Tell me someone knew about this: http://www.newcenter.com/cityfest/2008/schedule.html

Tell me someone went and saw Tally Hall perform tonight!

Dear Anton Bruckner,

Oh my God. How have I never listened to your symphonies before? They are incredible. You're definitely one of my favorite composers now. Finally, something to really let go on, something late Romantic, something NOT BRAHMS.

Much appreciation,
Sarah

P.S. Did you really have to write your trumpet parts in F, though? Transposing a 4th is not fun.


Dear Johannes Brahms,

Regardless of what I said in my letter to Mr. Bruckner, I have developed a great appreciation for you by playing your 2nd symphony. Sure, you could have made the trumpet part a bit more exciting, and not written octaves between the two trumpets every other beat, but I've ended up really liking your 2nd symphony. If this continues, you may end up being one of my favorite composers, something I never thought I'd want to say.

With all due respect,
Sarah


Dear Sylvia Plath,

Sometimes I feel like there are too many similarities between Esther Greenwood and myself.

Nervously,
Sarah


Dear Tori,

I have e-mailed Mr. Hood to tell him we both have copies of Fun Home. Seems he never did get around to pre-novel posting... Anyway, I suppose we'll see where to go from there.

All the best,
Sarah

Dear Life,

Cut me some slack, please?

Love,
Sarah

In other news, the wireless internet lives again.

Oh my God. Have I ever mentioned how much I love Lost? I'm halfway through Season 3, and the show gets more fucked up with each episode.

( Just in case anyone hasn't seen it and plans on watching the series. )

paulhendrixson: You don't need to sleep
QueenSarah89: Yes
QueenSarah89: I do, because I'm not a robot
paulhendrixson: I KNEW IT


P.S. I posted pictures from my house in the previous entry, if you missed it.

I actually can't believe I haven't made this list yet.

Favorite Books Ever, in No Particular Order

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
East of Eden, John Steinbeck
Harry Potter 3, 5, and 7, J.K. Rowling (1 and 4 were decent, 6 was not so great, and 2 sucks)
His Dark Materials series, Philip Pullman
Lord of the Rings 1 and 3, J.R.R. Tolkien (2 was SO SLOW)
Winesburg Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
The Odyssey, Homer
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Battle Royale, Koushun Takami
The Pig That Wants to be Eaten, Julian Baggini
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Timeline, Michael Crichton

These are books I would easily recommend to everyone.

Well. The trumpets (all two of us) had a sectional with Colnot yesterday. I've never worked with anyone so impersonal in my life. Nor anyone so sarcastic, humorless, and tough. He's also the best conductor I've ever had, and I know that when we get on the stage to perform, it's going to be really damn good. So I suppose that evens out.

I just wish that, when there are just the three of us in a room, he'd use our names instead of calling us by our instruments. I can understand doing that with the full orchestra, when there are so many people. But when it's just Tony and me, it becomes a bit dehumanizing. I am not an instrument. I play an instrument, but I, personally, am not an instrument.

Anyway.

Tomorrow I can buy food. So happy. I contribute my lack of energy lately to my lack of sufficient nutrients. Also because my insomnia is kind of returning. It's not nearly as bad as it was in the dorms, but I think it's because I have a lot going on that I'm having problems turning my brain off at night.

Still lonely as hell, but it's a small price to pay for being here.

Sometimes, we just need to know that we are doing the right thing.



In other news, my Internet has started randomly sucking.

I'm feeling: relieved

So the thing that bothers me the most about being on IU's payroll is the way in which we get paid. We get paid every two weeks, on Friday, for the previous two weeks. So, I won't get paid for that 10 hours I worked the first week I came back until a week from today, and in three weeks is when I'll get a decent-sized paycheck.

I am out of milk, eggs, orange juice, fruit, vegetables, and bread. And I'm not getting money until next Friday. Hmm. I do have several frozen dinners. I have some money in the bank, but not a lot, because I haven't gotten paid for work yet.

