iCame iSaw iPod

So it is Saturday morning and I am recovering from our outing to Il Portico last night. I feel very Roman. I told my mom to bring me something Louis Vuitton from Italy. But not a purse. She's going in search of a Hermes scarf for herself. My dad wants a decorative bowl made out of some sort of fancy glass that isn't venetian and which I can't remember to sit on our dining room table. This one I don't understand, but if it makes my dad happy, that should make the trip go well.

(The judge who made the descision on the copyright infringement case with The DaVinci Code is currently one of my favourite people. *stab, twist*!)

Thought experiment: What would you have engraved on your iPod, were you to order it from the website? Make it something other than your name. My iPod's been fritzy lately, and so I went looking at the website in the hopes that the 60GB iPod Video had come down in price. It hasn't (boo), but they had these engraving suggestions listed. One of the more note-worthy ones was "iThink therefore iPod." I was thinking something tempo-related, like "moderato ma non troppo," or "vivace assai." Something amusingly ironic. So let's hear some suggestions!

Thursday

I'm watching Miami Ink and it's reminded me of Joanne. ;-p I can't imagine being as tattooed as some of the people on that show. I would, however, get another tattoo. I've more or less decided to get a maple leaf like the one on the Canadian flag on the inside of my heel. That can wait for a couple of years at least, though. I waited six years to get my first tattoo, after all. And while I kinda felt impatient at times, I'm glad I did that. I was 11 when I came up with the idea for my tattoo, and 12 when I decided to get it done, so making sure I didn't outgrow the idea was important, plus, though it's not illegal no reputable places will tattoo a minor without parental consent, which my parents were not about to give. And since I didn't really have the... comfort zone to go to a less-than-reputable place, and I wasn't so much with the fake IDs like my sister, who got her first tattoo at 17, I was kind of stuck waiting. But it was worth it to get the stereotypical big, bald white guy covered in ink as my tattoo artist. The only non-stereotypical thing was his name: Roger. I still have his card, come to thinik of it.

Hehe, and now I'm watching CSI and the car with all the evidence in it got stolen. ^_^ They were playing the pizzacato strings and ...marimba? music of "this is supposed to be funny, not horrible," that I remember so well from seasons 6&7 of The X-Files. I can't believe I was able to pull that out of my head...

My parents leave for Italy on May 6th. They'll be gone for approximately five and a half weeks. My dad wants to see my brother before they leave, so we're going to Il Portico tomorrow night. I quite like that restaurant. It's one of the few higher-up restaurants in town that doesn't make me uncomfortable. Then again, it's not too upscale. Maybe on par with Jack's Grill, rather than The Hardware Grill. Why am I talking about this? My point is that tomorrow night will be enjoyable and then my parents leave for over a month. This would be better if I wasn't so worried about my dog, though.

Hehehe! I love Greg from CSI! ^_^

Naxos Makes Me Sneeze

Today was somewhat exhausting. All of our Naxos CDs at work went up in price by $1.50, so I had to reprice them. This may not sound all that bad, but it's actually a long process. First I had to scan each CD and divide them into six categories, thereby totally ruining the nice alphabetical order they were in. Then I had to print the big white labels for some and put Clearance stickers on some. This got rid of four of the categories. Then I was left with my two biggest categories, for which I had to peel off the big white labels so that they could be replaced by little red labels, apply said labels, then apply yet more Clearance stickers to one of the categories. And then I had to realphabetize everything and put it all away. I know I must sound really whiny, but it took me six freakin' hours today to do three shelves out of eight. And since they're Naxos, they're all dusty and I was sniffling all day. And my thumbs hurt from peeling off labels. *pout*

But, hey, even with the price increase, they're only $9.49, and most of them are Clearance, so they're 50% off that. There's some good stuff in there, too. Come buy some and say hi to me and I will feel less lonely. And less hypnotized by the Chopin Nocturnes I've been listening to on repeat. We need more play copies of interesting classical music that won't annoy the customers. We only have, like, one copy of the stuff I would want to put on, so I can't unwrap it and keep it behind the desk. *another pout*

On a different topic now, does anybody who reads this watch House? The preview for next week's _two_ episodes looked insanely good. I went to the Fox website for the show and read the premise of the episodes, which I won't post here because Peter would kill me if he accidentally wound up reading it, even though it's not a spoiler, but, anyway, I'm stoked. Foreman was all crazy-looking and yelling about how he'd go to jail if it saved his life. I'm really not sure how that fits into the premise the website outlined, actually. Hmm... Anyway, watch House next week! Tuesday _and_ Wednesday at 10 on Global/Fox!!

