I turned off my alarm last night and allowed myself to sleep as long as I needed.

I woke up at about 1:00 in the afternoon.

Ate some peanut butter toast, took a shower, bundled up in my parka, boots, scarf, gloves, and hat, and headed out with Dave and Yaron into the snow storm. It took us about 10 minutes over the norm to walk downtown. We couldn't tell where the sidewalk ended and the street began, unless one of us had the misfortune of slipping into a buried gutter.

Ate lunch at Ford News Diner. Ordered a BLT, potato salad and coffee, but had to run because I was going to be late in meeting up with Ike.

I was going to the opera.

Was.

Ike's parents had planned their opera trip for quite sometime, to see The Marriage of Figaro at the Met. However, with the sudden change in the weather, Ike's dad couldn't fly from Europe and his mom couldn't fly from San Diego. Rather than letting the $250 tickets go to waste, Ike had invited myself and Matthew to take their places.

I put on my New-Yorker-black-and-gray, put my hair up in a snappy, side-parted ponytail and tugged on my pointy-toed boots. I slip-slid down to the bus station with the boys, only to find that the busses were no longer running. Nor was the train. Nor were the cabs.

We huddled around the frozen payphone next to the station, trying to get through to Amtrak, but the automated voice told us we'd have to wait 15 minutes before we could even talk to a real operator.

After about 20 minutes of deliberation, we trampled back up the hill to the apartment, the spring gone from our steps, wisps of my hair freezing to my parka, digging my spike heels into the ice, praying to stay on my feet. Adding insult to injury would have been the last thing we all wanted.

We got back to the house, where the rest of the gang was watching East Side Story and drinking tea. I unwrapped my scarf, unzipped my boots, and flopped onto the futon. The world had stopped operating today, the first full day of snow. The snow, on the other hand, hasn't stopped, and as I sit here at Yaron's computer, all I can see out of his window is white, slowly creeping up the bottom of the windowpane, and sliding down in sheets from the roof with each gust of wind. I've decided to go to Alex and Michael's Winter Dance Concert - a $5 ticket - instead. Aaron is singing in the chapel tonight, and I might try to catch that as well.

And that's how I almost went to the opera to sit in a $250 dollar seat, wearing mascara and knee-high leather boots. Instead, I'm back in my torn jeans and snowboots, ponytail readjusted at the nape of my neck, looking more bedraggled than perky.

I baked snickerdoodles for the house, and rolling the dough between my palms gave me one of the most satisfied feelings I've had in a while. I'm going to bring some of them to Alex and Michael for the end of the concert. I'm excited to see what they've been working on in their late-night rehearsals for the last few months.

Take that, Met.

  ¶ 19:18

  "Many political words are...abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.' The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like 'Marshal Petain was a true patriot,' 'The Soviet Press is the freest in the world,' 'The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution,' are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality." --George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946.  ¶ 23:59

  Jay leaves; Taylor takes over.

I start, mic in hand. Quiet, sly, with a sultry look, I sing my line. Dave comes in, playing a delicate, jaunty baseline, leaving gaps in just the right places for a melodramatic breath or pause. "You'd be all that I could desire."
Cue Ryan, brushes swirling on just the snare. Keep it quiet. Break it open a bit on "paradise." Breathe through the last four, trail off "and love" with itself, over and over, up to the head.

Mix up the lyrics a bit, talk to yourself. Exchange syllables in the place of words, make it sound wistful, like you're trying to think of the right thing to say to your lover, but you know that words alone won't always suffice. Make love with the melody, and then make it your own. Put your finger to its lips and do the talking for both of you.

Third chorus, cue Haley on tenor, playing with yearning, breathy Ben Webster-esque tone. He and I move around the changes together, feeding off of each other's lines. Think of us as one of Bach's inventions, swung like all hell. I move over to Dave (another) at the piano, and we tumble down arpeggios together, piecing them together, interval by interval.

The last chorus: with my back turned, Taylor cues the rest of the ensemble to cut out, and suddenly Dave and I are back again, toying with the theme, moving away from the changes now. Without warning, he slides down the neck of the bass and drops out with eight bars to go. I finish it up a capella. I love my voice, I love my phrasing, I love the microphone, I love stripping this tune to its essence and reconstructing it, my way. Our way.

Silence. A pause.

"Good one. See ya'll next week."

  ¶ 22:37