I'm your worst nightmare: a barbershop singer with a blog

Pipe down. Uncle Swan's back in the house.

Sorry for the radio silence the past few days, sports fans. I was in not-so-sunny Southern California with the quartet for a competition, our second in less than a week.

All in all, things went swimmingly, no weather pun intended. We delivered our best-ever public performance on Friday evening — not quite good enough to crack the Top Ten in an awesomely tough field, but sufficient to net us the eleventh-place honor of opening the contest finals on Saturday night. That placement was infinitely better than we had even dreamed going into the contest — we honestly expected to finish dead last in a 20-horse field — so we were as giddy as schoolgirls on prom night.

The reason for the contest cramming? Unbeatable stage experience in preparation for the contest that really matters to us — our Division finals on April 9. Buoyed by a modicum of success and three shots in front of the biggest audiences we've ever faced, we'll be better prepared to throw down our best next month.

But enough of this frivolity. Let's get back to blogging, shall we?