1. Winter traffic sucks. Left Campus Earls at 5:40, got home at 6:30. Had hoped to just run home quickly and change before yoga, but it started at 6:30 and I was about to run out of gas, so I didn't _actually_ get home until 6:40.
2. Some pairs of slippers do in fact have a left on and a right one. And it's remarkably uncomfortable to mix them up. Especially when one of your toes is busted.
3. Drinking orange juice, especially watery orange juice, when you have a split and bleeding lip is disgusting. I didn't know my lip was bleeding, though, so I thought at first that it was just the juice, which tells you how yicky watered-down orange juice is even all by itself.
4. Starting the weekend with money doesn't necessarily mean ending the weekend with money.
5. The upcoming federal election will end in a Liberal minority government. And that makes me unhappy with Stephen Harper and Jack Layton for bothering eveybody right now.
6. All the same, voting is only good! Vote _for_ somebody, not against somebody. If there's nobody you like, nominate your own candidate to run next time, under an existing banner or as an independant.
7. No matter traffic, white Christmases are the best. Yay, snow!
11/29/2005
Fratboys Exempt
Gah!! I finally admit that I actually like Prison Break and it does _this_! I am not happy with the having to wait until next year to find out what happens. Michael looked so hopeless... But you know what? I *heart* T-Bag. I know that's wrong on so many levels, but that characters rocks. But my point was that, since the writers/producers/whomever had this story planned out for two seasons before it was greenlighted, it is possible to find spoilers, right? Things this tense and episodic give me a rash (metaphorically speaking), so I'd like to just know what's going to happen, pleaseandthankyou.
11/28/2005
The Net
Monday is my most insane day of the week, and more or less has been since I started University. In addition to my classes, I have my lesson and rep class on Monday. Thank God I don't have Jazz Band any more to top it off. Today was all right, though. My Scene Study class, which is usually a two-hour workout to start my day, was spent largely in HUB eating watermelon gummies (well, I had two of them, anyway). Each group had booked time in SouthLab during class hours to rehearse our final project in private with the prof, and our time wasn't until the last quarter of the class, so my partner, Scott, and I went to HUB with this guy Lester, who supplied the aforementioned watermelon gummies. Lester and I were going to buy Scott a coffee to cheer him up, since his best friend had been an ass recently and cost him upwards of $300 (long story about car getting towed... twice), but Scott didn't want coffee, so we just sat around wasting time. It was nice and non-mentally-challenging, as Monday mornings should be. The rehearsal was kinda bad because we just plain disagreed with our prof on what was literally going on in our scene, but I'm still miffed at her about that review, so I don't really care.
Then I took a nap, which I hadn't planned on doing, but it was sunny and I was tired and I woke up 55 minutes before my lesson in need of lunch and not having played yet. La Pasta is wonderful and Olwyn gave me her room when there were none left, which makes her very wonderful. :-) Half of my lesson was articulation, which, while frustrating, is productive and gave me a nice long warm-up. And I have an accompaniest for my jury!!! Sylvia Shaddick-Taylor (sp?). Since both Roger and Judy are out of town for juries... *grrr* I rehearse with Sylvia tomorrow morning.
Ohohohoh!!! And I don't have to play in the instrumental excerpt for my Conducting final!!!!!! *does happy dance*
And I didn't have to play in rep class!!! *does more happy dance*
Well, actually, I'm sitting on my bed, not moving much at all, but I'm dancing on the inside.
Then I took a nap, which I hadn't planned on doing, but it was sunny and I was tired and I woke up 55 minutes before my lesson in need of lunch and not having played yet. La Pasta is wonderful and Olwyn gave me her room when there were none left, which makes her very wonderful. :-) Half of my lesson was articulation, which, while frustrating, is productive and gave me a nice long warm-up. And I have an accompaniest for my jury!!! Sylvia Shaddick-Taylor (sp?). Since both Roger and Judy are out of town for juries... *grrr* I rehearse with Sylvia tomorrow morning.
Ohohohoh!!! And I don't have to play in the instrumental excerpt for my Conducting final!!!!!! *does happy dance*
And I didn't have to play in rep class!!! *does more happy dance*
Well, actually, I'm sitting on my bed, not moving much at all, but I'm dancing on the inside.
11/27/2005
10-1 With 0:14 to the Half
And it's Sunday. I was going to go to the University and work on my Scene Study project, but my partner isn't feeling well. Says he's had a bad week. Now, I've seen him every day this week (except yesterday), and he's seemed fine, so I'm confused and kind of worried. But I didn't feel like working, either, so I'll just ask him what's up in class tomorrow.
