uh oh, Neak, I got that backwards, I must have been using Arkansas math! Its actually 12:45 pm CST in Texas.

:twobyfour:

Don't worry. I fixed it for y'alls.

Neak, you have a beautiful voice! And you looked just lovely. T&l did a great job playing piano too!

Thank you!

We had sooooo much fun! I'll tell The Rest of the Story in a bit, but first I have to say....

I AM NOT THAT FAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



They say the camera adds 15 pounds, but no one told me it would be equally divided between my tummy and calves.

Now, PLEASE, this is not a not-so-subtle invitation to tell me I'm not fat. It drives me NUTS NUTS NUTS when people do that, you know...this makes me look sooooo fat, meaning please tell me I'm not fat.

Well, I'm not fat. I am happy with how I look IRL, but the whole camera thing was a bit of a shock.

Now that that's out of my system, I'll tell you all the funny stuff in just a little while.

i thought you looked very SVELTE and lovely!

You are such a sweetie!

Also, I never heard the secret signal, so I never hit the floor. Hope that was ok...

First piece of dirt:

Mr. C was naughty during Sabbath School. (He was one of the kids that needed a whoopin, wasn't he?) He kept talking and talking and talking, and they couldn't get him to shut up.

They tried moving him to sit by someone else, but still talktalktalktalktalktalk. Finally, Pastor Batchelor's wife had to come sit between him and another boy.

Afterwards, aghast at learning who his seat partner actually was, Mr. C exclaimed, "If I had known you were MRS. BATCHELOR, I would have behaved better!"

We arrived a few minutes late, having missed our turnoff due to it not having any sign to indicate which road it was we were passing, and next thing we knew we were in downtown Sacramento. Oops.

But the atmosphere was very relaxed, and we got our sound check done just fine anyway. And only a few trips to the bathroom later, we were ready to sing.

Our duet was first, and went fine except for one tiny glitch. They had taken away my mic after the sound check, and I had no idea where it might have gone. I walked up slowly, hoping that one would materialize from...somewhere...anywhere... Thinking all was hunky-dory, Mom started the introduction just as a kind sound person came rushing with a mic.

A small pause, the intro starting up again, and the rest went just fine. It wasn't on camera anyway, so I didn't have a heart attack or anything.

I was also ready to duck at any moment, just in case, but thought Mel would probably not break out the pistolas until church time.

YEEHAW!!!

A few more trips to the bathroom between services, and I was ready to go! Poor phrasing. I was ready to sing.

Walking back to my place, I met Debbie Simpson-Kippel (I think that was her last name) and thanked her for letting me sing with them in song service. Handing me a copy of some music, she asked if I could sing a harmony part with her for the church song service.

"I think so, just give me a couple seconds to look at it."

A couple seconds later, she asked, "Did you want to come and sing it with me?"

"Sure," I chirped, thinking she meant to practice it once, since I had never seen it before in my life.

I followed her through the backstage door, looking for a cute little soundproof practice room. But no, we went to the stage entrance. When no further effort was made to find a practice room, I began to suspect...aaaaaaaaaaagh...and study the piece rather frantically. JUST before we went out onstage.

It went well, and would have been nearly perfect if I hadn't had just a teeny bit of trouble reading those itsy bitsy words.

Only a few minutes before my song, near-disaster struck. I choked on a sip of water, big time, and had to exit the sanctuary, gasping and choking. A kind man slipped me a cough drop, which was very helpful. Still, all the coughing caused my throat to over-produce mucous in an attempt to counteract the irritation.

That was a bit worrisome, but not too much, since I just figured it was God's little plan to make sure I was depending more on Him than on my voice alone. He has such funny ways of making sure I don't get too big for my britches.

Afterwards, when I called AJ and he was making Love Bank deposits left and right telling me how wonderful I had been, I asked if he had seen any of the kids in the audience. "Only during the chidlren's story. I did see Grandpa picking his nose, though."

:MrEEk: :MrEEk: :MrEEk:

So if any of you noticed the fine elderly gentleman on the front row, with his own excavation business, that's my grandpappy!

And if you happened to notice the fine pair of children (they showed them twice), looking like adorable little dark-haired twins, him in black pants, black shirt, and gray tie, her with long hair, and a black and white circle-y dress, those were my wee cherubs.

Except for during the children's story, there were no shots of the Dervish. He fell asleep on Mom partway through. Awwwwwww.

Oh, and I was amazed to find out that pictures of me had hit the web almost before I sat down from the very first song. One of my friend from summer camp, that I hadn't seen in years, was in the second row. She whipped out her phone, took some photos, and immediately put them on Facebook. Technology is so amazing!

Anyway, that was our super fun adventure. Thanks for sharing it with us!

*thud* *thud*

I missed it! Is there a video?

she ducked on cue!!

we tried and tried and tried to get the live feed but it wouldn't work. I thought it was the software but then found out it was THOSE peoples server. Something STUPID about the bandwidth being devoted to family contact.

I was just about to :twobyfour: when I remembered it was supposed to be a church service

THEN about 5 mins later as I was steaming I got a voip call so I figured the "Boss man" had a reason.

But I would LUV to see a you tube or vid

Don't worry about being FAT on stage or video, just don't eat anything for a day or two before, maybe just coffee and tea for a few days ,

it works for me

I am SO going to remember that next time!

As far as video, I am still muttering and fuming at it. Trying to somehow save it, archive it, or SUMPING. One nice thing is it says right on the copy that it's uncopyrighted material, so I can stick it on youtube just fine with no permissions needed.

Oh, one other thing that was funny, they started out the piece with a shot of Mom's hands, but it was wide enough to include the pages of handwritten music, as well as the bold yellow and pink highlighted markings she had in places her mind tended to wander.

I missed it! Is there a video?

I'm going to have to send my copy to AJ, and maybe he can make it cooperate. I keep trying to put it on youtube, but every different way it just keeps telling me that it failed to convert. Humph.

Even the sound files won't convert, or I could at least post 2 audio files.

What did you use to record? Sometimes there are free utilities on the web that will do the conversion for you, depending on the media.

They recorded and gave me a copy. It doesn't give a clue what file type it is, but it saved on my computer as a .rar and I didn't see any way to change that.

(I originally typed that they gave "ma" a copy, and that would have been true, too. )