I think I'll be able to buy milk and bread with the money I have, and I have peanut butter and jelly, as well as cereal. I just don't have a lot of nutritional things. I could buy some Ramen.

Well, now I can literally be a poor, starving musician. Ha ha ha. No, I'll be fine. This just kind of sucks. It's not even because I spend a lot of money, either. Oh well.

Edit: I just realized that I have a ton of pasta and sauce! So that will be fine. I can easily live on spaghetti.

Now I'm just waiting for the arrival of my mattress. I hope it comes soon, because I really want to go practice.

So I had my first orchestra rehearsal today. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE

The conductor is a man named Cliff Colnot (my entry title is something he told the horns and bassoons, rofl), and he's a badass. He kind of intimidates me. He really knows what he's doing, though.

So earlier today, around noon, I get an email from the director of all the orchestras telling me (and the other two trumpets) that Colnot wants us to use rotary-valve Cs trumpets instead of regular Cs. This is a rotary valve trumpet, and before today I had never played one in my life. It's kind of like trying to drive a stick-shift when you've never driven one before. Keys are a lot different from valves, and the horn centers differently. I was fine by rehearsal, but it took me like an hour and a half to halfway adjust to it.

Now, to elaborate more about the rehearsal, we worked on Academic Festival Overture. I nearly died of happiness. Words cannot express the full extent of my joy. What a great piece. Amazing to listen to, and even more amazing to play. *dances around*

So, I'm supposedly getting my mattress tomorrow, and they're supposedly going to call me tonight and tell me when I will supposedly be getting my mattress. Or so they say. I remember when this was supposed to happen last week and it, well, didn't.

Edit: Whoa. Sears just called. I'll actually have a bed tomorrow night. Let's just hope the centipedes are gone...or else I'll be back on the couch.

You know who's a good guy? Brahms. Well, kind of. I picked up my folder for orchestra today (it still brings a silly grin to my face, the fact I'm in it), and the repertoire for the first concert is Academic Festival Overture, which I absolutely love, and Symphony No. 2, both by Brahms.

Academic Festival Overture is one of my favorite pieces of classical music. Brahms wrote it as a thank-you to a university that awarded him an honorary doctorate, and comprised the piece of student drinking songs. Haha. It's also the only piece written by Brahms that calls for more than two trumpets, but you won't care about that as much. Anyway, I think it's a perfect example of Romanticism. It's dynamic, it builds you up and brings you down, and the end is simply stunning in all of its majestic glory.

Lest you think I'm a Brahms fan, though, I feel differently about his 2nd symphony. Now, if any Brahms fans who love his 2nd symphony are reading this, you might not want to continue, and if you do, don't beat me up. Brahms did a great job with his overtures (Tragic Overture is also amazing) and his Requiem, but I find the 2nd (and the 1st, actually) repetitive, overdone, and...well, corpulent, for lack of a better word. I listened to the entire thing today, then listened to the first movement in detail with a score, and while it has some beautiful moments, it is just. Too. Much. I mean, Beethoven's 9th is an hour and twenty minutes long, and it's far more engaging and moving than Brahms' 2nd.

...That's not really fair, is it? You can't really compare symphonies to Beethoven's 9th. Haha. But you get the idea.

Anyway, playing Brahms is a whole different story. I mean yeah, by conventional standards, trumpet parts for Brahms, as well as Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, et cetera are "boring" (the parts started getting more involved with Dvorak and Tchaikovsky), but I love that that one note in exactly that spot played by the trumpets can change the entire color of the orchestra. Most of my friends find it boring, but I love it. I remember Kristin saying how bored she was, in the pit orchestra for the Marriage of Figaro. I also remember subbing for her in rehearsal once, and loving every second of it. It's not like in band, where sometimes the part you have serves merely as filler, or you're doubling the fifty thousand clarinets/flutes/horns so you don't really make that much of a difference. Every note truly matters, and that is what I love, no matter if I'm playing Brahms or Mahler, Beethoven or Strauss, Mozart or Shostakovich.

