1. Breakfasts go in and out of fashion in FAB. When I was in first year, it was all about the French Toast from Eurasian Bistro. In second year, it changed to coffee and a loafer from Cookies by George. I was rather fond of that one. Bagels from Java Jive have been a constant undercurrent, the crew neck t-shirts of breakfast. Over the past while, I replaced getting breakfast from HUB with getting breakfast from Starbucks. Not that much more expensive, actually, if I'm reasonable about the caffeinated beverage I purchase. I don't know what's in fashion for breakfast right now in FAB. I wonder if breakfast sandwiches from Subway will ever catch on.
2. The introduction of exclamation!points into online language was something I kind of missed the start of. I was too stubborn about it--I liked my compoundwords. It's turned out to be a very useful application of a punctuation mark. I'm waiting for it to be adopted into search engines, much like the comma. I think the reason that inexperienced people have difficulty with the internet is that they don't know what to look for. I was sitting around the other day while my father was looking up prices on vacation packages to various beach!destinations, and he actually had a pretty good grasp on what he was doing. The exclamation!point is probably something he won't get for a while, though. The [square bracket] (yes, I know that's redundant, shut up) is a good cousin to the exclamation!point, and would probably be easily understood by people like my dad, but [brackets], unfortunately, have their own logical meaning already. It's bad enough that IMs turn math equations into a string of emoticons you didn't even know you could type.
3. My wardrobe has become more and more filled with Old Navy clothing lately. This makes sense, since I've been working there for about five months now, but it was something I was sort of hoping to avoid, for the most part. I'm actually dressed entirely in Old Navy clothing today, except for my shoes, which I wish people would stop buying so that we could stop selling them, because they're a pain to keep organized. Now, granted, my sweater is five years old and I love it to death, but I didn't decide to work at Old Navy because I liked the clothing. I'm actually rather apathetic about it. I wanted to work there because it was a big store and I'd be working with many people. If I wind up quitting sometime within the next few months, I think I'm going to do a purge of all the jeans I've purchased that I don't particularly care for. I won't feel bad about donating them, though, because I got them at either 40 or 50 percent off, for the most part, and they served an important function while I needed them.
4. The house I live in, along with every building that surrounds it for a one-mile radius, at least, is less than five years old. I remember being in my old house, which was the first thing that was *mroe* than five years old at the time, and thinking how crazy it was that everything was expanding so quickly. The housing boom in Edmonton can be attributed to a handful of things, most of which also explain housing booms across North America lately. When I lived in Blue Quill, there were the sounds of construction from the redoing of 23rd avenue behind my house. When I lived in Whitemud Hills, there was construction for the houses immediately surrounding me, then for the houses immediatly South. In my new house, there's construction all around me, and I've gotten way too many flat tires for my liking. I joke that it's not home without construction, because it's been there steadily for more or less my whole life. Each time I've moved, though, it's been farther into the middle of nowhere. I'm getting rather annoyed with it.
5. Many of my friends' blogs have been either neglected or abandonned entirely in recent months. Largely, this is due to the surge in popularity of Facebook. I find it interesting that it was Facebook that distracted people from Blogger, rather than something else. Things like MySpace and LiveJournal are centred around blogs, so despite their community aspects, they aren't that likely to lure people away from the blogs they already have. It's surprising, though, that Facebook, which, while it has a blog aspect to it, is rarely used as a blog, would *replace* Blogger. But I guess that Facebook is as much of an everything site as exists right now, especially with the addons. The supermarket of online social networking and communication. I want something a tad better, personally. Maybe if I made myself some sort of package deal with Facebook, Blogger, Livejournal and IM, I'd be happy. They should come out with that. Call it the "Never Be Alone Again" software bundle. Adapt it for cellphones.
10/16/2007
10/12/2007
Of a Friday
Today I learned about the Eater Egg-esque cryptograms in Robert Schumann's music and I am thoroughly delighted. I *heart* Romantic music.
I'm currently doing a little dance of "no afternoon classes today!" When I'm done Choral Tech, I'm heading to work to pick up my schedule and (finally) change my availability so that I can actually schedule appointments with my doctor (who's now working Monday afternoons only), and then I'm going to go home and veg. I haven't decided if it will be in front of the computer or in front of the tv, but it will enjoyable. :-)
My brother left last night. I was wondering where my parents were when I got out of rehearsal at 6:30, and when I called my mom's cell, they were at the airport, along with Chris' mom and stepdad. Apparantly, everybody cried except for Jim (the stepdad). I don't know if I've ever seen my dad cry before. It's an odd thought. It's also an odd thought that my dad would be so upset at Chris leaving when my dad used to go years without even remembering his birthday. I guess things have changed in the past few years, and it's not that I ever thought that my dad didn't love Chris, but... people are odd and act in self-contradictory ways.
