shroud ourselves in the cosmos; let the music play

So, this quarter, and the past month in particular, has made me realise that I'm okay with being single right now, because honestly? I have no room in my life to try to accommodate another person. I barely don't have time to take care of all my own shit, and I've already had to miss a ton of orchestra and that makes me sad and guilty.

That said, I finally have a crush on someone that I don't immediately dismiss when I think about it, like I did the various people I took interest in last spring. And despite not being able to act on it because I have no time (see above), I'm pleased that it is happening, for two main reasons:
- it means I'm not ruined for life
- it's my first crush on a girl who isn't a celebrity, so it's new and exciting. Saxophone, first year masters (or DMA maybe? i'm not actually sure), v. butch, v. laid-back, orch manager, adorable faux-hawk. She might have a gf? I don't know. But that's okay because I have no time.

So yeah. *shrug*

In other news, new orchestra angst! SO MUCH ORCHESTRA ANGST.
1) I am on the roster for the Messiah orchestra (extravaganza with choirs)
2) I have a concert of contemporary chamber music during one of the dress rehearsals, which I feel it is important to note was not on the original schedule. Actually, we weren't even given a schedule for the whole quarter, just concert dates and a schedule for the first rotation, and even though this is the way the concerts with choir have worked out every other time, if it wasn't on the schedule they can't really punish us for not making the assumption that it would be the same this year
3) I was not expecting to be in the Messiah orchestra, because I thought we might be doing the smaller orchestration AND I assumed that Maestro would pick New Masters Student over me SO I figured that either way the chamber concert wouldn't present a conflict for me personally and if the various string players weren't going to make a stink, neither would I (plus I did mention it but Chamber Coach scheduled it anyway)
4) I feel guilty about playing in approx. twice as much orchestra stuff as New Masters Student, because Maestro isn't warming up to her very much at all
5) I asked Maestro via e-mail this afternoon if maybe it wouldn't be better for New Masters Student to be in Messiah, since she is available for all the rehearsals, and he hasn't gotten back to me, which freaks me out because he is usually a prompt e-mailer
6) I just registered for the CBEST, which I have been meaning to do for ages, and it is a 4-hour test on the day of the other dress rehearsal, which is scheduled to begin an hour before the test will end, not to mention that my testing center is far the fuck away because I registered so late, so essentially I will miss some or all of both dress rehearsals
7) I don't want Maestro to hate me
8) I don't want New Masters Student to resent me
9) I like large-scale choral works in general and Messiah in particular, but I honestly just don't want to deal with being in it right now
10) I also don't want Orch Manager to hate me for having so many conflicts and making life difficult because she has a cute fauxhawk.

So I guess what I have to do now is e-mail again and be like, I'M SO SORRY BUT I REALLY REALLY CAN'T BE IN THIS CONCERT BECAUSE I HAVE TOO MUCH OTHER SHIT GOING ON, UNLESS YOU HONESTLY HAVE ENOUGH BLIND FAITH IN ME TO EXCUSE ME FROM BOTH DRESS REHEARSALS WHICH YOU SHOULDN'T DO BECAUSE I AM, IN FACT, NON-ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL IN THIS SITUATION. Which gives me anxiety in and of itself.

Communication is hard, guys.

UPDATE!! Before I sent the CBEST e-mail, Maestro e-mailed back and says, "I'd still rather have you play. How much of the [Friday night] rehearsal would you need to miss?" So now I'm explaining about the CBEST and I'm so nervous about this, why? is this irrational nervousness? I just want him to liiiiiiiike meeeeeee. Which he apparently does or he wouldn't be so adamant about me playing this concert? SO WHY AM I SO NERVOUS AAAAAAAHHHHHH

