I had to look this up recently to see how far I had to go to reach "Video Archivist" status - so here's the relevant page in the FAQ..

Oh - and back when I used to be asked "and when will we hear the pitter-patter of little feet?" I wish I'd thought fast enough to say "when we put shoes on the cat."

MMmm, homemade Indian food. I agree with asking the mom if she could show you something simple to make, or ask her where she finds her ingredients, Bettyjobialosky. That might be a nice way to compliment her without putting her under too much of an obligation. One time when I was invited over to a Pakistani family's home for dinner, I asked about "curry powder" and found out it's really a combination of a lot of different spices, and the hostess showed me this nifty little spice-tray thing with compartments for each one. She just threw in pinches and dashes and crushed bits of dried stuff and wa-lah!, it was delicious.

You mean like this?

And mmmm...curry. It's been a long time since I've had any. Maybe I'll make some this weekend.

Thank you so much, WedsAddams, Mama Tiger and Red Targetter!! You have been very kind to a rude stranger. I will try your suggestions, and I hope I can redeem myself.

Oh, and I think I’ll look into those etiquette lessons, too!

My husband and I have been married close to 8 years, and have tried for children for four. We get this question all the time, and our response is similar to above. However, we throw the ultimate curveball and say, "well, we must be doing something wrong, and we appreciate your heartfelt concern. We'll put you on our list, and next time we have sex we'll call you and you can give us your suggestions."

:::sob::: Everyone around me is getting new kitties, and the last thing I need in my life right now is a new kitty, but I want one too!

Anyway, rabrab, that is so cool -- details?

When I first started posting, I thought Stalkers were just a kind of urban legend. Now I'm seeing more and more all the time.

I thought I was close to a promotion - I thought it was at 500 posts, but it turns out it's a thousand. I've got a long, long way to go till I get to Fanatic. At the rate I'm going, it'll take years.

Anybody else missing the banner ad days? Good times. Except for the part about possibly losing TWOP of course. I remember all the new people we pulled into the TAR fold.

What's this about a poster revolt?

With all this talk of status and promotions, I thought I would add this completely extraneous post--just so that I can officially become a Couch Potato. Yay! (And the day after my first anniversary, too.) I also post regularly on the Survivor, Apprentice, and Starting Over boards (and occasionally jump in on a few others), but I thought it was appropriate that I become a Couch Potato here at TAR since this is where I first posted a year ago during TAR4. I had been lurking for a while, but posted because I had a question about Linegate. Sniff! Now I'm getting nostalgic.

Aw, Bubbcat, congrats on your elevation to no-life-outside-TWoP status! I'm carefully watching my post numbers because I'm determined to become a stalker here at TAR; I actully started posting during American Idol last year but it was the TAR recaps that really sucked me in. Good times.

This post will elevate me to Video Archivist - onward and upward to Couch Potato. I started posting this time last year on TAR, but had been lurking for ages.

Me, Me!!! I was actually looking at them over at the Tarflies site yesterday and remembering the good old days.

I've posted very occasionally here...but have lurked since the days of Mighty Big TV.

Edited for spelling, of course

Those banners is what sucked me into posting more, as a matter of fact. From there it was but a short step to TARflies and complete neglect of my family....

Well, DariaG I believe me and my sister emjaytee will now have to wait on getting our new kitty. You see, we were on a cruise during the week of the 12th and while in Jamaica we tried doing the Dunn's River Falls climb. Emjaytee slipped on one of the rocks and cracked her knee up really badly and now she can't walk and is bruised and swollen from her thigh to her ankle. Needless to say we did not finish the climb. Luckily, there was an exit a few feet away from where she had her accident. Her knee is not a pretty sight. If anyone is ever thinking of doing this climb - please think twice. It is much more trecherous as they lead you to believe. We heard of other horror stories of this climb from others AFTER we went. Where were these people before we did the climb. Anyway, the ship's doc covered the wound with a second skin type of bandage so that we could go snorkel with the stingrays at Grand Cayman the following day. WHAT A FANTASTIC EXPERIENCE. So cool.

So - the new kitty now will have to be put on hold. Damn those falls.

