Thanksgiving Break

Thanksgiving Break was awesome. I haven't had such a good time in a long while. Unfortunately, having a good time meant doing absolutely no homework or practicing. I kind of had an excuse about not practicing, because I have a cold sore, but I probably should have worked on some of my homework. As a result, I have tons of stuff to do this week. I have done nothing today but go to class, do homework, and practice. I even skipped two of my classes today to work on that stuff. Tomorrow will be much the same. I have a whole butt-load of homework due in Choral Music Ed. because I let it build up. I also still have to finish my history homework for tomorrow. We have another paper in history due on Wednesday, and our Research Paper is due on Thursday! What kind of person has three papers due in a row? Especially things like research papers! Rena is coming over Wednesday night to watch my Concert Band/Symphonic Band concert and staying for the Transfer Student Orientation the next day. Our camp has our annual Christmas party this weekend and this will be the first time ever I'll be able to make it! This is the first time in six years! Next week, I have two finals on Tuesday, one on Thursday, and one on Friday. I also have my jury sometime during that week, hopefully towards the end of it. My jury piece is not nearly ready enough, but the first two movements no longer sound like ass. So, I really need to get off my ass more and practice because I can see the end. I feel good about today though, I've done a lot. Anyways, I hope everybody else had a great Thanksgiving Break.

Only one more day of classes 'till Thanksgiving Break and I can hardly wait. I'm picking up Rena from the Greyhound station in less than three hours and I'm so excited. It seems like forever since I've been able to see her. For you peeps who don't read her blog, you should know that she has her wedding dress now. You can see it here. Of course, Rena will be much hotter in it than the model. I have two tuba warmups tomorrow, then a class, then my tuba lesson, and then two hours of rehearsal for Symphonic Band. This wouldn't seem like much if I didn't have my lesson; but because I do, I'm going to cram about two hours of practice in before the lesson. :P My jury piece is still sucking pretty hard. I switch to an unaccompanied piece two weeks ago to get out of having to hire an accompanist, but its so hard to play with so little notice. Oh well, what are they going to do, fire me? Haha, camp staff humor.

Guess what happened this morning? The Registrar found my file and got my transfer stuff on the computer. Yay! Now I can schedule an appointment with my advisor so I can figure out what the hell I need to take still to graduate. Everything transferred, but I still need to find out if I can get out of taking some of the classes that I've already taken, but have different names. But guess how many credits I have? 194.5. Wow. Those are quarter credits by the way. For you guys on the semester system: 90 quarter credits = 60 semester credits. In other news, I went to the Chamber Orchestra Concert last night. They played four pieces and it lasted an hour and a half. I enjoyed the second half of the concert but the first half dragged on. To make matters worse, a whole bunch of children sat all around me. They were figiting and making noise. One of them even touched my head during the performance! During the intermission, I moved. I swear that when I have kids, I'm not going to bring them to concerts like this. You can't expect children to act with concert etiquette, they have too much energy. I remember when I was that age, I certainly didn't like going to my sister's ballet performances. It's up to the parents to understand that they shouldn't take away from the performance for the rest of the audience by bringing distractions.

Registered

I finally got to register for classes today, and I'm really surprised I got into all the classes I wanted. I'm really content with next quarter's classes. I'm going to be taking Instrumental Music Methods, Music History 1600-1800, Class Percussion, Class Woodwinds, Conducting II, Student Recital, Brass Choir, Brass Quintet, my private lessons, and whatever band I make it into. If I don't make Orchestra or Wind Ensemble, I'll have to take both Symphonic and Concert Band again. Not too bad, eh? I'm excited a little bit about my lab classes because it's always kinda fun to learn new instruments. I also transferred into the other history class! Percussion is at the same time as Maria's (the scary Russian woman) class, so I got permission to enter the other class! When I went and talked to him about it, he said fine. Guess what else I found out about him? He's a Sinfonian. He went to Florida State University and is friend's with Dr. Hammond at Morehead. We talked for like five minutes about sinfonia, but then I had to leave to finish my registration process. I'm so glad I'm switching from scary Russian woman history to cool Sinfonian guy history. Anyways, I haven't eaten since breakfast this morning and I'm starved. I'm also going to the Percussion Ensemble Concert at seven, so I need to head out.

Stupid Registrar

About five weeks ago I had gone to the registrar with some problems. On my Degree Progress Report, I still had no credits from before Central on it. It also still said that I was undeclared and a Freshman. They told me not to worry about it. I filled out a request form that would have them get it done and they said to expect results in about two weeks. Now it's time for registration for next quarter, and I still don't know what classes I still need to graduate. I talked to Joe Koski and he talked to them for me during my lesson time. After being transferred around to about four people, we finally were talking to the right person. Apparently, they had lost my file! They have no idea where it is. They're looking for it now at least. Joe is on their case for me. At least Admissions still has my transcripts. I'm telling you, the Registrar is filled with a bunch of idiots. Bah!

In other news, I have surpassed my requirement of forty etudes this quarter so I can now focus sole on my jury work. I need to jury up to the 200 level this quarter. For my jury, I'm playing excerpts from Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique and Damnation of Faust. I'm also playing movements 1, 2, and 4 of Persichetti's Sonata No. 12., and I have to play all my major scales in broken thirds. I can play them all now, but only about half of them are at the speed I need. Only three more weeks of class and finals week! I'm happy, this quarter went by quickly. They go a lot faster after you've been used to semesters for two years!

