Am I really here?

I may start posting again, although I don't know who would still be reading this. And considering how little I share information with people who actually ask, it doesn't look good. But I'll try anyway.

Almost done!

I am currently in the midst of music history listening journals, which are the last major thing (besides finals) that I have left to do in my undergraduate career. I'm tempted to be nostolgic, but...no. I can't wait to never have to do them again (says the person who's probably going to grad school). In any case, there are only two more days of real school. I haven't really thought about it too much because I haven't had time, but I think I'm really going to miss being here. Maybe not. We'll see. It all depends on exactly what I'm going to end up doing after I graduate. And now I'm just rambling so I won't have to get back to my journals. Only 5 left to go (although four of those are Beethoven Symphonies, so '5 left to go' is a fairly relative term in the amount of time it will take). But actually, they are going pretty fast this semester, which I like, and i'm still getting A's on them, which I also like, and I'm starting to get sleepy, which is bad for doing music history listening journals so I had better go finish them before I get too tired to care and...oh wait...no...that's the difference between me and the sophmores. I actually do my work regardless of whether I want to or not, they don't. Ha. Ha. (Sorry, current thing that annoys me. Some of them just don't get it. Anyway...)
Oh yeah, we had the recital last night and it went pretty well. It was long (1:45) as we had 27 people playing. Most everyone did well, including me. Everyone really liked the piece I played (a Grieg Notturno) and said I played it beautifully. I'm glad because I would prefer to end with a good performance than a crash-and-burn like last semester. Now I just have to get through juries...oh well, I'm ready...mostly.
And now, I really should get back to my journals...I've discovered pre-classical music is kinda cute. It's like a mix between the elegance of Baroque with the simplicity of Classical, and the composers all have really long, hard to remember, somewhat silly, names (Giovanni Battista Sammartini, for example). Once again, that's beside the point and I need to get back to work. Later.
See you all on the flip side.

Another long time with no update...

Well, school's almost over. Just a matter of weeks. I have some largish projects to finish up, but nothing spectacularly difficult. On a cool note, I conducted one of my recital pieces today in chapel (the title is Golgotha, and it was for Holy Week, so it works), and everyone really liked it. So, that was nice.
Gotta go to choir. Later.

Well, it's been a while.

I haven't had a chance to update in a while...but that's life.
For those who don't know, my senior recital is done. It went very well and lots of people attended, which was nice. Dan Foster was there. He's the head of worship ministry at school, and like my piece Golgotha enough to ask me to perform it in chapel during holy week (it's Easter themed, so it makes sense). So, that's a great honor.
In other news, I'm wrapping up school. I went into La-La land for a while and came back to discover that I had lots of homework suddenly due on the same day. That was a shock of sorts, but I think I'll manage.
Last night I took Aiko to see Riverdance for her birthday. It's in Redding for a few days, and she really likes dance stuff. It was quite good. Contrary to what I've heard, it was all live (no prerecorded tap tracks). Plus there was some new material I hadn't seen before, including an incredible dance-off between some of the Irish dancer and two black tap dancers (in the immigrant in America portion). So, it was good, and Aiko really enjoyed it. Although, being the music majors that we are we still had to offer some criticisms (for example, the instruments and dancers weren't entirely together at parts, most likely because the stage was smaller than usual; and the lead singer in a few songs had a cold; and the female lead singer in other sections was most likely the understudy because she was a little too nervous; sickening, I know, oh well).
Not much else. I'm looking forward to break that is coming up. From today only 15 or so days left of actual school. Scary. And then I'm graduated. Even scarier. But I won't think about that too much at the moment. Maybe next week.
Anyway, gotta go do some of that homework I mentioned. And maybe to see if I can get my suitemates to turn off the a/c. True it was 90 degrees today, but a/c is still overkill in March.
Love you all.

