fooled you!

I know spent four years in Wisconsin, so I should know better, but the Californian in me is still fooled by a sunny, blue-skied day into thinking it is warm and nice outside.

North Texas wins again.

So today I am freezing in a light jacket and a t-shirt while all the smarter people of the area put on their brisk weather coats and wear hats. At least I had the good sense to wear socks and shoes despite being tempted to just go out in flip-flops.

*#*&@$!~(*! Texas.

renewals, revivals, and angst in other people's names

You ever have those times, every now again, where you feel generally unattractive and low- for no particular reason other than maybe you're just lonely and sometimes it's hard to get someone to like you in the way you'd like to be liked at just that moment?

I have been feeling that way for a while. It's nothing serious, just a sort of general slump that's a mixture of not having met anyone new that I'm interested in and of watching other people get to hook up and enjoy new company. I think maybe I'm kind of into a few people, but I'm not sure and I'm too apathetic about it to really chase any of them down and see what happens. It's been nice not to be obsessive or neurotic or even just lonely for someone in particular. It's like a little vacation from angst.

Which is why I've sort of let it go and just tried to enjoy myself when I'm out. I'm finding, as I think said earlier, that my wider crowd of people this year is helping me to be more of a social butterfly in some ways. I get to talk to different kinds of people and have all kind of conversations, and that in itself is practice for the next new conversation, and so on and so forth. In any case I know how to be by myself emotionally and I'm not stressing out about it as I might have five years ago. Maturity is a nice thing!

I've definitely been feeling the angst for other people though. People I care about and people I watch curiously from a distance. Living vicariously, I guess you could call it. Maybe that's not as interesting as my own personal dramatics, but oh well. Healthier this way, maybe.

And there's a little bit of pleasure in the thought that maybe something big is around the corner, that maybe I'll get a spark of something new soon after this dry spell- whether it be a spark of inspiration (which I could use, the closer I get to my recital), or a spark of interest, or a spark of intelligence. Something new and something exciting.

That, or Team Impact turns out to be everything I've ever hoped and I give up everything for a life devoted to Jesus kitsch and body builders.

volution

1. My crowd of friends is changing, ever so slightly. It now includes more jazz folks and many fewer trombonists. It's also sprinkled with people I've met at work. I miss some of the kids that used to frequent our house more often, or run more reliably in the same circles, but now I get newer perspectives and more social contact with the 'outside world', which makes me feel more well-rounded and complete. I am liking it. More philosophical thoughts on this at a later date.

2. Maybe it's time to admit this outloud: Hello, world, I would like someone to love me. Soon.

evolution

Sometime about a month ago, some fashion decision was collectively made by the skinny legged, narrowed hipped girls of the world to start tucking their jeans into their boots. Number One: You look stupid. Number Two: I cannot even begin to think of imitating that or everyone will think that I am a pear in boots.

revolution

1. The desire for it to be spring hit me earlier this morning. It's time to be wearing light skirts and fighting the urge to frolic in the park instead of going to practice. It's time for long bike rides and flowers and barbeques.

2. To Albuquerque or not to Albuquerque? That is the question at hand.

tim-ber!

Last night in a flurry of drunken text messages that tested the strength of his phone's T9 capabilities ("I am infacrisidated!" later: "i mean inebriated!"), my good friend Tim informed me that he was going to be in Dallas today and tomorrow.

Timberly!

Excitement all around. The Greek restaurant? Beer? Hurray!

Anyway, in the meantime I am biking around town enjoying this beautiful day, the first in about a week and a half. This is rare for North Texas, as I will say that we get more than our share of beautiful sunny days in this traditionally sunny-day offseason. A week of snow, ice, rain and hail made me think I was back in Wisconsin for the winter.

Maybe the sunny day will make me feel better about how little I give a shit about school right now. Here's hoping!

snown'd!

Ah, winter in North Texas. No one knows exactly what is going on, except that it's pretty much the same as most of fall, until one day it gets icy and then two days later it snows.

And all hell breaks lose.

