some morons actually think this fantastically designed thing we call the brain just magically evolved itself out of nothing.

I resolve to *try* and post once a week. try.

sigh

life has been pretty good. busy a lot of the time, but good busy, not bad busy. I'm playing piano every spare second. for several reasons:

1) practicing for my weekly lessons....trying to learn Rhapsody in Blue. I'm playing it for the recital. probably the whole thing. every time I think of it I get really excited and really terrified at the same time.

2) still teaching and pretty soon I'm going to do a little advertising and try to get more students. I only have four right now. I don't really have to practice for teaching but I have to do lots of piano-related things like make worksheets and fun game-type stuff for my students so that lessons aren't boring. teaching is the craziest job ever.

3) I'm playing accompaniment stuff for my choir class, so I've got about four of our songs down, and I'm trying to learn everything as fast as possible so that I can play it. it's mostly fine, but we have three songs where the parts are written out on seperate staves. trying to read four staves and transpose the tenor from treble to bass in my head all at the same time is proving to be a little too much for me.

4) Last week at my lesson my teacher suggested that I should see about getting a job playing at Nordstrom's or somewhere. I thought about it and realized that this is an absolutely brilliant idea. I mean, I've been playing for eight years, and it's about time I get something back for all the work I put into this. I mean, besides the enjoyment of playing, haha. Teaching is great but I'd love to supplement it with either a day job playing at a department store or hotel lobby, playing weddings and parties, etc. Good work if you can get the jobs (go Craigslist!). soooo.....I've been going through all my music and a bunch of my teacher's music too, figuring out which songs/books I can use for this kind of stuff. I need to buy a ton of music. and then I need to copy everything out and put it in a notebook I can take with me to gigs. lots of work and lots of money, but I've decided this is going to be a lot better than trying to get a minimum-wage job anywhere else, so I need to just be dedicated and dive into it. It's exhausting work (playing like three hours a day), but I'm actually really excited about it. It's something I enjoy and the prospect of making money doing something I enjoy and am good at is really nice.

5) I just got worship music for my next rotation in two weeks and I need to start practicing for that. I'm playing all the keyboard/piano stuff now (my worship leader used to play a lot of the accoustic piano parts and I'd just do a string part of something, which was much easier) which is more involved, both in practice and performance. It's fun though, and I'm learning a ton through experience. Both Roger and Bret told me that they can see the improvement from one rotation to the next, so that was really encouraging. I love my team....they're so supportive and we have a blast playing together.

6) My youth group is starting up a worship team - so far we suck, but what the heck. Our leader plays electric guitar and he's good, but other than that I'm pretty much the best musician on the team. Our bass playing knows practically nothing about bass, we don't have a drummer most of the time, our second keyboardist is actually a violinist who knows just enough to play block chords, and the last two weeks we haven't had any vocalists so it's been me and the guitarist singing. But, I have faith that it will pull together. I can help the keyboardist a lot so she'll come along soon. We can deal with not having drums. If we can get our vocalists back, we'll be ok. We're going to have a really intense practice session on Saturday, which should help. our biggest problem is never having enough time to practice before youth group.

so. I think that's it. oh I'm debating playing a song for our church talent show thingy the week of Valentine's Day. one thing that I know is happening (but thankfully doesn't really require practice) is that everyone in church who plays/played an instrument like in high school band or whatever is going to get together and play something....something easy, lol. that should be really fun. we have a lot of musicians. but I'm thinking about playing Chattanooga Choo Choo. I have to see if I can pull it together in time.

other that piano, it's basically school and trying to have some kind of social life blended with family time.....fine line there. my classes are going ok. I have a psych test tomorrow that I should be studying for now; thankfully I don't have that class the rest of the week because my teacher had hernia surgery on friday. choir is really fun when I'm there, but stressful the rest of the time because I still have a lot of music to learn. PE is going better because I'm not as sore, but it's still difficult. Art History is still fun and interesting, but personally I like studying Gothic architecture more than Italian oil paintings. whatever though, it's a really easy class and still pretty interesting.

at school I get to hang out in the music areas and with the music people a lot. I have a one hour break three days a week, and occasionally I have a two-hour break. I generally go to the piano lab and just practice. the choir room and piano lab are always really warm and have the fun music-geek people in them, so it's a cool place to hang out.