Going to the Wind Sinfonia concert tonight. Looking forward to it, I guess. I have to go to the University first to get my observation form/assignment sheet for my Conducting assignment. At least it's Ray directing, so I'll have an idea of what the hell he's doing, unlike some of the ESO's guest conductors, where I'm left wondering which beat is symbolised by a "butterfly" gesture.
I've decided to drop in on a begginer's Ashtanga class at this place called Lion's Breath Yoga on Tuesday. I drive past in a lot (it's right by Peter's place), and I finally got around to checking out their website, and it looks pretty spiffy. I've noticed lately that the increase in the amount of exercise I've gotten since starting back up with lessons has been greatly benefcial, so some extra-curricular stuff might be even better.
So it's Grey Cup Sunday... My entire family is in front of the TV right now. And we're winning. Not quite the par-TAY affair it could be, but I think that sort of atmosphere might interrupt my dog's napping. Farley really is ridiculously cute.
Going to the Wind Sinfonia concert tonight. Looking forward to it, I guess. I have to go to the University first to get my observation form/assignment sheet for my Conducting assignment. At least it's Ray directing, so I'll have an idea of what the hell he's doing, unlike some of the ESO's guest conductors, where I'm left wondering which beat is symbolised by a "butterfly" gesture.
I've decided to drop in on a begginer's Ashtanga class at this place called Lion's Breath Yoga on Tuesday. I drive past in a lot (it's right by Peter's place), and I finally got around to checking out their website, and it looks pretty spiffy. I've noticed lately that the increase in the amount of exercise I've gotten since starting back up with lessons has been greatly benefcial, so some extra-curricular stuff might be even better.
So it's Grey Cup Sunday... My entire family is in front of the TV right now. And we're winning. Not quite the par-TAY affair it could be, but I think that sort of atmosphere might interrupt my dog's napping. Farley really is ridiculously cute.
11/25/2005
Angryday
I'm surprised at how very busy I've been lately. I mean, I know it's the end-of-term crunch and whatnot, but I haven't worked this many hours in a day since my second year. And I find it very satisfying. :-)
But I also spent a great deal of today being rather angry. I ran into my Conducting prof right after I wrote that post yesterday, and he realized that he'd taped over the video I was supposed to watch with our Unit 3 assignments. This would suck, except he decided that I didn't have to do this one, just the next one, and he'd count the mark I got on it as the mark for both of them. Woo-hoo! However, this morning, when I got to school at 7am, I was less impressed with him. We had to do a rhearsal preparation assignment. No big deal. Four excerpts from the textbook, five weeks, two rehearsals a week, high school band. The problem was the excerpts. See, Brendan, for all that he's a really good teacher, is a choral conductor. The Rufford Park Poachers movement of Lincolnshire Posy is not something I'd give to a high school band on five weeks' notice. Nor is this Aegan Festival Overture piece, which liberally uses time signatures I grumble at, such at 11/8. The pedagogy for these excerpts overshadows any quick and dirty rehearsal process. Now, for a choir, these pieces would be rather easy to both sing and conduct. Choir is just more condusive to intuitive conducting and interpretation like that. Part of the assignment was that we had to give a brief overview of each of the excerpts and note any difficulties they present for the ensemble or conductor, and for two of them, I started my description by saying that this was not an appropriate piece for the hypothetical situation. I got kind of snarky, even, when I mentioned the bass line for the Lincolnshire bit, which is a divisi part where each player plays the same note the. whole. time. Not so much as a breath mark. I finished my overview paragraph by saying that the basses would have to be left out of a great deal of the rehearsal process so that they don't die of oxygen depravation, and I suggested giving them a crossword or "one of those hip new Sudoku puzzles."
Yeah, it was early and I was annoyed.
Then came my Scene Study class at 9. Most of it went all right. We had more or less a free class to go rehearse our final project, so my partner and I went and yelled at eachother in the dungeon/pit at the bottom of the stairwell in FAB. We got a lot of work done, some good blocking especially, so we decided not to rehearse this afternoon. Glory! But we had to back to SouthLab to pick up our theatre review assignments at the end of the two hours, and I was surprised to find that my assignment had been docked marks for being late. See, I printed off a copy of it the Monday it was due and then left it on my desk at home. Oops. I had e-mailed it to myself just in case, though, but when I told my prof, she said that it was fine and to bring it on the Wednesday. We didn't have anything structured for the first hour of that class, so I could've gone and printed her off a copy. She didn't even collect them until the end of class. I argued her into conceding and upping my mark, but I was still annoyed. Plus, I just plain got a bad mark on the assignment. She told us to look at the reviews in See Magazine and the Journal to get an idea of what she wanted, but she said my review seemed too much like I was advertising the play. I didn't even say much very good about it, so I was kind of miffed. But what really got me was that she said that I didn't mention the acting enough. Now, I commented on the one guy who did a spectacular job. I said he performed his character with "remarkable fluency." She didn't know what I meant by fluency and wanted me to use another word. I meant it in more or less every way you could reasonably construe. He had the Welsh accent down, he was smooth, etc... But, really, my prof is an actor. She wanted me to talk about the acting. The acting in this play was tertiary, though. Primary was theme, secondary was tech. Very little of the play involved the characters actually talking to eachother, so there was no playing off the other actors. And anything cool the actors could have done was teched. They actually pre-recorded lines of speech and altered them so that they sounded echo-y or emphatic or whatnot, so the actors didn't have to do it on stage. It was kind of cheap. But, no, I was supposed to talk about the acting. Bah.