My nose is dry and sore in spots. This is actually a good thing, since it's been running like mad the past few months, and a change hopefully means that the treatment for the mould is working. Yay, no more mould! Yay, no more chronic respiratory annoyance!
Random craving: tequila. And it's 10:30 in the morning.
Amusing fact: my dog has started to snore. It's ridiculously cute. ^_^
I'm rambling now. Stupid not getting enough sleep. More tequila!
I'm currently doing a little dance of "no afternoon classes today!" When I'm done Choral Tech, I'm heading to work to pick up my schedule and (finally) change my availability so that I can actually schedule appointments with my doctor (who's now working Monday afternoons only), and then I'm going to go home and veg. I haven't decided if it will be in front of the computer or in front of the tv, but it will enjoyable. :-)
My brother left last night. I was wondering where my parents were when I got out of rehearsal at 6:30, and when I called my mom's cell, they were at the airport, along with Chris' mom and stepdad. Apparantly, everybody cried except for Jim (the stepdad). I don't know if I've ever seen my dad cry before. It's an odd thought. It's also an odd thought that my dad would be so upset at Chris leaving when my dad used to go years without even remembering his birthday. I guess things have changed in the past few years, and it's not that I ever thought that my dad didn't love Chris, but... people are odd and act in self-contradictory ways.
My nose is dry and sore in spots. This is actually a good thing, since it's been running like mad the past few months, and a change hopefully means that the treatment for the mould is working. Yay, no more mould! Yay, no more chronic respiratory annoyance!
Random craving: tequila. And it's 10:30 in the morning.
Amusing fact: my dog has started to snore. It's ridiculously cute. ^_^
I'm rambling now. Stupid not getting enough sleep. More tequila!
10/10/2007
Ugh
It's Wednesday morning and I feel like crap. I'm exhausted, even though I slept for seven hours last night and I just had a long weekend, and my chest feels really weird. I think it's from stress. Or frustration. Isn't the latter a type of the former? *sigh* Why do I live my life in a near-constant state of wanting to hit things? I don't even know what I want to hit. *another sigh*
I got back my "paper" from my Music History class today. I got an 80, which is fine. There were a lot of markings on the page, though. I don't know whether it was the TA or the prof (I'm pretty sure it was the TA), but one of them seems to have been given a grammar nazi stick and no grammar textbook. There's a long explanation about how I supposedly use the wrong subject for the second half of one of my sentences near the end of the paper, and bits of it have been flat-out reworded, and the new words don't mean the same thing as what I originally wrote. Even if I *did* phrase something incorrectly, why would anybody reword it? That's not an exercise in grammar, that's an exercise in following instructions blindly.
*falls asleep*
*wakes up*
*is frustrated*
In other news, the furnace in my house is broken. We had no heat whatsoever for a couple of days. It's working halfway now, though, and should be fixed completely tomorrow. We've had about five different people come to fix it over the past couple of weeks, and each until the latest guy has said that it needed to be dealt with by a different kind of tradesman. The current diagnosis is a low voltage short circuit, so we've currently got electricians poking at it, but since nobody could stay home today, they couldn't come to finish the job they started yesterday.
Thanksgiving was good. Saturday night was dinner at my place with my parents, my brother, Peter and myself. My brother gets on a plane to move to the UK tomorrow evening. I can't go with him to the airport because I have class and rehearsal. Sunday was dinner at Peter's dad's place. Andy and Simone, Dave and Sheryl, and Peter and I were there. There *wasn't* an insane overabundance of vegetables. ^_^ I ate waaaaaay too much on both nights. :-)
I have Choral Tech in ten minutes. Today's lecture is on concert programming. This course is so redundant. It's fun, and I love Bob, but I've taken courses on how to run a music program and how to conduct a choir. Now that I've got IPA more or less under my belt, there's not really anything new for me to learn. What with the exhaustion and the feeling like my body is trying to wrap itself in around the centre of my chest, I am so very tempted to just go home and go back to bed.
