Glanalaw - delighting in pure song

I've been living in my new apartment two weeks now, and it's beginning to feel like home.  Aubrey and I finally got our living room furniture arranged - the first week, it was just all dumped anyhow, as we were still waiting on a few items from her parents' house - but now we have chairs and television placed, decorations hung, blankets draped on chairs.  I love how the apartment has come together; it is what my roommate's family likes to call "Early American Attic" - that is to say, mismatched, in a variety of styles and periods - but it all works together well enough.  And more importantly, it's comfortable .  We have big squashy armchairs, useful tables, lamps.  Nothing too fussy; nothing difficult to clean; nothing really unnecessary. I took all these photos in the evening, so you don't see the incredible sunlight we get from that huge window in the mornings; I'll have to take a morning photo someday.  It's wonderful. The kitchen is sma...

Well, here I am in Tennessee again, all moved into my new apartment!  I love it; the location could hardly be more ideal - as close to campus as you can get without being on  campus; fairly secluded; east-facing, so we get all the gorgeous morning sunlight and none of the heat of the afternoon.  I'm still revelling in the space ; we have a living room!  A dining area!  A kitchen with enough cabinets!  My room holds my extra-long twin bed, a bookshelf, and a recliner with no trouble at all and has room for a desk when I find one.  I have my own bathroom, for that matter!  And a walk-in closet! More than that, I have a delightful roommate who shares my love of vegetables, Jane Austen, and good tea; who cooks and organizes and decorates and thinks much the same way I do.  Our mothers like each other, too :)  I think this is going to be a good year! We loaded up the car last Wednesday and drove down Thursday (and I was convinced that I h...

...or rather, where you trip... We ate Sunday dinner out on the deck today, as usual on lovely days, and we'd gotten to the dessert stage - peach-blueberry cobbler, fresh out of the oven.  I realised we'd left the whipped cream inside and jumped up to get it.  Going a little more quickly than usual up the stairs and through the door, I caught my foot on the sill - the runner of the screen door. Caught it a little harder than I'd realised, because when I stopped hopping up and down and gasping in pain long enough to look at my foot, I found I had a gash in my second toe and was bleeding freely on the tile floor of the hall.  I'll spare you the gory details, but I'm fairly sure my toenail is at least partially detached - the end with the quick, not the "dead" end.  Lovely. So I have spent the afternoon in a considerable amount of pain, with my toe first being iced and then bandaged, and elevated as much as possible.  I'm already tired of sitting in...

This past weekend I went to Memphis for the wedding of two sweet friends from college.  Jordan has been my saviour in music theory, tutoring me through a couple of tough semesters when he really was the only thing between me and failing.  Shelby has been a dear friend for a couple of years, especially last year when she and her sister - and her roommate! - transfered to Union after their school hit financial difficulties.  I was able to be "behind the scenes" when Jordan finally proposed, and the piece I was part of a quartet to sing at the wedding was one that he wrote and I helped sing for the proposal last fall.  (I made cheesecake for the proposal dinner, too.)  It was an honour to be asked to sing at the wedding as well! I took the train because it was cheaper than flying, and that way no one had to drive to Nashville to pick me up.  It was fun!  Plus, I didn't have to deal with strict baggage restrictions, security checks, or getting to the stat...