in the spirit of full disclosure...

I shall write now about anything and everything, and maybe awkward things.

I walked downtown today, because I wanted to check out the popcorn store (and maybe buy some to send to a certain someone who is currently out of country) that Wheaton is famous for. Apparently it's the narrowest store in the world/country? and it's supposed to be awesome and everything. But. I was less than impressed. The candy was all commonplace stuff you'd find in any supermarket, and the popcorn was...well, I didn't really get in to see the popcorn since there were people in the way. So I'm not dissing their popcorn, but suffice to say it was in paper bags and therefore would not survive a week+ long trip in a box.

I ended up walking all the way to Caribou Coffee (about 15 min from campus) to study. I managed to write most of my poem there, so it was mostly productive. Caribou is definitely a nicer place to study than Starbucks. For one they just have more space. Walking back I also passed another non-chain coffee shop, i.e. not La Spiaza, that I think I'll try next time I go downtown to study (Saturday?)

I was getting sort of annoyed by my oily scalp recently, so I just googled "oily scalp" and found some simple ways that just might help me get it less oily. It's annoying you know, having to wash my hair everyday when it's getting so long.

Care group today was a huge blessing, as usual. We had some together time just sharing and laughing and praying, then we split into guys and girls. It was lovely to spend time with such a wise group of women. We did talk about "girl things", yes, guys, mainly. But in a very God-honoring way of how to wait patiently for them, to respect them. It's just interesting to see the different stages we're at - one married, two sort of going through break-ups, and two who've never had a boyfriend.

Then when we got back, had a long discussion with Zanna that somehow moved into modesty and honoring our brothers in Christ. I don't remember how we got started, but mummies and clowns were in there along the way.

In Asian Lit today, Dr. N showed us a youtube video of the process of dressing up in a kimono. One wears 10+ layers of sumptuous silk, layered to create a beautiful color gradient. Fascinating! I wonder if there's similar stuff online of traditional formal Chinese-wear. But Zanna and I were just wondering how in the world they could go to the bathroom in those things. gee. It must be difficult and awkward. Sometimes I get annoyed just have to unbutton and unbelt and unzip my pants.

Dr. H has asked me to be the primary accompanist for WC next year. I feel like I'm on MG level!

note: I do put abbreviations because I'm writing about a whole bunch of real people, and because the main purpose of this blog is as a personal record. So down the road I'll probably know who I'm talking about if I just put J, but if you don't...sorry!

when I forgot

It's times like just now that make me annoyed. I thought I had relatively little homework to do, but then realized I had a staff report due tonight. Here's to another late night.

Other than that, it's been a splendid Monday. I was happy because it was a lovely day! That always helps. And I ran two miles this morning.

Sitting in Starbucks for the first time this semester. On a whim I decided to join J to study. So far it's been...sort of productive. Read a bit of The Pillow Book but it was getting dull, so I answered some emails and tried to write some of my ballad. But I have to leave soon anyway, since I'm ushering for Artist Series tonight, and I have to get changed and eat dinner and all that mundane stuff.

I've been in a surprisingly good mood for the past two days. I just feel...happy. I haven't much to say except that life is full and mostly good. I still know I need to spend more time with God, though. Which is why underneath my happiness there is a twinge of something, apprehension or expectation, that I'll fall into a slump in a couple days. If I continue to revel in my self-created joy, it will soon be shown for naught.

I've had more time to think and have good conversations these past two weeks, too. Talked to K and learned more about her background over dinner the other day. I'm so excited to be suitemates with her and J next year! And so glad that we've got it figured it out.

I'm almost done with my second journal ever, started when I was 16 years, 10 months, and 24 days old. Yep, that's what I wrote in my first entry. I want to read over everything I wrote before I end it. Maybe tonight or tomorrow. Then I can move onto the beautiful journal Stevie gave me for Christmas. [I love paperblanks!]

Maybe it's because it feels like a season of beginnings that makes me feel so cheerful - springtime (even though it did flurry this morning!), new journals, new-ish class schedule. And also because I ran 2 miles today. Well, I did split into 1.5 and .5...but still.

shootz

I just ripped a big stinkin' hole in my new silver tights. sad day.

beautiful days

It's such a lovely lovely day today, here in Wheaton. It was simply too lovely to waste inside a practice room. Especially after hearing four seniors speak today in Conserv chapel about not being so focused on practicing and fine-tuning your skill to the neglect of everything else.

So I'm sitting outside in one of my favorite parts of campus. I'd thought I'd like a quieter

::edit:: so I didn't get to finish my post yesterday but I can still write in the same vein today, even though it's rainy ::edit::

...place to study, but it's actually perfect.

::edit 2:: I didn't get to finish the post yesterday either, so here I am writing about Monday... ::edit 2::

Or maybe I won't. I'll just...move on with my life. hehe.