OK, my HR person is out for the next few days (when I'm gone for the next two weeks after today - my husband and I are going to Italy, whee!), so perhaps my fellow MMs can pull from their vast collection of experience to help me out:

Yesterday I had a baby-checkup (17 weeks! next one is THE ultrasound!), and among other prescriptions was a note for work to not lift, pull, or push over 25 lbs, and no more than 8 hours/day; 40 hours/week.

Sounds great, right? But will it work? My boss is the sort that has me scheduled for 18 out of 19 straight days in late August (when I'll be 6 months pregnant), on the schedule for 12 hour days (because I had to take a Friday and Saturday off for a wedding, and she charged me vacation for both days, and then bumped my hours from 10 hours a day to 12 hours a day to cover the difference of me not being there for two days)(everyone else is still just on for 10 hour days). Now, this seems a might illegal to me, but she claims it is just because I, as a salaried employee, have to work until the work assigned me is done, and if I am taking days off I will need more time to work on projects.

Here's my question - what does she really have to do? Will these extra assignments that I can't finish in 8 hours a day mean she can fire me for not performing? Will she be able to cut into my maternity leave to cover weekends off (which I'm really supposed to have, anyway)- or can she use full and partial Personal Days/Sick Days for that?

I am just really worried by this; she is not going to be happy with me, and I hate feeling her wrath.

karatekate - your boss sounds like a real piece of work. The labour laws would vary by state/province. You need to check with your local labour department. I should think if you have a doctors note, you should be OK. Your health is more important than any job. Have fun in Italy!

karatekate, she can't cut into your maternity leave, and she can't make you work more hours than your doctor allows. Those are violations of the FMLA and the ADA, respectively. (I forget whether you're American or Canadian, this is info applicable to Americans, but the principles would likely apply in Canada, and Google is your friend.) Check the Department of Labor website, and Google FMLA and ADA for more info; I'm not an attorney, I'm just going on what I remember from having worked on projects in those two areas.

Your boss may have to hire a temp. That's not your problem, that's hers. And if you're a salaried employee, you should be able to do the work on your own schedule, not hers. She may be able to cut into your personal and sick days, but it looks to me like she's just trying to intimidate you.

Another resource is your doctor. Call him/her, and say that your boss wants to schedule you for a lot of hours beyond what s/he said you should work, and you don't know where to turn. You may get a letter out of it, or an offer of a phone call to the boss, or even info based on this happening before.

Don't let this bitch intimidate you. Although it sounds like you'd be better off working for a more reasonable person anyway.

And I should add that companies are generally very reluctant to fire pregnant people b/c it leaves them wide open to a lawsuit, so even if she does try to pull that nonsense, you would have good recourse. I would suggest that you document everything she has asked you to do--keep records of that ridiculous schedule for example--just in case. Better to be prepared, b/c that boss sounds pretty much evil to me.
I could be really overreacting and I don't want to freak you out--I'm just speaking from experience here.
You can also speak to the HR person about the laws around this stuff, too, but HR people are not generally on the side of the actual people doing the work at companies, I've found. (Wow, it's Hildy's Cup of Bitter post!)

ETA: I keep forgetting to ask you guys. My parents have decided that they want to take all four Hildy Kids, their spouses and their spawn, on an all expenses paid vacation someplace warm this winter. Any suggestions? We're on the East Coast, so it has to be pretty easily accessible from there. We were thinking that it might be fun to rent either one big house, or a bunch of small ones all near each other. Kids range in age from 2 to 16, so we were thinking someplace beachy, although the dreaded term 'Disney Cruise' has floated up. I'd really like to have a better alternative than that, however.

That's how I got here. I'd been posting in the American Idol forums and kept seeing the TAR banner ads and reading references to TAR from other posters. I'd never watched it before, but it sounded interesting, so when I got bored and there wasn't anything new to read, I started reading the old recaps, which got me interested in watching TAR 4, which led me to wonder why I'd never watched before. I have a vague recollection of hearing about TAR before the first season and thinking it sounded dumb. I must have been sick at the time because I can't imagine what I was thinking. I kick myself every day for it, of course.

Also, karatekate, check your state labor department's website. If you can't find the information you need there, you should at least find a phone number. Call someone at the department and explain your situation.

