It has been a surprisingly nice week. Yes, there have been a few days of rather heavy rain, but even that hasn�t managed to change the fact that it's been a nice week.

Considering we've got the cantata coming up and the director is usually pretty stressed by now, and especially considering that the cantata he picked for us this year is likely one of the hardest things we have ever done (the fact that at times we split into 9 parts might have something to do with that), the fact that choir practice last night was remarkably low key and even mostly enjoyable was a large part of why this has been a nice week. I am having a wonderful time with this cantata because, since there are only two of us tenors and he is more comfortable with the low notes while I tend to prefer the higher ones, when we split, I stay on the top line, and can remain blissfully immune to all the confusion the rest of the tenor and bass section have to deal with. I noted that this meant I got to pretend I was a soprano, not ever having to worry about which part I was supposed to sing, at craft night tonight, and one of the other people there reminded me that this didn't apply to *all* sopranos (she happens to be a second soprano, so in a piece of music with sometimes nine parts, she *definitely* has to be paying attention). Plus this particular cantata has a number of men-only choral sections that are also actually challenging, so it is a lot of fun to sing.

Another reason why it has been such a lovely week is that I had today off from work. So I got to sleep in a little bit, and then, because I finally managed to schedule an appointment (I have been trying for weeks now) I got a long overdue haircut, during which she chopped off several inches and restored my blah hair to its former almost cute self. Then, because the stars were aligned perfectly and I not only had the free time, but am not even sick, I zipped off to the blood center and spent a few hours sitting in a chair watching Bride and Prejudice (which is the sort of movie that is only entertaining because it is just so truly bad) while they stuck needles in my arm and hooked me up to a machine and sucked a triple donation of platelets out of me because I may not have much in other respects, but by golly, I have oodles of those.

It's been a few years since I was able to do this sort of donation, so I'd forgotten just how much this tends to wipe me out, but that's okay, I had the day off! So I went home and took a short nap and then camped out in bed and worked on my knitting and ended up sitting there far longer than I'd intended, all the while having to go to the bathroom more and more desperately but unwilling to move because Zucchini decided that after twelve years of being too nervous to do more than pace around near me and occasionally let me scritch his head before he has to run away in terror, he needed to sit on my lap! And not only was he on my lap, he was purring and batting at the yarn and letting me pet him and I think this means the world might end, but that's okay, because after twelve years he has finally decided that he can trust me enough to sit on my lap.

I told this to the people at craft night tonight (where there were kittens to play with, which just added to the week of good) and there were enough people there who know about him to realize just how much of an amazing thing this is, and also people there who have cats who are not quite as invisible or as terrified as Zucchini is, but still pretty skittish, and so even though they might not know the whole story about Zucchini, they completely understood why it nearly brought me to tears.