Game night

Yesterday was busy in a good way. The day before I had a nice chat with Janna. It was cold and gray again, but today is sunny so far. Sunday nights are Amelia's Friday, so she and Kevin came for game night. We played Splendor (again) and I won! It's a deceptively simple game, with no violence. You collect gems. It starts slow, there's luck and strategy, and the last few rounds are really intense, because I had a plan to win, but it was possible someone else would beat me to it. We had takeout food from Dashi, ramen noodle bowls and other Japanese fare: grilled chicken and shrimp, pork buns. Kevin ordered bacon-wrapped mochi, which he does not recommend. Half of it is still in the fridge... It was a little complicated because we sang at the installation ceremony for the new lead minister at ERUUF. Her name is Rev. Jacqueline Brett. She is a gay black middle-aged woman and now the lead minister of a congregation of 700 members in Durham, North Carolina. This is a cause for celebration and many of the national UU leading lights were there. It is also one of the first big UU gatherings since the start of the pandemic. There was a guest musician named Melanie deMore, who is amazing! I'm now a huge fan. We rehearsed with her Tuesday and Thursday. She taught us parts to several songs by rote. She sang solos, conducted other groups and led the audience in energetic music. She also spoke with heartfelt sincerity about the importance of singing music from other cultures. She said that talk of cultural appropriation is "poison." "As a card-carrying black person," I will come to your school and tell you, please sing my songs. We're all human and we've all faced challenges, draw on your experience. She talked about getting a song written in Mandarin, so that a multicultural choir could sing in everyone's language. Apparently, China has no choral music tradition...? She wrote, "I will be your standing stone," for a friend with cancer. Anyway, it was a great experience, but I did not want to cancel Sunday night, so we rushed home at 6:30 and didn't stay for feasting and dancing. Dramatically, the choir director was not at rehearsal Thursday night. Her name is Wendy and she is fairly new at ERUUF and quite young. She had tested positive for COVID. They treated her with Paxlovid and she was there Sunday afternoon. We always mask when we are singing, except for soloists during performances. Ray and I tested negative yesterday before we went. Melanie directed and sang from a glassed-in chapel in the corner of the sanctuary. They said it was from "an abundance of caution." I thought probably she had tested positive as well. You can imagine the behind-the-scenes work to set up the sound system for that last-minute change. I know no one wanted this celebration to be a super-spreader event. There are also filters throughout the sanctuary. Molli and Michael visited a house in Marblehead that we thought we might make an offer on. It has the requisite 2 full bathrooms and bedrooms, a decent kitchen, a fireplace, all on one level, about 15 minutes from their house. The layout is a little odd, with the primary bedroom made from two smaller spaces, so there is sort of a bedroom and a dressing room or antechamber, and the whole thing is through the kitchen. There's a little sunken family room at the back of the house. But there is virtually no back yard, no usable outdoor space, no deck or patio. And it's on a somewhat busy street. Ray was in. Molli was in. But I said no, I want to hold out for something better. We have the flexibility to do that, although moving everything out of the house in Beverly and into storage and then into another house when we find it will be inconvenient. We still have a little time, since the closing is scheduled for March 31. So streessful!