While it is true that if you are a certain classification, you may have to work more than 40 hours a week, generally it is also true that if you are that classification and you get your work done faster, you can also work a lot less. What your boss is trying to do certainly sounds like a violation of labor laws.

Call the labor department and get info from someone there, so you'll at least have the basic information to work off of. I called ours one time when I quit a job because the owner of the business said my paycheck would be late because she said I quit without notice. It wasn't true. I never saw her and we communicated solely by notes, but she left town without notice and her husband never told her that I quit. So she was fairly upset when I called to tell her I wouldn't be working when she scheduled me because I wouldn't be working for her again. (If you own a business, never communicate with employees by notes. It's sloppy. Also, make work schedules more than a day in advance or your employees will hate you.) Either way, though, with or without notice, a paycheck must be given or mailed to a former employee on the regularly scheduled day. I called and left a message on her answering machine telling her that, and I got my check. (If I hadn't, I was going to turn her in for asking applicants' age on her employment application.)

Anyway, call the labor department. That's what it's there for. Good luck.

Hildy, I have a couple of co-workers who took Christmas vacations last year. One went to St. Croix and one went to Puerto Rico. Both had great times, though the one who went to Puerto Rico (Rincon, specifically) gushed a bit more. I have a friend who goes to Destin FL every winter. They are supposed to have the most beautiful beaches in Florida there, and there are lots of houses to rent as well as hotels and resorts.

Hildy - I take a vacation every January with a bunch of friends and their kids. We go to a different all-inclusive resort every year. So far - Manzanillo, Puerto Vallarta, Margarita Island (Venezuela) and Cuba (OK - we're Canadian). A lot of the resorts even have kids clubs with tons of activities.

Hildy, I wrote this lengthy post, then realized you said "winter." So here's the only applicable part left:
I love Savannah, although I didn't go to the beaches and I don't know what you'd do with kids there (I'm so not a kid person). Even if you don't go there, "Savannah Blues" by Mary Kay Andrews is an enjoyably fluffy romantic mystery set there, and one of the characters lives on the beach.

If anyone ever wants a comparable recommendation for summer, I can babble about more northerly locations as I did originally.

Hildy, I recently went to San Andres in the Caribbean and had a wonderful time. We stayed at a resort called Decameron Aquarium. The setup is really cool - it looks like something out of Swiss Family Robinson. The food was pretty decent (though, for Colombia, the coffee was dreadful), the town is cute, and you can rent mopeds really cheap and have a look around the island.

Please do Babble, Daria, as schedules may turn this into a summer vacation instead of winter. It's also cheaper that way, I think.
Also, from the WW MM: stagger home drunk How long can you keep the guy in his feet? You move your mouse left when he goes right, and vice versa.

I couldn't get very far ( 7 meters)....but I'll blame it on my very tempermental mouse....not its very tempermental operator!

Okay, I even more officially have no life. I got him to 51 meters on my third try.

And just out of curiosity, how does one become a Tarfly and get to review Racers and stuff? Cause it looks really fun!

I am so far behind, but I wanted to congratulate everyone for everything from new lives to new kitties.

I don't want to start the name game again, but I guess every generation has its popular ones. I had 3 great-grandfathers named Fred.

I also had two goldfish named Fred, before I even knew about the family names. Weird? We had Fred and Sheena, but when Sheena died we replaced her with a second Fred.

GOing back a few pages, I think everyone should get to decide for themselves how old they thought he was in the Seventies, because I would have guessed pre-school DJ myself. I don't know how to link to individual photos, let me try this

Daria one of my bestest friends in all the world adopts the ferals in her neighborhood--gets them fixed and vaguely socialized. A lot of the queans are preggers, or get preggers before she can get them to the clinic, so she's usually got kittens running around. Our Trivet died a couple of years ago, and Sylvarra's been kind of moping (she was always one of at least two cats), and Jan's been after me to take one of the kittens from the the last three litters. She finally got me. I was down visiting her, and she put this little grey fuzzball in my hand, and I was a goner. If I can find the camera and the cable to feed the 'puter, I'll put up pictures after he gets here.

Hee. I got to 5 on my first try and 69 on my second. Then he fell asleep with his thumb in his mouth....