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A Dog's Breakfast

Hmm... Blogger is being rather sluggish right now. Maybe it's like the rest of the world and doesn't work too well on Monday mornings. I probably could've slept another three hours on top of he six and a half I slept last night, but my dog heard my dad get up and leave, and so woke up and was whining to be let out so that he could, I dunno, go prance around my parents' room demanding attnetion and Jerky Treats, so I had to get up to let him out. Now he's curled up next to me, keep one eye open to guard a Milkbone.

I had the yummiest raisin toast for breakfast. There's the cinnamon raisin bread that CostCo sells, called Inkeeper's Best, and it is sooooo good. My mom and I went to CostCo yesterday and got some. We also (finally) got the new Harry Potter DVD, which I should watch. I was playing the movie when I was on reception at work a week or so ago, but I was busy answering the phones and helping people with the listening posts and more or less doing my job, so I didn't really get to see it properly, even though I played it twice. It's always good to play movies that make good babysitters on the weekends. The Simpsons season seven was a big hit, too, with a steady stream of kids being left to watch while their parents, I dunno, haggled. We still have comission sales staff at A&B, which, in addition to being annoying for the cashiers (because some people who buy, like, batteries, don't talk to a salesman, which means they don't get a "reference number" made for them, and then you can't adjust anything about the product, so if a 4-pack of batteries comes up at $20, there's nothing a cashier can do without a salesman because we can only adjust stuff on CDs and DVDs), is also annoying for a lot of the customers, because it involves the wonder world of haggling. I hate haggling. But that's just me, I guess.

HA! My dog currently looks ridiculous. He's curled up with his nose kind of poked against his middle, and the rest of him looks wound around that like a cinnamon bun! Oh, he looked up. Now he's only ridiculous-looking because he recently had a haircut.

So I was introduced to what is apparently a common occurance at work on Saturday: the entryway campout. The sales staff get to the store at 9:15 for their meeting, but the software staff are supposed to get there at 9:30, just to get things ready, but that discrepancy means that there's nobody to let us in when we get there, because everybody's upstairs at the meeting. There were five of us waiting for twenty minutes on Saturday. That wouldn't have been so bad, except that we're supposed to be on the clock as of 9:30, so we missed half an hour's pay. :-(

Wow, this entire post has been about my dog and work. And breakfast. That's sad. At 4:30 today, Peter will have handed in his papers and will be free until September, so that'll be nice. I'm slowly but surely saving up money for Uruguay. I should be up to $500 when I get paid on Firday. Yay, getting more hours, and therefore more pay! Jenilee and I have decided to go get our hair done in celebration of the end of term. We usually both go to cheap just-give-it-a-trim kinds of places, but I'm hoping to get my hair streaked or something. I'm trying to decide which colour. Any suggestions? No green, and probably no orange, but that's all the limitations I'll put on it.

Anyway, in four minutes my doctor's office will start answering phones, so I should go find the number so that I can reschedule my appointment on Wednesday. Yay, rescheduling appointments! That's not at all a pain in the ass!

The Worst Part is, DuFay Was on the List of Suggestions the Society Gave Them...

It's Saturday night, and, despite having eaten dinner, I'm hungry. I guess it was a light dinner. Peter and I went to Earl's Tin Palace on Jasper, and they have a sandwhich there that's not on the menu at Campus Earl's, so I tried it. It was really yummy. It had slices of portabella mushrooms, roasted red pepper strips and cheese, on focacia. But that plus half of a side salad was apparently insufficient. But, man, was that belini good. :-)

No work tomorrow. Yay! I had this couple come in today that just made me want to sit down and rub my forehead until the world went away. They came in saying that this society they'd just recently joined needed background music for an event, and so they needed medieval music. They said no chant, which was ok-ish, depending on what you consider chant, but I couldn't find any stuff that I would call medieval (but after they left I did find one Josquin CD). I told them this, and they said (paraphrasing) "Really? Nothing like gypsy music or celtic music?"