Mini-tour

Well, Oregon was fun for the most part. The most part being whenever we weren't on the bus, or in a large group in general. Or waking up before 5:30 in the morning. Or when the people I hung out with weren't being in a not so good mood. So, really, there wasn't much fun.
Quick overview:
Friday:
-Wake up 4:00 a.m.
-Get the bus packed and leave at 5:50 a.m. (we had a 47 person bus with every seat filled. And somehow it was a bit smaller than the one we had last year. The aisle was narrower and seats were so close together I could barely fit my legs in. Fun, fun.)
-Get to Medford, Or at 8:00 a.m. (Medford is Dr. McCollum's hometown. Also Meridith Johnson has her family there)
-Sing for Grace Christian School K-8 at 9:15 a.m. The usual. We sang okay for being as tired as we were. The little kids were cute and wiggly, the junior highers were stonefaced and trying to act cool.
-Went to the High School, Cascade Christian. We had lunch there (pizza and homemade cookies) in their cafeteria. It was a pretty cool place. We sang for them, also getting the expression range from bored to interested. There were some kids in the front row who were acting pretty rude as well, but what can you do?
-Walked around Jacksonville for a bit. Cute little old town.
-3:00 p.m. Met our host families and went home with them. This was the interesting part because usually we only have to spend a few hours with the family, but here we had to spend all afternoon and evening with them (pretending to be hungry and not tired). Fortunately the family I (and Dan, Jake, and Chris) stayed with was really laid back. They had sons our age, so we hung out with them. And we got to do pretty much whatever we wanted. It was actually somewhat fun. And for dinner we had pizza.
-9:30 p.m Went to bed.

Saturday:
-8:30 a.m. Woke up. Although I did the whole "wake up every 45 minutes thing" throughout the course of the night, if you do that for 11 hours, it really doesn't make too much of a difference.
-10:00 a.m. Got on the bus and went into Ashland. We hung out until 4. I walked around with some people. Went into used book stores and used cd stores. Got some cool stuff for pretty cheap.
-4:00 p.m. Went to Angelo's pizza for dinner (pizza again). They have a 3 and 1/2 foot diameter pizza. The choir ate one of those, plus two 2 foot diameter pizzas. It was good pizza I'll admit.
-7:00 p.m. Went over to Meredith's family's house. It's a very nice house. And it fit the whole choir. And they had yummy dessert, and her family is incredibly nice. That was cool.
-9:30 p.m. Got back to our host's house. Hung out with Tyler and Andrew.
-11:00 p.m. Went to bed.

Sunday:
-5:30 a.m. Woke up and got everything packed.
-7:00 a.m. Got to church and warmed up. It was pretty bad. Everyone was dead tired and few people were focused.
-8:20 a.m. Sang for service 1. In front of people we pulled together a serviceable performance, although almost everyone fell asleep during the sermon (they had surprisingly comfortable pews. Go figure).
-11:00 a.m. Sang for service 2. This was better, but it took the last bit of anything we had.
-2:00 p.m. After changing and eating we left for home. It was a long and somewhat loud busride home. We have a very interesting group of people this year.
-5:00 p.m. We get back and unload.

So, that's pretty much it. Lots of travelling and free-time with very little singing. Some would consider this a good combo, but I don't like it. If we're travelling that far, that early, to sing we might as well. Even if we had just done one concert on Sat. it would have been better. Kept a little focus going, etc. Also, at least 10 people got sick with something at some point. Not necessarliy the flu, but some form of ailment (due to the abundance of pizza/dairy, plus the tiredness factor, plus the omnipresence of people, I we feeling pretty lousy most of the time as well). It wasn't too bad overall, but I'm not really looking forward to choir tour. It's going to be long. Oh well, it's still a ways off.
Anyway, I want to get to bed now so I can get sleep so I can do my homework tomorrow before my classes. Among other things. Love you all. Goodnight.

