All telephone service was interrupted in part of my town this evening. Apparently our phone company accidentally cut a phone line that took out my local service, long distance, and even the cell phone tower! That meant no internet, no cell phone, and no land line. Cut off from the world…

It’s funny how I suddenly wanted to call somebody, anybody that I know. I even contemplated going back to work, where at least the internet still ran blithely along through my computer, and camping out there with my knitting, a book, and my laptop. Yeah, that’s sad.

Do they have Communication-aholoics Anonymous? I think I need an intervention.

So what did I end up doing on my one-day weekend? Well, remember that my Saturday started pretty early in the morning due to my neighbor’s love of people, music, and alcohol (especially when all of these can be combined throughout the night). So before the sun was up I already had most of my household catching up done. Balanced my checkbook, rejoiced in the 35mpg I’d gotten while traveling home to see my family the previous weekend, did my dishes, and made sure Pippin’s box returned to a sanitary condition. Then, while a beautiful sunrise splashed itself over my picture windows, I sipped cocoa while sorting through two weeks’ worth of mail, paid bills, and generally took care of everything I haven’t had time to take care of for the last ten days.

This left the rest of my Saturday free for power relaxation. That’s right, I intended to do whatever would be the relaxing and satisfying enough to make one day feel like a whole weekend. So I started at the top of my stack of library videos by popping in Brideshead Revisited and watched the first three episodes of that, then I took a break to watch Top Chef on TV, then came a Poirot mystery and then the final three episodes of season 4 of the Sopranos. If you’re counting, that means that I put in 9 hours of TV/movie watching yesterday!

But, fear not. I was not a complete lump. During this time I also battled Blogger over whether or not I’d be allowed to publish the posts I’d written, wrote quite a bit, caught up on my blog reading, caught up on my email, called my mom, called my sister, talked to my co-worker, and doubled my progress on the sweater that I’m knitting.

So that was yesterday. And today was the wonderful, glorious, luscious end of daylight savings. I’ve been a little bit early to everything today even though I feel like I’m taking everything very slowly. The sun was up as I drove to church, and I got home in plenty of time to do my laundry and knit before work.

We just won’t mention that the “knitting” that I did today was actually “un-knitting.” I’ve decided that my sweater was too big, and I’d misunderstood some of the directions, so I took the whole thing out and started over. Funny how it’s taken my two weekends to get six or seven inches knitted, but it only took me twenty minutes to unravel it all and wind the yarn back into balls.

Pippin loves this game…

This is strange, seeing as I went to visit my parents last weekend, Friday through Sunday. And Saturday was a wonderful vacation day, full of sitting around and buying yarn for knitting. But then I came back to my place and life kicked into high gear.

Monday work was full of meetings, and the entire evening was devoted to reading in preparation for a discussion group at work. Normally I enjoy reading of an evening, but not this book, and not when I’m dogged by the certain knowledge that I will not be able to finish the assigned portion before the discussion group meets.

Tuesday there were even more meetings at work, and the evening was spent at my first choir rehearsal as the new director. This was more fun than I expected, but still tiring, and it conflicted with my futile efforts to catch up on my discussion group reading assignment.

Wednesday is always a long day. I work from 8:30 to 2 and then from 7 to 10 on Wednesdays. And from 2 to 7, when I had intended to catch up on that reading chore, I ended up having to read several reports and articles in preparation for a meeting I hadn’t known I was supposed to attend, let alone present at, the next morning. I ended up not being able to finish the reading that day so I got to work extra early (8:00) the next morning to finish preparing for the 8:30 meeting. Which brings me to…

