"If I should ever die--God forbid--let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTANCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC." -- Kurt Vonnegut

seriously... I. do. not. understand how people can listen to music and not believe in God.

What's the deal, heart? Why can't you just be happy? I swear, there is no pleasing you.



Also, what's with EVERY music major suddenly working out? How am I supposed to be skinnier than everyone else when everyone goes to the gym?


Also... Jeff Quay. Maybe life changing. I can't get him out of my head.

Early Semester Jitters

I suppose I should have finished talking about Christravagansmas, but the rest of it was quite uneventful, as far as Christravagansmases go. New Year's Eve, as we all know, is "the biggest letdown of the year," so how about we ignore that too?
Sunday I made the epic trip back to Houghton with Becky, Lis and Kat. Over lunch at Kat's house we decided to call ourselves Becky Miller and the Carnivores in the Kitchen, and somewhere in PA we realized that all of us but Becky have March birthdays.
Classes started yesterday. It's JANUARY, and the high was 63. Nice, but ridiculous. I was overwhelmed by my classes, but mostly because I kept forgetting that this semester, my tuesday-thursdays are actually harder than my monday-wednesdays, so I kept panicking, unable to imagine how I would possibly survive. Then this morning I slept in until around 9, and that made everything seem much more survivable. We played through chunks of Copland's Appalachian Spring (the chamber version) in orchestra yesterday, and despite practicing it for hours over break I was still thoroughly overwhelmed, though mostly from switching to a different copy of the music that didn't have all of my notes and scribbles, and from all the jumping around we did. Thankfully, it's the only song I'm playing for orchestra, so I'll have plenty of time to spend with it (in a perfect world, at least). And then there was jazz band.
Every instrumental ed major has to take at least one semester of jazz band, in case we have a jazz band of our own one day. I completely agree with this requirement, I think it's absolutely necessary and something that most instrumental majors don't have nearly enough exposure to. But. Most instrumental majors don't play jazz instruments. This sucks for the performers, this sucks for the director, and this sucks a lot for the poor trombonists who have to sit in front of me and listen to me play trumpet. This is an unfortunate situation for everyone involved.
Other quite serious concerns for the semester:

• a REALLY HARD concertino for my jury, and super-intense two-hours-every-other-week lessons... and needing to find the focus for yet another Vivaldi concerto
• working up the patience for 2 classes a day with Mr. Stith. He's great, but I would still like more variety in my professors. He teaches half of my classes this semester. And he's my advisor. And he's in charge of two cabinets I serve on. On Tuesday/Thursdays, I have two classes with him in a row.
• being unemployed. Seriously. I go to the only college in the world that runs out of custodial jobs. I can't work for Phonathon any more because of recitals, jazz band and orchestra. I could almost work for telecounseling if I applied, but I'm pretty sure they don't have thursday openings and I would still have to get subs every time there were recitals. So I guess I have to hunt down a cafeteria job, which I was really hoping I would never have to do. Nothing against the cafeteria... except I don't want to work there. It's hot and smelly and I don't want to, so there. But I also don't want to be poor, so I have to find something.

On the bright side, however:

• I never connected that my art teacher and "that lady at my church" are the same person. Did I mention I'm taking an art class? heck yes. I'm a junior, and this is my first elective.
• I went to the gym yesterday. Not having a job gives me time to work out (good for my body, bad for my bank account), and for now at least I have time to work out every week day without having to be up at the gym at 4 in the morning. Thank you, night classes that ruined my longstanding employment
• I have a reasonable practice schedule, if I can kick Dan out of the room every morning
• I have a recital buddy! Bekah is pretty much my favorite in every way possible. She's my favorite accompanist, she's my favorite not-actually-study-buddy, she was my favorite aural skills buddy, hopefully we'll live together next fall for student teaching, and now she's my recital buddy. Yay recital buddy!
• Herrmann is loaning me two of the (quite pricey!) books I need for this semester. He assaulted me while I was book-buying yesterday and made me put two of them back. This saved me a lot of money that, since being unemployed, I don't have.