My Shepherd will supply my need:
Jehovah is His Name
In pastures fresh
He makes me feed,
Beside the living stream.
He brings my wandering spirit back
When I forsake His ways,
And leads me, for His mercy’s sake,
In paths of truth and grace.

When I walk through the shades of death
Thy presence is my stay;
One word of Thy supporting breath
Drives all my fears away.
Thy hand, in sight of all my foes,
Doth still my table spread;
My cup with blessings overflows,
Thine oil anoints my head.

The sure provisions of my God
Attend me all my days;
O may Thy house be my abode,
And all my work be praise.
There would I find a settled rest,
While others go and come;
No more a stranger, nor a guest,
But like a child at home.

Blogging is such a silly thing to do but I still sometimes get the urge. But we like things more when there are pictures, right?My recital was last month. It's really weird to have it be over. I've spent the last five or six years of my life worrying about it, and the last year preparing for it... and now it's over. I sort of wish I could do it again, but not enough to go to grad school. Look! More pictures!My recital started with the Devienne Quartet no 1 in C. I love everything about these people. Seriously. I had sooo much fun playing with them, and they were so wonderfully reassuring to have on stage with me.I spent a lot of time backstage worrying while Bekah was playing, both for myself and for her. She did so wonderfully, though! It was amazing.The time I spent backstage not worrying I spent staring at my music and trying not to think about the fact that there was an audience. But Bekah and I played Elephant....... And then it was done!Afterwords, naturally, we went to the Truck Stop. Going to Houghton is kind of lame... Steak n Shake is so much cooler than a truck stop. But anything is fun when you're surrounded by wonderful people, right? Right :)

Other things that have been wondeful since the last time I blogged include...The fabulous Stone Soup party, where everyone brought a picture book (or two, or three, or a whole stack... I have a problem) and something to contribute to soup. It was wonderful.Hillary bought me a fish! She has the misfortune of being the orchestra president this year and our director decided that flowers for the seniors at the last concert is too... um... cliche? not special enough because that's what band does? Anyway, Hillary kept asking me what I wanted for having been in orchestra and one time my answer was "a fish!" So, this little fellow is named Maurice. I love everything about my church. Palm Sunday was wonderful.

I also spent Easter Break at Bekah B's, but I was so content that I never broke out my camera. Oops.

How have you been?

Things I Have Accidentally Typed Into My Program Notes So Far

• Devienne was a frequent performer and composter at the Concert Spirituel
• The second movement, slowly and stingingly
• I've been spelling the composor Eugene Bourdeau wrong for, um, two years.  Including ON MY JURY SHEET in the fall of my Junior year.  No one caught that....
• I also switched the words "quite" and "quiet" like seven times.  Seriously.

A quick succession of thoughts led to a rather sporadic decision. Quick recap? Sure:

Despite near-constant whining about how I'm always tired (yes, only two days after break), right as I finished the last paragraph of my American Lit reading LastFM started playing the song I really wanted to listen to but am too cheap to download (yes, 99 cents seems like a lot right now). So of course I had to listen to all of it, so naturally I putzed on the internet.  Today's Stuff Christians Like is about Lent, which I have never in my life given anything up for.  But the repetitive comments of "maybe next year..." caught my attention, because I'm pretty sure I've said that every single Thursday after Ash Wednesday for about the last seven years.  Reading other people repeat it made me grouchy (read: convicted me hardcore) because it's ridiculous to confine God's call for us to abandon things that keep us from him to just a handful of weeks, minus sundays.  But I moved on in the blog world, and Kate's new post A) talked about happy lists and B) made me decide to give up whining.

Yes.

Whining.

Because I am a grown up and I need to suck it up and be grateful for all the amazing wonderful things God does for me.  I'm still going to allow myself complaining, but whining and wallowing in self-pity are out, as are temper tantrums, hiding under desks or burying my head in the sand.

Also, Kate made me feel guilty about having not posted in, um, almost two months. So! To kick off my new season of sucking it up:

A Happy List, a la Jacqui Sheehan! Reviewing the good things that have happened in the last two months:

• Verizon's "New Every Two Years" actually means new every twenty months, meaning a free new cell phone when I lost mine
• My room in the Danners' has skylights. Plural. Hecks yes.
• On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I don't have class until 1.
• I'm taking real classes that aren't music. Awesome.
• Almost half my 8 AM El Comp class, as well as assorted other music majors, went for pancakes when Dennys had free Grand Slams.  We were half an hour late for our 50 minute class, beginning the tradition of latecomers bringing in breakfast for everyone.  It's pretty great.
• I went to Jubilee in Pittsburgh, and I got four new books, and I ate in the super-sketchy basement of a fantastic greek restaurant, and I got to see Erin, and I got to spend lots of time with Nicholette and meet her friends from the summer. And, Jamie Tworkowski, one of the founders of To Write Love On Her Arms--the one who wrote the story--said he wanted to be my friend.  
• I love my church. Always.  The last two weekends there were hardly any people there because of break, but it was still great. 
• Despite how terrified I am of my recital, and despite how much I still have to do... I had some really, ridiculously good practice sessions today.  And, I'm pretty sure I secured a Special Guest.... outstanding.
• Jeff got drunk and mailed me flowers for valentines day.  It was ridiculous, but it made my room smell lovely and makes a fantastic story.

I know there's been more.  I'm going to try to do this more often, friends.  <3!

Year Review in Haiku

let's see how well this works....

