Thursday's Child

Gosh I miss my friends at choir. It's so much fun to look forward to Thursday, the day we gather and rehearse and laugh at corny choir jokes. Thursday is the day I reserve for feeling music all the way to the core of my being. I feel it on Sunday, but Thursday is just special and easily fits into the role of Friday Eve. When I get done with my job at Keeneland after the Breeders' Cup, I hope I can get back to the regular Thursday routine and sit with fifty of my best friends and enjoy the fellowship of raising so many voices together. The gift of choral belonging has been a rich and bountiful one over the many years of my life. It all began with singing Lida Rose on the piano with my sister when i was four, she was six; she told me to sing alto, and I have been an alto ever since.

And glad to sing alto, it is where I belong, it's the coolest of the harmonies, and many times the most difficult. My brother Addison is impossible to sing harmonies with -- he keeps trying to sing MY part lol -- so I turn on the alto when we sing together, and he cannot keep up with me, he cannot copy what I'm singing and is forced to sing melody. It's pretty hilarious, I have to say, when being an alto is your only defense mechanism.

So I miss Thursday choir gatherings and the loveliness that we enjoy as we lift our voices in Praise, as we pray together and share each other's joys and sorrows. I do love my part time job at Keeneland as a liquor clerk, though. I have to say it's really a lot of fun to watch the liquor that folks drink at Keeneland go out of that room. Keeneland uses "bergs" to measure and count the shots that people drink, and each bartender is responsible for each shot of liquor. It's all carefully watched and keeps honesty at the fore, so the bergs must be placed on each bottle. It involves tape and stickers and the right neck and collar and stopper -- and everything has to be just so to properly 'berg' the bottle. Then an electronic monitor counts everything. All I do is top the bottles and send 'em on their way around the mammoth oval known as Keeneland.

The house Bourbon is Makers Mark, therefore, many a red waxed bottle must be opened and spouted, and the track bartenders pour a LOT of it. Accordingly, we berg bottles all day long and go through a lot of Makers. Well well well, I happened upon a rare 'slam dunk' Makers Mark bottle on Saturday, and I thought someone had gone to sleep whilst dipping bottles at the distillery! Our liquor manager Fran exclaimed she had never even seen one, her assistant Lane wisely kept me from popping it open, phone calls were made, and everyone acted like I had found the golden ticket and Willy Wonka was waiting to take me to wonderland. I did get treated to a barbecue sandwich -- which is the BEST sammich at the track, by the by!

As usual, there is no point to this post. Is there? I haven't visited for a while and the browser ain't good enough to allow me to post a pretty blog today with photos and such (though I shall try). Just wanted to say howdy, and that I'm doing okay. My foot is better and I can go to work with just my steel toed track boots on. The aircast is not my constant companion and we are both happy about it, me thinks. I'm settling in at the liquor center and my boss appreciates the me that is me...and that, my friends, is very very cool. Cheers.