harmony is going to be a lonnnnnnnnng process with me. At this point, harmony is basically when I stumble on something that works, haha. I think it's a reasonable goal to be able to do, but unless I "get professional help" (I must note that I am advised to do that on almost a daily basis) it'll be slow going. But fun.

Ronnie Beth: man that's sad about that church, it reminds me of ours for sure, we still have clergy, acolytes, crucifers, communion assistants, and choir all in robes. I'm surprised they don't want the band in robes. At least on paper we have one "blended" service, but it's ridiculous that a church 5 blocks from a major land-grant university doesn't even have one all-contemporary Sunday service.

***

The song in church went well enough. What I didn't realize was that it was an "anthem"-- in other words, the congregation was not singing along. So it was just the 4 of us singing; when we split to do the countermelody portion, it was our one good singer doing the one vocal part, and the other 3 of us doing the other part. I wish I could've heard it from downstairs in the sanctuary, impossible to tell what everyone heard from up where we were (we play up in the choir loft). Though I'd be a little scared to hear it from down there, too, haha.

Oh well, sfaik no one died.

After church there was a lunch and "chili cook-off" over in the fellowship hall, so we had to bolt from church and get set up over there. We did another five songs, interspersed throughout lunch, and then repeated the one we did in church. Apparently our pro tem praise team leader led the Music Director (who is also the organist and choir director) to believe that we would play "acoustically," but in fact both guitarists used unmic'd amps and Teles (the other guy's was a HH spalted maple top, mine my butterscotch '52 RI):



So I guess the Music Director was pissed at us again. Man, I've just decided that if he ISN'T pissed at us, we're doing something wrong. The volume would've been no different had we used acoustic-electrics direct to the PA, so why should he care? Man just hates electric guitars, methinks.

Yesterday evening I had a practice with my "church" side band, Pedagogy, the one led by our ex-praise team leader. That band used to be a trio, mainly keyboards with a rhythm section, with me on bass. The leader had me switch to guitar, with my daughter added to the band and playing bass. Up until now I'd been really kinda lost at trying to make guitar work with that band.

Last night, though, finally clicked. I used the same '52 RI Tele I'd used at the chili cookoff, and my Super Champ XD into my Sunn 200S and a 2x12, which I've decided should be my rig with that band. It totally rocked, and with the possibility of lead guitar on some songs it really brings the overall energy level up a lot, because before it was all pretty contemplative. I'm really looking forward to gigging with the 4-piece version of the band now, especially since my daughter is a member now too.

So Sunday was a good day of music-playin'!

[Duffy]

Krash,

Sounds like your music director is more like your Music Inquisitor. Maybe you should come out with robes on and set up right up in front, rock music style. I'm sure that would be sacreligious.

Some of these church people just plain don't want to see amps and drums and guitar cords, guitars, etc. taking a significant role in their cultural religious ceremony; which is a little strange, because the church going demographic is changing. It's not all old people anymore, a lot of the people grew up with rock music and are parents, etc. now. So I would think the generational gap with the old people is significantly eroded as time has gone by. Maybe that minority of older people controls the motion in the church, but I doubt it. I think the resistance to rock music, etc., is coming from a cultural angle, where the younger generation, influenced by rock music, is compartmentalizing the appropriate places for rock music and is resistant to allowing it to flourish in church settings. Almost every church I have heard of has open resistance against rock type music groups performing in church - or at least they do everything they can to minimalize them. On the other hand they will play CDs and DVDs of heavily rocked up music over their AV systems and everyone is gleeful. I think it's a visual thing, seeing what looks like a rock band actually set up in church flips the negative resistant switches in their psyche. Therefore, you show up out of sight in the loft, are told to play only one song, told to play only acoustic guitars - probably with the assumption that you won't bring amps, etc.

The contemporary service is a possible solution, but it serves to split the congregation. Maybe one solution will be to find or form whole new churches that are more contemporary in their fundamental structure, not based upon inflexible traditions and expectations, such is the case with many churches, denomonational organizations, such and such -ist conventions, etc. So when the heirarchy shows up many of the leadership figures scramble to cave in to whatever the suspected expectations may be, and they are probably usually wrong in their assumptions.

I think most churches actually want to be more "forward" looking and want to draw in contemporary and prospective members from younger groups. The function and responsibility of the rock band type presence in the church is a major element in reaching out to new members, along with great youth groups and other interesting activities.

I don't think it is fair to you guys in the bands that are literally pouring your souls into your church efforts, to be minimalized and not paid your deserved respect. It's like they are doing you a favor to let you play there, against some kind of unspoken odds.

Good luck to all you guys that are trying so hard and probably don't feel very appreciated.

[bigoldron]

I don't think it is fair to you guys in the bands that are literally pouring your souls into your church efforts, to be minimalized and not paid your deserved respect. It's like they are doing you a favor to let you play there, against some kind of unspoken odds.

Good luck to all you guys that are trying so hard and probably don't feel very appreciated.

Thanks Duffy! We're gonna keep on plugging and playing, because we're gonna get even with them by outliving them.... LOL

[Brian Krashpad]

Thanks Duffy! We're gonna keep on plugging and playing, because we're gonna get even with them by outliving them.... LOL

Haha, yeah, that's the plan, man!

It would be nice to be appreciated, and some people do, but more importantly, it's really important for the survival of many churches for them to offer a meaningful worship experience to their younger parishioners. I fear that our particular congregation is being peculiarly short-sighted in not having at least one fully-contemporary Sunday service to offer. As much as I grew up with traditional church music, fewer and fewer people have done so. They are simply not going to be comfortable with a bunch of men in floor-length gowns preaching in between attempting to sing hard-to-sing, old hymns played on a pipe organ.

Our prior church (same denomination, mind you, across town) had a full contemporary service for some ten years while I was there. My wife can no longer get excited about services filled with pipe organ music, even if a couple bones are thrown to modernity along the way, and I can't really blame her.

Sigh. Practice in the choir loft at 10 a.m. tomorrow!