This is slightly off tangent, but one thing I love doing is checking out scores from the music library, turning up my iPod, and following along. The reason I did it with the 2nd is because I don't know the piece that well, and I figure I should have a decent handle on it before Friday, when we rehearse it (we're doing the overture tomorrow). I've already played, listened to, and excerpted Academic Festival, but I checked out the score for it as well, because there's really a difference between listening to a piece and playing a piece. For example, I loved Mahler's 1st before I played it with MYS, but after that concert (and still to this day, really) I know it like the back of my hand. Same thing happened with New World Symphony. I loved that piece since 8th grade, and then I went to Interlochen before my senior year and it brought a whole different level of meaning to it.

Anyway, I love music. The end.

Well, almost. Book time.

So I recently finished reading the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which was, as the title suggests, amazing. Easily one of the best books I've ever read. I rank it with Invisible Man, East of Eden, and To the Lighthouse without a problem. It obviously has a good story to it, but what struck me most about the novel was how literary it is. The sentence structure, the way the novel imitates a comic book, the parallelisms between the comic book characters and the actual characters...absolutely beautiful. I wish I had to read this for a class, because I would love to write a paper on it. No, I'm completely serious. I finished the book and was like, "Wow. There are so many paper topics here." *happy sigh* Anyway, the book made me very happy, and even had a (mostly) happy ending.

Alright. I'm completely drained, and Lost and leftover Chinese food are both calling my name.

Ladies and gentlemen, HELL HAS FROZEN OVER!

Second chair in the Symphony Orchestra!

FUCK YESSSSSSSS!

Okay! Well. Here's how the audition went.

1. Academic Festival Overture: I nailed this one. It was soft, beautiful, and expressive. Yay.
2. Fanfare for the Common Man: This one also went pretty well. The part that goes up high got a little thin-sounding, but stronger range comes with time. I was happy with it.
3. Scheherazade crazy double tonguing: This one went exactly as I thought it would, and that was not very good. But you know what? I'm not physically at a point in my life where I can easily double tongue for that long.
4. Daphnis et Chloe 203: The beginning was shaky, and that's never happened before. I think I was still stuck on what just happened with Scheherazade for a bit. I recovered, though, and played the last 2/3rds of it as well as I normally can. So, good.
5. Shostakovich Symphony No. 10 end of the 2nd mvt: I nailed this one, too. I was angry, driving, and the chromatic run at the end was golden.

I told myself I could cry if I had a good audition (I've had a pretty shitty day today), so afterward, I went in the bathroom and bawled my eyes out for about half an hour. I'm a freak, I know. But I feel so much better now.

It was a good audition. I can actually say that. It was by no means perfect, but I think I'm on the right track.

Now, time for a bit of pessimism.

There are between 4 and 6 spots available for orchestra. There were seven people auditioning. Five of them were graduate students, and one of them will be a senior in the fall. Ouch. I think that, regardless of how good it went, at the end of the day, these people have more experience and are just better than me. So, it was a good audition, and that was what I was aiming for. Do I think I made orchestra? Considering the level of the graduate students, that's about as likely as hell freezing over. That's alright, though. I'm going to be super prepared for the fall audition, plus we get that music a month in advance instead of two and a half weeks.

Remember, it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll.

Mmm, Mother Bear's wings tonight.

Audition tomorrow. *breathes*

OH MY GOD. MY ROOM IS INFESTED WITH CENTIPEDES. I broke down for about 45 seconds. I really did. Then I sucked it up, put on my shoes, and am about to go back into the room and Raid the shit out of it. This really fucking sucks. Why can't my room be infested with LADYBUGS or ANTS? Why CENTIPEDES?!

1. Mmm. The souffle is very much a success, save for the rather crusty layer of dark brown on the bottom. It's really strange...because the top is a nice golden brown. The dish I cooked it in is glass; could that have something to do with it? Next time, I'll line the bottom with aluminum foil, and that should keep it from crusting over. Luckily, the dark brown crust peels right off, and leaves a delicious, non-crusty slice of souffle behind. Mmmmm.

