Random

Let’s start with voice lessons and singing.

I can hear and feel myself improving every week. Slowly, slowly, I am incorporating and blending together the different techniques that together help me to produce beautiful rounded notes on top of my air. I’m currently working on many many songs, but focusing mainly on Voi che sapete and Deh vieni non tardar. Because why not sing two different character’s arias from the same opera? Also working on El Majo Discreto, I Love all Graceful Things, O mio babbino caro, and keeping fresh and updated on the songs I’ve already performed. Upcoming concert will be in April, I think in a local library.

Speaking of April, I’ve planned a trip to see the parents. Last time I was there they told me and Alex to stop singing around the house. Oh joy. Then if for some reason they do ask me to sing, my mother will interrupt and ask why I’m not singing in English. Oh joy. My dad will make some snarky comment about the crystal breaking, or when will I be onstage at the Met. Oh joy. So they’ll be snarky to me, but I will learn later from the relatives that they brag about me when I’m not there. What’s up with that? I wanted to plan the visit to coincide with Rigoletto at Florida Grand Opera so I could take my mom, but I just couldn't work it out.

Next random. For a giggle. Jared Leto has a photo blog. He has been asking people to send self-portraits that he makes into a collage and posts on his blog. He gets thousands of entries and uses about 20. He chose my picture for the first one. Look! Guess which one is me. Go ahead, look for me there.

Another random: Fun with the blog tracker! There was a period of time where I was getting hits from a search on “spider with striped legs,” mainly from people in Ohio. That’s weird, right? I often get hits from google searches about the Grand Tier in the Met Opera. And now I wonder if Nathan Gunn isn’t up to something, as I’m suddenly getting many hits from searches about him… including people looking for naked pics!! Uh… no. I realize that simply by putting this in a blog entry I’m going to get more hits. It’s a loop. It’s loopy. I’ve also got people googling him and my blog together. Like they're looking for him here. More than once. So now if they do it again they’ll know that I know they’re looking. I know that they know that I know…and so on, and so on, and so on.

Final random: My next operatic adventure is in March! It seemed like it would never get here when I bought the tickets back in August. But finally, soon, I'll be seeing Juan Diego Florez and Diana Damrau in Elixir of Love. Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, thinking about it.

I Dream of Jeannie?

I think y'all know by now that I have a tracker on my blog. I mean, doesn't everyone? So now I'm wondering why all of a sudden am I getting so many hits to this entry, based on a google search of the image I linked to there of a costume. Is it some sort of cascading thing, like, once a few people click to it, it moves up in the google search results, causing more people to click? Did someone from I Dream of Jeannie die or something? Why the sudden run on these costumes? And most importantly, did anyone read more than one entry, or stay for longer than 2 seconds? I bet you can guess the answer to those questions...

Back to our regularly scheduled opera blogging tomorrow. Or maybe the day after.

Blog Power!

Wow. Didn't expect this to have any effect. I'm referring to the part about this being inexcusably outdated. Right. Guess what? It's suddenly been updated. So has this. Glad to know someone's listening. Reading. Responding. Reacting. Whatever.

And now, as my butt is totally numb from sitting in that tiny kindergarten chair listening to what Alex's day is like, I must go loll (and that's loll, not LOL) about on the couch and watch whatever baseball game happens to be on. *snore*

More Random Stuff to Appease and Entertain

Mish mosh of stuff for a Friday. Let's see.

Twitter pictures. Briefs Included.

Seattle Opera, next season. Watch, look and listen. (on that 2nd link you have to flip through the pages. Mouse around and you'll figure it out.

More Seattle Opera, this season. Elizabeth Caballero as Susanna in Marriage of Figaro. You have to flip through the album to find her as they have two casts.

Finally, the cats.

Diego in his castle:


Remember the friend I stayed with in NYC? The pregnant one? Here's her belly and also her cat enjoying a drink:


And then... Oh my who let these alpacas in?

Three Drinks and You Got a Problem?