Good news, Bad news

Well, the good news is, that after several months of stress and panic, my pre-recital jury is done. And I passed, which means I get to have my senior recital (GET to have. Well, I guess that also means I'll probably GET to graduate, so I can't complain too much).
Also my Music History midterm went well this morning (don't you love it how the two largest possible stressors come together in the same day?)
On the bad news front, I'm going to be gone all weekend with the choir. That's not too bad except, a) we have to be AT the music department at 4:45 am tomorrow morning so we can be in Medford at 7:45 to get ready to sing for a school. b) we're singing twice on Friday (in the morning), and twice on Sunday (in the morning). This leaves all Friday evening and Saturday for who knows what. And you all know how I love spontenaity (so much so, I won't even take the time to look up how it's really spelled).
My vote is we just drive back Friday evening and be here Saturday, but no. Oh well, at least we'll get to see how we'll react together on Choir tour. Another annoying thing though is that with the size of the choir and tag-alongs (Darin's girlfriend who is an admissions counselor) we will have at most 1 empty seat on the bus. Close quarters, early in the morning, and I've been finding myself in a progressively worse mood all week (although now that my pre-recital is done that may change). Fun fun. Oh, and did I mention there is a 24 hour flu going around the choir. 5 people are recovering and 5 people are coming down with it as of 9 hours before we're supposed to leave. At least I'll get to spend lots of quality time with my girlfriend, at least the times we aren't sleeping.
No too much else going on. Aside from major stress, things aren't bad. Josh is very happy lately. Mostly because he has and almost girlfriend. For banquet he took one of Aiko's housemates, Genevive, because she needed someone to go with. It turns out their personalities compliment each other, and so Josh asked her out the other night. They had a good time and have both been beaming for the last four days. In fact, Josh is out with her and her sister and her sister's fiance, as we speak (after skipping choir, which, for the record is something I have not done yet. The only class I've skipped to hang out with Aiko was Geography, a non-essential, and that was after we had been dating at least 3 weeks. So there.) But I'm happy for him. It's a bright spot for him in a dreary semester.
Well, I should probably go get packed and get to bed sometime before 2 am (unlike last night). No if I find myself in that position, I'll just stay up until we leave. I'll also let you know how the mini-tour went.
Love you all, hope everyone is well.

And so forth...

Just another week. Little more stress with my recital only 3 weeks away, and my pre-recital on Thurs (plus loads of mid-terms, etc.). Oh well, I'll deal, although I'm not going to be able to play Lan games with Ryan and Dale tomorrow.
On the plus side, this was my first Valentine's Day with an actual Valentine. Last night she made me dinner (note: artichokes don't really go well with chicken unless done properly. Oh well, it was still better than the cafeteria.), and we watched Oscar. She liked it. Today, I took her out to lunch then we walked around in the McConnel foundation preserve. It was nice.
She got me a nifty card. The picture on the front is a tall giraffe and a small turtle using balloons to float up at the giraffe's head level (very appropriate given our respective heights). The front text is "Our relationship is pretty unusual." Inside it says, "I'm pretty and you're unusual." She bought it because Lisa thought it was hilarious, and it is pretty funny.
Anyway, like I said, lots of homework for this week. And this next weekend is our choir mini-trip to Medford, Or. Yeah. So we'll be gone all Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday. What a weekend. At least we'll get to see how annoyed we're going to get with each other on our end of the year tour. I predicting we're all going to be very annoyed after four days.
Well, I really should go pretend like I'm going to start thinking about considering doing the things I usually do before I get around to doing my homework. Don't you love college. Love y'all.

E) All of the above...

This week was not too bad. I've gotten lots done for my recital, with lots left to go. School isn't bad other than that. Dr. Slane really liked my thesis in Theology on Thursday, which is good, especially since I didn't think it was all that profound. Oh well.
This week has also been full of tying up little incidentals. For instance, I got pulled over on Wed. night for having an expired registration. So, I got a fix-it ticket for that. I called DMV and it turns out that when I registered on the internet it never actually processed (their site was acting up at the time, I probably should have figured that would happen). So, anyway, the lady let me register and dropped the late fee for me (yah!). So, the stickers should be here next week (and if you could send them promptly, that would be great).
In other money spending news, for one of my senior recital projects I bought Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 (it's good to have around anyway), and it doesn't like my onboard soundcard, meaning I'm have to go buy a new soundcard today (which I was planning on doing anyway, eventually). So, that's a bit of money there. I also found out that Riverdance is coming to Redding March 16-17, so I'm taking Aiko for her birthday. Suffice it to say, I could have probably bought her several items of jewelry for the same price as the tickets(!!). Oh well, I'll see if I can get others to chip in. Fortunately, I still have enough for car insurance, but not by much. Oh well, if I get in serious trouble I can always pull some money out of my Simpson account. Which reminds me. Could you send me the address info for the MMOA people so I can send them proof of enrollment so they can send me money? That would be good.
Other than all that, not too much going on. Aiko and I discovered that a fun thing to do is hang out at Barnes and Noble. We've gone there the last three dates. Usually we don't buy things, but just grab books and sit and read. At the rate we read, we can each get through a 200 page book in four hours, or two visits. It's kind of nice (esp. since we don't actually have to pay for the books, although we've bought enough stuff there to compensate for it). Also, it's a good place to just sit down. One of the problems we have is that I live on campus, which means no girls in the dorms, and she lives with 6 other girls, so there's really no place for us to just sit and talk away from people. Sometime we use Sandy and Austin's house, but in general there's really nothing. So, we're discovering places we can just sit. So far we have Round Table, Barnes and Nobles, and Starbucks (although with two of those you actually have to buy something). Anyway, just thought you'd enjoy that random information.
Well, now I need to go something like eat, spend money, or do homework. Love you all.