OH AND ALSO! I got a haircut on Saturday and everyone keeps telling me it's cute but I am Not In Love With It. *pout* Am having a v. hard time making my peace with this one. ALSO!!! The lady was all, "IT'LL LOOK GREAT IF YOU FLAT-IRON IT :D" right after I said I don't have a flat iron and that I don't like them, and I wanted to say, "GEE, THANKS, I DON'T HAVE A FLAT IRON AND I DON'T WANT TO FLAT IRON MY HAIR AND I DON'T FUCKING HAVE TIME TO FLAT IRON MY HAIR EVERY DAY ANYWAY WHY COULDN'T YOU JUST MAKE IT SO IT LOOKS GREAT WITHOUT ME DOING ANYTHING TO IT?" Plus, she made everything too short. I'm not that bothered about the overall length, but I definitely wanted my bangs cheekbone-length and not eyebrow-length. Amelie haircut: DID NOT WANT, KTHX BUT NO THX. I don't think it suits my face. >:C

Dear Flatmate,

The plates don't get clean if you load them so that the biggest plate is right in front of the smallest plate and touching it and blocking it from getting any of the spray. They also don't get clean if they are caked with food when you load them.

I hope the dishwasher that I just reloaded and started running keeps you awake tonight.

kthx.

So I just spent the last three? 3.5? hours lying on my bedroom floor, poking around websites of music schools around the country (though mostly on the other side of the Rockies, if not the Appalachians) and trying to decide where I want to apply. I made a chart detailing the location, bassoon faculty, admissions deadlines, audition dates, and repertoire requirements for ten schools, on a sheet of butcher paper that's about three feet by three feet. Jesus.

Schools: Northwestern, Manhattan SoM, Carnegie Mellon, Juilliard, Roosevelt, Peabody (Johns Hopkins), Mannes, San Francisco Conservatory, Yale, Cleveland Institute of Music.

I also had tabs open at various points for UCLA, That Other School, Boston Conservatory, New England Conservatory, De Paul, Curtis, Eastman, Oberlin, Rice, and Indiana (@ Bloomingdale), but they didn't make the chart for various reasons... wrong location, teachers I've never heard of, teachers I doubt will be a good fit, lack of MM programs, unappealing gossip from friends...

I'm sort of overwhelmed. At least my preliminary research in September paid off -- the TRICERATOPS ASSLOAD of music I'm preparing puts me in good stead for... well, everywhere, pretty much.

Still, I feel I should whittle down this list, if for no other reason than to save my parents money on application fees and travel arrangements (and, you know, so I don't have a paperwork-related breakdown, and so fewer professors will hate me for giving them inadequate letter-of-recommendation-writing time). Right?

SO. ( my thought process, let me show you it. )

In other news: today's frustrations.
Remember that panic attack I almost had yesterday, which happened mainly because suddenly my day of Rest And Big Decisions got hijacked by a rehearsal and a busywork class group project meeting?
Neither thing happened. No, I'm not kidding. I hauled my ass out of bed and drove to campus on a holiday, and I couldn't get hold of three of the four people I was trying to schedule-on-the-fly with, and I sat around texting/e-mailing/on the phone for about an hour that I could have used for other things, like staying home and sleeping or doing grad school legwork. And then it became clear that the rehearsal couldn't happen, and the project guys were still incommunicado, and I figured, hell, I'm here in the music building, I can at least practise. So I did, for about two hours, and it wasn't great. My hands were not working today, and the left one kept having worrisome numbness.

But damn, that was all morning that I could have spent sleeping or charting, but no.

Things still to do today:
- read article on race and music school admissions
- write lesson plan for busywork class's midterm two weeks ago
- look over piece for busywork class group project, think on lesson plan (to be hastily written tomorrow between 11 and 12, extending to 2 if necessary. There goes my chance at getting lunch.)

And I was hoping for an opportunity to go shopping, because I am out of chips and cheese and crackers, but that's probably no longer on the table, either.

Percent of my shit that I currently have together: ZERO.

Bitchly Little Girl #3! Comes in to return a laptop. Appears to be in a rush, but spends a full minute adjusting her clothing before she logs on to the laptop lending station, so we can go through the actual process of returning her laptop. Which, I notice, has not been shut down. In the future, I mention casually, make sure you give it enough time to shut down all the way. Why do you have the default on 'restart,' then? she counters. You know, I say, I couldn't tell you. You should take it up with CLICC. I don't have the time to, she informs me. She also apparently does not have two fucking seconds to switch the setting from 'restart' to 'shut down.' But she does have the time to make my life unpleasant, apparently. Jesus.

