What a day!

My, aren’t these days just packed when I actually manage to get up early?

So yesterday, I:

• had an extended breakfast with Ken at the cupcake cafe and had extended discussions about object orientation and type systems;
• went to a panel discussion about “women in engineering”;
• had a chorus rehearsal: They distributed the sheet music and played a demo recording of the song for the International Contest next year, which is beautiful. The arrangement was specifically written for our chorus, and the demo recording was done by Tim Waurick, an utterly amazing singer who earns money by selling demo recordings of songs in which he sings all parts. He sings tenor in the current International Champion quartet, but that doesn’t keep him from singing a low E on our demo recording, and on the other hand he has some sample arrangements for women’s voices on his website where he easily goes up to the E three octaves above that. My God.
• finally went to have dinner with the people who will hopefully make up my novice quartet at the Rodeo Bar, which is decorated in a weird Texas cowboy style and is just another one of these places that you’d never suspect behind a New York door. There was live music by The Moonlighters, a really nifty local group doing “ukulele and steel guitar” music who play arrangements of 20’s songs and compositions of their own. They had one amazing song about the Suicide Hall, which was a saloon in the Bowery where prostitutes would go to drink poison in order to commit suicide, and which apparently ended up as something of a local attraction where people would go hoping to see something interesting. They have now torn it down to replace it with condo housing, and I really have to wonder when the furniture will start moving by itself and blood coming down the stairs.

Also I was a little annoyed with my neighbours last night because I could hear music playing, but then realised in the morning that I had left my Ipod on in coat pocket all night. Sorry, neighbours, my fault. But at least we now know that the Ipod nano really has a battery life of more than nine hours.

Next up: We challenge New York to provide a reasonable haircut.