There should be a required course in culinary college:

ArchEngr 642: The sandwich This course covers basic and advanced sandwich design, with special emphasis on strength of materials, coefficients of friction, the fallibility of imaginary support, and the toothpick.

'Nuff said about that.

Hm. I should try to remember to bring the guitar in to the repair guy that's been recommended. A bit of stumming and some fingerpicking really is a remarkably easy way to get a tune down, if one were inclined to do some mfc-ing.

The rehearsal last night went remarkably well, given how difficult it's been to get this far. This is good, because there's only one more before the gigs. Maybe it's the forgiving acoustic of the church, vs. a classroom where we usually practice, or maybe we've actually mostly learned the music (finally).

In related news, the director brought along her new toy: a 1x2 inch microphone attachment for an iPod that makes it into a recording machine. Her previous mini-disk recorder was, well, lemme just say it had delusions of adequacy. This is very cool.

I should look into some voice lessons, or something. What I really need to know is how to learn vocal music between rehearsals, when I can't hear how my part fits into the harmony. The problem with early (vocal) music is that it's intended to be performed in some kind of just intonation, with true, 3-to-2 frequency ratio, fifths. And likewise for other intervals. Which implies differently sized half-steps, and an E flat may or may not be the same E flat as the last one, depending on who else is doing what. Needless to say, if you learn it by banging it out on a piano (which is tuned to equal temperament, all half steps the same size), you tend to be off on the intervals.

And when the intervals click, it's really fabulous. There's an effect that I've noticed, in my case, between tenor and soprano voices, when the two parts are written to be an octave plus a fifth apart, in a 3:1 frequency ratio. If they're properly tuned, it's really sweet, and the other voice excites the harmonic resonances in my head.

If you take my meaning...

Anyway. Working with this director has been a frustrating experience. Maybe voice lessons would teach me enough of the terminology she assumes we know that I wouldn't have to translate it to terms an ordinary rocket scientist can understand, ponder resonances and waves and stuff, and then wonder what all else I missed while I was figuring out what that was all about.

Eight days to the $evil_project deadline. I hope the team makes it through.

When cooking, I find I do fine with baking kinds of things, because it's chemistry; you follow the recipe exactly, and it's fine. I do less well with "add some water and see what it looks like" or "reduce over low heat until it's thick enough." Or, as my grandmother's molasses cookie recipe said, "add flour until the spoon will stand in the dough."

I also find that I can remember about 4 dishes. New things we try push out old ones. So, when reminded of something I've done before, I can allow as how I'd like to try it again, there's no way I'd think of it on my own. Perhaps I should come up with a private web page or something, with a list of stuff we do that's easy and tasty, so I don't forget about what we haven't had recently. And links to the recipes, of course.

In a similar vein, I think toxicfur has told me about the movie Pan's Labyrinth at least 10 times now. I can remember the title while she's talking. When she stops, it fades rapidly. Looks like a cool movie, actually. I hope it's going to stay long enough that we can go see it after deadline (AD). Especially as this coming weekend is occupied by gig-stuff (for me) and $evil_project (for toxicfur).

Oh, right. We should maybe sign the dog up for a playgroup or two a week, with the dog walker/day care person who does the two dogs who live across the street. We don't seem to be doing the walking thing nearly often enough.

And speaking of the dog, we got him a tennis ball with a squeaker inside. He absolutely loooooves it. To the point that he carries it around for an hour at a time, squeaking it, until it's so soggy that it sort of goes sploodge on the floor when he drops it.