Mama Tiger, go to the Tarflies site, and register for the fourms there, and volunteer.

Mama Tiger, there's plenty you can do at Tarflies, and I have a couple of ideas. So e-mail me. You can also send me a "personal message" from that site.

Hildy, if your family opts for a summer vacation, I would highly recommend the Avalon/Stone Harbor/Cape May area of the New Jersey shore. The beaches are nice and wide, the water is cool enough that if it's hot out you can get some relief, they have a kazillion lifeguards who all seem to know the difference between enforcing safety and being a killjoy, and there are lots of big houses suitable for clans and half-clans. We piggyback on a multi-generational family vacation there each year (the family is there for a month, and we're old friends there for 3-5 days). People in all the various age brackets find plenty to do. There are some good restaurants in the area, and once you get beyond Cape May it's not excessively commercial. It's not as glamorous as some other locations, but it's fun and it works out as a vacation, and there are enough elegant that you can satisfy that side of you (if you want). One of the people in the family we visit has his own beach house in Avalon, complete with wine cellar and a courtyard full of flowers. The house we stay at is more typical -- lots of bedrooms, a big kitchen, a huge living room, and a gigantic deck. I've become opinionated about vacations, and I think a family beach vacation has to allow the family to function as such first and foremost. Part of that is meeting everyone's needs, which I think is easy to do in this area.

I know lots of people who take kids to the Outer Banks of NC, although I've only gone down there with childless people so I don't know what you do with kids there. It's definitely different, though.

I haven't been, but one of my students was from Bermuda and talked very highly of it.

When I was little my parents took us to the Bahamas and it was great fun.

I want to be a Fanatic so much, but still hundreds of posts to go. I've always admired RachelRSL and her Stalker status...

Off topic, but I nominated today's buzzword at www.buzzwhack.com here. Yes, I am a complete geek. dawsnzchck even bought me a polo shirt with <GeekMom> on it for Mother's Day.

I ought to nominate some word associated with TAR. Bringing it back on topic...

Ooh karatekate is going to Italy. I’m jealous. What part? Also, I hope everything works out with your boss. She is very close to breaking about 20 FMLA rules.

And Word! wtf about the “morning after” awkwardness. I always get a case of the giggles.

My big work conference thing happens in August. And I usually try to get out of as much of the back-slapping self congratulatory crap as I possibly can; this year I fear that I’ll have to be there for every horrific minute.
The only plus is that our Executive Director is H. O. T. HOT! That makes up for the boredom.

I envy you so much, my bosses are N.O.T NOT!

Every year we do a summer and winter off-site. The winter one used to be held at a country club that my then boss belonged to. Every year we sat through the annual Christmas show (think cruise ship lounge act and you're in the right ballpark) and then went to a local bar for drinks. I was officially over it the time that one of my co-workers sat at a table and tossed the entire desert tray, one desert at a time, down the length of the table for another co-worker to catch in his mouth. Last winter the restaurant at the club closed down and moved. I'm hoping it means that we don't have to do that anymore.

The summer one? Last year we were at my boss' yacht club. We met for a couple of hours and then went out on his (small) boat for about an hour. I'm proud to say I didn't get seasick, but being trapped on a boat with those folks made me want to puke.

I keep wondering when they'll figure out that I'm not a joiner?

Thank you all for your reassuring messages about my boss. Yes, she is a real . . . trial. I feel better after reading your advice, and do plan to talk to my HR when she is back (after I get back, that is!). I have taken your advice and printed all of these crazy schedules as additional backup, also.

Duchess Kitty, we are going to Rome and Venice. Neither Mr.Kate nor I have ever been to Italy... Mr.Kate has never even flown before!

Hildy, to chime in on DariaG's mention of NC Outer Banks, I recommend southern Outer Banks (like Ocean Isle, NC). We used to rent the big beachfront houses out there (both summer and winter). It's a quiet island, and you can get a place with hot tub, plus beach walks and outdoor funnery. The scenery is great for even playing board games in the house and visiting. You are about 45 minutes north of Myrtle Beach, so close enough to go for day or evening trips for outlet shopping, clubs, Broadway at the Beach, whatever, but you have the plus of not actually being at Myrtle Beach. There are airports in Wilmington, NC and Myrtle Beach, SC, (you're about halfway at Ocean Isle).

karatekate, if I were you I'd also take those crazy work schedules to your doctor and have him mark through them all in red ink just so nobody, not your bitch of a boss or the folks in HR, can suggest that the schedule your boss wants you to keep is to his liking!

