I've been playing around with this website called Spock. It's a free people and information search engine that gives you the ability to easily find exactly what your looking for. You can use names or descriptive "tags" (you know, the descripitive words like "blond", or "republican") to find what you're searching about. The cool thing about these tags is that they're created by both the person and other Spock members. Opinons about the people can then be expressed by voting for or against these tags.

I did a search on Colin Firth who I think is one of the yummiest actors around. I just adored him in the Bridget Jones series and Pride and Prejudice!

I learned a lot about him, like he has a brother, Jonathan Firth, who's an actor in both movies and on TV. I also found his (Colin's) fan website that I had no idea existed (everyone has one so I don't know why this didn't occur to me!), and I just spent over 30 minutes swooning, yes, actually swooning, over him.

I did another Spock search on Amici Forever, which is an album I adore. I actually saw them in concert here at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center and it was one of the best I have ever seen. I didn't know much about them before this search, but now I feel like I know a little bit about the people behind the voices.For instance: Tsakane Valentine, one of the saprano's in the group, actually did performances for Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki!

Now, Spock isn't necessarily a social network (i.e. dating site), but they do offer things like messaging.When you do a specific seach of interest they also provide you to the person's other web locations, like their homepage,MySpace page, Wikipedia write-up, or their blog (if they have one). Become a member and check them out. You'll have fun, I promise!

I did it, I did it, I DID IT!!!! I almost passed out during the first run-through but the accompanist was fantastic. He let me blunder and shake and gasp through it, then insisted we go through it again. He told me that he was there to follow my singing and that I should just relax and breathe like I know how to do.

The next time was pretty good! I was still nervous, but it was like I just had to get through that initial panic, almost as if I had to prove to myself that I could do it. There were even people milling around so I got a taste of what it's going to be like on Sunday. OK, maybe not quite like that, but I know I can sing in front of people again!!!!