Well, I went to log in to my UM mail account tonight - and it's been cancelled. I knew this would happen very soon; I received email telling me that my account would expire on December 1, so I was prepared. And, truth to tell, all I'd really been getting in that account for the past few months was spam. But still, it was a shock. It's really the end of an era; I'd been a UM employee for eleven years.

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In other news, I went to see Messiah with Randy on Saturday night. I was very distracted; things on the home front have been turbulent lately, to say the least - but dinner and conversation and the concert were a very calming influence. I took the score supplied for the Hallelujiah chorus, but didn't manage to find a note until the last Hallelujiah . . . next year, I will know the alto part! There has GOT to be a flash-based website out there with all the notes and the several parts that you can listen to separately, and all that. I just haven't looked hard enough . . .

This was the second time, I believe, that I've heard Messiah all the way through in concert. (The first was several years ago, also with Randy, also at Hill Auditorium.) This time I was struck with the repeating phrases (which, maddeningly, I can't remember at the moment . . . ). I meant to ask Randy what he knows about the structure of the piece, but forgot. Maybe next year . . .

And I suppose it was my mood, but I had a really strong reaction to the verse, "All we like sheep have gone astray/Returned everyone to his own way/And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." I mean, pardon me, but this sounds like a diety with an anger management problem. He's pissed off with his creation, and he punishes his son?? This is the kind of behavior I seem to get caught up in fairly regularly (ask Em about how I took my anger at Charlie out on her the other day) but feel guilty about. The impulse is understandable in a human . . . but not in a god. I'm sorry, but I expect more from a supreme being.

I should also note that I learned to love Messiah when, as an exchange student in Australia, I listened to it in the Jesmond High School library, where the world of classical music opened before me like a panorama . . .