Dear Mr. Bad Economy

I thought I had been spared, but, no. I was laid off this morning along with several others at my job. The bad thing is that I know what goes on on the back end of these things, so I know that it didn't have to be me. That part stinks. The idea of losing my house and, well, just the general "I don't know what tomorrow holds" idea is a bit scary. But my God has brought me through much worse, so I have to keep that in mind.

There is a silver lining to today, though. My quartet was accepted to be a part of the Acappella Praise and Harmony album, recording in June in Tennessee! WHOOP WHOOP! I am one excited girl!

Talk about an emotional roller-coaster of a day! I have a headache. :-/

Difference of opinion

It's so funny to me how you can see something so clearly in your head and someone else see it completely differently. For this past Christmas, I wanted to give a good friend of mine a photo of my hands doing the sign for "friend". My brother is a good photographer, but he doesn't do much to photos other than lightly touching them up, so after he took the picture, I asked my boyfriend-at-the-time to photoshop it to make it pretty. He is pretty great at touching up pictures. I have seen several that he has done. They're always subtle fixes, which I prefer.

Here is one of the original photos that Matthew took

Okay, not much to look at. Definitely not gift-worthy.


So I asked Ben to shop it, as I said, and this is what I received from him

Yeah. Totally not what I was thinking. I then told him more what I was looking for - I basically just said "can it not be so... um... colorful?"

This is his second attempt

It wasn't what I originally had in mind, but I thought it would work. That is the photo that my friend received.


Today, I decided to play around with an online photo editing tool. It didn't have all the effects that I would probably need to make this gift-worthy, but this is more what I had in mind


Isn't it just funny that we can see things so differently?

My voice (along with the rest of my body and mind) is tired!

Several weeks ago, a member at church approached me about an opportunity to audition for a new Acappella Praise & Harmony album. He is intimately involved with this project and I couldn't help but be excited at the thought of getting to record under the direction of Keith Lancaster! That name probably doesn't mean much to a lot of people, but I grew up listening to Acappella and AVB. I remember the group way back when it was just Keith and Rodney Britt (pretty much the best bass that has ever walked the earth... I'm just sayin'). The first concert I ever attended was an Acappella concert. In my eyes, this man is a LEGEND!

My Papa and I ended up asking Matthew, my brother, and Audrey M. (another girl from church) to fill out our quartet. We recorded and I am pretty proud of our finished product! If I knew how to post audio here, I would do it. In the meantime, you can check out www.xanga.com/sbbh and click on the audio tab. It is the most recent entry.

We sent in our audition earlier this week and we should get a "yes" or "no" within a couple weeks. It was hard to schedule my recording time around all my midterms, though! I think I did okay on my tests, but what a stressful week. On top of the aforementioned obligations, I sang in a wedding on Saturday, which of course included a rehearsal on Friday evening. To say I had a busy week is quite an understatement!

My cousin, Andy, and I were asked to sing "When God Made You" and "Lucky" in the wedding. I've known both of those songs for a while now and learned my part weeks ago. You can imagine my chagrin when we started the rehearsal and Andy didn't know the songs very well yet.

Yikes!

We played it off for the rehearsal. After we practiced the ceremony, we watched a video that someone had made for the bride and groom. I have known the groom as long as I can remember and have gotten acquainted with the bride over the past couple years. They are such sweet people and seeing the love they had for each other and the love that all those in attendance had for them - well, it just gave me the warmest feeling. The video showed pictures of each of them growing up, and at one point the groom's very pregnant sister came on the screen and her voice came over the loudspeaker. She told them that she wanted to be there so badly, but that the doctors wouldn't let her come and that she loved them so much. I am not doing it justice, but there was not a dry eye in the church. It was so bittersweet. Her words were precious, but we all wished she could have been there.

Andy went home and practiced, so during the ceremony it went off without a hitch - except for the recessional where I got so caught up in watching the beautiful bride and groom that I missed my entrance! Thankfully no one was paying attention to the singers at that point. :)

The reception was beautiful, but cold. Cold is preferable to raining for an outdoor event, though, so we were all thankful!

Hopefully I'll have pictures to post soon. I borrowed Matthew's awesome camera during the reception and for the first time, took some great pictures. Pioneer Woman has introduced me to the world of photography from behind the lens. I had a great time playing with the aperture and manual focus! I thought I did a pretty good job for my first time! I'll let you be the judge of that when I finally get them on here, though.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I will start my "expert" blog next week. Maybe.

Perhaps I should blog about procrastination. Or over-extending yourself.

Something to think about...

Regardless, it will be something about which I have a plethora of knowledge. Or, at least, I will pretend like I do.

But yes, next week. Maybe.