*falls asleep again*
*wakes up*
*is sad*
I got back my "paper" from my Music History class today. I got an 80, which is fine. There were a lot of markings on the page, though. I don't know whether it was the TA or the prof (I'm pretty sure it was the TA), but one of them seems to have been given a grammar nazi stick and no grammar textbook. There's a long explanation about how I supposedly use the wrong subject for the second half of one of my sentences near the end of the paper, and bits of it have been flat-out reworded, and the new words don't mean the same thing as what I originally wrote. Even if I *did* phrase something incorrectly, why would anybody reword it? That's not an exercise in grammar, that's an exercise in following instructions blindly.
*falls asleep*
*wakes up*
*is frustrated*
In other news, the furnace in my house is broken. We had no heat whatsoever for a couple of days. It's working halfway now, though, and should be fixed completely tomorrow. We've had about five different people come to fix it over the past couple of weeks, and each until the latest guy has said that it needed to be dealt with by a different kind of tradesman. The current diagnosis is a low voltage short circuit, so we've currently got electricians poking at it, but since nobody could stay home today, they couldn't come to finish the job they started yesterday.
Thanksgiving was good. Saturday night was dinner at my place with my parents, my brother, Peter and myself. My brother gets on a plane to move to the UK tomorrow evening. I can't go with him to the airport because I have class and rehearsal. Sunday was dinner at Peter's dad's place. Andy and Simone, Dave and Sheryl, and Peter and I were there. There *wasn't* an insane overabundance of vegetables. ^_^ I ate waaaaaay too much on both nights. :-)
I have Choral Tech in ten minutes. Today's lecture is on concert programming. This course is so redundant. It's fun, and I love Bob, but I've taken courses on how to run a music program and how to conduct a choir. Now that I've got IPA more or less under my belt, there's not really anything new for me to learn. What with the exhaustion and the feeling like my body is trying to wrap itself in around the centre of my chest, I am so very tempted to just go home and go back to bed.
*falls asleep again*
*wakes up*
*is sad*
10/03/2007
Slow Morning
It's Wednesday morning and I should be in 282 right now. I'm half an hour late, though, which is good enough reason to not bother, according to me. Traffic was crazy and a half this morning, so even though I left at a reasonable time, I've just now arrived at school. Oh, well. I stopped by Starbucks and got a scone and a triple latte, so I enjoyed a good sit in traffic. I wish the latte would kick in now, though.
(There's a rather creepy noise in the computer lab. It's a kind of rattling sucking sound every few seconds, like the room is trying to breathe through pneumonia. I have no idea what it is, but it's been steady since I got here.)
I don't really have much to say today, but blogging is a nice way to get my brain up and running. I should almost just go home and go back to bed. My next class is cancelled because Bob DeFreece is in Idaho, and my next class after that isn't until 1. Even that one I may be skipping to go see a visiting conductor talk to the 315 class. He's here for a while, though, and listening to him talk to the introductory conducting class might not be all that exciting. Annoyingly enough, the one thing I really should (and want to) do today, I can't. There's a review session for my first 282 midterm today at 4, but I can't go because I have to be at work for 5. Stupid work. At least I get to be a cashier today, rather than being in the fitting rooms, like I have been soooooo often lately. The review session is with the TA, too, so it would be nice to get another person talking about some of the things that I'm supposed to know, but I guess I'll have to make due with the sheet of key terms we were given, along with the textbook and the CDs, of course. God, I hate that course.
Come on, latte... Oh, I give up.
(There's a rather creepy noise in the computer lab. It's a kind of rattling sucking sound every few seconds, like the room is trying to breathe through pneumonia. I have no idea what it is, but it's been steady since I got here.)
I don't really have much to say today, but blogging is a nice way to get my brain up and running. I should almost just go home and go back to bed. My next class is cancelled because Bob DeFreece is in Idaho, and my next class after that isn't until 1. Even that one I may be skipping to go see a visiting conductor talk to the 315 class. He's here for a while, though, and listening to him talk to the introductory conducting class might not be all that exciting. Annoyingly enough, the one thing I really should (and want to) do today, I can't. There's a review session for my first 282 midterm today at 4, but I can't go because I have to be at work for 5. Stupid work. At least I get to be a cashier today, rather than being in the fitting rooms, like I have been soooooo often lately. The review session is with the TA, too, so it would be nice to get another person talking about some of the things that I'm supposed to know, but I guess I'll have to make due with the sheet of key terms we were given, along with the textbook and the CDs, of course. God, I hate that course.
Come on, latte... Oh, I give up.
