Taxes!

How can you charge me $29 to file Illinois? Why should it cost me money to file taxes? I don't know how to make a grumpy emoticon, but I would. harrumph!

I've had quite a busy week! I had two auditions that were the near miss type that all singers try to avoid. It wasn't the singing that was a problem but communication and transportation.

Tuesday I was in the midst of A: doing my taxes, and B: trying to figure out how to politely word an e-mail to a group that I had applied to audition for. This e-mail was going to somehow say, you should give me an audition, and if you don't I'm going to come and sing for you anyway.

However I then received a phone call asking me where I was because I was supposed to be auditioning for this very group at that moment...did you receive our e-mail? Why no I didn't but I will come as soon as, well I take a shower! So went down town and sang Una Donna and If I Loved you (in a really stupid key). It went quite well! He complimented my Italian and then told me that I gave the smartest performance of If I Loved you that he had ever seen. So that was fabulous. He then chatted with me for quite a while about the research that I'm doing for CIAO.

I haven't heard back from them. Which isn't really concerning considering that it hasn't been that long, but I'm worried that they have my e-mail wrong some how and the same problem that arose with the audition will again surface.

The second audition was down at the University. The first anxious thing about it is that I had to completely learn and memorize the andante movement of Mozart's Exultate Jubilate for this audition in a week. The second problem was the traffic. I left with plenty of extra time to get down there, but I did not remember that the car show was this weekend. So. It took me a half an hour to get from Balbo to the McCormic center. Needless to say I arrived late for my audition. That's really not something that I want to do, ever. Even though this wasn't an audition that was something that I was banking on. They should give it to a student, which I am no longer. The audition was fine, except for that pianist made the cut we had agreed on a phrase early cutting out my cadenza.

No big deal really. I just was really confused for a brief moment, because I thought for sure that I had somehow blithely missed a whole phrase of music. No matter I continued on to the Alleluia which I sing with gusto!

Now a week of vacation before I return to more auditions!