jury week

Eastman

Wind

Orchestra

pre-rehearsal goofiness. ;)

so, it's this was jury week.. which means No Classes!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!

This week was fantastic. I feel so much better having been active and interested in life again. lol but seriously, I think the strain of all the work we have

to do was slowly eating me. So much so that I feel like a different person now. I'm visibly healthier, mentally happier, and the weather is fantastic. I've been using that word a lot recently, fantastic that is, because everything has just been fantastic. FANTASTIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And it's all because of the way we kicked off jury week, (we being my small bible study and I) which was to go watch movies at Luke's Apt. till all hours, and then dance to loud stereo music. haha The neighbors probably hate us!

So we did that again the next night, minus the dancing but we stayed up talking till all hours.

The next day I went over to Luke's apt. whilst he cleaned and vacuumed and I half-heartedly did german homework.... always german homework. He mentioned that he was subletting the apartment for the summer and I made a poster for him with the pages program on my mac. That was exciting.

That evening, Tabitha, Seth, Luke and myself went to an awesome Mediterranean restaurant called Sinbad's. It was good. yum yum. Then we got a movie from Block Buster and watched that in Luke's Apt.

The next morning I was actually more productive than the rest of my week combined (except today) because I organized my week, cleaned my desk (mostly), fixed my printer, printed luke's apt. advertisement, made copies of it and posted them in the dorms and school, finished the german homework that I half-heartedly done the previous day, showered, napped (because 7:30 is just too darned early and 2:30 am is way too late) had an aural skills coaching, and ran to the beach with Tabs (Tabitha), Luke and Lynnann. We ate Chinese food, took lots of silly pictures, declared vehemently how cold the water was on such a warm day! (82 deezgreez) I hit the swings with luke while the girls chatted (they're so grown up...) then we hit the pier, which is where the real excitement happened.

So we're walking down the pier which is about a half mile long and on the way we meet this fisherman who had some serious attitude. The reason we met him is because we saw a fish on the pier that we assumed had jumped up by mistake and couldn't get back into the water. We were wrong. The fisherman yelled at us to leave it alone and just let it die because it was not an indigenous species to the area. It was some type of goby from the Mediterranean, and it's because of some Russian ship that accidently picked up these fish in some part of it's hold that these fish even exist in Lake Ontario. They're breeding faster than rabbits and eating all the microbey thingys in the water (not sure if it's plankton or algae), which is causing the rest of the fish to die off.

So I confront the fisherman and ask him if we can put the poor dying fish out of it's misery instead of just letting it drown in the air, since he wouldn't let us throw it back in. He asked why I cared and I told him it had to do with my philosophy behind being a vegetarian (and bizarrely humane...) and that it bothered me to see it just dying like that. Instead of doing something about the fish he avoids it and asks if I smoked. I told him no and he then informed me that they make a part of cigarettes out of animal fat. I asked him again whether or not he could do something about the fish... well no he'd rather just try to make a hypocrite of me instead of doing something about the situation at hand. Oh people.

So we're still on the pier, we walk to the end of it and it starts to rain. So we head back. In passing the crazy fisherman we hear him yelling violently at everyone to "GET DOWN!!! THERE'S A STORM COMING!!! THERE'S LIGHTING AND IT'S GOING TO STRIKE!!! GET DOWN IF YOU DON'T WANT TO DIE!!!!!" And that is when I noticed peoples' hairs standing strait up in the air (or maybe luke noticed first- our stories differ on that point)... my hair is about 3 feet long and there were strands standing strait up, just because of all the electricity in the air... wow. So we're laying on the ground, just chillin waiting for the fisherman to stop yelling and to give us the all clear. The guy himself was scarier than the prospect of being struck by lightning... yeah...

AND then it rains. Not little cute droplets like in CA, but really rains. Huge massive droplets which were surprisingly warm. That's when we all made that half mile dash for the shoreline. Obviously we survived, but the fun thing was the fact that our hairs were still sticking up even though it was raining! lol

Then we had dinner at Lynnann's watched The Soloist in theaters and went to bed.

Today I got up called my parents, did some other things I don't remember doing, and hit the practice rooms. I was there for many many hours, not practicing (tho that did happen) but practicing aural skill material for the upcoming final. Aggghhh!!! So that evening I make plans to take Tab's car with Luke to Wegmans and get a money order for the insurance policy on my broken blender (the same one from Thanksgiving- procrastination is my middle name..) but that snowballed into dinner at a couple's apartment with some other friends from church and then a game of some sort. Wegmans had actually closed their money order section of the store six minutes before I got there so I ended up not getting that done. Came back and studied aural skillz, contemplated my crazy crazy week and then admired the wet though perfumed air of the outdoors as I also admired the source of the perfume, which was a great tree covered with thousands of beautiful white blossoms. The weather is absolutely awesome and peachy right now. I don't want it to ever end. I want to be perpetually stuck in my 19th year with Luke and Tabs and Lynnann and Seth and Hillary with this wonderful weather and the flowers, studying music and having the most ridiculous amounts of fun during our free time.