So last night we raided our brother floor. The theme was TV, which gave us license to do pretty much anything. The idea was that the different videos would be of anything you could find on TV. So that included sports-themed stuff (ESPN's Not Top Ten), a parody of MTV's Cribs, random music video mash-ups, NCIS-turned-Never Cross 1 South, and of course commercials. I would say we all, combined, spent a total of 20 hours if not more filming around 55 minutes of footage.

It was pretty fun to just think of random funny things to film and to be involved in other people's ideas. for the NC1S spoof, Zanna and I were ninjas who had to kidnap the T7 RA. yeah...running through lower Beamer in all black with a scarf around my face...is not an experience I'll recreate anytime soon.

The part I was most involved in was the commercials, which I did with Zanna. We thought they were pretty funny, but we weren't sure if our "brand" of humor would translate to everyone else. But I got so many comments about how ridiculously awesome they were that I'm very glad. We spoofed Old Spice, Geico, Garnier Fructis, and a made-up Anger Management Pill. So. much. fun.

We had drama right up to the last minute, with the projector not being connectable to the laptops. Silly Apple. Making things that aren't compatible with the rest of the world. I don't know why, but I became techie for that...I, who am notoriously bad at messing up techie things. I think partly because of my bossy personality, so I sort of took over from Zanna (sorry, Zanna!)

Anyway, now that that's over with, I can get on with life and school. I have a B+ in Aural Skills right now, so I better work hard to bring that up to an A.

raids are fun!

So this weekend was composed mostly of preparing for the loud raid...coming up sometime this week (hey, I can't be too specific, even if I'm 99.999% sure none of my Wheaton friends, let alone T7 guys, read this.) Yesterday I spent an hour dressed in all black with a white and black scarf wrapped around my head and face. Talk about sketch. While dressed thus I also kidnapped my brother floor's RA. yeah. Good times were had by all.

I also filmed Suzanna as the Old Spice guy in a onesie, did some Scottish nose-humming, watched 12 girls in a row whippin' their hair, and practiced some epic stage combat.

Yes, good times were had by all indeed. I'm looking forward to the raid...hopefully the guys will enjoy it as much as we are in preparing it.

Oh yes, I also practiced 3+ hours yesterday and played hairdresser to two girls who were going to the spring dance. I know I know, why didn't I go lame-o? Well, because it cost 8$ (I'm cheap) and because it was a girls-ask-guys dance and I didn't have any guy I particularly wanted to ask. yes, I could have gone with a bunch of girls but somehow it just didn't seem worth it. Plus I'm not particular adept at, nor do I enjoy that type of dancing.

I still haven't found my flip flops. This is becoming a problem. First chance I get tomorrow I'm going to go to the Co-op to pick up a pair. I can't go on borrowing Zann's flip flops just to shower.

ILWG has a spring encampment! I have plans for next year mwahaha. I'll probably be a C/Major by then, so I'll apply for an Exec staff position. It's spread over two weekends in April, which would fit quite well. That would be so friggin' epic. In 2007 they had a C/CMSgt as the XO, for goodness' sake. ILWG must be lacking in dots and diamonds.

one track minded

The most bizarre thing has happened. I lost my flip flops.

Now before you go saying that that's a perfectly normal happening, hear me out.

These are flip flops that I only wear inside the dorm to shower and go to the bathroom. So they've gotta be somewhere in my room or in my hall. But they're nowhere to be found.

I traced my course of action up to the last I remember of them. I showered this afternoon after I ran, so I had them as late as 1330. Just as I came into the room in my towel and flip flops, I saw my phone vibrating, and Lt Capiak was calling me. So I answered it, and during the course of the phone call I changed and sat down at my desk to open up documents. Sometime then I must have kicked the flip flops off and changed to my room slippers.

So that's that, plain and simple. I don't recollect wearing them afterwards. So did someone willfully take them?

It's very inconvenient, and I've been puzzling over it the whole evening, since 2230ish, when I discovered their disappearance. I can't shower, for goodness' sake. Well, I can, but not without a feeling of uncleanness of feet. It's so disturbing!

selig sind...

Just got back from Chicago where we performed the Brahms again. This time at Symphony Center, which was an amazing experience. The venue itself is breathtakingly beautiful - ornate, gilded wall carvings, plush velvet seats, soaring balconies and boxes. Compounded with the heritage of it being the home of one of the best orchestras in the world and the many splendid musicians I shared the stage with, it will definitely be one of my favorite memories.

And the way we sang tonight -- I was certainly moved. I don't know about the audience, though I'm pretty sure they were too. I poured my heart into it - pain and sorrow, love and joy.

I get goosebumps every time we sing "Denn alles fleisch" at forte. Something about the text and the music and the volume.

Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras
und alle Herrlichkeit des Menschen
wie des Grases Blumen.

Now all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.