AND, we have good instruments. the practice rooms have lousy pianos of course, but in the choir room we have an amazing Steinway (and I get to play it every morning!), and the keyboards in the piano lab are actually really good keyboards.

I'm working out/exercising a lot more than I used to. meaning, about four days a week instead of none. it's great this quarter because with a PE class and the fitness room at school it all works perfectly into my schedule, and a friend of mine at school works out with me on Wednesday and Friday. I'm not sure what's going to happen next quarter.

and speaking of next quarter, I finally figured out classes! I'm taking logic, and I get the only Christian teacher (*dances*)! then I'm taking Modern World History with the teacher I had for Ancient World History last year....she's really great and she likes me, so I'm looking forward to that. After that I'm taking English 126 with my Shakespeare teacher. I'm looking forward to the quarter because I know at least two of my teachers are going to be great, and I love history and English so it should be a lot of fun. even if it will be a lot of work.

Our Shakespeare club on campus is FANTASTIC. makes Thursday pretty much the best day of the week. We're reading A Winter's Tale, and it's just like Shakespeare class was last quarter. We're looking at how to become an official school club, and discussing names, t-shirts, and mascots. and I think we're reading Othello next, which I'm really looking forward to because I know the story pretty well but I haven't ever read it. and there are a bazillion parallels between A Winter's Tale and Othello and we talk about it all the time.

unfortunately, I can't go to Shakespeare Club this week. because........*fanfare*

it's my birthday!

haha, so I'm actually not sure how I'm feeling about this whole turning 18 thing. I'm not freaking out at it like I was about turning 17 last year. which is funny, because 17 has been the best year of my life, I think. I love being 17 and I don't really want to be 18. too much responsibility and expectations that I don't really want to live up to yet.

I just applied for a Visa card though, which is going to make my life much easier. so that is one perk. another is that if I do end up getting a part time job somewhere, I have a lot more options. and even if I don't, I have more credability as a self-employed teacher/performer.

on Thursday we're going up to Pike Place Market right after school (yes, I have to go to school because I can't skip my stupid PE class) and spending pretty much all afternoon up there. I'm stoked. We're going to find the gum wall. and of course go to Starbucks, and the european markets, and eat really good farmer's market food, and find the fantastic used book store downstairs. and then we're going to my favorite Indian restaurant for dinner. on friday my grandparents are coming over for dinner. AND, I get my backpack (the one I'm taking to Europe)! So I have a whole year to figure out just how much stuff I can fit into it and still be able to carry it.

hmmm.....other than that stuff, not much has been going on. it's nice to get back to a routine to some extent. but alas my dear friends, I have to go read more about oil painting and how culture influences our behavior. and then go work out. and then come home and play piano. and then read about neurons.

(and I will try to post again soon!)

Confessions of a midnight snacker (that would be me).

Yes, I am well aware that this post, like the e-mail I'm currently writing to Cosi, is shamefully overdue.

The day after Christmas I started a big, all-about-Christmas update thing, got about half-way through, got tired or sidetracked or something, realized it was massively (almost obsessively) long - and focused mostly on boring or already-stated details about my disfunctional family - and consequently never finished it. You may all mourn for the great loss the world has just sustained.

Anyhow, Christmas was good - very good. Christmas Eve my grandparents came over for dinner and the evening, and we did all the presents (since I'm an only grandchild on their side, it's usually quite a lot of presents). This year mostly my whole list was stuff I'm gonna need for my trip to Europe.....I won't go into boring details but there are a lot of traveler-friendly things that I'm going to need in my backpack. My grandparents got me the sleeping bag I had picked out at REI when I went with them Thanksgiving weekend. I slept in it last week and it's super-warm and comfy. *grins* My backpack is my birthday present, so I'm practically counting down the days till I get it! hmmm....should I call it 'my precious,' I wonder?

