I spent all of Monday morning on the phone and writing emails. The choir executive is in crisis: after many years of chummy deference to the conductor (whom we pay $20,000 per year), half the board has degenerated into a clique of fangirls, and the other half wants to quit. We might actually be allowed to start rehearsing again this fall, so ... here's a problem that contains an opportunity. The choir badly needs to shake itself out of the 1990s, recruit new members and learn to market itself to a larger audience, so doesn't it make sense to overhaul the leadership team? In fact, I don't think the choir will survive if we don't.

But the choir president wants to retire and I, as the current vice-president, am likely to find myself in the top chair when the over-reaching conductor realizes the extent of the changes to come. Then the rubber will hit the road.

All the thinking, talking and writing quite drained me flat by noon. So I had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch and went out to play tunes. Two hours of diddly music reset my head, but then I was *really* tired.

Watson got me up at five this morning, but it's a beautiful day -- not too hot, not too humid. I'll take a stroll downtown and back, a distance of about four miles, and call that exercise.