January
Copland rehearsals
"oh holy crap what have I done?"
too much tenor clef!

February
"Babysoon" shower
the arrival of Francis--
--who's NOT an oboe!
March
So much Percy G
also lots of Mozart
but not for long! ...oops.

April
Gillette Hall Banquet
--wait! I meant to say East hall!--
My calves looked so good 
May
Physics of Music
I am so unprepared
Chinese makes more sense
June
Not having a job
also not having a car
makes Indy boring.

(ok, so also gorgeous and in every way amazing. But sometimes a little dull.)

July
The unfortunate 
return of Yellow Shirt Days
to my schedule

August
I bought my first car
and I drove nine whole hours
to my apartment 
September
forty-five minute drive
to a rural middle school
I'm not crazy for

October
Homecoming Parade
but much more importantly
the great Fall Frolic!
November
Liberal Thanksgiving
With a few Canadians
but still delightful

December
So many cookies
but Prism Break was awesome
... one semester left.

Reasons to Love Mo Willems

Gerald is careful.  Piggie is not.

Piggie cannot help smiling.  Gerald can.

Gerald worries so that piggie does not have to.

Gerald and Piggie are best friends.

I love it!  I think I need someone to worry for me so I don't have to anymore.

The last week or so of my life has been so incredibly beyond ridiculous.  I don't even know what to say about it!  I figure I should type out a test run of my Weekend In Review since I'm sure I'll be telling it to everyone I see over Christmas. (Is anyone else as frustrated by those repetitive conversations as I am?  "How's school?" "How much longer do you have left?" "And you're studying what, again?" "And have you found that special someone?" Ugh!)

So, Friday was supposed to be my last day of student teaching.  Thursday as I left school I decided to move home only half the instruments I'd dragged into school, so I left my bassoon and Houghton's oboe to take home on Friday.  I would have taken my bassoon home first but I wanted to do some Christmas shopping on my way home and didn't want to leave the one instrument I actually cared about in the car while I putzed around Borders.  This, I suppose, was mistake number one of the weekend.  

So Friday morning I wake up to cries of excitement coming from our living room.  "Snow day!!"  Rebekah was thrilled because she'd never had a snow day before (silly homeschoolers!) and while we all were a little disappointed to not be going in for our last day, everyone else was at least comfortable leaving everything they had left at school there for the rest of break.  I couldn't, however, go home without my bassoon.  Mistake number two of the weekend was deciding to wait until Monday to try to get into school to get my bassoon.  I figured surely they would have school on Monday as the last I'd heard was that the weather would be clearing up.    So, rather than leaving on Sunday like I'd originally wanted, I decided to wait until Monday morning to leave so I could get to school.

Well, of course there was a snow day Monday as well.  Of course!  But I couldn't stay in my apartment another day--our lease was up!--and I didn't want to spend the night at Sarah's (mistake number 3!) so I decided to try to get into school and get my bassoon.  The janitor was out snow blowing so he let me in, and I figured that would be the greatest obstacle of my day.  

So, naturally, just about 20 miles from the PA/Ohio border--where I've heard the roads magically became crystal clear--the snow and wind picked up like crazy and I couldn't see and I slid into not one but two cars that were on the side of the road.  I sort of bounced off the first and stopped when I hit the second.  Conveniently, both the folks I hit--who were in fact mother and son--were very friendly, as was the random stranger who pulled over to help, and the police officer.  And no one was hurt and I think my car got the worst of it, but it still left me stranded and in western PA for the night.  Ugh.  

So I puttered to a hotel just off the interstate and got a room for the night and called home to figure out what to do.   My car might have made it home but certainly not through the snow and I didn't want to risk it.  We decided it would be best for me to fly homeand thankfully my family found remarkably cheap plane tickets out of Erie, through Philadelphia... at 6 in the morning, which was less than ideal, but they were cheap!  Unfortunately, that meant I had to do something with all of the stuff in my car.  So, just a few short hours after having dragged it all down the stairs and into my car--through the snow!--I again found myself lugging half my life's possessions (the other half are at Sarah's for break) through the snow by myself.  My family thought the best plan would be to mail everything home, but in my one (and only) good choice yesterday I realized that Jenna lives somewhere nearby and I called her.  She agreed to come get my things and house them until after break, but not until after I'd already moved everything from my car into the hotel. (Again. In the snow. And the dark. By myself.)  But, thankfully, Jenna came and brought me Christmas cookies and spent the night with me and made me feel so very, very much better about my life.  But not before--oh yes, it does indeed get worse--I lost my cell phone moving my things from my car to the hotel.  Though, of course, after Jenna showed up I helped her stuff my things into her car... bringing the total number of times I've moved half my life's possessions in the dark and in the snow to three.  Ugh.  

So, to review:

• Locked my bassoon at school over a 4-day weekend thanks to two snow days
• moved all my things by myself in the snow
• Crashed my car
• moved all my things by myself in the snow...again.  And cut my finger on a box and couldn't find a bandaid anywhere at the hotel. (I forgot to mention that part earlier)
• Lost my cell phone
• moved all my things in the snow...but with Jenna's help!

But, in all fairness, things I'm still happy about:

• I'm fine (ok... a little sore. But uninjured!)
• The other drivers are fine
• I had a place to stay
• Jenna came and brought me cookies and saved my stuff and calmed me down and in general was wonderful
• I still have a way home

My life is ridiculous!