I also have a backpacker's tent, which is very small and very compact, and fun to set up. and kind of confusing. but still fun. I've decided that this summer, when we do our road trip down to the Grand Canyon and back, I'm going to take my tent/sleeping bag/backpack as kind of a 'test trip,' so I can get used to living with this stuff for awhile. I'm REALLY excited. Family vacation just got about 10x better. :P

Oh yeah, Christmas. Lol, I kind of forgot......
I made a Christmas Pudding like the one that almost turned out at the sleepover last year (the cake-like thing that we steamed for two hours that tasted AMAZING but didn't rise), and it did turn out! Actually, it rose but it didn't taste quite as amazing, though still really good. It wasn't quite as dense and rich, but it held it's form better and I made a vanilla sauce to go with it. We also made mulled punch like last year (alcohol free), and managed to NOT burn honey on the stove (unlike last year).

Christmas Eve service was actually just as fantastic as I had expected and hoped it would be (which is good, because I was looking forward to it a lot). We went to the 10 PM service, which I love doing because it's the very last thing you do before going to sleep, and then you wake up and it's Christmas! Not really a lot of details to go into....it was a very musical night though, kind of half-spoken with the Christmas story, and the other half carols/special music type songs that further illustrated the story. I just wanted to share this song that my good friend Bret (my team's electric guitarist) wrote several years ago. I remember him playing it for Christmas Eve service two years ago, the first time that my family was at this church for Christmas. At the time, we didn't really know who Bret was at all.....just some guy singing some song. We figured that he had written it, but it's been neat getting to know Bret over the past couple of years and then hearing him play it again this Christmas Eve. He sent me a copy of all the lyrics since I could only remember about half of them. It's basically the Christmas story written from the innkeeper's point of view............

It might be easy to regard me with scorn
When you think about the night that Jesus was born
I was the one who stood there at the door
And said all my rooms are taken
I don't have any more
I know you think the earth stood still to hear the angel sing
The world in solemn stillness lay - maybe in your dreams

I had twenty people sleeping in five little rooms that night
Every single one complaining, not a thing I did was right
My wife was in the kitchen, she'd been there all day
And my boys, who should have been asleep
Were in the stables pitching hay
My heart sank when a young man knocked and asked me for a room
His wife was just a child herself with a baby coming soon

The little town of Bethlehem was far from still that night
There were people sleeping in the streets
The world was going wild
But for a moment short and sweet
The light of hope burned bright
In those tired and frightened eyes
That holiest of nights

My wife would have killed me if I'd turned those two away
So I took them to the stable and my boys threw down more hay
I emptied out the manger, tied the donkeys up outside
I said It's not the place to have a child, but at least it's safe and dry
A long time after midnight I finally closed my eyes
But in the early hours I rushed outside when I heard a baby cry

The little town of Bethlehem was far from still that night
The was no deep and dreamless sleep around that little child
But for a moment short and sweet
The light of hope burned bright
Against the shadows of this world
That holiest of nights

The shepherds came
With crazy tales
Of angels in the sky
The sun came up
And we went on
With our hectic, busy lives..................



On the way into Jerusalem to celebrate the feast
I saw three poor souls get crucified, it was a shameful sight to see
There were two thieves and a rabbi that I'd seen from time to time
So I asked a woman what he'd done, and she turned with tearful eyes
The shock of recognition sent shivers through my soul
She was weeping for that baby from my stable all those years ago

The little town of Bethlehem was far from still that night
When a king was born
To live and die
And rising, bring us all to life
And from that moment, ever on
The light of hope burns bright
When we celebrate
With grateful hearts
With peaceful souls
And tearful eyes
We celebrate with grateful hearts
That holiest of nights




Anway, Christmas Eve was great, Christmas Day was fun too. As most of you already know, we got a Belgian Waffle maker for my dad, so Christmas morning we had Belgian waffles along with the package of bacon I'd won at a White Elephant the week before. Maple syrup and powdered sugar and blueberry syrup and whipped cream completed the ensemble. After eating our own breakfast, we packed up and headed to my mom's aunt's for, well, more eating. Annual Christmas brunch thing. Lots of good food. I spent most of the time playing piano, which made me and everyone else happy. It's tradition to sing some carols together every year (has been for as long as I can remember; it's one of my favorite memories growing up of Christmas morning, and it may be why I love Christmas carols so much). An aunt of mine used to play, but I've taken that over as I've gotten older and better, so now I do the playing. that makes it easier to just keep playing my own stuff after the carolers have dispersed.....and then I don't have to try and make conversation. It's a plus all around.

