shroud ourselves in the cosmos; let the music play

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.

From yesterday:
things that MUST happen tomorrow:
- call ucpd and schedule fingerprinting/background check, preferably for FRIDAY, EARLYISH because I have to turn materials in to the school of ed on Friday. Scheduled for Tuesday and I'll just have to plead my case to the School of Ed Office of Student Services -- well i was planning to do it earlier this week but then i was really really sick and after i was able to leave the house again, the next available appointment was on tuesday... *pout*
- find online form for fingerprinting/background check, fill in applicable fields
- figure out APLE application business, fill out appropriate forms.
- call mum re: rent money, necessity or lack thereof of funds transfer?

New To-Do-Tomorrow-Or-Else List:
- fill out live scan paperwork
- figure out APLE shit
- make pilgrimage to Sch of Ed OSS & turn shit in
- OMG PROJECT. Because guess what didn't get done today, either? !!! :D
- call student's mom re: scheduling lesson for Sunday (or not. I might beg off. sorry i can't teach your daughter how to play bassoon today, i am sick. *pout*)
- to Petsmart for kibble
- to Rite Aid for drugs. and maybe also chips. because I'm out of chips and that sucks.
- to Aah's for pith helmet? I'm probably not going to do anything Saturday night because I'm sick, even if I am starting to feel better, but that doesn't make me want a pith helmet any less. *sigh* I guess dinosaur tamer costume must wait another year...

Aaaaand I had a whole shitload of music worked up for my lesson last week, but it turned into hammering scales and then therapy, so I didn't get to play any of it for my teacher. And then I forget whether I practised very much last week but I suspect not that much? Maybe some. Except then I was sick and missed this week's lesson, and this week I have been sick and have not practised at all, except last night so my fingers could re-learn Mahler, and now there will be lessons on Monday again and I no longer have things worked up. Fie.

Also, being sick apparently interferes with my ability to access my vocabulary? The word I was grasping at yesterday when I was babbling about "upper harmonics" was in fact overtones. And it's still hard to tune if you can't hear your own overtones, btw. Also, tonight after the concert, I was blowing water out of the contra and my ear popped. It hurt a little, and seems like not a good sign. I might also stop at student health to see whether the antibiotics did their job.

But in other news, know what's tasty? Chai tea with Kahlua in.

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.

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@ 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.

Why would one ever buy the small, bear-shaped bottle of honey? It's creepy-looking, and the plastic is thick and virtually impossible to squeeze. Buy a bigger bottle and you get a better price per ounce, the bottle is squeezable, and you don't have to buy more honey for another year -- and it's not as if it's going to go bad in that time. It's honey. I have never seen honey go bad. Also, if you buy the bigger bottle, you can get it in a shape that's not a fucking creepy little bear. Jesus. Idiot.

And, okay, so I didn't wash the things I used to bake last night, but they're all at least in the sink and I wiped up the cheese that strayed onto the counter and the floor. That doesn't mean that it's cool to leave empty string cheese wrappers and grape stems on the counter. The trash can is two feet away.

Playing duos with bass players gets me in on some bass gossip. Such as:
When someone asked if we should beef up our bass section (currently two juniors and a freshman, and one of the juniors will be studying abroad for all of winter and spring, which is sad because he's my favourite and the one I'm playing the duo with) by calling Die In A Fire, the response of both the bass teacher AND the conductor was, "NO. NO, NO. NO."

I busted up laughing.

Yeah, it doesn't really hurt anymore, but I have a lot of anger about it still. Not just that -- I have anger about a lot of things. Honestly, I have a lot of rage, these past few months, most of it directionless, simmering and impotent.

But yeah, I still want to punch him in the face. He's pretty scrawny, I bet I could take him out.

Or key his car. Or slash his tires.

Mostly punch him in the face.

RAGE.

1. Sore throat + sniffles + watery eyes + maybe a slight fever if my baseline is below 98.6 as I suspect it is = hopefully not flu. Seriously, I am not allowed to be really sick until after next week, I have way too much bassooning to do.

2. Dear Homework I Have Not Seriously Considered Doing For The Past Four Days,
I'm not sorry.
love, Sigma

3. I have discovered the fiery green joy of wasabi peas. Uh. Or maybe I like them because I can taste them even with a sniffly nose?

4. Sci-Fi Bassoon! Well, Eigenharp. My teacher linked me to this. Awesome electronic instruments ahoy! ... Will tried to explain what the mouth-pipe does but I still don't get it.

5. Okay, NOW kittens. ( EPIC KITTEN PICTURE POST )
More kitten pictures at my Photobucket album! Seriously. TONS more.

P.S. OMG CONCERT. MOZART + MAHLER. THURSDAY @ 8.
(this is why I can't be sick. among other things.)

What I did Thursday night: ( DALEK-O-LANTERN )
All the pumpkins that happened that night (on the landing at my friend's apartment): ( six pumpkins )

What I did Friday morning: got my first ever speeding ticket. The officer kind of talked to me like I was a child, possibly because I clearly had no idea what to do when he pulled me over. (It took me a minute to even realise he was pulling me over, especially because I was almost in my parking lot.) I suppose I had it coming, though. Even if there was no one else in my lane, or even my stretch of road at the time. *sigh* Traffic school, I really don't have time for you. But here I come.

What I'm doing today:

(here's a secret: the piece isn't that good :( Our concert next week should be pretty awesome, though. Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor + Mahler Symphony No. 1. Thursday @ 8pm in Schoenberg Hall, tickets $5 with student ID!)

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!!!

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

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