*pause*
Ok, rant over.
I finished off the day by taking a nap on the old, dilapidated and wonderfully comfy couch in Peter's office. I'm going to meet up with him later. He's currently drinking with his fellow historians. Oh, and the listening for the good "screaming punk" endeavour has not yet been deliverd. It's apparently sitting in his car, so I'll hopefully get it when I meet up with him on Sunday. I'm wondering if he'd like borrow my Mahavishnu Orchestra CD or something. Or maybe my electroacoustic sampler CD. ^_^ I had a nice nap in a practice room yesterday while listening to Chopin Nocturnes... Yeah, I won't lend him that one... Maybe my CD of Holst's Planets... ^_^...
But I also spent a great deal of today being rather angry. I ran into my Conducting prof right after I wrote that post yesterday, and he realized that he'd taped over the video I was supposed to watch with our Unit 3 assignments. This would suck, except he decided that I didn't have to do this one, just the next one, and he'd count the mark I got on it as the mark for both of them. Woo-hoo! However, this morning, when I got to school at 7am, I was less impressed with him. We had to do a rhearsal preparation assignment. No big deal. Four excerpts from the textbook, five weeks, two rehearsals a week, high school band. The problem was the excerpts. See, Brendan, for all that he's a really good teacher, is a choral conductor. The Rufford Park Poachers movement of Lincolnshire Posy is not something I'd give to a high school band on five weeks' notice. Nor is this Aegan Festival Overture piece, which liberally uses time signatures I grumble at, such at 11/8. The pedagogy for these excerpts overshadows any quick and dirty rehearsal process. Now, for a choir, these pieces would be rather easy to both sing and conduct. Choir is just more condusive to intuitive conducting and interpretation like that. Part of the assignment was that we had to give a brief overview of each of the excerpts and note any difficulties they present for the ensemble or conductor, and for two of them, I started my description by saying that this was not an appropriate piece for the hypothetical situation. I got kind of snarky, even, when I mentioned the bass line for the Lincolnshire bit, which is a divisi part where each player plays the same note the. whole. time. Not so much as a breath mark. I finished my overview paragraph by saying that the basses would have to be left out of a great deal of the rehearsal process so that they don't die of oxygen depravation, and I suggested giving them a crossword or "one of those hip new Sudoku puzzles."
Yeah, it was early and I was annoyed.
Then came my Scene Study class at 9. Most of it went all right. We had more or less a free class to go rehearse our final project, so my partner and I went and yelled at eachother in the dungeon/pit at the bottom of the stairwell in FAB. We got a lot of work done, some good blocking especially, so we decided not to rehearse this afternoon. Glory! But we had to back to SouthLab to pick up our theatre review assignments at the end of the two hours, and I was surprised to find that my assignment had been docked marks for being late. See, I printed off a copy of it the Monday it was due and then left it on my desk at home. Oops. I had e-mailed it to myself just in case, though, but when I told my prof, she said that it was fine and to bring it on the Wednesday. We didn't have anything structured for the first hour of that class, so I could've gone and printed her off a copy. She didn't even collect them until the end of class. I argued her into conceding and upping my mark, but I was still annoyed. Plus, I just plain got a bad mark on the assignment. She told us to look at the reviews in See Magazine and the Journal to get an idea of what she wanted, but she said my review seemed too much like I was advertising the play. I didn't even say much very good about it, so I was kind of miffed. But what really got me was that she said that I didn't mention the acting enough. Now, I commented on the one guy who did a spectacular job. I said he performed his character with "remarkable fluency." She didn't know what I meant by fluency and wanted me to use another word. I meant it in more or less every way you could reasonably construe. He had the Welsh accent down, he was smooth, etc... But, really, my prof is an actor. She wanted me to talk about the acting. The acting in this play was tertiary, though. Primary was theme, secondary was tech. Very little of the play involved the characters actually talking to eachother, so there was no playing off the other actors. And anything cool the actors could have done was teched. They actually pre-recorded lines of speech and altered them so that they sounded echo-y or emphatic or whatnot, so the actors didn't have to do it on stage. It was kind of cheap. But, no, I was supposed to talk about the acting. Bah.
