Dune-blogging II plus other stuff

My dear father in law watches the women's car as we come down a rather steep dune in the midst of the desert. Can you imagine riding this on a camel or a donkey? Pregnant? Like Mary?







On the right, you can see our driver Mr. Abdullah thinks this is all a load of laughs. You can't see my mother-in-law in this picture, though it's just as well, since her eyes were very tightly closed and she was holding my hand tight.


On a more mundane note, we had our 15th annual singalong Messiah performance at our church this past evening. As usual, we did a sometimes sublime, sometimes rocky performance. I sang "Rejoice greatly." Not one of my better performances, as I think I'm fighting off the flu. In fact, the whole bench should have been on the injured/reserved list: our choir director and tenor soloist cum trumpeter had a bad cold, our usual alto soloist has been down with a nagging bronchitis and didn't sing at all, so she was replaced by our former organist who had strained her voice at an earlier concert in the afternoon leading carols, and our usual bass soloist was busy playing Herr Drosselmayer in a performance of the Nutcracker downtown. A relatively new member of the choir, and a brand-new dad, so you know he was operating on little sleep, stepped in the do the bass solos, and did an excellent job. The choir did well until "His Yoke is Easy," when the altos missed an entrance, which knocked out the tenors and basses on their entrances like a row of dominoes. Only we noble sopranos kept going for about 10 rather empty bars. Ah, well, it was a receptive audience, from our church membership and the larger community, so everyone still had a good time. One of the more charming moments was noticing, during the Hallelujah Chorus that the 8 year old son of one of our choristers was sound asleep, head bent back over the chair, while we blasted away. If he can sleep through that, he can sleep through anything! Best of all, there were cookies afterwards. PH and I went home and crawled into bed with grilled cheese sandwiches. Aren't we a lively pair?

I'll be having a follow-up MRI this morning for the optic neuritis problem I suffered from earlier this year - I covet your prayers that there will be no further changes in this feeble and overcrowded brain of mine! The good news is that I really can fall asleep in the MRI tube... as long as I've made sure the middle-aged bladder is empty.

Time to read myself to sleep. I sure wish I could get back into this time zone once and for all! I've got the falling asleep part down - it's the staying asleep part that's a challenge.

Grumble, grumble...