Also, I am hungry.

I was having a good night -- well, early morning. Finished my project, sent it in, and settled down on the couch for NCIS and tea, right? I decided to make myself a midnight snack involving cream cheese.

Except apparently my cream cheese was a casualty of Flatmate's fridge-cleaning?

My PERFECTLY FUCKING GOOD cream cheese.

And, BTW, I do remember specifically saying NO, I did NOT want her to go through my food.

FUCK EVERYTHING. I DIDN'T WANT TO BE PISSED OFF RIGHT NOW, THANKS.

FUCK.

And I scared the kitties by slamming the cabinet door.

I really should be working on that ed project right now but instead I'm kind of... de-braining via internet. Because today contained about 5 hours of bassoon-and-contrabassooning (wind ensemble + Mozart sectional + playing through Mahler so my fingers re-learn it) and it completely wiped me out. Seriously. I'm staying home from my 8-11 class tomorrow morning (so I can drag my ass to campus for rehearsal at 11 instead), and I'd better get some of this project done in that time, but I'm not holding out much hope because omg I feel like death right now, and that's after I've been at home hiding in my room for two hours doing nothing productive at all, so I have no idea when I'll be up and running tomorrow. I promise after this post I'll buckle down and work on it, I will. Because I suppose I can't really count on getting anything done on it tomorrow night after the concert, which I'm sure will effectively finish me off, following as it will on the heels of 5 hrs rehearsal + 2 hrs work.

Just took my temperature -- 97.8 degrees. Haven't taken any kind of anti-inflammatory since 5pm. Should I be worried? Or is that within the realm of daily temperature fluctuations? It seems quite low to me. Then again, I've been sitting still and my room is quite cold (but turning on the heater makes the air too dry for comfortable breathing)

Flatmate apparently just took some time to go through the fridge and actually get rid of food she doesn't plan to eat/has allowed to go bad. Asked if there was anything I wanted to get rid of with her stuff. No, because I don't buy/cook 3x as much food as I can eat and then forget about it for a month in the fridge because I buried it haphazardly under new groceries. Seriously. One shouldn't need refrigerator space that is greater than the volume of one's own body. And while Flatmate is definitely not slender, she ain't that big. (Chrissake, she's probably not even five feet tall. That itself eliminates a lot of potential volume.)

Another thing that bugs me -- Okay, I get that she has to move the seat so that her feet reach the pedals when she has to move my car, because I am 5'6" and she is 4'something-less-than-12". But does she really need to change the rearview mirror every damn time? I don't change her mirror when I move her car. I turn around and look the fuck behind me. Christ. Sometimes when I am really hacked off, I adjust her seat, rearview mirror, and steering wheel. Because I am a bitch. I really hate tandem parking. And I really hate that Flatmate's car makes obnoxious noises and that it always takes me at least two tries to throw the damn thing into reverse because her transmission is fucked.

Also my feet are freezing despite socks & a blanket, and I am motherfucking hungry because I haven't had dinner yet but I didn't want to have to interact with Flatmate while she was puttering around the kitchen and living room.

Being sick also increases my levels of aggression and misanthropy, apparently.