*pause*
Ok, rant over.
I finished off the day by taking a nap on the old, dilapidated and wonderfully comfy couch in Peter's office. I'm going to meet up with him later. He's currently drinking with his fellow historians. Oh, and the listening for the good "screaming punk" endeavour has not yet been deliverd. It's apparently sitting in his car, so I'll hopefully get it when I meet up with him on Sunday. I'm wondering if he'd like borrow my Mahavishnu Orchestra CD or something. Or maybe my electroacoustic sampler CD. ^_^ I had a nice nap in a practice room yesterday while listening to Chopin Nocturnes... Yeah, I won't lend him that one... Maybe my CD of Holst's Planets... ^_^...
11/24/2005
Sleepless in the Zoo
In the lab at school, wondering why I got out of bed this morning. I skipped Percussion Tech to go to the library and watch the video of my conducting assignment, but my first problem was that the library wasn't open. So I ate breakfast, worked on my Scene Study stuff and even did half an hour of articulaton practice and a run-through of my jury piece. I'm less worried about that now. Then I went to the library to discover that the video hasn't been returned by the prof yet. This thing is due tomorrow! Well, actually, it was due last Friday. Well, actually, it's "due" whenever the hell we can get it to him, but he's going on a marking spree this weekend, so I figured I'd get it to him before then. And now I can't find his e-mail address to ask him when the tape will be back in the library. I suppose I could go upstairs and knock on his office door, but it's doubtful that he's there. Between this and the fact that I'm not going to my Stagecraft class, there will be very little to my day. And I'm tired. And I can't even go nap because the lownjlounge has been taken over by the Art and Design students for their Art Auction. Grrr...
11/23/2005
Do the Wednesday Dance!
I made trail mix! Six cups of it, so I can take little bags of it to school until the end of term. And since I actually made it, it doesn't have anything that I'd want to pick out. Some trail mixes have things like pine nuts and granola clusters that I don't think really work, so mine only has peanuts, almonds, raisins and M&Ms. Mmmm. :-)
So, ok, ok, I admit it. I actually like Prison Break. I can't believe they killed off Arbruzzi!!! But where the hell did T-Bag keep that blade? I only saw him pull it out of his mouth... For the record, though, the romance subplot between Michael and the doctor is still preposterous in my opinion, but the chemistry is enough to make me shut up and enjoy. ^_^
Conducting Assignment was today. I kept telling myself to practice for it, but it was just would not stay at the front of my mind. Remarkably, though, it went pretty well. My biggest problem was making sure I wasn't pulsing with my left hand throughout things like crescendi. We could choose between four excerpts, and one of the ones I didn't do was the weirdest arrangement of Shenandoah. It changed meter and the words were kind of displaced and nearly everbody who chose that one had problems with it. And that's why I don't want to focus on choral directing...
You know, I had such a busy day that I assumed I might have something to blog about. But I really don't. I have endeavoured to learn about *good* "screaming punk" music. I should be getting some listening by the end of the week. I'm especially curious as to how the drums get used. I'm so sick of "dance" drum beats...
HAHAHA!!!!
There's a story on the newscast I'm watching (I know, I know...) about how some people are trying to get 50 Cent's tour to stay out of Canada, and the anchor announced him as "Rapper Fifty cent, who I would be calling Fitty Cent if I had any edge whatsoever." ^_^ Ah, some people have a weird idea of edge...
So, ok, ok, I admit it. I actually like Prison Break. I can't believe they killed off Arbruzzi!!! But where the hell did T-Bag keep that blade? I only saw him pull it out of his mouth... For the record, though, the romance subplot between Michael and the doctor is still preposterous in my opinion, but the chemistry is enough to make me shut up and enjoy. ^_^
Conducting Assignment was today. I kept telling myself to practice for it, but it was just would not stay at the front of my mind. Remarkably, though, it went pretty well. My biggest problem was making sure I wasn't pulsing with my left hand throughout things like crescendi. We could choose between four excerpts, and one of the ones I didn't do was the weirdest arrangement of Shenandoah. It changed meter and the words were kind of displaced and nearly everbody who chose that one had problems with it. And that's why I don't want to focus on choral directing...
You know, I had such a busy day that I assumed I might have something to blog about. But I really don't. I have endeavoured to learn about *good* "screaming punk" music. I should be getting some listening by the end of the week. I'm especially curious as to how the drums get used. I'm so sick of "dance" drum beats...
HAHAHA!!!!
There's a story on the newscast I'm watching (I know, I know...) about how some people are trying to get 50 Cent's tour to stay out of Canada, and the anchor announced him as "Rapper Fifty cent, who I would be calling Fitty Cent if I had any edge whatsoever." ^_^ Ah, some people have a weird idea of edge...
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