After a bit of stammering on my part, I lead them over to the World Music section and sent them to the listening post with a "Gypsy Fire" CD. The Jazz and Classical section already has doors, but what it could really use from time to time is a bouncer. X-(

My Ed Psych final yesterday was a little more difficult than I hoped it'd be, but I'm pretty sure I'll be fine. I wasn't failing going into th exam (although I don't know what my mark was), and I don't think I failed the exam (although I wouldn't count on me understanding a lot of things about it), so I'll live. And I'll go on to take two more Ed Psych classes next year. *twitch* At least they're shorter ones...

My stomach has graduated from feeling empty to outright growling, so I am going to go find food. And on Monday, I may go to Ikea. I am looking forward to that. :-)

Ho-Hum

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted. I haven't really been doing too much. Working, sleeping, not studying. My 281 final was this morning, and it went no too bad. The Baroque section was easiest and the essay was bs-able, but the cumulative era/genre/composer section was difficult. Yay, Ed Psych exam tomorrow afternoon. Then I'm done! Well, until my spring class starts on the 8th. And even until then, I'm working. Oh, well.

Spike has less CSI than usual today, so I'm sitting here half-watching Entertainment Tonight. I miss the Simpsons at 7. Even after A-Channel/CityTV switched to Sex and the City, Fox had Simpsons, but they've now changed it to That 70's Show, which, while mostly watchable, is not the Simpsons.

Will Smith went to the Wailing Wall? He's so much taller than everybody there...

I... don't know what else to say. It's kind of uninspired around here. Even my dog is in his "puppy bed," looking rather blah. Maybe I'll take him for a walk. ..

Hippity Hop (Yo)

Hehehe. I just realized that I fell asleep with my computer mouse on my bed last night. It seems to be fine, though, although I haven't really checked to see if my dog was licking it or something.

Happy Easter! Chocolate and stat holidays for everyone!!! And something about this guy coming back from the dead, but that's kind of secondary these days. That was one of the points of this "Lessons of History" book I had to read in highschool: holy days have become holidays. I really liked that book, but it's perhaps a little too concise--to the point of almost being glib. In any case, today is an excuse to have lamb chops for dinner. My mom and I outvoted my dad, who wanted ham. Maybe that's why Jews don't eat pork--the whole ham being associated with Easter thing. ^_^ Speaking of, I miss Ben. His APT has meant that I haven't seen him in months.

I feel the need to plug something: Elizabeth Arden Lip-Fix. It's the most effective, wonderful lip blam I have ever used. It's expensive, but one tube lasts you forever. And it's not actually supposed to be a lip balm, per se, but instead a lip primer to put under your lipstick, so you have to put something with wax in it on top to act as a sealant, but it rocks. I'm currently rubbing my lips together contentedly. My brass-driven obsession with lip care products is something I like to think of as quirky and endearing. ^_^

I think I'm going to move myself downstairs so that I can half watch football while I play World of Warcraft so that I can annoy my brother when he shows up. He's a gamer, but refuses to pay subscription fees after buying the game. Silly rabbit.

Holy Crap/Excursion

So I got home from my jury early this afternoon (it went well), about 2 o'clock, I check my e-mail etcetrea (137 junk mails from the Arts Town Crier that's going all whacko), and then I fall asleep. I woke up when Peter called at 8:45.

I was dreaming about not being able to leave rep class.

Anyway, after lunch today (Russ and Al bought us lunch at Earls), Katie comes up to me and says "Janita, we need some Pri." So Pri, Morgan, Peter, Katie and I will be at Darrien's at 8pm tomorrow. If anybody else wishes to join us, they would be more than welcome. For anybody who hasn't meat Katie, this is a must-attend event. ;-)

And now my computer is about to die, so I must stop writing.

At 5 o'clock Tomorrow, It'll all be Over

Tuesday lunch. Wrote Band Tech final this morning. It was about what I expected, but the last question was a bitch. We had to do a piano reduction of ten bars of this band piece, which isn't that hard, in and of itself, but there were these three cluster chords in the middle of it that I just couldn't understand. The passage was in Eb Major, and the first of these chords (which occured right after a half cadence) was spelled E natural, F natural, A flat, B natural, D flat. And since the first thing I did was an analysis, I got stuck there and wound up only getting five bars of the reduction done. Bah. Oh, well. I'm certain I did well enough on the rest of it that the last question won't be too big of a deal.