Ahhhh girls' night out. Girltini night.

1. Cosmo-Cello --> variation on a cosmo with limoncello.
2. Watermelon Martini ---> Jolly Rancher with a kick.
3. Peach something or other --->Stoli Peach with some kind of peach liquor.

Then, after lots of water and a vitamin B, I decided I should keep with tradition and do a tipsy blog posting. The thing is, I have nothing to say. Therefore, I will talk about the love-hate relationship I have with the blog tracker.

It's no secret I have a tracker (ok more than one) on the blog. The links are right over there ---> . You can click on them and see how people get here. Go ahead, check it out and see your own entry. So yeah you know about the house centipedes, about the searches on "My good opinion once lost is lost forever," people looking for naked pics of Nathan Gunn (why? why????) and occasionally people looking for this blog. Like today. Today someone from my geographical area (as in, someone I probably know In Real Life) did a google search of 'opera keeping me awake gunn susan problems.' Yeah ok so I get the first part... but... problems??? Meh? I admit that one piqued my curiousity. Someone knows me, they know the name of the blog, they know who/what I sometimes write about, but... no, my interest in opera has not adversely affected my marriage. Is that what you wanted to know? Send me an email next time - there's an "email me" link on my profile page.

My newest google search hits have been on "voluptuous women." That's kind of creepy. Which reminds me. From now on, instead of "voluptuous," I will use the term a friend of mine recently coined, "volumptuous." Go ahead, say it out loud.

I'd consider removing the tracker, but it's actually pretty cool and quite fascinating to see where people come from and how they get here. Don't worry, Readers, I'm not stalking any of you. I'm just interested in demographics!

Ho Ho Ho Triplets!

Triplets are my new love and my new foe. I love how they sound and I love how they feel. But the feel will have to change because I'm sort of aspirating an "h" on them. How to explain in writing...

Ok so in If Music Be the Food of Love... the word "music." In one part of the song, the "zic" is a triplet going up. Instead of a nice legato line, I'm singing more of a "zi-hi-hic" sound. I keep trying to NOT do it but it's hard. I need an exercise to practice it on different vowels because I'm doing it on some of the others. **note to self... tell this to my voice teacher on Thursday...** I'm also not liking how the "myu" part sounds. Too much y, too nasal. Not enough u. I'm thinking a vowel-only sing-through is in order. Again. I've done it already a few times. So many schwas, so little time.

I still (love-love-love) the song. Note my attempt to write a triplet. Yeah, I didn't think so either.

Fun with the blog-tracker. The house centipedes are coming out, that's all I have to say. One lousy off-topic post about house centipedes and somehow all these searches end up here. And no, not one person has clicked to see any other parts of the blog. Dang do NOT click on the house centipede link unless you are ready to be GROSSED OUT.

Is It Soup Yet?

I have fun checking the tracker to see what kinds of google searches lead people to my blog. But some of them... well, I just don't get it. I tried googling some of the very same things and my blog doesn't come up until like page 7 of the search. Who goes all the way to page 7 on a google search? Ok dumb question, I have. So then I tried googling the old, "Nathan Gunn Naked." Luindriel's blog? Nope. I mean, he's NOT naked here as far as I know, and I should know since it's my blog, right? And I stopped at page 3 of the google search. But even just a straight, "Nathan Gunn" search got me nowhere near me. However I did run across a slew of photos from some shindig in Chicago last fall here. Of course, it's all about the music. You can hear him talk about it on a podcast from LA Opera here. But you want to google your way to my blog? Try "house centipede" or "my good opinion once lost." Nothing to do with opera, yet you'll probably end up here.

Anyway, that's not the point. What is the point? There is none. My voice lessons resume tomorrow, perhaps I'll come up with a point after that. I'm thinking now that I want to put the new stuff on hold and go back and fix the pieces I put on the back burner. Time to move those babies forward. Unless my voice teacher says they need more time to simmer. Is it soup yet? Not yet...

