Nota bene ("note well," for all you non-Latin scholars)

For all of you who like to use live bookmarks and have been mad at me for having a live bookmark that has failed to load for about a month, please note that you need to change the location of your live bookmark to http://www.supermaren.com/atom.xml, or just delete it and recreate it (if you haven't done that already).

Really, I'll have some interesting pictures soon...I'm editing them right now...

I'm back!

Just wanted to let all o' y'all know out in the blogosphere that I'm back from Hawaii and the wedding went just beautifully. I'll write more about it, but I thought I'd just let you know to expect lots of pictures!

The Countdown Continues

So I've made my lists, I'm checking them twice (and three times, and four times), but I've really gotten a whole lot of stuff done in this past year and a half to get me pretty ready for the big day. One thing I'm kind of sad about is that my step-grandmother (who lives on Oahu) just had to go to the hospital with atrial fibrillation, so she'll (understandably) not be able to attend the wedding. From what I hear, she's out of critical care and on various blood-thinning medications, but there's still a possibility of a stroke, and she's in her 80s, so it's not like she's a spring chicken. We're all pulling for her, though, and Ray and I will make sure to stop by the hospital and visit.

In the meantime, the show must go on, and I'm busily packing and cleaning and making sure I've got everything for our trip. We leave on Wednesday, so this will probably be my last post until after the honeymoon. Wish me luck!

I'm Back, Finally

After about a month of wrestling with my web host because my blog has refused to publish (they kept giving me an error message that said I had exceeded my disk quota, yet when I logged into my control panel, it showed that I had only used 2% of my quota...sheesh!), I have changed web hosts. I know all of you have been going through Supermaren withdrawal (as have I!), and I have had so many stories about my wedding planning that I've wanted to write down. However, you may have to wait until after the honeymoon to get the full scoop. I'll try to post when I can, though...

A Brush -- Nay, a Spray Can -- With Fame

I know I'm almost a week late in posting this, but I did have to put the old bragging rights out there. For the second time in six months, I've been in the presence of an old rock star. This time, it was at last week's 150th Anniversary of the Academy of Music Ball in Philadelphia. Along with the star-studded cast of locals (Philadelphia Orchestra, Philadelphia Singers, Dongwon Shin, and Angela Brown), we were honored with the presence of Ben Heppner and John Lithgow, with Tom Brokaw emcee-ing for the night.

But nobody seemed to care about that when I would tell friends and acquaintances I was singing at the Academy Ball. All they cared about was that A) Prince Charles and Camilla were attending, and B) Rod Stewart was going to be singing. Rod frickin' Stewart. And I got to be a backup singer for Rod Stewart, singing "Forever Young" with him. Hey, he even gave the chorus a thumbs up while he was dancing around the stage.

So here's the thing: as you might be able to tell, I'm not a huge Rod Stewart fan. There was a time when Rod was cool, he was rock and roll, and he was all those things, and I was four years old, but then he came out with "If You Want My Body," and I'm pretty sure that finished it for me. And he never changed his hairstyle. Ever. Oy.

And the fact that he showed up to rehearsal with a gaggle of giggling bimbos didn't do much to raise my opinion of him. But even I felt sorry for him at the concert when he was dancing around on stage in front of an audience of the Philadelphia society elite, who didn't know what to do with him. They were mostly just quiet...deadly quiet...until I think at one point or another near the end of the song, they started clapping to the beat. But it certainly wasn't a stadium filled with screaming fans, which I think would be a more appropriate setting for him.

After the concert, Their Royal Highnesses condescended to come backstage and shake the hands of the conductors and soloists. Prince Charles turned around and acknowledged the chorus and orchestra with a wave of his hand. Since we were about 60 feet away, it was hard to tell if he was smiling, but I'd like to think he was. All in all, it was a very nice experience, and hey, not a whole lot of people can say they were a backup singer to Rod Stewart. Or maybe most people don't want to say it.

Caroling, Caroling, Up and Down

I have so many stories from this past month of caroling/rehearsals/concerts/wearing my voice out, I'm not sure where to start. As anyone who might have gone onto my calendar of events might have seen, I had no days off at all during the month of December, and hardly any even in November.

My 32nd birthday came and went with little fanfare. I got a nifty Canon Powershot Elph as a birthday/Christmas present from Ray, which I'm still trying to figure out, but this little thing takes way better pictures than my phone, that's for sure. Plus, it's got an underwater accessory which I will be getting before we go to Hawaii for the wedding. (You can look forward to many super duper photos in the future!)

From the day after Thanksgiving until the day before Christmas, my caroling group sang at Large Department Store on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. I wasn't there all the time...in fact, the only one of us that was there almost every day was our bass, and to say he was tired of Christmas caroling by the end of it would be an understatement.

Most of the time, the gig was pretty easy. The first week or so we tried to settle into a routine. We were asked to sing before the light show, which played every hour on the hour, but the area where the public congregated in the middle of the store was huge, and the ceiling went up at least 60 feet. Needless to say, no one could hear us. Management then had the bright idea of having us sing up by the organ console, where there was a microphone.