---

@ 23:49
Since I'm clearly not done fucking around on LJ for the night, and I still haven't eaten anything and I still don't want to work on my damn project, can I complain about the Mozart sectional today?
- Second Oboe (who I already knew to be a Big Fucking Flake because I had to be in a scholarship quintet with her for over a year) said she would be available at 5:15, but apparently she actually had a midterm. And then she didn't send an e-mail about it until about 3:30 TODAY, when three of the remaining four of us were already in a large ensemble rehearsal. Which, btw, goes until 5:00, so when that was over we pretty much went directly to the appointed sectional room and set ourselves up. (the remaining member didn't get the e-mail either, because she was on a bus on her way to campus. btw the sectional was the ONLY reason for her to go to school today.) My Favourite Oboist saved the day, though, by offering to sit in and fill out the chords when Maestro encountered her in the hallway. Honestly, we were both laughing inside because it was so classic and finally other people are realising Second Oboe's flakiness. But still. Now we'll have to go back and re-check the tuning and balance sometime tomorrow, because of Second Oboe's FAIL.
- New Master's Bassoonist is good, and I like her a lot, but she has now had a month to learn the tendencies of her shiny new Fox 601. She shouldn't still be having problems like Being Sharp All The Time. She should be at the point where she knows how to adjust her reeds to the new horn so that her setup is in tune.
- And then the ENTIRE rest of the sectional consisted of Maestro walking Faily Sophomore Flute through the bajillion things she has to do to pull her weight in an orchestra wind section, such as: tune octaves with the oboe, tune unisons with the oboe, blend with the oboe, balance to the oboe, count rests correctly, come in correctly, adjust the intonation if it sounds wrong at first, play in time with the solo piano's subdivisions, balance to the solo piano, match articulations with the rest of the section, and OH YEAH PLAY IN TUNE. I fail to see why Maestro put her inexperienced ass on this piece. SHE IS THE EPICENTER OF SO MUCH FAIL. Actually, I'm pretty sure that if he had known beforehand that it would take this much hand-holding, he would have put someone else on the part. SOMEONE WITH LESS FAIL, MY GOD.
- Also, my ears were really stuffy and it apparently made me unable to hear the upper harmonics of my notes, so I had massive intonation paranoia, but apparently the only problems I had that Maestro corrected were with my top space G, which is SharpSharpSharp. And then I overcorrected because I couldn't hear where the note was resonating properly because I couldn't hear the upper harmonics. I really hope my tone wasn't as stuffy from outside my head as it sounded from inside my head.

As a SPECIAL BONUS, I had sound sensitivity during wind ensemble, which makes me have paranoia about whether my ear infection is cleared up or not. Or maybe it's just that the trumpets who sit behind me are too DOUCHEBAGGY to aim their bells around/past my head, rather than at it. And I also apparently picked the Wrong Distance to sit from the horn-player-next-to-me's bell -- I suspect that I would have been getting a lot less SOUND-IN-THE-FACE! had I been either closer or farther away.

HOORAY!! And now it is AFTER MIDNIGHT and I AM STILL NOT ASLEEP and I HAVE STILL NOT EATEN and I HAVE STILL NOT DONE HOMEWORK but at least I am DONE FUCKING VENTING.

1. OH MY GOD BUSYWORK CLASS WTF.
- four hours of bad-quality video to watch (srsly one of them was so damaged that the screen blanked out every few seconds and the audio was wavering ALLLLLLL over the place. WTF BUSYWORK TEACHER YOU WANT US TO LEARN ABOUT CHORAL TEACHING BY NOT BEING ABLE TO SEE OR HEAR THE CLASS?)
- "video review" that contributes to a 30% chuck of the final grade, for which we have NO GUIDELINES WHATSOEVER THANKS FOR THAT
- five (+ about four more that were SEKRITLY STAPLED TOGETHER) articles (admittedly short) to read
- ONE-PARAGRAPH SUMMARIES of aforementioned articles (which I have not done and have very little intention to)
- take-home mini-quiz which BTW WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN IN THE LAST CLASS WAY TO GO WITH THE TIME MANAGEMENT BUSYWORK TEACHER
- random-ass songs to learn and analyse vowels of? I DON'T EVEN KNOW.
To sum up: WTF BUSYWORK CLASS GTFO

2. OMG BASSOON. WHERE DID ALL MY TCHAIK 4 MOJO GO? I swear it's all Charlie's fault, I felt happy about that excerpt until I started working on it with him. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF IT TOOK ME 3 YEARS OF NO CHARLIE TO GET MY SCHEHEREZADE MOJO BACK I DON'T HAVE 3 MORE YEARS FOR TCHAIK. Also: DEAR REEDS, STOP SUCKING PLS. KTHX.

