Quick update. So much has happened since we last spoke:

• After ten months of virtual unemployment, with the odd freelance web design or writing gig, I got the best new job. I am now a full-time web developer at Seattle's much-esteemed progressive weekly newspaper The Stranger. That means I'm not sitting around getting tedious with Photoshop and drawing paths and doing gradient fills (which I just don't have the patience for). Instead, I'm making conceptual/theoretical decisions about user interface and doing more technical coding/programming. It really satisfies my obsession with psychology, patterns, and systems. This means full benefits, IRA matching, a very serious change in fortune as far as salary, and a work environment that is asbolutely relaxed and encouraging of expression (i.e., a rat-tail, mustache, and vintage Versace mollusk-and-coral print jackets). On top of this, The Stranger is hyper-vigilant about social justice, environmental issues, politics, artistic discernment, etc.
• I contributed a longish article to Wikipedia on the topic of my favorite operatic bass, Pol Plançon. I used a pre-existing French bio I found, then did my own translation of it, while editing it to make it more Wiki-friendly. There are a few things I'd like to add to it—namely, a more complete list of his rôles (if you know of any to add to the present list, e-mail me) and a full list of his extant recordings, listed chronologically.
• I received a package of new music from the indispensable Classical Vocal Reprints, run by supremely experienced and knowledgeable Glendower Jones. Originally I ordered seven bass/baritone folios of works that Plançon was popular for performing or recording. When I finally got the package in the mail, I thought, Gah, this is heavy. When I opened it, I found that Glendower had enclosed three folios and a full book with a note attached:
  

  20 years ago when I was working at Patelson, I got Mr. Patelson to reprint all the Spicker [b]ooks. 4 of the titles you ordered are in this book.
  
  Best wishes,
  Glendower.

  
  Agh! Wow. I couldn't be happier with the book. It contains a number of rarities that were popular at the turn of the century but have since fallen out of fashion and don't appear in Schirmer bass aria compilations. I'm especially partial to 19th century French material because it is characterised by more grace and ease, while being peppered with lots of difficult florid passages. Anyway, the book reads as a collection of arias expected to be mastered by the finest basses chantantes of the pre-Verismo period.
• My boyfriend attended Seattle's second annual Wooden Octopus Skull Experimental Musick pFestival—a showcase of various noise, collage, power electronics, occult, freejazz, and dark psych acts. I wanted to be there for the whole thing, but I was finishing up my final freelance project. I did catch a few things, all of which were pretty impressive. My man was most enthusiastic about Midmight (right), who "performs wearing a lampshade on the head and using all four limbs," which reach, Kali-like, back and forth across various boards and synths and keyboards and a piano. Every one of the three nights, I would drive over to catch the last act, and T would have a handful of merch. So by the end of the weekend, with his limited edition tapes and CD-Rs and my classical vocal reprints (and four free and unsolicited double-disc, promo opera CDs from Sony Classical—not pictured), we had a frightening mess on the desk:
  
  

Now that I have my own PowerBook and a nice view from my office at work (and no time-consuming freelance projects), I can make more frequent updates to Trrill. Doesn't that make you want to just. . . just. . .brrrap!