tee-hee.

sometimes it’s fun to pretend to be a music student, even though i’m just sitting here in the souped-up computer lab listening to the mars hillbillies through gigantic koss headphones and typing on a mac keyboard that’s pulled out from underneath a real keyboard. *sings* all creatures of our God and King, lift up your voice and with us sing…

have you ever listened to any of francis poulenc’s music? the calvary choir is singing his “vinea mea electa” in a few weeks and it’s beautiful. one thing i love about calvary is the sense of ritual and ceremony and theme. all the pieces for sunday, the feast of st. michael, reflect the theme of God’s presence and blessing, which i think is particularly apt for september when every student i know (including myself) needs to be reminded of that. God inhabits locus iste — this place — this time — this season. and there is something essential in it for us all, whether or not it be the most enjoyable season of our lives right now. we’re in it, and He’s in it.

i love having plans for the weekend. even if there aren’t any plans, superb things usually happen, but the beauty of plans is that you get the fun of anticipating those superb things. so this saturday morning, nick and i (and maybe brandon and jared, if they want to tag along – they’re coming out from martinsburg tomorrow night) are going dragonboating!

here is a dragon boat.

pittsburgh has a
sister city in japan that sent us several of them. the sport resembles
crew, but in a boat that looks like a dragon. .:. infinitely cooler.
 and we get to try it for free, since our friend jonathan (who’s
from liverpool and works for the pittsburgh symphony and gets to pal
around with artists like lang lang) and his girlfriend sarah (who’s
just peachy) actually teach dragonboating. and — which is reason enough for rejoicing — there’s a big breakfast afterwards! for free!

i can’t think of any good concluding sentence, so you’ll just have to do without.