Score one for grammar

From today's Globe and Mail: The $2.13 million comma.

I absolutely agree with the interpretation and the cancellation of the contract, not because I dislike Rogers per se, but because their lawyers, as all lawyers, should be the most anal-retentive grammar geeks ever and should have spotted the enormous change of meaning that this second comma gave to the sentence.

Remember kids: one comma splits a sentence in two parts, linked in meaning yet seperate. Two commas create a subordinate clause which can be lifted from the sentence and the rest, before the first and after the second comma, read as a full sentence in its own right.

And the previous paragraph is the best example I can give of that difference. :)

Crack that voice!

So I was driven to undust and tune my bowed psaltery today. In doing so, since that thing hasn't been tuned in 15 years (or more), the strings make nasty creaky sounds and one breaks.

So I go online to look up price of strings at the Ottawa Folklore Centre. No individual string prices (I need 25 strings of three different gauge), but a link to the Ottawa Folk Festival.

Check out the lineup, get reminded I want to go and join the festival choir. Dig up the one time they allowed us to buy the music, the first time I went to the choir, and realise it's back in 99. Seven years ago already. Then try to find out how to sing the parts again.

I think I'm the unofficial "baritenor", unable to have the full baritone range but incapable of reaching the high tenor notes. Darnit. I'm usualyl shoved with the baritones because there's so few of them.

So going to practice what I have. Too bad it's so soon, or else I think I could find a few locals to practice with... Siyahamba, The Storm is Passing Over (in which us poor baritones have the highest note line), Hard Times Come Again No More. If I could do those again, I'd be set.

Must practice vocalisation again. Is it a good or bad idea to do it in the shower in the morning?