The double life

Sometimes I'm not sure if I live in Salt Lake or Utah Valley. Tonight I drove down after work to visit Steve and Emily, who are in town from Missouri, where they are going to med school. It also happened to be Steve's birthday, what better reason for everyone to get together and eat a lot of food! There is always a lot of food at Steve's family's house, and it's always very good food. After filling myself up on salad and fresh fruit and really good herb bread and corn on the cob and the best shish-kebabs I've ever had, I sat and contentedly listened to Steve discourse to everyone on why the proposed health care changes won't work. As Steve pointed out, he does a good job of playing devil's advocate, which I completely agree with. Then I went upstairs and talked with Emily while she gave her daughter a bath. Then I filled up even more on trifle, and as I was leaving, Em told Steve that I was planning to come visit them in Missouri sometime. Steve gave me a bit of a strange look, as if to imply he didn't believe me.

"Well, all right," he said. "But you know where liars go."

"Where?" I replied innocently.

"Hell. Everlasting burnings. Where the worm dieth not," replied Steve solemnly, at the same time that one of his other friends stated, "Congress."

I'm not sure if the two are synonyms, but it was enough to have me chuckling until I was out in my car. Heh.

With all this driving, my car is becoming more of a place where I spend time than it ever has before. It gives me lots of time to ponder various things- and also time to practice singing. I figure I might as well use the time constructively, and since I'm paying a fair amount of money for voice lessons, I figure I might as well put in as much practice time as I can. When I was in high school, I would get up at 5:30 to practice voice. Now, when I get in my car and drive to Orem or Provo, I play CD recordings of my lessons to practice with (my latest teacher is by far the most technologically savvy). I'm not sure why I've taken lessons for so many years, except that I feel like I should. But it's good for me, which is reason enough right there. It makes me think about things and gives me a constructive project and a structured way to improve. And it also makes me grin when I think about what other people might think if they should happen to see me doing a lip-buzzing exercise in my car, or if I should happen to have my sunroof open while I'm doing warmups.