Back is still out

The Mrs. looked at me a bit funny yesterday and asked "Are you OK?"  The constant pain makes me a bit grumpy.  On a helpful note, the fellow I was helping yesterday figured out that progressive tri-focal glasses make for real crappy marksmanship.  He was getting sub-1cm three-shot groups, but the spot of the grouping kept moving around on him.  He's going to get a pair of single-vision spectacles, and give it another try.

As for me, I guess I'm still a bit grumpy.  Mass is out for today, because the thought of sitting on a wooden pew for an hour makes me cringe just to think of it.  So I'm skirting around YouTube looking for music to put me into an appropriate mood.



Way back when I was a long-haired highschool kid, the priest at my church was given his orders to report to a different parish.  One of this priest's favorite pieces of music was the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah.  So the choir worked for months, and at the last mass that Father Paul celebrated, we sang our hearts out.



G.F. Handel hated singers, especially sopranos.  That's the only explanation I can give for the way his music is written.  But it's worth singing, and by the time you're finished with it, you're just plain wrung out and whipped.  There's a sense of pride in saying "Yeah, we sang THAT, and we nailed it!"  I would assume it's much like a musician mastering a Bach piece on their particular instrument.  Speaking of Bach, last time I was in Seattle I actually saw one of the buskers pull this off:



Sometimes when I'm in a funk, the only thing that will pull me out of it is music.  Good music.  On the other hand, listening to bad music (like 80% of today's crap) will put me in a bad mood.  I guess I'm just tuned that way.

OK, make that 90% of today's crap.  Which is why I rarely buy any new music.