After the brunch we moved on to my dad's parents, and my mom's parents came along with us (they basically have a standing invitation to Christmas as my dad's parents, so they come occasionally). This year the prime rib was NOT overcooked, my grandpa wasn't allowed near the shrimp so they weren't overcooked either, and in short there was so much MORE good food that we all quite overdid it. Everybody stayed pretty late, and we ended the evening playing Apples to Apples in the living room with about 20 people.....it was crazy awesome. My mom's parents were going to leave but ended up getting sucked in and playing with everyone else for a long time. We got home late and went to bed, leaving the mess for the morning.

********************************************************************

The 26th and 27th I was on worship, which was fun but exhausting. Practice was longer and a lot more intense than usual. On the flip side though, Bret is back from a long break and he's playing guitar for us again; it's been literally months since my whole team has been together, and there's something very relaxing and secure about playing together again. Although we had a lot of kinks to work out, the last service on Sunday was as smooth as honey and we had a blast playing together. I'm looking forward to our next rotation!





New Year's Eve we did a little party-hopping......spent a few hours at my mom's parents, as they have a big party every year sometime between Christmas and New Year, and this year it just happened to be New Year's Eve. Lots of people (most of whom I either didn't know or wish I didn't know), but TONS of amazing food. I tried goose for the first time and it was very disappointing - tastes just like turkey. really dry turkey. Other than that the food was all amazing and again, we ate too much.

(In case you can't tell yet, I have a lot of exercise to do this month.)

Actually there was a good part in the evening - my mom's cousin, who is really just a few years older than me, is home from school in Quebec where he's studying French as a Second Language along with about five other languages. To be entirely honest with no exaggeration whatsoever, I' not sure we've ever exchanged ten words together in our whole lives up until this evening. He's older, he's a boy, we saw each other maybe twice a year growing up, and he's always been literally the most shy person I've ever met in my life. Just never talked to ANYONE. Since he grew up and went off to school, things have changed a little bit. He's still really shy, but we actually carried on a conversation. Since I love linguistics, we had some common ground.....and neither of us wanted to try and talk with the rest of the family/friends who were there. So, we discussed French, Canadian French, different cultures, why learning a foreign language and travel are so important, how Welsh is impossible to pronounce, and the differences/similarities between Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic. Overall (even though I had to do most of the talking and questioning), it was actually kind of refreshing. you know how it is when you meet someone who's just as much of a geek about something as you are? you just kind of click. and seeing that we're both antisocial and didn't really want to be there, it worked out quite well. fun time.

The second half of the evening we went to some church friends', where the party was smaller but the conversation better. I talked for a long time with the daughter, who just returned from 3 years of teaching English in Japan, and is getting ready to head off to India for several weeks before coming back to the states to attend law school. Needless to say, we had plenty to talk about.

Now, I'm trying to get used to writing '10 instead of '09. I've discovered the common '0' is very useful. every time I start writing '09 I catch myself, and can just slip the '1' in there in front of the '0.' So far, so good.








Well, school started up again yesterday, and actually it's not too terrible. I was really dreading going back for some reason.....just not looking forward to it AT ALL. Yesterday I had choir in the morning, then an hour break (in which I attempted to re-learn some French verbs), then psych, then another hour break before class piano.


Choir: = AMAZING. I'm so glad I took the plunge and registered and forced myself to go through with it! I don't know why I was scared, but so far I'm loving it. The instructor is really sweet and knows what she's doing too, and I've already made a friend (which surprised even me, so it will probably shock all of you!). Unfortunately my friend is a soprano so we got split up today, but I'm sure we'll still talk and stuff. Anyway, the teacher is this super-sweet Mormon gal who has performed as a jazz singer for years, and did shows in Vegas (among other places) for a long time. She started teaching 8 years ago, and just came to my school last year. She's done great things with the music program though, and is a good teacher + a lot of fun. This morning we got music for two pieces.....for our concert we're doing a mix of American folk music and Classical music. don't know what classical pieces yet, but the American folk stuff is really fun! In general I don't much like folk music, but when you're singing something it's different. I'm enjoying the challenge of singing alto too, since I'm not used to singing anything besides melody very often. So far it's been pretty easy though.....my sight-singing, though shaky, is enough to get me by, and it's improving. I feel really bad for the baritone sitting next to me......he isn't quite a tenor and isn't quite a bass, and to top it all off his voice is changing. :(

