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

So today I, um, watched Star Trek. Again.

Hey, Campus Events was showing it for two dollars. TWO. That is the same price as a cookie from the organic vending machine. Only twice as much as a bag of chips from the regular vending machine. And about 1/5 of what my dinner from Rubio's cost today.

I almost decided not to go, because, damn, I have so much shit to do. And I promised myself I would decide where to apply to grad school by the end of today -- which is looking unlikely. (I did have a good talk with Dan about grad school and other things today, though.)

But today kind of sucked -- tired the moment I woke up, frustrating practise, scratchy throat (o hai post-nasal drip), angry at work, dozed off in the stacks at work, didn't play well in a coaching -- and I decided that no, I needed to go to this movie. Because I need the future to be bright and shiny and beautiful and full of lens flares and french horn solos.

Seriously, this film has a great score. I hope the horn soloist got paid really well. And I love that they used the original theme for the end credits.

Honestly, Star Trek just gets better and better, possibly because now I've seen about 20 times as much TOS as I had when I first watched it. ( potential spoilers? )

BUT OMG I WANT SALT AND PEPPER SHAKERS THAT ARE SPACESHIPS. MOST ADORABLE PROP EVER. I CAN HAS?

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

One of two things is happening. Either (a) there is WAY too much reading being assigned, or (b) there are not enough hours in the day for me to do the reading (and sometimes the associated busywork), AND practise AND live my life. I already know there aren't enough hours in the day to be in all the classes I'm in, since I have a 1-hour overlap with orchestra and one of my ed. classes on Tuesdays.

HOORAY!

p.s. why do I think it's the most adorable thing ever when the kitties carry things in their mouths? Ducky caught a ball of crumpled paper and he's prancing around with it. Eeeeee! <3

p.p.s. things I am currently practising: ( omg cut for length. srsly guys this is a fuckton of music )

FREE TIEM? WHAT IS THIS OF WHICH YOU SPEAK?

And now back to your regularly-scheduled programming my reading for class tomorrow night: Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality: A Brief History of the Education of Dominated Cultures in the United States, by Joel Spring. Aaaaarg it is a 150 page book, which is why they gave it all at once, but I am only on page 17 because the only reading that goes quickly for me is fiction. WHY CAN'T WE READ LOTR FOR MY CLASSES? I WOULD BE ALL OVER THAT SHIT. also i have been meaning to re-read those, because i haven't for several years. boo.

p.p.p.s. i wore my enterprise-inna-bottle shirt today and 3 people said it was awesome. win!

OH GOD I HATE KING OF THE HILL SO MUCH. SO MUCH! >:c I HATE FLATMATE'S TASTE IN EVERYTHING.

But i love Muse. love love love love love. Am listening to the highlights of Kevin & Bean's Breakfast With Muse In Manhattan (go there, scroll down, it's on the right under a prominent header). LOVE LOVE LOVE. So much love. And they're playing the OMG SO PUMPED songs, too. (which may not actually be a good thing for the angry-place-ness)

He saunters into my room, presumably bored. Jumps onto my bassoon case. Looks at himself in the mirror. Looks at me. Then he jumps off of my bassoon case and trots over to Ducky, who is asleep on top of a paper bag (THEY LIKE PAPER BAGS OKAY) and has been for the past fifteen minutes. He steps on Ducky, then walks around him to sniff at the food and water bowls, then he walks on top of Ducky again and pounces on him, waking him up by biting his throat.

What loving brothers they are.

(Also, they refuse to drink from the stainless steel water bowl next to their food dish, preferring to drink from the plastic bowl I put in the other room (so that when it was super-hot, they wouldn't have to go as far to keep hydrated). What's up with that? I can't figure out the problem.)

In other news, the haze today is so thick that I cannot see the mountains from my kitchen window. This perhaps explains the tightness in the chest from this morning, yes?

Advantage applied, but I'm not sure how exactly I'm supposed to keep them from grooming the medicine off of each other, and then getting all foamy because it's icky-tasting, and then freaking out about getting all foamy, when I work all afternoon. Still, it's been nearly an hour with no incidents, so I'm just gonna cross my fingers and hope.