Thursday was the worst day of all. I got to work at 8 to prepare as well as I could for the 8:30 meeting. And this meeting turned out to be a horribly uncomfortable one, with stake holders arguing vehemently over whether or not our assigned task was “a load of ____” (insert your favorite vulgar term for excrement… and yes, this came from the mouth of a tenured professor). The rest of Thursday was scheduled back to back with appointments and meetings until 6:15, and which point I jumped into the car and rushed to meet my friend to see a movie. I haven’t gone to see a movie in a long, long time, so I was really looking forward to this. And the movie was interesting and well acted, but by far and away the most vulgar, violent, and foul-mouthed movie I’ve ever seen. If they wanted to make a TV version, they’d have to write about an hour’s worth of dialogue to dub over everything they’d have to cut out. It was also a very long movie, so I didn’t get home until about 11, at which point I still had to eat dinner. So I made myself a grilled cheese sandwich and ended up falling asleep on the couch and sleeping there, weighted down by Pippin’s steady purring on my chest.

Friday morning I woke with a start, realizing that I hadn’t brushed my teeth or anything the night before, and that without an alarm I could easily have slept right through my morning appointments at work. But I hadn’t, so I got myself to work for yet another day of back to back appointments and meetings, and then dragged myself home for a quiet evening.

Alas, Party Girl threw a party last night. It started just as I was going to bed (at an early but much-needed 9:30) and continued until 7:00 this morning. The 2 to 3am hour was by far the worst, though, and culminated in a visit from the police. So today I feel hung over from lack of sleep. On the upside, though, I was up by 6 sorting my mail, cleaning the kitchen, and generally getting a head start on the day. So in some perverse way I have more time to relax during the day today…

And now, I think it is time for cafe au lait, some knitting, and Brideshead Revisited. I wish it weren’t my turn to go to work on Sunday (1:00 to 5:00 and 7:00 to 10:00). I need a real weekend.

For the last couple of years, there’s been a new wool shop in my parents’ town, and it has stocked the must luscious yarn. My mom and I would go in just to hold this yarn. It didn’t matter that we didn’t need yarn. We just needed a feel of the wonderful stuff.

Well, while I was home over the weekend, I decided to try to knit a sweater. I’ve never knitted a sweater before, but I don’t need any more scarves or cup holders or hot pads, so it was either a sweater or socks. Of the two, the sweater would take longer, so it was a clear choice. I don’t want to be done with my project in a couple of days. This is my entertainment for the next few months.

You can see where this is going… I held that yarn, that wonderful yarn, and I was sold. Simply holding it makes my palms tingle and sends warmth seeping up to my elbows. The thought of running it through my fingers for the next few months was completely irresistible. So now I’m the proud owner of 12 balls of this marino/cashmere mix, in black.

I’ve been asked to serve as my new church’s choir director, and I just don’t know what to answer. On the one hand, when this happened to me at my last church I was terrified (never having received any training in directing) but it ended up being the highlight of my last two years at that church. I got to know people in a way that just isn’t possible if you aren’t fully committed to an activity. I also got to work with a wonderful group of people who didn’t laugh at my completely comic attempts to learn to conduct, and who chose my tenure there as the time to really sink their teeth in and make some truly beautiful music. Then I moved here.

This time I can’t plead as much ignorance of the craft. I’ve had two years of experience, and while this doesn’t make me an expert it certainly makes me more of an expert than I was the last time I faced this choice. But this time I’m also half an hour away from the church, which means that I’d be facing a minimum of two hours away from home on one of my three free week-nights. Tuesday night I feed whomever from my department wants to come over. Wednesday nights I work the evening shift, and Thursday nights would be choir practice.

And while this would be enough to give me pause, I know from experience that the hour of practice with the group is usually only a fraction of the time I would spend planning music, learning parts, and basically figuring out what to do during rehearsal. I just don’t know if I can handle it with the way work is right now.

So my pastor will be calling soon for my answer and I just don’t know what to tell him. I need to ask him if there’s a budget for buying music, and how much money is in that budget. I need to ask him if Thursdays would even work for them. I need to ask him how many people I could expect and what voice ranges. And I need to ask him if I’d be preparing anything for the contemporary service as well as the traditional service. But these are relatively minor questions compared to whether or not I’ll be their director. I want to be. I don’t want to be. And I want both of those things in equal measure.