Faculty Recital

I went to the Faculty Recital last night. Hilarious. Most of it was contemporary music. My favorite piece was one that our percussion professor wrote himself. It was titled "Preacher" and it was for tamborine and voice. The whole piece was him preaching to us about the beauty of music that incorporated minor 2nds, minor 9ths, and tritones. There were many jokes in there as well. For instance, "There are many out there who thing that a diminished fifth is an almost empty bottle of whiskey. There are many out there that think a tritone are the three notes to Louie Louie." He went on for about five minutes, the audience cracking up the whole time.

Anyways, I finished my rough draft for my history paper last night was a wonderful seven and a half pages. Its good to know that I already passed the minimum length for it and I only have written less than a page on the Renaissance! I'll add about two and a half pages to it for the final draft, and that will be easy. We finalized the name to our brass quintet yesterday. We're called "Das Uber Brassen". Excellent, huh? By the way, everybody should check out a post on Francis' blog that is developing quite a bit of controversy; feel free to put your two cents in if you haven't already.

Happy Real Blogiversary! Of course I would come to the library today, because I'm that bored. I've actually been getting a lot done though. My research paper is now over four and a half pages! I've covered everything up to the medieval period now. Since I'm like over halfway done with the paper, I can slack a little bit on the Medieval and Renaissance Periods, which are far more boring than Ancient Greek and Roman times. I'm going to a Faculty Recital at four today. After that, brass quintet rehearsal. I probably should find some time to practice today as well. I can't wait till this quarter is over. I hate the classes I'm in and the fact that I need to spend so much extra time practicing tuba music that is no long enjoyable. I just want Rena to move in and for me to get a job so some normalcy can return to my life.

Yeah, I know. I should be working on my research paper now. But I wanted to take a break. I've written a page and a half and the rest is going to come by faster. I needed to copy a couple of music excerpts at the library anyways. So to fill everybody in: my job search is sucking. I didn't get the job at Freddie's. I finally got ahold of the contact for the in home care giver positions today, just to find out that they've been filled. I have lost tract of how many places I have applied at. I heard that the north campus food court might need more dishwashers, so I'm going to check that out Monday or Tuesday. Registration for classes starts in the middle of next week and I don't even know what classes I still need to take to graduate! Fucking registrar. What a bunch of slackers. I'm going to talk to my advisor, maybe she'll have more luck with them than I have had. I honestly don't know what I'm going to do if I can't get a job. I could whore myself out to a hundred fat chicks for 1000 bucks each. Or a thousand really fat chicks for a hundred bucks. What? Fat chicks need luvin' to. But they gotta pay. LOL. I crack myself up. Hope everybody is having better luck in their lives than me. Bye.

Blogiversary!

Actually my blogiversary is tomorrow, but I'm not sure if I'll get to a computer tomorrow. As my blogiversary present to everybody else, I copied and pasted all of my old posts on my old blog to this one. It took a good fifty minutes. But now my blog isn't as crappy as it use to be. I didn't change the times of the individual days, but I got every date correct.

I didn't realize how sore I had gotten until yesterday. I was actually limping a little bit. Its a lot better now; I'm still sore, but I can walk without a limp and can turn my head withough sharp pains in my neck. I still have to write my history paper, but I've done a lot of research; writing it is all I have left. Anyways, I've been on the computer for about two hours now, so I better get back home and get started on that paper.

So sore...

Happy Veteran's day everybody. I just played football for two hours today. So Sore. Ouchie. I did get a lot done so far today though. The only problem is that I still have lots of homework due Monday. Well, I have a rough draft for a term paper for music history due Monday. I haven't started writing it, but I have started researching! My paper is going to be on the Development of Wind Instruments before 1600. These last couple of days our building has been overrun by high school students. I hate choir festivals. Too many giggly choir girls for my liking. Some of them even tried to start up conversations with me! Can't they see that I want them to stop crowding up the halls and fall into a pit somewhere? Oh well, I got most of my choral music ed. homework done and I will finish it tonight. Once I stop procrastinating on my blog...

Boo on Music History

We got our history exams back today. Wow. 69%. Wow. Looking through it though, I think I should've gotten a better grade on a couple of parts. I deserved at least a 70%. We took a quiz today as well. It was on "personalities". In our syllabus, it list a whole bunch of names and whether they were artists, patrons of art, musicians, or architects. The quiz was matching. The choices were, musicians, patrons of art, government officials, architects, or sculptors. Notice the difference here. The only one that got me hung up was the artist category getting changed. Since I figured it would be safe to list "sculptors" for all the artists, I put that. Apparently, she through us a curve ball. Two of the artists listed were primarily painters, not sculptors. We were supposed to leave those to questions blank. Otherwise we get them wrong. Does anybody else think that this was a dirty trick? I'm so mad at the teacher. I have a hard enough time with the material without her purposely making it harder. Maybe she should learn to speak FLUENT English instead of broken English so I could actually understand what the hell she is saying. Bah!