3. DEAR WEATHER, WTF R U DOIN? It was cold and rainy, and then it was hot and muggy and today was foggy-but-superbright and then I was inside all day and then it was cold and I actually needed to use the heater in the car this evening. What??

4. Note to self: YOU CAN'T PEEL OUT WHEN IT'S RAINING. YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TRACTION FOR THAT. It's okay, though, it happened each time within the first 3 minutes I was driving and none of them were situations that required peeling out and there were no crashes or anything and then after it happened I remembered to accelerate more slowly.

5. ... I don't really know but I feel like there should be a 5. Look for a future post about Star Trek waffles? YES THEY EXIST THIS IS TRUFAX. I sort of wonder how Zoe Saldana feels about people eating her face on waffles. For that matter, also Chris Pine and Zach Quinto (<3 <3 <3)

6. omg i am watching so much star trek. I FOUND ALL THE CHANNELS THAT TOS AND TNG ARE ON AND I DVR THEM AND IT IS WONDERFUL. I LOVE STAR TREK LIKE BURNING.

7. I keep forgetting that having an ear infection is in fact "being sick" -- I run around doing all the things I would normally do and since I'm not coughing or sneezing or feverish or achy or nauseous, I don't actually consider it "being sick" except for the part where my ear sometimes feels funny/painful and I have to take MASSIVE HORSE PILLS three times a day. Except I keep spontaneously sleeping. On the couch in front of the TV, dozing lightly in the library in front of the VCR setup (I HATE YOU BUSYWORK CLASS), taking 3-hour naps in my parents' living room... Well, maybe that's not so unusual -- I tend to fall asleep/take extravagant naps every time I go home, it seems. But still. It's also waaay too hard to get up in the mornings. THANKS BUT NO THANKS, EAR INFECTION.

8. At least I don't have 'flu like my brother. Yeah, apparently today he has a 100-degree fever and coughing. GET YOUR FLU SHOTS, KIDS. Swine flu and seasonal flu. (o btw I was definitely misinformed about the whole "swine flu is the only flu active in the u.s." thing -- there is ALSO regular old seasonal influenza and you should DEFINITELY get flu shots for both kinds k? some of my family from norcal has already had both kinds this fall.)

9. Oh! So, I glimpsed DIAF through the door in a rehearsal for one of the youth orchestras that uses our facilities. And I, like, wanted to get mad and hurt, or I tried to, or something... but then I realised that I don't care enough to get hurt and I don't have the energy for it and, you know what? That felt good. I still kind of wanted to key his car. I didn't, though -- I wanted to go home and eat dinner more. More good, yeah? Heh.

10. My grandma has a guava tree in her back yard and it has FRUIT and some of them are RIPE and so yesterday when we were at her house for lunch my mum and I went out and picked guavas!! And persimmons! (OMG SO MANY PERSIMMON. SO MANY.) I LOVE GUAVAS. I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT GUAVAS. THEY SMELL SO GOOD. AND OMG SO TASTY. I HAVE SO MANY GUAVAS. GUAVAS ARE LOVE. (corrolary: my family is love. SO MUCH LOVE.)

11. This business of being too busy for life sucks a lot, not least because it is making all of my LJ entries freakin' ENORMOUS. OH MY GOD INTERNET I MISS YOU SO MUCH

SO! I'm pretty sure I DO in fact have ANOTHER GODDAMN EAR INFECTION. HOWEVER, I was not able to get to the student health center this morning because I WAS AN HOUR LATER THAN I MEANT TO BE AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHY.

I got to school approximately at 9, and had a brief, frustrating practise in which I chose the two etudes I'll be learning for the next few months and in which I FORGOT to practise scales for my lesson and in which I ran out of time to go over the sonata and solo pieces I'm supposed to be learning. WHOOPS. It was particularly frustrating because I was away from my bassoon all weekend and yet did NOTHING PRODUCTIVE, and yesterday I was talking to my friend about being frustrated by my lack of technique but not knowing how to go about developing it but teachers expect incoming grad students to be pretty much set for technique and then they can feed their musical ideas into them but I feel like I'm the exact opposite. SO YEAH. frustrating. So now I feel frustrated AND unprepared for my lesson in half an hour.