Lull.

Sure, there are things I could write about, but they'd bore you all to tears. I think that by now everyone gets it that people in Champaign/Urbana are googling the whole people mag sexy man guy and getting here. Um... I've posted about getting tickets.... Um... that same dude is singing at the Kennedy Center Honors this weekend and it'll be on television at the end of the month. I'll probably bat my eyelashes at my coworker who can burn dvds from his TIVO and will get the relevant portions up on YouTube and/or MySpace in early January. Really I just do it for the free drinks. Wait a sec - he's not one of the drink-buyers! Damn, everyone knows I put all the videos up in an effort to "earn" enough drinks to become a girl-drink drunk! <--- watch that, it's funny. Someone let him know, ok? Hahaha I'm just kidding. Sort of. It's just that ever since I had that pomegranate martini with the candied lime in Chicago I can't stop thinking about girltinis. Wow that sounds so inappropriate! I love it! Hey at least I entertain myself. Wait that sounds inappropriate too! Wow. I better stop before I get myself into even more imaginary trouble than I can handle. OH NO! Even THAT sounds inappropriate!! Help me!

Ok ok... new topic.

Didn't have a voice lesson last week due to Thanksgiving... Oh I know, that reminds me.

Elizabeth Caballero has been putting up many more videos at YouTube. So click on that YouTube link to check them out, ok?

Um... what else... on Facebook there's a silly status game thing going on where you pick up the nearest book, open to a certain page and count a certain number of sentences in, then post that as your status. My nearest book was "Bringing Opera to Life," by Boris Goldovsky, published in 1968. It's next to the computer because I was checking to see if it was worth selling on half.com. So my status sentence is:

Whenever a performer is singing while in direct rapport with his partners, he must move to upstage (right or left) of them.

That's it for now. Voice lesson tomorrow.

Blog Tracker Strikes Again

Won't say where or when, but here's a recent hit on the tracker:


Referring URL http://www.google.co... Gunn and his family

Search Engine google.com
Search Words nathan gunn and his family

Visit Entry Page http://luindriel.blogspot.com/2008/05/umm-i-dont-know.html
Visit Exit Page http://luindriel.blogspot.com/2008/05/umm-i-dont-know.html

Wow I'm obnoxious sometimes. Or insane. Both I guess. Hey at least they didn't send me a bizarre message asking for strange personal details. Because... umm... I don't know... and if I did... I'm not telling.

What Are They Looking For?

I have to say that the blog tracker is sometimes very entertaining!

Today someone got here by doing a google search "the nurse made me take all my clothes off."

Other recent searches that brought people here include:

• baritone leather pants
• luindriel nathan
• going to the opera alone
• misery opera
• myspace nathan gunn
• star vicino high listen
• youtube ,opera tenors and baritone videos
• tiny rubber chicken

It amuses me that searches on both "baritone leather pants" and "tiny rubber chicken" lead here.

Voice lesson tonight. I feel like I'm in good voice but that might change - it's like a reflex - I walk through the door and my voice gets congested. Maybe I'm allergic. It's possible - I'm Jewish and the lesson is in a Catholic school. OK OK before anyone gets all up in arms and offended, I'm JOKING!! I'm not allergic Catholic school. On the other hand, many of my friends (including Husband!) went to Catholic school and if you asked, they'd probably say that they are now allergic.

It's Still Happening

Just for fun, I checked the blog tracker today. Sorry about the formatting, I did my best to make it look pretty, but...

Location

Continent : North America Country : United States (Facts) State : Illinois City : Chicago

Time of Visit		Sep 21 2008 12:36:38 pm
Last Page View		Sep 21 2008 12:36:38 pm
Visit Length		0 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://www.google.co... gunn naked&aq=f&oq=
Search Engine		google.com
Search Words		nathan gunn naked
Visit Entry Page		http://luindriel.blo...ed-at-least-not.html

Seriously, what are people thinking???
.