Almost there!

Only a few more hours and then the weekend will officially be here! Wahoo! Tomorrow I have a class from 9:30-10:30, work up the hill from 10:45-11:45, work in the music office until 4, and then am going to a sweet Messian concert at St. Andrew's. Should be a pretty sweet layed-back, non-concert day! :)

The studio recital went pretty well tonight. I'm finding that my reeds are really drying out quite quickly this week so there were two squawks that never should have been there, but oh well. The quartet piece that we did was made extra fun when Iraj forgot the second page of his music and just made up the whole last half of the piece, unbeknownst to any of the others, including Prof. McKay. Never a dull moment with that one!

A special treat to the evening was having my daddio come to listen. He took me out for dinner afterwards (FOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!:D) and also dropped off a care package from home. Check out the sweet stuff:
[Included are cranberry tea, Hershey chocolate kisses & hugs, Laura Secord Mint Chocolate Hearts, socks, mitts, pajama pants, Valentine's Day garland, a window hanging (it says "Love"), a photo frame with a new picture of me with my sistas, the movie Ghost (I recently got a DVD player... I've never seen the movie before so no judging if it's scandalous :P), heart ziplock bags, lip balm, heart push pins, & a wonderful card]. Thanks a BUNCH mom & dad! This was a wonderful surprise.

Anyhoo, I am *exhausted* from my week so I'm actually going to head to bed now before the clock strikes 10!

If I had a million dollars

I might send you one of these: http://www.ediblearrangements.com/

Surprise, surprise...

... but I think I'm sick. I really hope that my two concerts on Thursday will sound about 1000x better than the one today did. Turns out it is really difficult to make a good sound when every time you move you want to hurl. Hahahaha, oh my life!

On another note, today's been a really nice laid-back day so naturally I have no desire to start my schoolwork this evening. I've got a few chapters of reading if I want to be prepared for my MAS class tomorrow & probably should also write up my weekly blog for that too. Not a lot of work, but nothing I'm feeling terribly motivated to do. Perhaps I'll just write the blog and go to bed early... sleep will make me not get sick right? :-/

Sorry but that's all I got right now; life isn't too terribly exciting right now. Ttyl

Hmmm

So I think I overextended myself a wee bit this weekend... Friday night's concert in Hamilton was fine. Nothing too special to report of there except that the tickets were $250 a piece as it was a meal/fundraiser for the Burlington Arts Council (or something similar... I don't remember the exact name). Saturday's rehearsal and concert in Stratford was fairly eventful in that the music was incredibly difficult for being a) pops and b) expected to learn in 6hrs... Note to self: practice double tonguing in the high register more often... Yesterday I went to church with Jordan & Mark again at the Basilica. This is the second time I've gone recently and I have to say it really is quite a neat experience: so much interesting music & tradition. Having had more exposure to the Catholic church in recent times, I have to say that I've been extremely ignorant of a lot of practices. Always good to keep learning. Last night's rehearsal in Stratford was pretty uneventful though I was able to showcase my sight-reading skills.

This week is a 3-concert week so if you're looking for some bassooning, now would be a good time to visit. Tomorrow morning (at 9am I think?), Prof. McKay is giving a guest lecture to the Sr. Alumni group in the McKellar room and he's having 4 of us come to play. It should be fun. I hope none of the Sr. Alumni attack me for having ticket problems with last year's gala...

Thursday morning the Wind Ensemble is doing a concert at H.B. Beal Secondary School at 10am. I get to play the contra parts. Yay contra.

Thursday evening is our studio recital. It is supposed to start at 8 but there's some confusion about that, so I will post again later for clarification.

OK time to get to work.

New Recital Date

I am so tired that I have felt nautious since about 12:00pm, so tonight shall be a short post, in points.

