Washington, DC

I will be in Washington, DC March 15 - 18. I get in the afternoon of the 15th and may have the evening free (but probably not). I will definitely not have the evening of the 16th free, nor either day 16-17. But! I'd like to have dinner with DC-local folks on the 17th, for those who are available. I'll be staying at the Grand Hyatt, so something near there will make me happy, and I'll try to figure something like that out and let you know where and when. I'm open to suggestions (beyond what folks mentioned when this was more theoretical), and I'd like very much to hear from folks who think they'll join me, so I have an idea of whether I'm looking at dinner for 4 or 24.

free stuff -- get it away from me!

I have 12 frozen Twinkies that are free to a good home.

Also, most of a 2-liter bottle of Cool Mint Listerine, which it turns out I don't like.

I'll post these to a big list or community if I have no takers off my flist, but you all get first dibs. You will have to come to my house near Davis Square to pick up whatever of these you want.

singing, singing!

Back in December, miss_chance's birthday wish spurred me into starting voice lessons, which I had been wanting to do for quite some time. Since then, I've been going weekly (other than travel other occasional delays) to lessons with Jeannine Hebb, a local singer-songwriter, whose teaching style suits me perfectly -- very laid-back and fun. (If anyone wants her email address, let me know. She's in Brighton, near Cleveland Circle.) Since I'm going entirely for myself, not to perform or anything like that, I'm pretty flexible about the sorts of things we sing, and I'm really open to her suggestions as far as what to sing goes, which I think is fun for her, too. I also am starting from really far down, which means it's easy to make progress and feel like I'm coming along.

I'm totally loving the lessons, and the new music I'm learning, and just generally having a blast with it. It's such fun to be learning something new, and to be musical. Typically, after a class, I feel deeply relaxed, in the same way that I did after doing an interpretation in Guate (less intensely, though) and energized in a similar way to after a great dance. it's... it's just great.

So, I'm going to keep track of my progress occasionally (but not weekly), just for myself, and, well, you all can listen in if you care to.

( Lessons-to-date, a review: )