Ping

Yes, it's been a month. And yes, I'm still here. I just haven't been inspired to write lately — and I've been too busy to, at that. I think tomorrow is the first day in a month where I have no plans to do anything. And I'm looking forward to it like you wouldn't believe. (Heck, I desperately wanted to play hooky today to get the laziness started off right — but my sense of duty and responsibility kicked in first.)

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Last weekend was "concert weekend," with OGC presenting shows Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Though this seemed to be a big-time audience favorite, I have to say it wasn't my favorite. Some of the songs grew on me, and I'll admit this rehearsal season was a roller-coaster for me. But being able to come home and relax this past Wednesday night instead of rushing downtown for rehearsal, was a glorious feeling. And now, about a week after the show, I feel I can finally listen to Christmas music without wanting to hurl — we've been rehearsing since the last week of August.

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I've never shopped for Hanukkah cards before, so I never realized how many Christmas-and-Hanukkah cards there are. In fact, there were more of those than there were un-sappy Hanukkah-only cards. I'm not sure whether that's a recognition of increasing numbers of multi-faith relationships, political correctness gone awry, or a holiday way of saying, "you say potato, I say potatoe."

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Yes, I'm on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace — sorta. I can barely keep up with this here Blogger thingy these days, so please don't take offense if I'm not responding to your invitations, pings, comments and the like. "It's not you, it's me." I'm tending to do a bit more nesting-on-the-couch time these days and less keeping up with the electronic realms. I even (GASP) turn off the cell phone every night now, and leave it in the other room, along with the company-issue digital leash BlackBerry. (In fact, I even turned off both company-sanctioned IM programs at work so I could focus on, oh, I don't know, WORK.)