EPIC VACUUMING: Epic indeed. I started outside with the scratching post and the cat carrier, which have been gathering dust and ashes on the balcony for the past two weeks. Then, the dining area, the kitchen, and the walkway behind the couch. Then I moved the armchair and the coffee table off of the rug and then vacuumed the chair, the throw pillows, and the futon mattress. Then I vacuumed the rug and put the furniture back. And then I vacuumed my bathroom and bedroom. (If Flatmate wants her rooms vacuumed she can damn well do it herself.) The kitties hid under the bed all the while, except for the part where I vacuumed under the bed -- that was when they ran away to the other room, and now they're snoozing under the dining table (they like the chair cushions).

And I am sweaty and hot and my back is sore from bending to vacuum and my hand is tired from clutching the hose, but hey, the floors of my flat are clean! Also, I managed to stash the vacuum in my closet, which is quite an improvement from having it stashed in the dining area.

THINGS WHICH I AM QUITE SURE DO NOT BELONG UNDER THE COUCH:
- Flatmate's flip-flops
- Flatmate's sunscreen
- an old issue of some newspaper insert or something called Cinefamily (guess whose? NOT MINE)
- a magnetic chip clip (the last time I saw it, it was on the refrigerator. wtf is it doing under the couch???)
THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS: It would be really awesome if Flatmate could keep her clutter out of the living room. I mean, I've managed it so far. Next year, I'd like to live alone, please. I'll take the smallest studio apartment in existence, as long as it has a kitchen and north- or east-facing windows (well more like window, singular).

O HAI LUNCHTIEM!! I CAN HAS CHEESEBURGER? (well, no, I'm gonna make myself a salad.)

I just checked the schedule of classes for this quarter, and if the Graduate School of Education does in fact get its shit together and offer the classes we need, following the tentative schedule the Music Education professor sent us, I definitely won't be able to take a second year of German. Sadness. (Although honestly I probably wouldn't have been able to anyway because that would surely put me over 20 units, and I'm pretty sure the Arts counselors won't let me over-enroll any more because I'm already over my Official Unit Cap for all four (five) years here.) Of course, if the GSE has no money to offer our classes (because of University of California has failed ALL OVER ITSELF -- O HAI SHOOTING YOURSELF IN THE FOOT, I GUESS YOU DON'T WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO BE EDUCATED BY WELL-TRAINED TEACHERS), then I'll be able to work in the library in the mornings, instead of lunchtime, and take German 4 from 11-11:50. Is it wrong that I almost hope that the Music Ed program here falls apart so that I can do what I want? I did not say that. I swear.

In other news, after taking two days off, the air seemed okay this morning, so I went running (1:2), and it felt sooooo good. I'll probably do the same run:walk ratio tomorrow, take Sunday off, and try starting "week two" again next week (2:1, walk, 3:1, walk, 4:1, 4:1, rest -- a rather intimidating ramping up of the running portion). Also, my daddy told me to bring my running shoes when I came home this weekend (to see his cousin & her hubby & their new baby who are visiting from Chicago), and we might get me new shoes. Mine aren't uncomfortable, and they're probably not too worn out sole-wise, but they're a couple years old and I marched in them, so the upper part of the shoe is pretty beat up. *shrug* I like shoes, so it's all good.

In kitten news, they enjoyed my friend's visit, and he definitely enjoyed hanging out with them! Baxter threw up this morning, though. He's fine now, I think -- at least, he was fine when I left this morning. I'm pretty sure he's not actually sick, I think he was just a little too worked up running around and playing this morning, and then he ate too fast and gave himself a tummy ache. Right before he booted, he made the loudest, most miserable-sounding meows, though. I felt really bad for him. And then he tried to eat his own vomit, which was, well, not okay, but I can see why a kitten might do that. Especially since it was mostly entire pieces of kibble. (Baxter is apparently bad at chewing? Ducky seems to chew more, but he's a little bit smaller than Baxter and I think the kibble pieces might be too big for him to swallow whole.)

Oh, crap. I just gave a woman directions to the student services office, but it's a furlough day and none of the department staff are here. Whoops.