PE: I started today, and since it was just orientation I don't really know what to think yet. The instructor seems pretty nice, and the work out will be good for me. Tomorrow I'm gonna scope out the gym and take advantage of my free student status. New Year's Resolution, anyone?
(lol actually I don't do resolutions because I don't believe in making promises that I have no intention of/know I won't keep. but working out and eating better just sounded like a good idea, especially after the holidays.) Anyway, I am thankful this class is only two days a week, because I think my muscles might die. crunches. bleh.

Psych: ...................................
yeah my teacher is this crazy old guy and so far the class is only an awful mixture of boring and confusing. Yesterday we did absolutely nothing (I mean, he didn't even call roll) - didn't even look at the syllabus because he has it all online. so not only did I waste an hour in class, but then I had to come home and do all the stuff I was expecting to cover in class. Today he had a short relavent lecture, that really only covered the things in the book anyway, and several long non-relavent lectures about several things: how bad our current youth generation is and how none of them knows how to study or how to work and they think they're entitled to everything; how you practically can't make it in life without a college degree and how it's worth a million bucks, and how we're all taking everything for granted and wasting great opportunities that other people would kill for; how competition is becoming global and that's why our education (i.e. college degree) is so incredibly important, and how we have to fight the rest of the world for jobs and whatnot (I personally think that collaboration is a much better option than competition, and that a college degree, while not a bad thing, isn't crucial to success by any means); and lastly, how evolution is pure scientific fact like gravity - not something you "believe in," like that made-up Creationism thing.
argh. I eventually tuned half of it out and just focused on trying to remember which 17 French verbs are the ones that conjugate with "to be" instead of "to have" for passe compose. the good news is, he doesn't care if you skip....you could skip every day and it won't affect your grade. there's just this massive and confusing book now that I'm trying to understand.

Art History: = AMAZING! I really am enjoying this class as well, even though it's online and we haven't done anything yet. we get our first forum assignment dealy tomorrow. But the book (which weighs about six pounds that feels like sixty) has really cool pictures and is very readable and very interesting. The whole current chapter is about Gothic architecture in churches - architecture has always kind of fascinated me, and it's a cool era to study. I'm really enjoying it.


.....and I dropped class piano yesterday, because I decided to keep choir, and because there are seven other people on the waiting list who probably actually do want to learn how to play piano, and because I would be bored to tears in that class. this means that I don't have to stay on campus till 2:00 two days a week, which is fine with me.



So, all things considered, life is pretty good. I've got a ton of reading but hardly any writing this quarter, which makes me happy because it takes up less time for me. Started up my own piano lessons today and spent the whole lesson talking to my teacher about a ton of important, piano-related things, but not actually playing anything; start teaching again tomorrow and I'm not quite as excited for that......we'll see how it all goes. I really need some more students, and I'm kind of depressed because I've had several oh-it-looks-promising emails over the last month and they just don't turn into anything. But we'll see what happens.


We had meatloaf for dinner, and I'm already dreaming about a meatloaf sandwich tomorrow! As crazy as this sounds, I think meatloaf is one of my favorite foods. I just L-O-V-E it.

I've discovered that bananas don't last long in our house. We had three and now they are all gone. I only ate one of them. I'm sad that they're all gone....because they are just so good with peanut butter.

I talked mom into giving me $10 a month from the food budget for buying some snacks I can grab and take to school, since my schedule and my stomach don't quite agree this quarter like they did last quarter. Stocked up on granola bars and applesause and chex mix and string cheese and little cans of mandarin oranges, AND - get this - I bought a box of 16 Pop Tarts for $1.99. I'm pretty much set. Now if I only had some bell peppers.........



So now, after staying up too late to update you all on life, I'm going to go get some sleep, so we can do it all again tomorrow. *yawn* And the band played on.....