So my plan was to write that exam and then go straight to work on my 281 paper, but the exam ended about two hours ago and I still haven't headed to Rutherford. I'm not too worried, thouh, since I just realized that the paper is... well, it's ridiculously simple. We have to write "program notes" on the piece, max one page double-spaced, which I already did and handed in for feedback earlier in the term, as well as a comparison of two recordings, max two pages double-spaced, which I haven't done, but oh, well--I'll have to sacrifice a whole three hours or something. All we need beyond that is a bibliography, which I already wrote to go along with my program notes. So, yeah, that was a nice surprise to have a lot of that burden lifted off my shoulders. Now I should be able to start the flow chart analysis-thing for the first movement of the Dvorak for Band Tech tonight. I was going to put it off until tomorrow, but now I don't have to. Which is good, because it's due tomorrow by 5. But I've already done one of those, and the first movement is the one I conducted, so I know it fairly well already. I'll skim over it in front of the tv tonight, I think.

Not much is happening outside of school. I was thinking of going out Thursday night. Or Friday night. Whenever, so long as it's in celebration of classes and my jury being over. (Tangent: Regardless, there should be someone not drinking, because both of those nights are prime nights for checkstops, and while I'm sure that nobody I go out with would drive after having too much to drink, being pulled over after having one drink is a pain in the ass.) But I haven't really mentioned this to anyone, so oh, well. If you want in on either Suede Lounge (on Jasper) or Darriens for either Thursday or Friday, speak up. Suede has nifty drinks and yummy tapas, but Darriens is, of course, a classic.

So Katie and I told Kripa about Pri's dad today. That was amusing. It started off by Katie saying she wanted a motorcycle, so I told the story of how Pri got her Corolla. ^_^ Speaking of, does anybody know if that whole being cut off thing actually stuck? I haven't talked to Pri in a while...

I'm hungry. Thus, I go in search of food.

End of Term Crunch

It is Friday evening and why do I always mention the day and time in my blog posts? It's not like you guys can't read the date above the post and the time below it. My fingernails are long and it is distracting me.

In the first floor women's washrooms in FAB, there's one stall with lots of writing on the inside of the door, mostly ranting about advertising and consumer culture and whatnot. When I was in there yesterday, I saw that someone had taken a red marker and drawn that circle-with-a-V symbol from V for Vendetta. The best part? They had drawn it, not over anti-advertising rants, but over a reminder that the toilet flushes weirdly, so you have to pay attention to it.

The toilet was fixed some time ago.

I forgot to eat lunch today. That's rare for me--usually if I don't eat I can't concentrate very well and put work down, at which point I remember to eat. But today was insane. I compiled my entire Oral Collage for my Speech class. It went really well, actually, when I presented it this afternoon. But I had to cancel my rehearsal with Judy in order to finish, so in my lesson today, Russ gave me a bit of a lecture about prioritisation and time management. Now, it's taken a bloody long time, but I'm finally at a point in my life where bonafide adults actually believe that I understand that there are negative consequences to some actions, but I can't seem to get anyone to believe that there are times when I'm ok with incurring those negative consequences. Kind of a lesser of the evils sort of deal. Yes, my jury is worth 30% of my lesson mark, but my Oral Collage is worth 30% of my Speech mark, both classes are required for my degree, and the Speech project was just due first. And I started so late because I needed to find out what the hell I had to do for it, which I could have done on Monday, except for the fact that Russ made me come to masterclass instead, so I couldn't start the project until after class on Wednesday. And I worked last night. Stupid worked last night. So, really, it's not like I'm unprepared for my jury, it's just that today wasn't a good day to focus on it.

But now it is Friday Night! And even though I have to work at 9:30 tomorrow morning, I intend to relax tonight.

Hookey

So I'm currently missing my 281 class. Oh, well. I'm having a much better time at home, sipping my latte and finishing my laundry. I managed to do all my clothes yesterday, and fold them and put them away, which floored me, because I totally usually just leave clean clothes on my windown seat in a big pile, but today I'm doing supplementary laundry. Oooh! Which means bedsheets and towels.

I lead such an exciting life.

