Sunday morning arrived, and I woke up much earlier than I wanted to. I had breakfast with my sister and brother-in-law, and they left to go to sing in the choir at church. I worked on my dissertation for a little while and watched some episodes of "The Six Million Dollar Man" on DVD. Don't laugh. They were the Bionic Woman episodes. :D

I soon got tired and lay down for "just a little while." After 1-1/2 hours, my sister and her husband arrived home from church and work me up. Ha ha. We had lunch, and then I did a little more work before getting ready to go to the wedding.

We left the house at around 4pm, and we went into town so that I could get my hair fixed up for the wedding. I'd made an appointment on Friday, but the girls at the salon acted as if they had no idea who I was. One of them finally checked the book, and my name was indeed there. So one of them did my hair. She did not introduce herself, and she did not seem overly happy about it. She was not hostile; just not very friendly either. She did an OK job, I think, but, boy, did she use a lot of product!

Most of the family stood around watching picture-taking,

but eventually we made it upstairs for some lovely sparkling wine, appetizers, and conversation. It was nice to hang out with family and like-family friends. We took pictures of each other, ate, drank, and caught up.

Then it was time for the reception in the wine cave!

The reception was fun! The couple danced their first dance and looked beautiful.

We had some lovely food,

and we got to talk more with our family and friends.

Liza played the cello, accompanied by her sister.

After the cake,

we left the winery and drove the dark roads back to the house in the mountains. I was exhausted and fell asleep pretty quickly. :)

Stole this from Mick's blog. Totally cracked me up. (He posted it a while ago, but I'm very behind.)

Thanks to Ruthie and Carmel, who posted these articles (here and here) on Facebook about Steven Curtis Chapman's latest album, Beauty Will Rise. The article are hopeful and heartbreaking. Can't wait to get the album!

Here is a cool article that was in the St. Helena newspaper. It's about my sister and her husband and how they saved a pipe organ from being destroyed. The organ now resides in their home in Angwin. Sis tells me that there were better pictures in the actual (not virtual) newspaper. I think it's kinda cool.

I was reading Andy Chrisman's blog and just learned about something pretty cool. I know, it's probably old news. Those of you who are CCM fans probably heard about it a long time ago. It's something called CompassionArt, and you can learn all about it here. Here's what the website says . . .

CompassionArt is a charity that joins the dots between art and poverty. It raises money to help breathe life into the poorest communities, restoring hope and igniting justice.

. . . the dream was born to gather some of the best-known writers in the gospel/Christian music scene and spend the week writing songs that could impact these issues on a long-term basis.

So after many phone calls, the team was assembled, Michael W. Smith, Darlene Zschech, Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Tim Hughes, Paul Baloche, Israel Houghton, Graham Kendrick, Steven Curtis-Chapman, Andy Park, Stu Garrard, Martin Smith.

So, with so many songwriters gathering it felt like we needed a new structure to compliment and carry this dream. The usual way of doing things is for a publisher to own the songs and then distribute them to the writers. Although there's nothing wrong with this it felt like we needed a more radical approach to maximising all the income from these songs as the intention of the writers is to give every cent away. Also a lot of the publishers and managers were excited about being involved too and making a contribution.

So CompassionArt was born, a charity dedicated to seeing works of art generate income for the poorest of the poor. So these songs that will be written in Scotland in January will be owned by the charity meaning that every penny will come to it and the trust will own these copyrights forever. The publishers, the managers, the agents and the writers have waived all their rights to see something historic happen, the music business coming together for something great, something that is about something greater than any individual could achieve.

Can babies tell the difference between "happy" and "sad" music? Does an infant really know whether a piece of music is in a major or minor key? Well, according to this article, the answer is yes. Although the article gives vague descriptions of what pieces are considered happy and sad, I'd love to see the list of songs that were used. I would also like to know why THIS is the type of research that is funded instead of other things. But that's just because I'm feeling cynical today.