That seemed like a better idea all around. Even though the microphone was unidirectional (so whoever was standing in front of the mic was the one everyone heard the most), the crowd did hear us, and they even enjoyed us. We started playing games with the audience, having them sing with us, and so on, which I think pleased the parents especially because we were entertaining their kids and giving them a little bit of a break.

However, even though we were supposed to start the shows 15 minutes before the hour every hour, there was not always someone at the organ console to let us in. Our bass (I'll just call him Bass for anonymity's sake) managed to figure out how to get us into the "locked" area, but we still couldn't figure out how to turn the microphone on. Finally, we found one of the tech guys, who very nicely gave us a tutorial on the microphone. He pulled out a secret drawer from inside the organ console (you can see that thing in the picture above; there's a lot of buttons on that thing), and pointed at some labeled buttons. Just push "Muzak" to mute the Muzak in the store, press "amp" to mute/unmute the amp to the microphone, and then turn the microphone on, he tells us. When we're done, he says, we should do all that in reverse to return the system to normal.

What he didn't tell us was that the sound track for the light show was also on that system, and that it was on a timer. So when we accidentally ran long that first time on our own, the light show started, and Julie Andrew's voice rang out, "Welcome, children to the holiday light show!" We quickly stopped singing mid-verse ("...and a partridge in a pear...oh, never mind"), turned the microphone off, hit the Muzak button, hit the amp button AND MUTED JULIE ANDREWS!

The light show kept going, but it looked really stupid at this point, with Christmas light ballerinas flashing on and off with no music or narration. We quickly hit the "amp" and "Muzak" buttons again, but to no avail. Soprano (it's really her caroling group, not mine, although we're working on the paperwork to become business partners) and I went barrelling through Large Department Store in our Victorian outfits, looking for someone, anyone, with a walkie-talkie that could get us in touch with the tech guy who showed us how the microphone worked. Bass stayed by the organ console and said, "If you don't mind, I think I might make a couple educated guesses." I gave him my blessing, since things couldn't have gotten much worse. Tenor, not knowing what to do, just stayed put and watched Bass helplessly.

We made it up to the backstage area of the Dickens Village, which is sort of Command Central for the entire Christmas area. Of course, they had no idea how to contact the tech guy, but they did get security on the phone to help us out. However, by the time they had security on the phone, Bass had fixed the problem. He had ended up pushing the big red button above the button marked "LAUNCH," which is a pretty ballsy move, if you think about it. After all, how many times have we been told to stay away from those kinds of buttons?

The whole fiasco maybe lasted four minutes, but in my mind, it lasted four hours. I don't really think anyone in the audience really noticed that it was a fiasco, either. I was a basket case for the rest of the day, and on into the night, which was unfortunate, since I was singing Handel's Messiah that night. The concert itself went well, but I kept having to refocus myself on the music almost every ten minutes.

And this was only halfway into the Christmas season!

Deck the Halls

I tried to post this on 11/26, but the post never happened. Better late than never...

Thanksgiving was much less stressful for me than I thought it would be. Since I've had almost no free time, I was beside myself as to what to prepare for my soon-to-be in-laws, since the last couple of times I got overly ambitious and they arrived 30-45 minutes early to watch me frantically put finishing touches on things in the kitchen. Ray's mom, ever condescending (but well-meaning), keeps saying, "She's just a baby. She'll learn," which grates on my very last nerve, considering the fact that they come EARLY before I'm ready for them. Last time she said that, my dad spoke up for me and said, "No, she actually did a really great job." Thanks, Dad!

But I am learning. This year I told them to come at 5:30, planning on dinner to be ready by 5:00. They arrived at 5:15, and I was ready for them with appetizers. I was still putting finishing touches on the food, but everything was cooked and almost ready to put on the table. I was hoping she wouldn't make any more condescending remarks, but at the end of dinner, she said, "You're learning." Well, I guess she's right. I just wish it didn't bother me so much when she said it.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, Caroling season is in full swing. I started caroling at a Big Department Store in the middle of Philadelphia (I'm taking a page from Adam875's book and trying for at least SOME anonymity), and although the whole story of how I got the gig needs to be left for another post, it is actually quite a nice gig. They have a secure dressing room for us to take our breaks in, and we're pretty much left to our own devices. We have been wandering through the store, found out that although almost nobody shops in Menswear, there is a really cool place for us to stand and sing so that a good portion of the first floor can see and hear us.

Almost everyone who hears us actually stops and listens for the whole song, and sometimes even hangs out for two or three songs before they go back to their shopping. The parents are really pleased to point out to their kids, "Look, Timmy, Christmas carolers." And one of my fellow carolers commented that we were probably the only people on Black Friday that the shoppers weren't angry at. Shoppers would push and shove their way through the crowds, but when they saw us coming, they would smile and move aside.

We did have a strange incident, however, of a couple of teenagers we passed as we were walking to the escalator. They saw us and said, "Hey look, immigrants!" Immigrants? Um, how do you get immigrants from four people wearing Victorian-era outfits? Maybe immigrants who stepped out of a time machine. Those kids must be products of the Philadelphia public school system; obviously well-educated.