Especially since I could only give myself an hour with my bassoon because I had to go to the library as soon as it opened at ten and WATCH VIDEOS FOR MY BUSYWORK CLASS. You know, the one where we could watch the videos during class time and get just as much out of it, BUT NO, we have to listen to the teacher tell INANE MEANDERING STORIES and then cringe and fidget when she calls on the DUMBEST GIRL EVER to ALSO tell inane meandering stories because she is TOO FUCKING DUMB to articulate her thoughts coherently.

FUCK, INTERNETS. FUCK.

and my hair is awful today and my reeds are crap and i sound like crap and my eyes weren't focusing right and why am I breaking out and i think I gave myself a fat lip trying to put reams of printer paper into a filing cabinet and my to-do list has had the same 5 things on it for the last two weeks and i still haven't done them because i SUCK AT LIFE and EVERYTHING ABOUT TODAY IS TERRIBLE, OKAY.

at least i remembered my goddamn sandwich. fuck.

I am made of fail today.

I slept in, which is not totally faily, since I woke up waaaay early on Thursday and mostly-early Friday and Saturday, and I stayed up waaaaay late on Friday, so I definitely needed it and planned for it.

But then I laid around in bed with the laptop and the cats, and then I watched TV for a while, and then took an afternoon shower, which always means that the day is a wash, and then there was more laptop-and-cats. (And also a couple necessary e-mails, but still.)

That was what I did; what I did not do is this:
-reading for ANYTHING. (I tried to do some of that last night, at my parents' house, and I ended up falling asleep for an hour or more. I always fall asleep when I go home, lately. I think it's starting to worry my mum.)
-practise (omgggggggg tomorrow is lesson day, plus West Side Story day in wind ensemble and WSS is SUPER HARD ohshit)
-exercise
-go grocery shopping (we are out of sour cream, flour, crisps, and milk (and i guess also half-and-half but i might be falling out of love with half-and-half in my coffee after a week without it), although milk is the only really pressing thing. I went to use it in scrambled eggs this morning, having not opened it for several days (it started tasting olivey on Wednesday which is the first sign that the milk is turning), and it was solid. I haven't dealt with it (squeezed it out of the jug and down the commode) yet, but I did have a good talk with Flatmate about the merits of making sure the threads are aligned properly when putting the cap on, and of buying half-gallons because clearly we can't consume a full gallon between us before it turns.)
-indeed, leave the house for any reason, which is pretty damn sad
-call the vet to set up the kitties' final vaccinations. (also, i want to ask about the vomiting again. last time the vet said it was probably nothing more than them eating to fast for their tummies to handle, but it hasn't stopped. Ducky in particular has vomited several times this week, and even though afterwards they both sniff it and try to eat it (i try to be prompt with the cleanup but they're determined little buggers and the paper towels are far away) and they act like it's fine, I'm a little worried.)
-put things in boxes to be mailed

FAILY FAIL FAIL FAIL!!!

------

OH SO the opera sale yesterday was kind of cool( w00t run-on sentences!! )

O HEY ALSO FLATMATE STORY ( Cereal clog = Not okay )

oh godddddddddddd

the kittens are BOTH!! under the comforter but on top of the topsheet, and attacking my toes through it. Which is adorable! Especially the warm, soft, kitten-sized comforter lumps. BUT OH GOD IT TICKLES

oh thank god they stopped

-----

Dear Flatmate,

I know I tend to take curves on the freeway, especially the ramps, quite fast. I know my car handles well enough for me to do so. You going "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah" in the backseat is not entertaining, cute, or endearing, and it does not make me want to slow down, either. It just pisses me right the fuck off and makes me want to go fucking faster to teach you a lesson so shut the fuck up.

