Forgotten Adventures - I posted my week-long adventures, and then realized I missed two stories to tell you about:

Festival of the Rose - Rehearsals ran for almost a month, 1-2x a week with 3 friends. I'd forgotten how much fun it is to do a capella singing in harmony with friends. I want to do more! (Looks longingly at my over-filled calendar, and sighs.)

Saturday Feb 2, my roomie and I drove up to the *freezing* cold town of Lancaster, where for the first time, I was glad my Bard of Caid regalia was a cloak. The room for the event was unusually small for as packed as it was, and there were really no other rooms to socialize in, if you didn't want to disturb the performances on the stage.

There were showcase pieces first, followed by a lunch break, and then the "competion" pieces afterwards. The four of us singing together billed ourselves as "The Ladies di Cellini, and Lot" -- and though we had prepared 3 pieces, it had looked like there might only be time for two. There were no other group-vocals in the competition, so we "won" but that meant that we ended up doing our third piece just as filler or by Royal Request. We sang the Italian madrigal "Matona Mia Cara" by di Lasso, complete with English translation of the lyrics (to the amusement of the court). As our second feature, we accompanied Magdalene's composition "The Lady Behind Every Fighter," which upheld our reputation for, "White Star: We Make Baroness Bridget Cry." And for an encoure, we sang the filk to the Mingalay Boat Song, "Fair Cadiz."

The Queen also requested I sing my Kids' Caidan History Song, and I got the entire audience to join in with me. Lot and Magdalene jokingly did hand motions, a la "Y M C A," in the front for "C A I D." Sir Guillaume said he almost ran up to help, and we said next time he should! We ended up returning to our home barony at the end of the event, for dinner and socializing, complete with putting up Erica for the night at our apartment.

Girls' Day Out - For Super Bowl Sunday, my mom and sister(s) and nieces like to do a Girls' Day Out. This year Mom, Jan, Petula, Lilli, and I met up at the Getty Museum for the afternoon. Sadly my camera *completely* failed on me, but I enjoyed touring the museum very much. Lilli held up very well, for being so young and forced to tour a museum. And I found an amazing book in the gift shop afterwards, to help Laurie and I design and create Ben and Erica's wedding ketubah (Jewish marriage document, done in Hebrew calligraphy) for 2009. *bounce bounce* I'm so excited about the project!