10/01/2007
Pre-Meta
I totally missed the handing out of a 282 assignment sometime last week, so when I walked into class and people were handing them in, I was not impressed with myself. Now I'm starting to worry about my grade in that course. Note to self: don't fail. That would add another 8 months to your degree (counting summer). I've never failed a course before, though, even when I've done things like consciously skip the midterm, so I'm not *that* worried. There's just more at stake for the courses I'm taking right now, what with not having the time to take them over. Dragging myself out of bed first thing on a Monday morning to learn about sonata form and Felix Mendelssohn doesn't make for a happy me, though, so I'll have to fight the temptation to just plain not show up.
In less boring news, it occured to me the other day that Peter and I are rapidly approaching our 4-year anniversary. It's about 2 months away. That floored me. I haven't gotten to see him much over the past week or so. :-( I've had to stay at home so that my dog wasn't left alone while my parents were in Vancouver. Amusing tidbit: I had no idea why they were in Vancouver--I asked them when they came back yesterday. Turned out it was for a judges' conference. Why they had a conference for provincial judges in Vancouver is beyond me. I find it funny that my parents are gone enough that it never even occured to me to ask why they were leaving. Another amusing tidbit: My mom told me this morning that she had no idea where my dad had gone or when he'd be back. He may be back at 2pm today, having only been as far as St. Albert, or he may be in Cold Lake for the week. At least I'm not the only one oblivious to the travellings of my immediate family. ^_^
But, yeah, four years is... impressive to me. *is slightly thunderstruck*
Time to go organize the flurry of papers that are slowly but surely taking over my binder before I head to class. I lead such an exciting life... And to think, I was going to start this post talking about formalism amd meta-formalism. Which is worse according to you guys: mundane happenings or dry ponderings?
In less boring news, it occured to me the other day that Peter and I are rapidly approaching our 4-year anniversary. It's about 2 months away. That floored me. I haven't gotten to see him much over the past week or so. :-( I've had to stay at home so that my dog wasn't left alone while my parents were in Vancouver. Amusing tidbit: I had no idea why they were in Vancouver--I asked them when they came back yesterday. Turned out it was for a judges' conference. Why they had a conference for provincial judges in Vancouver is beyond me. I find it funny that my parents are gone enough that it never even occured to me to ask why they were leaving. Another amusing tidbit: My mom told me this morning that she had no idea where my dad had gone or when he'd be back. He may be back at 2pm today, having only been as far as St. Albert, or he may be in Cold Lake for the week. At least I'm not the only one oblivious to the travellings of my immediate family. ^_^
But, yeah, four years is... impressive to me. *is slightly thunderstruck*
Time to go organize the flurry of papers that are slowly but surely taking over my binder before I head to class. I lead such an exciting life... And to think, I was going to start this post talking about formalism amd meta-formalism. Which is worse according to you guys: mundane happenings or dry ponderings?
9/28/2007
Things That Have Always Been True About Me
1. I like people. You can quibble about introversion and extroversion, and the fact that I consider people with certain characteristics to be intolerable, but I really do like people, in general. I consider them to be interesting and stimulating. Hell, if I don't have to put up with them personally, I even like the people with the intolerable characteristics. Because of the interesting.
2. I have always felt young. That doesn't mean I've always felt youthful, mind. But even lately, when I've been feeling like an old fogey who can't get her life together around the gaggles of first years, I look at people who have moved into the "real world" and it's like there's a giant, gaping chasm between me and them. I don't know if this one will continue to be true through the next decade or so of my life. I guess, ideally, I want the feeling young to go away without being replaced by the feeling old.
3. I am smart. Not to be self-important or anything. I'm certainly not the smartest person in the world or the smartest person I know. Sometimes it's fun, like in Grade 10 Enlgish class where I had two indulgent teachers and got to chatter on about my ideas. Not that I knew what I was talking about, what to call things. That's an awkward qualification of my intelligence--I am woefully uneducated about certain things. And sometimes it's not fun, like when I have to work with people who are on a different level than me and I get frustrated.
4. I am a product of my time. I am not the least bit anachronistic. The way I perceive things, what I believe about the universe and life and how I use social structures are all very much hallmarks of people from this period in history. I don't know how much of that is good and how much of it is bad. I also don't know if I'll get stuck at some point and wind up behind the times. As it stands now, though, I'm pretty happy with it.
5. I am paranoid. Not in a psychiatric this-is-a-major-problem kind of way, though. Rather, I'm a very private person. I believe that trust is a matter of choice and that anybody is capable of breaking trust. I do trust people, and I don't think there's anything of major relevance about myself that I've never told anyone in some way or another, but I hate being found or found out. It's a rational concept that I apply irrationally with the justification that it keeps life simpler for people to be kept uninformed about little things that can become a matter or putting two and two together. In some way or another.
