Late at night...

I can't sleep. This could be related to the fact that I ate a fair amount of candy this evening, but I'm not entirely sure that eating candy at 9 would affect me at 2 am. Who knows.

I have been listening to Ella Fitzgerald all day today. I have a CD in my car that I've been playing and consequently singing along with. Maybe it's cheesy, but I really like her music - it's along the same lines as Michael Buble and Frank Sinatra. This afternoon, I decided I like "Too Marvelous for Words" the best on my particular CD. I couldn't find a Youtube recording of Ella singing it, but I did find one of Frank Sinatra, which is also good, albeit slightly different:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TtMHUJeiSc

Finally, I'm pretty sure that a good friend and I are going on a road trip to Montreal from May 14th - 16th. SO EXCITED! It will be lots of fun for a number of reasons: it's a "foreign country;" roadtrip ('nuff said); speaking French; Canada; etc. We're also hoping to go to church there, maybe on Saturday night. I'm not really expecting Canadian church to be any different from American church, but just the fact that it's Canadian is somewhat interesting. So with that, I think I'll look up directions for how to get from northern Vermont to Montreal and then try to sleep one more time.

Time to cook?

I NEED TO COOK. That is all. Ok, not really all, but right now it's taking precedence. This evening I was sitting in front of my computer, attempting to motivate myself to finish my homework, when I happened to glance to my left and spy Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Thus ended my homework effort for a good twenty minutes, and it only resumed when I promised myself that if I finished my homework I could look at it some more. I realized the other day that my love of cooking goes beyond just experimenting with recipes. To illustrate, I will compare myself with my mom, who likes to redecorate rooms in our house. She often goes to hardware stores just to look at all the options - sink faucets, light fixtures, counter tops, furniture, etc. - to get some ideas about how she would redecorate the next room on her list. In my case, I am drawn to the cookbook section of the bookstore, I love Williams and Sonoma in the mall, and while waiting around for 45 minutes to get my hair cut, I found myself in the kitchenware section of Kohls. Maybe that's unhealthy...it's not like I'm a gourmet cook or anything, I just like to experiment with recipes that seem promising. So far, they've turned out well, even if they don't look gorgeous. The problem is (as previously stated) that there is no alcohol on campus, and most of the recipes I want to try involve it to some degree. For example: a particular beef recipe that sounds fantastic requires six to 24 hours of marination in five cups of red wine.

In other news, I went to six recitals this weekend, and played in three of those six. Far. Too. Many. They were all very well done though, so I think the time spent in the recital hall was worth it, except that I'm now finishing the homework that was assigned Friday.

On a more philosophical note, I have a lot to think about as of now. I've found that it's difficult to balance everything sometimes, and I feel like I can't juggle the major things all at once. According to the present moment, major things include academics, music, family, friends, and faith. Up until this year I'd never been able to balance the academics and the music, but this year I figured out how to do that. But because of that balance, the social aspect of life was shifted and dynamics started changing. I can only assume that life will get more challenging after college, so I guess it's best that I learn to balance everything now while it's still simpler.

Regarding Dancing

I forgot how much I love to dance. Ballroom, mostly, but occasional ballet in the kitchen at home is nice too. A few of us watched Take the Lead last night, and by the end of the movie all of us wanted to get up and dance. Unfortunately, we're a little bit hindered from looking like people in movies by minimal ability level, but it's still fun even if you just know the basic steps of a lot of different dances. Tango, of course, is my all-time favorite, just because it's so....well, I don't know exactly what it is, except for sweet. Overall point: I need to go ballroom dancing sometime in the future, even if it's over the summer. It will happen. Thus saith...someone, I guess.

Holy Week and Folk Songs

I haven't updated anything here in a long time! Thus, I'll begin with Holy Week. It was by far the best Holy Week celebration I've ever had. On Maundy Thursday, we all went to church and sang an absolutely beautiful piece by Maurice Duruflé called Ubi caritas. Based on the Latin title, one could easily and correctly surmise that it was originally Gregorian chant. We didn't sound quite like this, but this is a nice recording of the piece:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=457nVpxJDkA

After church in the evening, we decided to go out to eat. At this point, I ordered my first drink (I know, I know, I've been 21 for well over a month and I still haven't drunk anything...) but I forgot my wallet, resulting in no ID. Oh well. I don't feel like I missed out on anything, really. Good Friday was also spent at church in the afternoon, and then we went to go see the BSO perform Mendelssohn's Elijah with the Tanglewood chorus that evening. It was magnificent. Ooooooh, the choir's first entrance...and the rest of the piece...glorious.

On Saturday, we spent the whole entire afternoon and into the night cleaning and baking, interspersed with listening to Saint-Saens Organ Symphony, which is also magnificent! Everyone should become familiar with it.

On Sunday, the church service, like the Elijah and the Organ Symphony, was also magnificent! It included a choir, a brass choir, an ORGAN (epic proportions, obviously, if you know the organist), and a handbell choir. As it turns out, I am a horrible handbell player. Perhaps if I practiced I'd get better at it, but my handbell debut was suboptimal. At least I had the fifth of the chord instead of the root. Church was followed by a lovely gathering of wonderful friends, and overall Easter was splendid. Best Holy Week of all time, so far.

UNTIL....dun dun dun....Monday happened. Well, not really just Monday, but the due date of our semester-long Folk Song Repertoire Project loomed in the future (Wednesday morning at 8). The weather was gorgeous, but both my entire Monday and Tuesday were spent in the windowless computer lab in the basement of the music building. Serious thought process for two days straight: "Oh gosh. This project is insane. I'm never going to finish! I have so much to do! Curses! I have two rehearsals tonight! I'm going to be up ALL NIGHT! No, no, I can do this. I just have to manage my time efficiently. Make a list. BUT I HAVE REHEARSAL! WHY AM I A MUSIC MAJOR?!?!?! Can I quit now?? Oh wait. It's the middle of the semester. What's this? I have stuff ON TOP of that? Like finding a summer job, finding housing, doing other stuff, worrying about normal social life and things of that ilk, etc.? Wait. Social life. I can't handle complications right now. This is nonsense. I'm going to eat chocolate. No. I have to finish. WORK."

In any case, the project is now done and turned in (on time, AND I got four hours of sleep! Win!), so I will hopefully have a little more time to devote to things outside of school work that require my attention. Needless to say, the number of hours I've spent practicing piano has increased exponentially since this morning, which I find excellent. :)

Natural Hair

This morning I had a conversation with someone about hair styles, and how girls with curly hair always straighten it. It started because my roommate, who has the most beautiful curly brown hair, straightens it EVERY SINGLE DAY. Now, I've always thought that my hair is pin straight, or at least it was when I was little. Nevertheless, if I wear it down, I have to straighten it because it poofs out in strange ways sometimes. However, after leaving it completely air dry this evening, I have discovered that my hair is officially wavy. This is a fairly unimportant discovery, but I thought it was a little interesting, so I figured I would document it here.