An Update Much Delayed...

I haven't updated in a bit mostly because I've been busy stressing. Yes, for the first time in my life, I have gone more than a week with alot of stress. I don't like it. Anyway, the source of my stress is mostly my Senior Recital which is fast approaching, and which is somewhat more slowly coming together. So, if anyone wants to practice praying for focus, motivation, and inspiration, now's your chance.
Other than my senior recital, school is easy, so I won't talk about that.
Some fun things have happened lately. Like last Sunday, I went with Ryan over to Dale's (a guy in the youth group) house. I also brough my computer and we hooked them all together and played LAN games for a few hours (well, maybe more like 8). It was headache inducing, but fun. Of course, less fun was Aiko getting irritated with me because she thought I was going to be doing homework all weekend and so she was trying not to bother me, and then she finds out I spent all Sunday playing video games. So, she wasn't too happy, but we worked it out.
Last night Aiko and I went over to Sandy and Austin's house for dinner. It was fun. They are very nice people, and have lots of fun stories about their travels and so forth. The best, though, was Austin's story takes place around the time he was at the University of Madrid. He made friends with some canon lawyers in a Spanish class (one of whom was a bishop or thereabouts) and they suggested since he was in Europe he should go to Rome. Since he wasn't planning on it, he said he'd only go to Rome if he had an audience with the Pope. A few days later an invitation arrives from the Pope. Because he was somewhat broke, they got him onto Iberian Airlines, who gave a 40% discount to clergy, as clergy. He stayed the night in a convent, and then was picked up in a car that also contained a high ranking general, and the German ambassador. He got there, he got a translator and then he met the Pope. The Pope welcomed him to Italy, asked what he did (he was an engineering student at the time), etc. Then he got to sit in the front row of the 5,000 person audience hall as the Pope talked on the need for reform in the Catholic church (this was 1962, just as the Second Vatican Council was starting). And that is just one of his many stories. Actually, on the whole, Sandy and Austin remind me alot of Grandma and Grandpa Walsh.
Anyway, those are some interesting points in an otherwise dull, yet stressful, week or so. And now, I should really go compose something. I have to think of some text for a song about Summer. Oh well, as I say, "Despiration is fuel for Inspiration."

Another fun week.

One week down, 14 left to go. Kind of a scary thought. Anyway, my lcasses look almost exactly the same as last semester (actually, most of them are the same, just the next in the series). The only two things that can keep me from graduating are 1. Senior Recital and 2. Piano proficiency. Mrs. Nichols is working with me on the proficiency, so that just leaves the Recital, which is going to be a lot of work. Oh well, I guess that's why I'm in school.
The choir sang at the graduation this morning. Some of us actually stayed afterwards because some we had friends graduating. Only 3 and half months and it will be me up there. Goody.
Right now I'm re-writing some pieces for my recital. After due consideration, I determined I was unhappy with what I originally wrote. We'll see if I can write something I will be happy with. Good luck to me.
Gotta go, talk to you all later.

Back to the Grind...

Well, I'm back at school for my final semester (let's hope). It's rather chilly in Redding, and there are piles of snow everywhere, which is a new sight.
Hopefully I'll be able to update every week, but it's going to be a busy, busy semester, so we'll see.
Love you all.