Two More Weeks!

There are only two more weeks of classes, finals, bowl game, and then I'm going home for Christmas! It's officially the Christmas season now that Thanksgiving is over and I'm definitely feeling it. I went to Don and Debra's place for Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving I help them decorate their house for Christmas. Now that I'm home, Ashley and I are playing Christmas music and slowly decorating the apartment. Ashley had some nice window Holiday stickers and she already put them up. Aww, I love Christmas so much. I'm so looking forward to going back home and being back with my family and seeing how much my nephews and neice have grown! Yay!

While I was at Don and Debra's house, I made some of Mom's delicious chocolate cream pie! Debra just asked what my favorite pie was, and I told her that chocolate cream pie was among my favorite. She immediately followed my answer with, "Do you want to make it?" Uhh, sure! Why not? So, I called my mom to get the exact recipe and ended up making it all from scratch Thanksgiving morning. Well, I didn't make the crust. Debra had some graham cracker crust she had bought and I just used that. I think it probably would've tasted much better with regular crust, but it was still delicious. I just ate the crust first and then would enjoy the wonderful taste of the chocolate cream. MMmm... so yummy. We had a total of 9 pies! It totally reminded me of home, and I even got to participate in the pie making! They had two pumpkin, two apple, two lemon meringue, my chocolate cream, and two pecan pies. Wow! It was great stuff. Thanksgiving is good times. :) It was even better that the food was free. :P

Right now it's just a survival game until the end of the semester. I had my 4th and hopefully final pace test for Sight Singing right before the break. Then there's one more dictation pace test (which I got an A- on the last one! Wow!) and then I have my Music Theory project/final to do. There's one more Calculus midterm and then the final, my jury, and then that's it! Well, I have a final project for my Music Education class, too, but I've basically finished that. I taught all of my lessons, and now it's just a matter of commenting on how I did and getting peer feedback. Which, I already gave my videos to two people to review. Speaking of which... I need to do that for someone else. Fun for me!

I gave a talk today in church. I got a call Friday evening from the Bishop while I was at Don and Debra's place asking if I could speak in church. Something about the Spirit... so I ended up speaking on "listening to the Spirit." There were four speakers, and the other three talked about being "led by the Spirit", "following the Spirit", and "living by the Spirit." I think he did tell us all the same thing, but we all ended up remembering it differently. He told me Friday and I didn't end up preparing it until Saturday night. Don't call me on procrastinating that... I usually end up writing talks the morning of. :P It turned out alright, though. I ended up telling about 3 or 4 stories to apply the topic I was trying to talk about. They always tell us in our Music Education class that there should be little information and a lot of application. You actually remember more and learn from the application more than lecture. And it's just more fun to listen to stories in Sacrement meeting than someone reading a General Conference talk to you again. I got compliments from people about it, so I guess it turned out alright. :) I was surprisingly not that nervous. I think all these performances they make me do as a music major are helping me not be nervous when I perform or whenever I speak. It's nice.

I should really try to finish some of my homework so I can try to get some sleep tonight! Yay for sleep! :)

I Fail

I was doing so well at updating this every Sunday, and then I missed last Sunday! Fail! Oh well, here I am updating on a Tuesday night. I'm now free for a week! No more classes until next Monday. Good times. Most of my classes today were cancelled. It's funny because I think they were cancelled more because the professors knew that hardly anyone was planning on coming to class anyway. I would've gone, but oh well. I'll take the free time. :) I ended up just programming a calculator in my free time... yeah, I'm that big of a nerd. I'm working on a calculator with lots of complex functions. So far I've got it getting any sort of root (square root, cube root, 4th root, etc), inverse, power, factorial, and now I'm working on getting the log to work. Ugh, it's so hard. I'll get it figured out eventually. It's just so much fun! :)

The plan for this week is to go to my Aunt and Uncle's place (Don and Debra) for Thanksgiving. It should be fun. Free food, fun, and just being with family. Even if it isn't my direct family... it's just under a month until I'll be back for Christmas and be able to see them again. :) My mom sent me pictures today from a family get together this past Saturday. Everyone in our family was able to come (all the kids, their spouses and their kids) except for me. That was kind of sad to think about, but the pictures were all freakin' adorable! How did I get the cutests nephews and niece in the world?? Man, it's awesome. I'm so looking forward to seeing them all again this Christmas. Good times!

