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On the way to Roger's yesterday, Stuart Hinds returned my call. Oh, my goodness.

My editing abilities have apparently become a shared factoid among the Shepherd faculty. I'm proofing Dr. Bailey's vocal rep book as she writes it for our class concurrently with the subjects she teaches. She must have mentioned it to her husband, because he asked me, one day right as I was about to go into studio and they were walking by, whether I could proof an ESL piano grad student's paper. I haven't been contacted about that yet, but in the middle of last week, Dr. Gottschalk stopped me after Aural Skills and told me he had a proofing gig for me. I don't know how he found out about my now demonstrably infamous mad skillz, but he gave me the number of Amazing Overtone Counterpoint Man Stuart Hinds, who came to Shepherd Singers last year to teach us how to sing overtones and to demonstrate his ability to sing Renaissance counterpoint by himself. So, Dr. Gottschalk called him and told him to expect a call from me regarding a paper he wanted help with.

He called while I was in the car on the Westpark Tollway, and asked how much I charged. Since I had no idea, I told him to come up with something, and I think $20-hr is probably fine. The gig, get this, is to edit the tone of his paper so that the journal he publishes it in will accept it, because right now it's too full of itself. I have a LOT of practice with this kind of editing, my friends. I practically live with Stephan. Anyway, I have an appointment with Mr. Hinds at 2:00 on Saturday to discuss changes I propose to make to his paper, but he hasn't sent it to me yet, so we'll see what happens.

We got through an astonishing amount of Renaissance material at Roger's, despite Bryan's absence, so we'll be ready for him next time (three weekends from now, I think). Roger seems unduly enamored of the King's Singers arrangement of Blackbird for someone who knows very little of the Beatles; he keeps having us record it. Which is fine, because it's easy, and pretty.

Dinner was lovely, as always, but in the middle of it I got rather a strange call from Stephan suggesting that I come over when I was done at Roger's. I did, to find everyone in the house on his own cell phone. It was a coincidence, but still. We watched a couple classic West Wing eps, talked, helped Bryan reduce the disaster in the kitchen to manageable proportions (he put Dawn in the dishwasher and it covered the floor with suds), had a recovery party in Ben's room, and crashed. Stephan has established a towel in the bathroom for me, so I no longer use the bathmat to avoid getting cooties on the boys' towels. It's surprisingly conducive to a certain level of contentment to wake up here and witness the hazy early-morning banter and lack of clothes. I've become so domestic in my old age. Yeah, I'll be 20 on Wednesday (Stephan's tomorrow). I'll no longer be a teenager. What a strange thought.

I guess it's time to get going for class. I could sit here and listen to this song for months without getting up for more than the necessities.

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Class didn't disappoint after such a pleasant morning, though I was unreasonably sleepy during Historical Ling. It was fun anyway, in that surreal linguistic reconstruction kind of way. Aural skills was nice, since I passed out for this week, and Ling Analysis was entertaining; Dr. E was in fine form. I get to analyze the grammar of the Huanaco dialect of Quechua for my language report. Excellent.

Vocal rep was more of a snooze than usual, possibly because there was no section of newly written book to proof, but I'm glad we're finally in Britain. Dan and his amazing secret key to Susanne's studio facilitated a halfhearted practicing of the Bell Song before he fell asleep on the floor, at which point I practiced even more quietly. I dunno if I'm going to be able to coach on that song for Wednesday. Especially with Tom, who still thinks it's a bizarre thing for me to be singing (as do I). Having let Dan sleep for a good fifteen minutes, I decided it was time to wait for Chorale among the denizens of the black couches.

Chorale was hilarious, as usual, and we finally got the Paert scores. Everyone was complaining, but, remembering my experience of his St. John Passion, I tried to convince them it'd grow on them. I love the starkness and clarity and relentlessness of the repetition, which makes it so much clearer when the affect changes. I don't know, maybe I'm just a sap remembering a good experience and applying the memory where it's irrelevant. Those were good years, the quartet was spectacular, containing Karim, and the performance was the first time I'd actually read the story of the Passion, translating the Latin to myself. The Paert style was very effective with that text. I could hardly sing.

Stephan was fixated on soup on the way out of Chorale, and Jacob seemed to be at a loss, and he's the epitome of the cool, so I snagged him as Stephan and I made our spastic, mannerism-saturated, slightly obnoxious way to Patu. It was like treating amiable but slightly blue royalty, with the weight of the world on his shoulders; it reminded me of how we all think of Bryan as on a level above ours. It's not anything he does, or any attitude he presents, it's just his inherent personal coolness and our inherent desire to... I guess, to put it selfishly, acquire some of his coolness by being of use to him. Or even just know him. Being in the presence of coolness is especially encouraging when the proprietor of coolness knows you exist.

Anyway, it was fun taking Jacob out, and then rehearsal was fun and fairly productive. It's not been as ridiculous a cast coagulation as the Sid musical, partially because my part is not nearly so central and thus I am present at fewer rehearsals, and partially because it's a different cast and I don't think a set of circumstances as auspicious as those can ever be repeated.

Multitudinous thanks to my beneficient mother, we got the tape of tonight's Studio 60 and brought it back here to watch. I suppose my evening might be happier if I... fixed all the personal problems of my close friends and people I admire, became fully possessed of the vocal technique I'll have in fifteen years, instantly lost fifty pounds with no trouble, and acquired the ability to do arithmetic with no self-conscious insecurity... But really, I can't think of a better way for an evening to proceed otherwise.