And as for good vacation spots, Hildy, one of our favorites is Edisto Island just south of Charleston, SC -- there's only condos and homes on the island, no motels, so it's far less touristy than most such places. You're only 45 minutes away from Charleston, too, which is a truly beautiful city and good for historical field trips for the younger relatives, such as a trip out to Fort Sumter to see where the first shot of the Civil War (oops, excuse me, the "War of Northern Aggression") was fired. We've gone there a number of times in the spring or fall, off season, and rented a fully-equipped four-bedroom house with some friends for five days for $160 total. It's a great place to get away from it all!

I haven't been to Ocean Isle, but I have a friend who goes there regularly and loves it, so I'd add a vote there, too.

My God, my coworker must have put on a entire bottle of perfume. I can smell it all the way down the hall in my office. I honestly can't breathe because the smell is so strong.

Sounds like the Eau de Oozing Swamp that a former coworker of mine started wearing that gave me first-class asthma attacks, at which point the weasely managing partner decided that my inability to breathe in the office was outweighed by her right to wear it (it was a "hygiene issue," not a "health issue" -- excuse me, I thought the inability to breathe had a fundamental relationship with the health of my continued existence?). Needless to say, I wasn't there much longer. Why do women drown themselves in that stuff? Do they really think men like it any better than other women???

(Psst, karatekate, you can post your best guesses at predictions for the second episode in the Amazing Poll/Play-Along Game/Whathaveyou before you go. Even though you'll have less to go on than the rest of us, posting something's better than not posting at all. Or you can check in at an internet cafe and tell us how things look in Italy, which may be the most fun for us all.)

That co-worker won't be there for Jeopardy/TARCon, will they?

Hi all - I read a more eloquent post regarding my recommendation, (shout-out Ska), nevertheless, I am here to say that Fahrenheit 9/11 is quite thought-provoking movie. Please let me know if you see it and would like to discuss it. I saw it yesterday and I am still thinking about it.

In other news, I first started reading this forum from the banners as well. I never posted in the Meet Market because I didn't know what it was. School is out here and I have a week to finish up graduate work. Like and good procrastinator, instead of doing that, I will read TwoP Posts.

Hildy I have some experience with Mexico, Bahamas, Jamaica, assorted Florida islands, and St. Maarten, but I think many of the other suggestions are more interesting.

Hello to everyone, from rainy Prince Edward Island, Canada.
Just thought I would pop in and say hi and let you all know how much I enjoy reading the intelligent and funny posts that you all contribute to the TAR board. My wife, Kinky Angellove, and I are huge fans of the show, and of the boards. I don't post all that much in here, because by the time I get my thoughts in order, someone has said them better and faster, so I would end up being the king of "me too".

In my office pool this season, I got the bowling moms, so I think my $2.00 is gone. Hope I do better with my Canadian Idol and Big Brother pools. What do you mean gambling problem?

Have a great weekend, and happy TWoPping everyone.

Ah, smelly cow-orkers. I sit downwind of a lady who would be the most inoffensive little thing in the world, except that she's a chain-smoker. For some reason, of all the people I work with that smoke, she's the only one that I can smell. From 30 feet away, if the ventilation system is up to its usual tricks.

Needless to say, I keep allergy stuff and an asthma inhaler handy.

Happy birthday to Pbuttercup! Welcome to Machiabelly. Good to have you around these parts.

The chemical sensitivity issue, and its related one of smelly co-workers, must be a big headache for the HR people. At one job several years ago that was one big office divided by only paperboard cubicles, there was this extremely stinky guy who just never ever took a shower. He'd decided that if he was going to be really counterculture, he wasn't going to bathe. (just like that Joan of Arcadia episode this season) I think finally he - cough- cleaned up his act, after repeated interventions by the bosses.