Seriously, there ehn't more than half a milimeter of snow on the ground and school is cancelled. The roads are wet, not snowy, and it stopped flaking about two hours ago.

And yet.

This doesn't make me any more ready to get my ass in gear for the spring semester, let me tell you. Instead I get a whole extra day of sitting around in my bathrobe, pestering my kitties for warmth, and feeling like vacation is the only mentality I'm in the mood for...for the rest of my life.

But I have a lesson at 5 and I need to practice, so maybe I'll shape up.

Still, this place is ridonkulous. I remember walking to school at UW in snow and ice and sleet (uphill, both ways, barefoot) and no one batting an eye. I used to ride my friggin bike in this shit.

Well, my neighbors are having fun, dragging their kid around on a sled attached to a dune buggy.

this never gets any easier

Day one of the spring semester, and I'm already unhappy with most of it.

Also, it occurs to me that drinking may be bad for you. Who would have thought?

The hardest thing I'm going to write here is this: Little Sue, the kitten rescued from the gutter outside my house, got extremely sick, sick beyond the financial means of myself or the friend that ended up taking her in, and was put to sleep on Sunday night. It was either FIV or diabetes, and there wasn't much we could do but make her comfortable. I take comfort in that she had a warm home and someone to hug her instead of living a life outside and hungry, but I feel terrible. I wish there was more I could have done.

Sue, I miss you, and I hope you are happier now where you are. You helped me appreciate what I have with Nik and Gatsby, and I love them more everyday because of it. The comfort of a kitty...that is something difficult to deal without.

Stuff for the concert competition is not going so well. The top t-bone choir audition piece is difficult, but not impossible, but I'm having trouble getting my head wrapped around being back in the swing of things. I have a lesson tomorrow and I'm sort of afraid of getting my ass kicked for various stupid things I've done lately.

I did have my first Wind Symphony rehearsal today, and that was fun. It's nice to be back in a large ensemble, doing the good stuff.

I'm going to play in the 6 O'Clock band because the director is bad-ass and I can pick my part (3rd tenor or 4th bass). I guess that'll be cool. I need the tenor experience so that's what I'll probably end up doing.

Regarding what I said below about not having cried in a while...well, it might be nice too, actually. It would make me feel a little better for being a general dumbfuck and asshat. I just don't think I can do it.

Meh. That's about it. Meh.

a meme-as requested by day

5 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Me (drumroll please)

1. I haven't cried about anything in about eight months or so, that I can remember. This includes some rough territory: breakups, fucked-up love affairs, a shitty fall semester, and death. I think it's not that I'm holding it back or that I'm not feeling as emotional about things as I used to, but instead that my penchant for angst and drama is lessening. It takes a fair amount to get me worked up and I'm in better balance overall.
2. I really like the smell of chlorine water, especially on myself if I've been swimming.
3. I have recently learned to love the avocado. A lot.
4. I want an old, small, crowded house with lots of trees surrounding it, in place that gets real live winter, and I want to be able to sit looking out a window with a cat on my lap and books and books waiting to be read.
5. Lately I have been very attracted to sort of rugged, intense guys, like Luke from Gilmore Girls. Which is weird mainly because I have a fierce opposition to the feel of stubble on my skin.

rounding it up at the unt library

I've been on campus all this week working at the Murch, painting the rehearsal room and, as of this morning, participating in a fruitless attempt to move the seating element of the opera theatre to a different storage space. It's me, making money, and being happy that on top of making money I also received my financial aid deposit. So happy in fact that I resisted the urge to buy a new computer with it and instead paid off one of my credit cards. Now that does feel good.

So, I am still computerless, but I have goals for this semester. The first one is: Save up some money. To do this I am applying to work in the box office, and that gives me a raise and more hours. I am also planning on going through my possessions and selling whatever I can, including a old trombone, a flute, and various electronics. The second goal is: Use that money to get a computer and a plane ticket to see Day in New York.