2. I have always felt young. That doesn't mean I've always felt youthful, mind. But even lately, when I've been feeling like an old fogey who can't get her life together around the gaggles of first years, I look at people who have moved into the "real world" and it's like there's a giant, gaping chasm between me and them. I don't know if this one will continue to be true through the next decade or so of my life. I guess, ideally, I want the feeling young to go away without being replaced by the feeling old.
3. I am smart. Not to be self-important or anything. I'm certainly not the smartest person in the world or the smartest person I know. Sometimes it's fun, like in Grade 10 Enlgish class where I had two indulgent teachers and got to chatter on about my ideas. Not that I knew what I was talking about, what to call things. That's an awkward qualification of my intelligence--I am woefully uneducated about certain things. And sometimes it's not fun, like when I have to work with people who are on a different level than me and I get frustrated.
4. I am a product of my time. I am not the least bit anachronistic. The way I perceive things, what I believe about the universe and life and how I use social structures are all very much hallmarks of people from this period in history. I don't know how much of that is good and how much of it is bad. I also don't know if I'll get stuck at some point and wind up behind the times. As it stands now, though, I'm pretty happy with it.
5. I am paranoid. Not in a psychiatric this-is-a-major-problem kind of way, though. Rather, I'm a very private person. I believe that trust is a matter of choice and that anybody is capable of breaking trust. I do trust people, and I don't think there's anything of major relevance about myself that I've never told anyone in some way or another, but I hate being found or found out. It's a rational concept that I apply irrationally with the justification that it keeps life simpler for people to be kept uninformed about little things that can become a matter or putting two and two together. In some way or another.
9/26/2007
Why I Hate Reading
(At school, have just skipped 282 for my own sanity and to practice. Was going to read the text, but it's at home, so I'm blogging before starting my Orchestration assignment. *blog*)
Every now and then I vehemently think that I *hate* reading. I don't, really. I can do research and read textbooks and blogs and whatnot just fine. I suppose the actual act of reading often gives me a neck/back cramp from leaning over what I'm reading, since I can't seem to get glasses that actually work, and it therefore also causes eye strain, but the debut of the internet (and upright computer monitors) has lessened that significantly. What I *hate* about reading is the thinking.
I can hear my brother laughing at me for that one (yes, you, putz :-p), but thinking too much, especially about one thing, drives me nuts. I tend to disappear beneath the event horizon of whatever it is I'm learning. This doesn't really happen with concrete things like photosynthesis or artithmatic, which are relevant to other things in concrete ways, but rather with abstract concepts that go as deep as people can. Studying those people as legitimate thinkers would probably be considered parapsychology. They come up with anything from epistomological drivel to bad metaphors to fantasy to the most wonderful of ideas. Being self-aware, maintaining a firm grip on reality and the larger context of these ideas is how you keep yourself from going nuts, but there's often a strong pull towards understanding by believing. Like the old idea of thinking like a monster to catch a monster. When I'm reading a textbook, I think monsters are archaic, obsession is archaic. And then I think I need a pet project because I'm bored.
Every now and then I vehemently think that I *hate* reading. I don't, really. I can do research and read textbooks and blogs and whatnot just fine. I suppose the actual act of reading often gives me a neck/back cramp from leaning over what I'm reading, since I can't seem to get glasses that actually work, and it therefore also causes eye strain, but the debut of the internet (and upright computer monitors) has lessened that significantly. What I *hate* about reading is the thinking.
I can hear my brother laughing at me for that one (yes, you, putz :-p), but thinking too much, especially about one thing, drives me nuts. I tend to disappear beneath the event horizon of whatever it is I'm learning. This doesn't really happen with concrete things like photosynthesis or artithmatic, which are relevant to other things in concrete ways, but rather with abstract concepts that go as deep as people can. Studying those people as legitimate thinkers would probably be considered parapsychology. They come up with anything from epistomological drivel to bad metaphors to fantasy to the most wonderful of ideas. Being self-aware, maintaining a firm grip on reality and the larger context of these ideas is how you keep yourself from going nuts, but there's often a strong pull towards understanding by believing. Like the old idea of thinking like a monster to catch a monster. When I'm reading a textbook, I think monsters are archaic, obsession is archaic. And then I think I need a pet project because I'm bored.
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