On the other hand, at the same job, there was a woman with an extreme chemical sensitivity issue whom we always had to be careful about. Our employee newsletter admonished us to forego perfume and highly scented shampoos or personal care products because of her. One day I showed up to work and she came over to me and accused me of violating the policy, because she 'could smell something on me and it was bothering her allergies." I'd washed my hair in Neutrogena shampoo, washed with plain Ivory soap and water, and had on unscented deodorant, and I told her this. (and I never wear perfume) She started walking around me and sniffing me and still didn' t believe me - she sat across the room from me the whole day and gave me this sour look and mopped at her nose with a martyred air.

So if you have chemical sensitivities or allergies (and I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious), where do you draw the line? Are we getting to the point these days that in an office environment today, management would have made me go home and not work because even all my hypoallergenic stuff bothered my coworker?

I have a co-worker with sensitivities like the one you describe, except she's civil about it. Because she sits in the cube across from me, I quit wearing cologne into the office, and I let her sniff my hand lotion before I put it on -- she's vetoed one brand and said the other was okay. Once, I came in on an emergency and had already put on cologne that morning. The following dialogue occurred:
Her: You're wearing perfume.
Me: Cologne. I wasn't planning on coming in today. Can you breathe?
Her: Yeah. [pause] I like the way it smells.
Me: Well, if I'd known I was coming in, I wouldn't have put it on.
Her: If you put it on really lightly, I won't mind.

I have a strong sense of smell, and I figure that's my problem. My co-worker does have trouble breathing when confronted with a strong scent, though, and I think she's pretty reasonable under the circumstances.

I've had hypoallergenic things make my skin break out, so what's hypoallergenic for one isn't hypoallergenic for all, clearly. But there's got to be a reasonable limit. I know I sang in a symphony chorus where we had a couple of those sniffers who would get totally bent out of shape if you wore hair spray that had any scent at all -- and it's almost impossible to find a truly unscented hairspray, but who's going to go out on stage with their hair hanging in rags?

I have that really bad reaction to one ingredient in some perfumes -- generally more expensive ones -- and find that many others make my eyes itch and my nose run. But I regard it as my responsibility to move away from people who are wearing things that bother me -- especially out in public, and fortunately that one ingredient is so instantly obvious that I can tell within 1/2 second that I don't want to be where I am, long before it reaches the point where I have a really severe asthma attack again. But there's got to be a limit. Short of all washing in nothing but water, there's no way to avoid some fragrances on our body, and people who are that severely allergic (such as that coworker of yours) have to be willing to deal with it in ways other than by getting other people in trouble for not living up to their high ideals of fragrance-free, IMO.

I work with a gal who has extreme allergies. Her classroom is across the hall from mine. She actually had to be hospitalized once as a student had come to her classroom after taking a cologne shower after p.e. She only works with a handful of students (reading help) and she pulls them out of a regular class to meet with them so she has made some cute passes with a skunk on the front that say something to the effect of "I have too much cologne/deoderant/perfume on today and so I can't go to Mrs. Q. Please let me back in my regular class". On the days she's at my school, I try to not wear perfume 'cuz she's really really cool and I like to be able to visit with her.

On another note, I am, as of 12pm today, fostering a Brittany. He's pretty cool, but has heartworm and some other problems, so he'll be with me for a few months while he's treated. He has to wear a diaper in the house as I wean him off of marking everything in sight. This is my first experience as a foster mom and they gave me one that's a bit of a handful. Fortunately, the heartworm makes him low energy. My other dogs are ok with him, so far!

I also used to sing in a chorus - I didn't quit because of excessive hair spray and perfume use by the rest of the alto section, but that was definitely a bonus feature. Most of them had shorter hair that was curled or maybe set on rollers, so I suppose they had no choice but to use hair spray. My hair won't hold a curl unless it's a short perm - but back then I used gel. Maybe hairspray is just a girly thing, and I'm not girly like that.

That being said, it was kind of icky on performance day trying to take a breath and sing, only to have the back of my throat close up and be able to taste as well as smell all the fragrance in the air. So I don't miss it much.