A roundup of my semester as it stands looks like this:
M: Chamber Class 4:30?
T: Wind Symphony 1-4
W: Departmental 12, Lesson 4, Chamber 5:45?
R: WS 1-4
F: Sleep/Practice: All day

So, until I fill in work schedules and rehearsals, it's wide open for masters recital practice.

I'm not teaching, which shouldn't come as a surprise, unless I can get a fair amount of students at a school reasonably close by. I'm hoping to gig more and get some experience in organizing a chamber group- this will be my last semester to do so before I have to do it for real, and I need some experience with marketing and publicity. That's another goal for this semester.

I'm trying to get all of this in my head because, right now, I don't want to go back to school just yet. Last semester kicked my ass, and I'm not ready to put forth effort and be a hard worker again. I'm planning on doing the UNT concerto competition, but the prelims are next Thursday and I've barely kept in shape this break, although I do already know my concerto well enough to do fine. Still...it's the kind of thing I'd like to rock out on and I need my head to get wrapped around it sooner rather than later. There's some other competitions out there, TMTA for one, that I'd like to do, and maybe there'll be some more money in it for me.

This weekend, then, is going to be the time to get all the good, fun stuff out of the way. Ben got back into town on Tuesday and we promptly went out and had a hell of a time at the bars on the square followed by a short pilgrimage to Cool Beans on Fry Street, which has been served its eviction papers along with, *tear*, the Tomato. Goodbye unique campus street, hello commercialism and conformity. Tonight is celebrations for Chuck's birthday, tomorrow there's a trip to Dallas in the works (I noticed today that when a UNTer refers to 'going to Dallas', he or she is generally only referring to Oaklawn, the gayborhood, because that's the only place worth going in Dallas).

I'm tired and full of pancakes.

Peace out.

picture this

There are some new pictures on the photoblog, favorites from the last three weeks. I hope you enjoy them!

remember the alamo-dome

Kristopher and I made our first visit to San Antonio this weekend, to see what was up with this city down south. We had two free nights stay with a friend of his mother's, avoiding for the most part too much contact with her exceedingly annoying, officious boyfriend. In the dictionary, under 'tool', there is a picture of him.

At any rate, we saw the sights: the Riverwalk (which had no water in it on Friday but on Saturday miraculously was full again), the Alamo, the Botanical Gardens, the...uh, well, that's it really. All in all, it was quite fun. We got drunk in the afternoon off of a pitcher of margarita, ate pizza rowdily outside in the middle of nowhere near New Braunfels (which the Tool kept calling 'New Brunsfeld'), walked everywhere, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. On our way back to Denton we stopped in Austin, for lunch at the Cosmic Cafe, of course, and wandered around the capitol building. I give San Antonio a thumbs up in the way of cities, but Austin still wins my vote for best Texas town.

and i'm back (BACK!), back on the streets again

Just a little T.O.P. to get your new year goin'.

And a little "back in the little-D" recap. P and A's wedding, very beautiful. Running: still going well. I ran two miles with Gabe on Sunday and today I am hoping for two and a half.

I'm still computerless so I'm at the library where the guy to my right keeps sighing and muttering about whatever he's reading, as if he really wants me to lean over and ask him what's so interesting/frustrating/fascinating. Ah, the library. Along with the fact that I have to poop again, some things never change.

New Years. Holy Shit. Started out the night at Gabe's, went out to Lucky Lou's with Jason and Chuck and Jon, acheived that rare state of intoxication in which I can say and do anything without the luxury of inhibitions, and ended up fast asleep in a sort of comprimising and highly embarrassing place with unique company. Clothes on. No suspect sexual activity. Just...sheesh. Pictures will be up...maybe. I might make up for my lack of shame and just be shy about them for the rest of my life.

Now, I have 15 days of freedom in which to do whatever I please. This weekend I will probably go down to San Antonio with Kristopher, I've never been there and I'd like to check it out. If you have any suggestions, let me know. Waiting patiently for Ben to get back so I can drag him around with me again and talk his ear off.

And...I'm off to the bathroom.