I am so glad to be home.

I still feel lousy, am exhausted and having chills.

I’m not sure if the chills are because I’m sick or if it’s because of the lousy damp weather.

Whatever the case I’m happy to be home and able to sit for a while. Of course there’s a good chance that if I sit I’ll just fall asleep!

We'd been kicked out of the big ballroom we'd been using for rehearsal space and stuck into a tiny room that couldn't fit our risers. They took this time to work on character and emotion, which is my thing, and an aspect of performance that our director seems to always overlook. It was draining, but brought me back to my theater training and teaching days, using exercises that were old friends. Interestingly, the coach was using stuff that she'd learned from one of her chorus members (she's from California) who is the coach of the Olympic synchronized swim team.

We did mirror exercises and really worked on faces, and getting a character into our performance. For me it’s always there, I always have a character worked out, but for others it’s tough. I can never get over how many people sing with deadpan expressions on their face.

To me, singing is all about emotion and performing. Put an audience in front of me and I’m "on"! I have a much more difficult time with rehearsals when we are stopping and starting, as I feel as if I’m getting slammed into a snowbank each time we stop to correct something.

I get the emotion going, and wham! I’m stopped cold. It gives me a headache and makes my frustration level go out of control.

As tired as I was, having the opportunity to sing with feeling and to help others achieve that was wonderful.

She also worked on singing through a song that is going to make us cry. The ballad that we are singing for competition was written for a chorus who lost five members in a plane crash and it can make us all very sad. It’s about old friends, and those of us who have been singing in this organization for a long time can get very emotional as we think of the words.

I was thrilled when I got to the point that I was tearing up and that I could then get beyond that point and not actually cry.

This was a good morning.

Now I hope the director can do the follow through to keep us going until we compete in May.

That’s a long way off.

Now I’m ready to collapse, but before I can I have to unpack and change the linen on the bed. Once that is done I think I’ll crawl in.

I still just feel so-so. I need to recover quickly. I have a busy week at school.