Tomorrow is church. Reality check. lol

This was an awesome break. Now time to rock the 5 formidable tests I have this week. Esp. the aural finals. But hopefully also the piano ones and the german one.

I'm not taking german next year. It is really really Really time consuming and I already have 23 hours of french I've taken extra curricularly at Palomar College. Those credits better transfer. lol But this year of german has been really good for me. Now I can actually understand most of what my Austrian friend Lorenz (from SDYS Musicamp) writes to me on skype. :)

Ok, I just got texted by Luke to go to bed.. I don't know how he knew I was still up. lol

I must obey- I'll be back after hell week has come and gone. :)

peace out.

this is Tabs, me and Lynnann from left to right- Luke is taking the pic

So it's Saturday night and I should go to bed, but I delved into the Nutella- since I don't have any actual food in my room. Eating chocolate before bed is a bad idea. I'm wide awake, and exhausted. My parents are probably groaning as they read this. Let's not talk about that... lol

So finals are coming up. Again. More importantly however is jury week. This Tuesday I will have to perform for a group of judges who will decide weather or not I have a future at this school. 

I'll be fine if I don't freak out the way I did at studio class today. That was scary... 

That incident was a combination of pent up everything, stress, fatigue, poor diet, poorer exercising, in-practice, the reed (which was awesome just a few days ago), lack of electrolytes and this wicked adrenaline rush that left me shaking beyond control. It was so intense.

But after I calmed down again it was better. I need to play for more people.

So, I spent about 12 hours on this thing here at Eastman we call a Listening Module.

You listen so some pieces and write in prose a series of theoretical observations and then elaborate on them and how they affect the piece as a whole. You also try to give your ideas on the what music means and how it effected you.  (yes affect and effect- am I using them correctly?) So I spend every available free minute on this listening module, and complete it the day before it's due. Wow how diligent am I? It only made me sacrifice much valuable practice time, added much undue stress, and prevented me from thinking about anything else. Well at least it was done on time right? Wrong. The day it's due we all hear from the head honcho of the theory dept. that there has been an extension on the due date of this listening module because it is unreasonable to ask for this assignment right before juries. Un huh. Too bad I already spent my jury practicing time on this bleeping module. 12 hours? What could you do with that time? Yet another example of the smooth function of the great cogs running this well oiled clock that we benefit from. No no, I'm not complaining. How could I possibly hold faculty up to the demands that they place on us, the underling students? 

German is tough, but you know what's tougher? MUSIC THEORY!!! oh wait.. I meant to say English... lol... whoops....

I feel really bad for those who didn't grow up with English as a native language, because it is a series of broken rules, exceptions, irregular verbs and run-on clauses. (oh wait, that's my blog... lolz)

I heard our native german teacher say an english phrase in which she made what should have been an adjective, an adverb. And why not? It was seemingly modifying the verb... except it wasn't really. It was the weirdest thing, because when you try to figure out why it's wrong, it's hard to explain. 

It appears to be modifying the verb. So if I said; "That sweater goes nicely with those pants." That would be a grammatically correct statement. However, if I said "That sweater looks nicely with those pants." That would be wrong... how 

do you explain to someone on the spot why that was wrong?  :D

It boils down to how the verb functions in the sentence. 

I think we can say without a shadow of a doubt that "goes nicely" is correct. The adverb modifies the verb (in this case) and the knee joint connects to the hip joint and so on.

However, does the adverb "nicely" really want to modify the verb "looks?" 

Well let's see, if your sweater had eyes and was in the habit of looking at things, it would be ok to say that it "looks nicely " however if you want to say that the sweater itself is nice in appearance, then you would say "That sweater looks nice with those pants." 

The word "looks" is not what you are trying to modify, you are in fact trying to modify "sweater." This is why you need an adjective (which modifies nouns or pronouns) instead an adverb (which modifies verbs, adjectives or other adverbs)

These two sentences "goes nicely" and "looks nice" both mean (virtually) the same thing. 

Grammar grammar... tisk tisk

You'd think I'd have more to say about the bassoon at this point... 

I hate reeds.

Beyond that, just pray that I totally trash (in an awesome way) my jury and kick butt on these finals. 

The Nutella is slowly wearing off and there are an increasing amount of typos in my writing...

Church is tomorrow and every new day brings a new adventure. 

Getting up and being on time are adventure enough for me. One day I'll figure out how to do it. :p 

Can't wait to see CA again and my fabulously family. 

yes. just to bug you.

This is my Quintet at Eastman which never actually got a name, thought I pushed for Quordal 5th, it never stuck. This is our end of the year concert, we played the Nielson Quintet- huge bassoon solo. :D