Running in the Sun

Today I went out for a three mile run. Note that it is mid January, and it was sixty-eight degrees and sunny when I went outside to run. Now, to native Los Angelinos, that is nothing out of the ordinary, but for someone who spent the past three years slogging through, scraping off, and generally fighting with the snow in southern Michigan, it is quite an adjustment. In December, I was feeling kind of nostalgic about the snow – in spite of the above sentence of complaining, I was always excited when the first snow of the year came down, and my last law school roommate got me hooked on snow shoeing. However, my trip home to Missouri and to Ohio to visit Rob’s family reminded me what it is really like to be cold. It was around ten degrees, which would be nothing in Michigan, but is actually pretty unusual for St. Louis and Cincinnati. The weather almost called for a down coat, long underwear, and snow boots. And it reminded me of a resolution I made last winter when I was running on a treadmill in my apartment complex gym: when I live in southern California, I’m going to take advantage of the beautiful weather year round. Have I been doing so? Absolutely not! So, a couple of times last week, and again today, I went and ran outside and it was beautiful. I’m hoping to get back into running regularly. A friend of mine is running a half-marathon in September (she apparently got conned into this because her best friend’s husband told this friend she could never run a half-marathon, a statement that clearly won’t fly and is good cause to register for said half-marathon post haste) and I’m actually considering it, though I’ve never actually run a race longer than a 5k. September is eight months away… plenty of time to train to run 13-something miles, right? Right.

In any case, though it might be a little late for New Year's Resolutions, I'm going to make one/renew one now - I will make a point to enjoy the outdoors in sunny Los Angeles as though I had just flown out from snow-covered Michigan, whether by taking nice run, firing up the grill, or sipping a glass of wine on the back porch. I'll let you know how it goes.

A Return to Choral Music

When I arrived in Los Angeles in September and realized that six months of free time lay between me and my job at the law firm, it seemed I would never make it unless I found some kind of organization or activity in which I could participate. Music used to be an enormous part of my life - I sang in choirs all through high school and college, and did a short stint with a women’s choir in St. Louis while I was working as a legal assistant. During law school, I really had very little time to do anything but study, prepare for class, study, and go to class, with the occasional break for a beer or two, so I never got around to joining a choir. And I really, really missed it. So, I typed “Los Angeles Choirs” into Google, hoping to find a choir nearby that had not yet finished auditioning for the season. I came across the Angeles Chorale, a 100 something auditioned group of singers that performs several times a year, and found that auditions were, in fact, happening in three days. I called to set up an audition time, pulled out my copy of Twenty-Four Italian Songs and Arias, and started trying to remember how to sing. The audition information stated that candidates must submit a “choral resume,” something I have never even contemplated needing before. When I attempted to write down choral works I had performed with my previous choirs, I found that I could only remember a handful. My audition took place in the music building at UCLA and consisted of one prepared piece, some sight reading, and some vocal exercises for the sake of determining my vocal range. When my turn came, I was trembling like a leaf and just hoping that my voice was not. I botched the sight reading exercise (three years away from choral music had left me kind of rusty), but the director stopped me in the middle of my aria and welcomed me to the chorale.

So far I’ve performed with the Angeles Chorale twice – the main performance to which we devoted fall rehearsals was The Messiah. Several friends came to hear the performance, and it went fantastically. The Messiah is an intricate and interesting work – I never fully appreciated it until I learned it for this performance, and I feel it is often underappreciated, perhaps because the most popular bits are so overused and do not necessarily reflect how stunning the rest of the work is.

The other performance with the Chorale is one of my favorite L.A. memories so far - performing in the Holiday Sing Along at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. About forty singers from my choir performed with a few jazz musicians. The concert is a yearly tradition specifically designed to bring in entire families for about an hour and a half of singing favorite holiday songs. I have to admit I was a little skeptical at first, thinking the idea bordered on cheesy, but the audience loved it and the opportunity to sing on the stage at Disney concert hall was worth any residual feelings of ridiculousness that might have stemmed from the Santa Claus hat I was wearing. Before the performance, someone described the venue as the inside of a large ship, and he was absolutely right. The curves and tiers on the inside are as interesting as those on the outside, and result in an acoustically pleasing and oddly seaworthy experience. The best moment of the performance was probably when we did The Twelve Days of Christmas, for which the director, from the stage, split the hall into eleven different sections and assigned them each a different part to sing (everyone sang "five golden rings" together). Seeing everyone in a sold out Disney Concert Hall popping up out of their seats to sing their assigned phrase was quite the spectacle. I was definitely in the Christmas spirit after that.

A New Blog for a New Era

I haven't been doing much blogging lately - in fact, I have not updated my previous blog, http://amedley.livejournal.com/ in nearly a year. Now that I am returning to a normal human being, or something approximating (but still different from) my pre-law school self, I thought I might try a new take on the blog.

Upon hearing that I recently moved to Los Angeles, people often ask, “Oh, how do you like it?” I never really know how to answer – like many people, I feel kind of a love-hate relationship with L.A. The city does have its drawbacks – it is big, sprawling, dirty, smoggy and full of traffic, not to mention half a continent away from my entire family. On the other hand, anything you could ever want to do is here – any cuisine, any kind of art, music, movies, things to do. My philosophy in life has always been that if you put in the effort, you can be happy pretty much anywhere. It can take some work though, and motivation, to get out of the house, get involved in the community, and to find places and things to do that fit you and make you feel at home. To honor that philosophy, I decided to start this blog in order to record some of my efforts to enjoy L.A. and take advantage of what it has to offer (aside from Pinkberry, the Hollywood sign, and sunshine). I’m an official Los Angeles resident now – mailing address, license plates, driver’s license, and voter registration. L.A. is the first city I’ve ever moved to for an indefinite amount of time. I always knew I was likely to leave St. Louis after college or after a couple years of working after college. When I moved to Ann Arbor to attend law school, I knew it was only a three-year arrangement. So, since I have no plans to leave L.A. any time soon, I figure now is as good a time as any to try and embrace it.