Actually, what I'm doing right now is procrastinating doing a self-analysis of my Band Tech conducting for my meeting with Deebs tomorrow afternoon. I have a while, though--I don't have class until three, and I don't really have any other assignments to work on right now, unless I want to buckle down a do more stuff for my 281 paper. But why ruin a skipped class by working on an assignment for the skipped class? Asides from the fact that logic like that will have me failing horribly, should I apply it to all the classes I skip. I've really gotta find the part in the calendar that says that you can't be graded on attendance, just participation. If there's nothing for me to participate in, then I can't be docked marks for not showing up. I think my Speech prof would be the first person I'd show that to. Stupid Rep Class and Wind Ensemble conflicting with my Speech class. Or, well, really, stupid Speech class for conflicting with Rep Class and Wind Ensemble, but I'm so happy to be finished my minor that I'll forgive it this once.

Yeesh, less than ten minutes of rambling and I can already picture people rolling their eyes at my blog. ^_^ So I'll stop now and go put the laundry in the dryer.

Laundry and Band Tech

I am currently doing laundry, and I don't think I've ever been happier about it. I was in such desperate need of clean clothes... Plus, all my dirty clothes were strewn about my room from being sifted through to find something reasonably clean to wear each day. The first load is in the dryer right now. Yay!

Do you ever feel like keeping up with the smallest things is a landmark accomplishment? Yeah...

Anyway, it is Tuesday and I like Tuesdays. I don't have to work tonight, I didn't have Wind Ensemble because the piece we're playing (Dvorak octet) doesn't have trumpet parts, and there's good TV on tonight. So I went to Band Techniques this morning, which was a ridiculously trying class (more on that later), but then I got to go out for lunch with Peter at Earls and then come home to be productive. :-)

But, yeah, Band Tech today made me want to smack someone. There were three elements which, individually, would have been vaguely annoying but perfectly tolerable. The first was some people's complete ignorance of jazz. See, we were taking turns running these mini jazz rehearsals, and some of the directorial choices some people made were... questionable. The second thing was Deebs, who kept interrupting the students to rephrase what they were saying. He wouldn't let people say things like "Is it okay if we start at B?" or "Do you want to take a solo?" but instead say things like "We're staring at B and you're going to take a solo." Now, I can understand the theory behind this, and I agree that band directors shouldn't be wishy-washy, but nearly every sentence spoken was reworded by Dr. Street. Most students couldn't even get instructions out without getting flustered. Now, yes, I realize they should have just started rephrasing what they were saying, but we were short on time and the way they phrased things was on of secondary importance to the fact that most didn't know what they were doing. The third thing was this guy from France who walked in halfway through class. I totally don't remember his name, and a despcription would be useless (gray hair, slight paunch), but he was one of Deebs' France buddies. He took a couple pictures, but mostly he sat by the piano. And he played. Not really anything pertaining to the class, but rather this minimalist-ish thing where he would tap one or two high notes over and over again, no matter what was going on in class. Dr. Street actually told him to be quiet at one point, but he resumed it pretty quickly. I have no idea what he was doing or why, but he plink-plink-plinked on regardless.

Oooh! The dryer just finished! That was good timing. I was going to talk about how Kaitlyn's being a grown-up and whatnot, but I'll leave you to go read her blog instead.

Return of the Sunday Dinner

Wine! And food! And chocolate! And people!

(Peter adds: "Can't forget the brandy!" in an... odd British accent.)

Criminy

So when I worked last night, the April schedule still wasn't available in hard copy, but I guy showed me the online version and tole me I could download it to my computer. I didn't actually get to look at it, though. So when I tried to download it at home today and I couldn't find it, I called the store to see what was up. The supervisor I talked to didn't know how to access it, so she got the General Manager to dig up the scheldule fof her. When she got back to me, she said that, accoreding to the schedule, I was supposed to have been in at 9:30 this morning. At this point, it was after 1:00. So I quickly got changed and went to work for four and a half hours. I'm trusting the supervisor to be correct about me not working again until Thursday.

And, since I'd essentially run out to go to work, I hadn't eaten properly, so by the time the store closed, I was starving. And I really wanted to go to Joey's and have a belini and their fries. Neither Joyce nor Jenilee could come with me, though, but Peter could, so I didn't wind up sitting by myself, which was nice. And now I am happy and sated. And wondering what to do with my Saturday night sans friends and boyfriend. Curling up and going to sleep isn't sounding too bad right now, actually. Maybe I'll put a movie on. It's always nice to fall asleep in front of a movie. :-)

ETA: I have this spyware that Spybot can't fix, and, while it's not a problem, it's annoying. It keeps resetting stuff in my browser. I may have to find another spyware program...