• Our discussion in my class that I hadn't done the readings for, turned out to be just fine as we spent so much time talking off topic that we hardly got into the readings. Yeah :)
• I CAN graduate this year with a B. Mus. Perf. with minimal additional paper work. I am pretty sure this is what I'm going to do; 2 commencements are always better than one! :P This will give me more options after my internship is finished in that I could go into a masters programme sooner. Yeah Diane Mills :D
• John Doerksen, our present Associate Dean, has been appointed to the Vice-Provost position. I'm really excited for him (I know him through his involvement with North Park Community Church... where I went in 1st and 2nd year) but it will definitely change the administration of the music faculty. After spending 3hours in the car with McKay tonight though I have doubts as to why anyone would want to be an administrator (it really wasn't that bad at all, I'm just poking fun)
• I am considering buying a palm pilot or something of the like. My accompanist Rudin has one and it amazes me with it's instant access to e-mail, a calendar, music, a tuner, a metronome, etc, etc. I think part of my desire also stems from hanging out with the business kids more... man some of those kids have a lot of money!
• I am considering purchasing a lap top. This is something I've been thinking about since first year but have been becoming increasingly aware of how handy they are. It would be incredibly beneficial for my marketing & MAS classes, but also for working in the music office (I'm doing a lot of data-base entry into Excel that would be 1000000000 times easier for everyone involved if I could do it on my own laptop within the board room). Any advice on laptop purchasing? I think this one is more likely to happen than the Palm Pilot. GTs.

OK, time for a snooze fest. Thanks a bunch for all of your prayers this week; I'm doing much better :)

Success?

So does it count as a successful evening if I :

• Got no more reading done after the last post
• Messed up my room a whole lot more... perhaps I should take a photo... it is pretty epic
• Got my packages ready to mail for tomorrow :D Yay! Go team (you know the team with me in it...hahaha... oh man I am overtired)!
• Sent a whopping THREE e-mails. w00t! 3 important e-mails though... One to the Dean asking to chat about internship opportunities, one to my keener group to express my genuine keen-ness (yah right...), one to Diane (our beloved academic counsellor) to see if I can graduate this year with my classmates. This last e-mail took an epic amount of time (over an hour) and required a LOT of paper searching... it looks like I'm 0.5 music credits shy of graduating with a perf. degree this year (as opposed to with the MAS degree as per the plan all along, but anyways...). The major advantage to graduating this year would be that I could begin a masters program after my internship whilst finishing up my 1 semester of MAS courses. I could still graduate next year, during my internship, but it'd be more fun to graduate with my classmates, right?

I've been listening to KLove and have determined that when I'm overtired minor keys just really aren't for me; so sad.

Anyhow, I'm up over an hour longer than I planned and I have to pack concert clothes for tomorrow on top of making a lunch & dinner so I really ought to stop sharing my soul and get to it.

I Hate Reading.

In case you're wondering what it's like to be a university student doing two degrees at the same time, let's take a look at the amount of reading I have to do to prepare for next week's classes:

- 102 pages of "The Cultural Industries" due tomorrow by 9:30am, 40 of which are completed. An additional 109 to be completed by Wednesday at 9:30, none of which are completed. An additional 27 pages that were due last Friday that I haven't completed yet because the article uses way too many big words I don't understand (what IS the difference between oligonomy, oligopoly, oligopsony ... and these were just adjectives to describe concepts that also have non-obvious definitions)

-232 pages for next Thursday's marketing class... a lot of that though is because I haven't even opened up that textbook yet (aside from seeing the number of pages I needed to read). I also need to jump on board my keener group project train...

- 52 pages of the most blasee Harvard Business School text you'll ever read due Monday. This course (organizational behaviour) also requires a 10-page report that needs some serious attention pronto.

Aside from reading, other things on my plate include:

• Concert in Hamilton tomorrow
• Concert in Stratford Saturday... haven't arranged a ride yet... need to get on that... also haven't listened to the CD I signed out with the Mendelssohn on it yet... need to that tonight or tomorrow otherwise I'm looking at a fine...
• Concerto competition on Sunday afternoon... didn't practice as much today as I would have liked... must practice tomorrow instead of reading...
• A recording session on Tuesday? with the Wind Ensemble? I don't even know what day... MUST FIND AGENDA.
  
• Sending out the first/last batch of arts admin resumes... I'm just ignoring the uneasy feelings and just doing it... we'll see how that turns out in the end
• Answering e-mails... I've kind of ignored my inbox for the last week or so. So highly not recommended... people really do appreciate when you respond in a timely manner.

OK, off to complete the packages to mail out tomorrow & answer/send a few e-mails; my deepest apologies if I do not get around to yours but I truly wish I could.