p.s. You telling the kittens loudly that their nails are sharp and need cutting does not endear you to me, either. I will cut the kittens' nails when I think they need it and when the are relaxed enough and I have the time. Being coy about it does not make the confluence of these events any more likely. shut the fuck up. maybe if you didn't insist on holding them when they don't to be held, you wouldn't encounter their claws. I haven't had problems yet.

p.p.s. I won't thank you for finally cleaning the stove and the countertop. I am quite relieved that you did because the mess you have left unattended for several days was on the verge of becoming a biohazard (seriously, that bowl that you used for defrosting the raw chicken sat out three days, and that fork with the raw egg was from yesterday morning), but I refuse to thank you and congratulate you for doing something that should be automatic and prompt -- not a special feat deserving a reward. And while I'm glad you finally picked up most of your shit that was scattered around the living room, I see no reason for your flip-flops to still be under the coffee table. You don't even wear them why the fuck should they ever be out of your room.

-----

so I FINALLY completed week 2 of my running program, after attempting it for three consecutive weeks. Wednesday was 1000x easier than Monday, and Friday's 4:1 was not the most torturous ever, and yesterday was almost pleasant -- I ran in the evening, from my parents' house to the fire station and back, while they were on their walk. I was sort of with them but not really, in the way that I ran ahead of them for four minutes, then for the walking i doubled back towards them and we had time to meet up and say hi before I had to run off again. It worked. Also, it was dark and cool, which may also have been good. I've noticed that Mondays are super hard, so I did "30 min easy walk" today instead of "rest" in the hopes that it makes it less daunting to start again tomorrow. We'll see. (yes, I do know that athletes should take a day off every 7-10 days, but I think it might make it easier to start again tomorrow if I didn't do nothing today.)

Mum and I went shopping yesterday afternoon -- for once in my life, I went to DSW without buying anything, but fear not! I made a list of shoes to find pictures of and then maybe we can have a poll or something about whether I should buy new shoes and if so which ones. I didn't get a red dress either, or a new concert blouse (my old concert blouse I still love, but it is getting a bit faded. sadness!), but I did get new jeans (much needed) and a belt and a shawl, and two button-downs (one white, short-sleeved, and okay I guess, and one off-white, long-sleeved, slightly more casual, and GORGEOUS), and two waistcoats (i am filled with joy) (one is solid black with a full back and pointy lapels, the other is grey-brown stripey and it goes in a band around the back, then has adjustable elastic to connect that band to the "collar". It's less spiffy than the black one, but I still like it). And they were on sale and mum had a gift card and everything.

Tomorrow I have an orientation for the school of education, and supposedly all will be explained and we will no longer be confused and worried. It starts at 8.30a though, which SUCKS.

Tuesday will be full of the busy also. Plus, I'm going to bring the kittens to visit the library. O.o

Thursday night is orchestra auditions. Bassoon at 8, contra at 8.30 (appointments are 15 minutes each.) I'm feeling pretty good about contra -- the excerpts must be easier than last year's, because I've been able to practise them intermittently and it's still gone smoothly. Bassoon not so much. I kind of inadvertently took the last few days off because I am a bad music major, and so I'm a little apprehensive. Plus, my tempi are too slow for the fiddly excerpts still, my Mozart is Not Tidy Enough, I'm pretty sure unintended rubato is happening in the slow excerpts, my reeds are fighting me, and ... I'm worried. I feel like as much as I wanted to prove myself last year, because I was a senior dammit, the expectations are even higher this year because I'm a fifth-year and I gave a good recital and my main competition are the new master's student, who has the same number of years of experience as me but will have better parts anyway unless I really kick ass in auditions, and the same two-years-younger moderately flaky technique whiz who has been kicking my ass in auditions since he arrived. And I just don't really know how I was so motivated last summer, but not this summer, even though this summer feels like higher stakes.

P.S. I still haven't finished gathering info for grad schools. But if I want to audition anywhere I'd better find out what excerpts/pieces/etudes I need to learn, and soon. Bugger.