I actually don't remember smelling any hair spray during a performance from any of our people, even though most of the women wore quite a lot; we'd just all put it on well beforehand, so it would have a time for the fragrances to evaporate out. I really only remember noticing it carpooling over to the concert hall. But we apparently had actually had people told they couldn't perform because they smelled too much of something, so this group took the no-fragrance edict very, very seriously. Which was fine by me -- it's bad enough being in such close quarters without choking on chemical fragrances, too!

Heh! we had that rule, and we had the "no pants" rule, which was regularly broken. By the women, that is, who were supposed to wear long black skirts. And we were also supposed to wear white-white blouses, another frequently broken rule on performance day.

Actually, the main reason I quit was because it was a big investment in time for a lot of aggravation and discomfort the last 3 days before performance, and I always had a schedule conflict for at least one of the "mandatory" rehearsals. Also, the board members were the ones that were most vocal about the rules to the new people,and also the ones most likely to be rule-breakers on the big day. Mind you, this was just a little community chorus, so the performance standards weren't that high.

I liked the spring pieces we did, but got tired of doing yet another setting of the Magnificat at Christmas every year.

We were allowed to wear pants, fortunately; but we were supposed to wear long-sleeved, V-necked black tops, plain, and of course one board member showed up in a round-neck black top with a skirt that was grey with a black lace overskirt. Way to stand out like a sore thumb, dumb bitch. (And she was a bitch, not just for her clothing choices; she never graduated beyond sneering down her nose at me and many other members who were clearly beneath her notice.)

I just got tired of having a rehearsal every single night for a week before every single performance, because our conductor was too chicken to actually enforce the rules about people (gasp!) not missing too many rehearsals, so that we always found ourselves a week before performance with a bunch of people who clearly had no fucking clue what they were doing, while those of us who'd faithfully showed up for every rehearsal found ourselves going over the same stuff every single night for that last week, stuff we'd been going over since the first rehearsal. (Can you tell I still have a bit of a resentment about that?)

We didn't do the Magnificat at Christmas every year; we did the Messiah. With a different guest conductor, who had his own interpretation. Some of which were good, and some of which were downright goofy. You know, some music isn't meant to be tinkered with to that extent. (Plus our overwhelmingly uneducated audience wouldn't have noticed the difference no matter what we did.)

Oh, man, choir uniforms. I was in community and school choir from second grade until I graduated from college, at which point I was so sick of the whole thing that I said ENOUGH! and haven't sang a note outside of church since.

Along the way I had the following community choir uniforms:

• "Party dress". No patent leather shoes allowed. (1 year)
• Navy blue corduroy jumper, white long sleeve dress shirt, red ribbon around neck, white tights, black flats -- NO PATENT LEATHER SHOES! (3 years)
• A shiny blue blouse with an elastic-gathered waist, black collar and cuffs, bias-cut crappy black skirt which I suspect was acetate, black nylons, black dress shoes -- heels okay but no patent leather! (1 year)
• A slightly better blue blouse (less shiny) with the same collar and cuffs but a banded waist, a slightly better black polyester skirt, black nylons, black DRESS shoes, heels okay but NO PATENT LEATHER AND NO, YOU CANNOT WEAR YOUR DOC MARTINS, DAMN IT! (8 years)

As you can tell, they had problems with shoes. In school choir I had the following uniforms:

• Black pants, black long-sleeve shirt, and suspenders in an obnoxious neon color corresponding to the part you sang. As an alto, mine were hot pink. (This was the 80s, after all.)
• White shirt, black skirt/pants/whatever. (The teacher was in her last year and had given up.)
• Green choir robe with yellow stole. Far too short.
• Blue choir robe with yellow and green stole. Too tight across chest and too long.
• Purple choir robe with white stole. Did actually fit okay but was only worn for Lessons & Carols service.
• Black skirt/pants and "jewel-tone" blouse. The skirts were supposed to be knee-length or longer, but they had about as much luck with this as the community choir had with the shoes. This was in college, where I worked for the music department, so at each concert I had to haul risers and such around in my uniform, which was sooooo pleasant.

I actually consider myself lucky, because due to my slackerdom as a teenager, I never made it into the really advanced choirs, thus sparing myself some truly awful prom-poufs, blood-red old lady dresses, mustard-yellow robes, and tight tight tight skirts.