Let me state the obvious. It’s damn cold!!!!

The wind-chill is brutal, and no matter how you bundle up you feel like a popsicle in less than fifteen seconds.

My drive to the stamp show this morning was another of those rides where I had to hang on to the wheel in a death grip in order to remain in control whenever one of those wind gusts decided to whip its way across the highway.

I also had to keep fiddling with the heat. My feet and fingers would start to freeze, so I’d need a burst of heat, but I couldn’t do that for too long as the defrost was needed at all times. It was a challenge.

I made it to the stamp show by nine-thirty and stayed until after eleven. I hadn’t planned to spend that much time, or that much money! Without going into morbid detail, let’s just say that it’s a good thing that I have some groceries in my freezer. I blew a bundle.

The thing is, everything was on sale at either 25 or 50% off, and there were some great stamps that I’d never seen before. I love it when I see things and am immediately inspired and can clearly see what it is that I want to make with the stamps and stuff.

I didn’t want to go to the Adeline’s thing after that, but I didn’t have a choice really, I’d promised Dee I’d meet her.

I met Dee just after noon and we got to the hotel just as the sessions were breaking for lunch. I was greeted very warmly by many chorus members, and it was nice to feel as if I was missed. I like so many of these people that it’s sad to feel so negative about the thing that brings us together.

I saw some of my oldest friends who first got me started in the organization and it was great to catch up with them. I really love these people.

So Dee and I grabbed some lunch then went in search of other friends. We found them in the dining room just finishing up their meal, so we pulled up chairs to chat a while. Once they finished lunch we went off to a class that was being presented by the mucky-muck that they had flown in from Texas.

She was great. She spent a couple of hours teaching us how to sing tags so that they ring overtones. Now if you don’t sing barbershop I’ve just begun to speak another language.

A tag is the ending to a song, that generally has great chords, and moves in each part that are called swipes (usually baritones), and when you sing the notes, match the vowels perfectly and lock the chord, the notes ring. They also create an overtone that is a very high note that isn’t actually being sung but that can be heard hanging in the air.

It’s what causes the hair on the back of your neck to stand up.

It was a lot of fun.

The next session was not much fun. It was to sing regional songs, which are songs that everyone in the region is encouraged to learn so we have things we can all sing when we get together. Unfortunately the person conducting the class was our former director, who never could teach. It was a flashback to eight years ago, and we realized that we didn’t miss her at all.

We then went to a dinner buffet in the hotel dining room, and it was downright awful. We had to go in search of a waiter in order to get coffee. The service was awful. This guy was too full of himself and just didn’t want to be doing much but schmoozing. It was really not worth the money. We only left him a dollar tip.

He didn’t even deserve that much.

We then went in search of a place to warm up. The heat was broken in the hotel, so it was downright freezing in the dining room and in all the hallways. Only a portion of the guest rooms had heat, so some people had been bumped to other hotels in the area.

Fortunately the ballroom had heat, and that was where the show was being held, so we went and camped out. The show was alright, but nothing that blew my socks off. The choruses and quartets that had placed in second and third place at contest last May performed. They were ordinary. Some years the performers are so unexpectedly fabulous that you are leaping out of your chair and cheering, but that didn’t happen last night.

By about ten we were out of there and on our way home.

I can’t say I’m glad I went, but then I can’t say I’m not glad. I probably would have been just as happy to come home and stamp.

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