Dilemma

What to do?

This should be a non-issue, since I have a "mandatory" rehearsal on said date, but damnit. Why does Stanford have to program two potentially interesting events on the same evening as my rehearsals?

I hate showing up to rehearsals late and hate missing rehearsals even more, to the point that there have been days that I've felt lousy enough to take off early from work, but then still showed up to rehearsal (and sitting far far away from anyone so I don't pass on my germs). Why this much commitment to a nonprofessional group? Well, I can't explain it, but I am not the only one who does this; many of my fellow members still come to rehearsal when they feel sick. One woman told me she scheduled chemo around rehearsal dates. All this to make the point that I don't take rehearsals lightly.

However, to return to my pesky dilemma, I have three eacoas (equally attractive choice of activities-- an acronym I just coined, fashioned after the odd-sounding "eanabs" that is so ubiquitous on this campus that people try to pass it off as a normal acronym, when really, it isn't, but I digress, so I'll save my rant on ridiculous acronyms for another post.) on Monday night, in no particular order:

Option 1: attend rehearsal like any responsible ensemble/choir/orchestra member would.
Option 2: attend a talk by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, which I haven't read (yet), but I did regularly follow (and even blogged about) his blog and writings in the NYT last year.
Option 3: attend a talk by Richard Taruskin who writes brilliant commentary about classical music and is the only person that can compare the 237 reasons one has sex to reasons one might listen to classical music without making it sound contrived. (Though I'm sure the author of one of the secret blogs I frequent could write a hilarious entry on this topic. . ..)

Actually, it really boils down to option 1 and 3, since thing the little voice inside my head is telling me that I have a slight preference for Taruskin over Michael Pollan.

I guess then, the question is really, is Taruskin rehearsal-hooky-worthy? Taruskin, whose writing is interesting enough that I, with my 30-second attention span, can consume his 10-page article bashing the Washington Post Joshua Bell experiment in one sitting?

Which brings me full circle to my initial question, what to do?