How transient our being is!

tension

I just googled what size shirt a 6ft tall man would wear. I feel like a tool. A sketchy tool.

Actually I don't even know what the vernacular use of "tool" means. I probably shouldn't call myself one. Watch me call myself some dumb putdown.

Hey, don't judge. I was getting some discounted Wheaton swag for my homies in NJ.

It's Brahms week again, so long rehearsals. Standing up rehearsals. My feet were tired and slightly swollen, sure, but what really kills is the tension in my neck. I don't know how it gets there. I was thinking today and remembering that the same tension came when we did the Brahms last time in November, right before Thanksgiving. And how I went home for Thanksgiving and slept and the tension magically melted away. except this time I don't get to go home to lose the tension...please don't tell me I have to go through the whole quad with this pain. G says it's probably a physical manifestation of the intense mental concentration required in singing German in my passaggio and above for three hours.

At least the weather is fine. I can smell spring now. I really hope it won't turn very cold again. See, a Chicago winter really isn't that bad. I get to be home for three weeks of it anyway.

We were writing haiku for Creative Writing, and I thought I'd share.

Twitching, quietly

She stalks with tail erect. Crash!

Goes the Christmas tree.

"too busy living..."

"A poem may be the residue of an inner urgency, one through which the self wishes to register itself, write itself into being, and, finally, to charm another self, the reader, into belief. It may also be something equally elusive - the ghost within every experience that wishes it could be seen or felt, acknowledged as a kind of meaning.

It could be a truth so forgiving that it offers up, a humanness in which we are able to imagine ourselves. A poem is a place where the conditions of beyondness and withinness are made palpable, where to imagine is to feel what it is like to be. It allows us to have the life we are denied because we are too busy living. Even more paradoxically, a poem permits us to live in ourselves as if we were just out of reach of ourselves."

- On Becoming a Poet, by Mark Strand, from The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, Strand and Boland

The life we are denied because we are too busy living. That's a thought I've been thinking and expressing to many people recently. Though of course I didn't put it that elegantly.

Life at Wheaton is so fast-paced, so full, that I don't have time to think. I encounter so many fascinating ideas in the classroom, but instead of being able to savor those thoughts, I head straight for the homework, which yields good grades. honestly the homework doesn't take me that much time, but then what time I have left I spend on practicing.

Or perhaps the problem is that I don't have good time management in my thoughts. There's a notion. When my mind is free to think, like when I'm walking to and from class by myself, or when I'm showering, what do I think of?

Thoughts Serfy Thinks When She Has Spare Thoughts
1. When and what will I eat next?

2. What should I wear tomorrow?

3. I wish I weren't walking by myself.

4. My schedule sucks.

5. My friends don't understand how hard music majors have to work.

6. some OPSEC Encampment problem

7. I need to walk faster to get to class on time.

Self-centered? yeah...

I should work on time management in my thoughts. plus, thinking idle thoughts leads to sin.

I don't think about God at all. This needs to change.

MY DAY IS COMPLETE

amazing how one email from a good friend can make my day oh-so-much better. I can't tell you how much I love long emails! thank you, m'dear!

real post to come soon...

silence

I prayed some dangerous prayers today.

"Lord, may I be a witness to ____"

"You know what's good for me. And maybe it's not my best. But I will submit."

But will I? Am I willing to give up what I think is best, for what God knows is best?

I need to look at this problems through new eyes. I know what my idea of a perfect outcome is. That would make life so much easier, I say. It would relieve the burden on me. God, if it turns out otherwise, I won't be happy. I'll be stressed. I'll be upset. Do you hear me?

Yes, my child. But you can't see past July. You will see how I work.

But what if I don't like the way you work? What if it hurts? What if it irritates?

Silence.

God speaks in the silence.

Wait, my child. Wait patiently. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of captivity into a land of milk and honey. I am sovereign over all, and you are my child, my heir, my beloved. I love you, and I will give you the desires of your heart. Only long after me, and you will be fulfilled.

an open letter to the musicians I accompany

Dear singer/instrumentalist,

Without you, I wouldn't have any hands-on experience accompanying. Without me, you wouldn't be able to perform.

It's a mutually dependent relationship, right? That involves mutual respect. That's right. I respect your time by arriving promptly at your lesson. You respect my time by notifying me that you've changed your lesson time and that I won't be needed that day.

I'm not asking for 24 hour notice. I understand emergencies and changing schedules. I deal with that all the time. But at least have the decency to let me know that your lesson is cancelled so I don't spend half an hour waiting around because half an hour is barely decent time to find a practice room and actually practice.

Oh yeah, while you're at it, you might want to also let your teacher know that you're not showing up.

And hey, there's a reason that Collaborative Piano is now a degree offered at many schools. I'm not your background track and I'm not a pushover. Heck, I'm usually more musical than you. So get over yourself and treat me like a live musician.

Signed,

Frustrated Accompanist