2. I need to use up the milk and eggs I have, because I neither drink milk nor eat eggs very much, and the sell by dates are within the next week. So, tomorrow, I am making tonnato stuffed eggs, a French soup that I currently forget the name of, and perhaps au gratin potatoes, if I have enough money when I go back to the grocery store. I would have made the stuffed eggs tonight, but alas; I forgot to buy mayonnaise.

3. My goal on Monday is to go after it like I've never gone after it before. It's really hard to do that in the scary situation of an audition, but if I can do that, I'll be in good shape, regardless if I make orchestra. There are a lot of really good upperclassmen staying here this summer (Tony and Alessandro among them, Stephanie, if you read this), so we'll see what happens. My primary goal is to have a good audition. Everything else will stem from that.

4. My legs are dying. I've been riding my bike everywhere, but I wasn't prepared for the amount of exhaustion I'd encounter from riding it around. It's due to the fact that Bloomington is composed of hills, as opposed to Southgate's flatness. You are either going up or doing down. Going down is wonderful. Going up, not so much.

5. I am incredibly lonely. I've never lived alone before, and it sucks. There's no one to talk to, and also no one to eat the rest of the souffle, as well as the rest of whatever I cook tomorrow. Sigh. There's also no one to help with the cooking. I am a pretty good cook, as those who have tasted my dishes will hopefully concur, but I am crap at several important things, namely separating eggs, which I had to do for the souffle. Yikes. Well, at least it got me using the eggs.

6. Overall, I am halfway there in terms of preparing excerpts. Now I know exactly what to do for the fall auditions, because it's more than just listening to hear how it goes and then learning the notes. I'm on the right track, though, and now I know.

7. There are really big spiders in Indiana. *cringes*

8. Send me mail, dammit! I have a lot of free time, so I can absolutely guarantee that I will write you back.

1. I have a job for the next two weeks! The head supervisor at the circ deck recommended me to the Document Delivery Services (DDS) department. They had extra money on their budget and needed someone. *sigh of relief*

2. My mom yelled at the Sears people for epic failing, so we got $100 off the price of the mattress.

3. I practiced for a very long time and was very productive. The total approached 5 hours. One of those hours was spent purely on articulation. My God. I am beat.

4. I got my checks reordered from the credit union, and they were nice and didn't charge me.

5. I just had a delicious dinner of ravioli. Mmmmm.

6. I am about halfway through the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and I still loooove it. If you're looking for something to read, I highly, highly recommend it. It won the Pulitzer Prize.

7. Lastly, I have the crazy double tonguing shit in Scheherazade worked out. So, if they pick that one, I will be good to go.

And everything (and more) worked itself out. Yay!

Tonight, I am going to relax. Today was a lot of hard work on the trumpet, the hardest I've done in a while.

MangarFruit97: god i fuckin love birds
QueenSarah89: Birds are great
QueenSarah89: Big Bird was always my favorite on Sesame Street
MangarFruit97: lol
MangarFruit97: i HATED him
MangarFruit97: so much
QueenSarah89: Whaaaaat
QueenSarah89: How can you hate Big Bird?
MangarFruit97: I HATE BIG BIRD
MangarFruit97: HATEHATEHATE

Sigh. I am very annoyed.

Last night, Sears was supposed to call me to tell me when they were delivering my mattress today. Alas, no call. So I called them today. After chasing down the people I needed to talk to, I was told that they had no record of the order. So I called the Lincoln Park Sears, and after a lot of waiting on hold, was told that I'd have to reorder it and that I'd get it on the 20th. So I left them to the wrath of my mother, and we'll see how that goes.

How fucking difficult is it to deliver a mattress? Srsly.

I also really want some White Castle. Too bad there aren't any around here.

Fuck.

Other than today and tomorrow, I don't work until June 30th, even though Summer II clearly starts next Monday, the 16th.

Fuck fuck fuck.

And why do I only have 18 hours? I also clearly stated I wanted at least 20.

Time to find an additional job.

I'm feeling: worried