My excuse for not updating on Sunday is that I was having dinner with some family! I met up with my Aunt Bonnie and some of her kids (Jonathan, Jared, and Alena) along with Jeff and Nicole and their kids, Grandpa B, and Kristie and her daughter! Shawn and Coby weren't able to come because Coby wasn't feeling very well. It was so much fun! We had this awesome dinner of potato cream soup with some topping stuff (bacon bits, cheese, and green onions) and this delicious salad and some jello salad. Then there was dessert: cheesecake and pumkin chocolate chip cookies. Mmm... it was fun to see everyone again. After a lot of people had left and Jared was waiting for his laundry to finish (LOL... couldn't pass up the opportunity to do laundry for free), we played Apples to Apples. Such good times. It's great having family up here. Jeff reminded me a lot of my dad and Bonnie reminded me a lot of my mom.

So this Saturday was the rival game between Utah and BYU... long story short, BYU lost 48-24. At the half we were only behind 24-27. Just a field goal! Then Max Hall, the BYU quarterback, fumbled it which led to a touchdown by Utah. That just seemed to get him down and he ended up throwing about 5 interceptions after that... almost all of them leading the Utah scoring somehow. I've got to say, many of the Utah fans are just not nice. I was honestly scared wearing a BYU marching band uniform while being in that stadium. One of their favorite things to do was to give us the finger. It seemed like when Utah would make a good play they would cheer at us to rub it in our face more than to cheer on their team. We had this combined show with the Utah band and they were all really nice. One of their Saxphone players started singing, "Why can't we be friends..." So true! Why not? Man, they were all great people. It was fun performing with them. I remember one person looking at me and saying, "I'm sorry... " Oh, is this person actually being nice!? "...I'm sorry that you go to BYU." Oh, just kidding. He couldn't have the class to just respect me as a person. Oh well... at least I can sleep at the night knowing that I'm not rude to the Utah people.

Okay, I should try to finish my Smallville Rambling for the most recent episode, Bride, before I leave to Debra's place. It's gonna be so freakin' long... so much to talk about!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving! 

More ramblings!

Ashley pointed out to me the other day that this semester is actually very close to its end! There's this week, and then a 2-day week for Thanksgiving and then two weeks and then finals! The Friday of that second week being a "reading day" to prepare for finals. Which, for music majors is jury day. It's really so close! Then we'll have our bowl game and then it'll Christmas/home time. :) Yay!

This week I finished the 4 music lessons I was supposed to teach for my Music Education class, and I performed a little mini recital on Monday. It went pretty well, I guess. I got many complimentary things said to me about it. For me, though, it could have been much better. At least I had a pretty good reed I had just made that weekend. People were commenting on how good my tone was, so I guess that's good. :) There are just this high F that I've hit so consistently and it's like a climax, and I totally missed it. I was still getting used to the reed, and I was used to a reed that was dying that would hit those high notes too easily. Oh well... people didn't seem to care. At least it's overwith and now I just listen to everyone else in the class perform.

Trombone is a lot of fun! It's so much fun to actually use my air again. Though, the Trombone is much bigger than an oboe and has much less resistance. I have to take so many breaths... I run out of air so quickly! Now that I have some basic slide positions down, I can sound somewhat like a real Trombone player while I'm playing easy stuff. Aww, it's so much fun. I can't wait until I start my workshops and all that we focus on is playing the instruments. Well, I heard it's a lot about how to teach it, too. That's fine. :) In this class, though, we are literally just thrown into the group with the kids and just kind of learn as we go. It's great.

I'm trying to decide if I should take an Exercise Science class next semester. I'm thinking about beginning weight training. I was going to take that class last Winter, until I realized that it wasn't very convenient in my schedule at all. The only drawback this Winter is that I'm already taking 17.5 credit hours and this class would bring that to 18 hours. It would also take away two hours of time that I could work. That would add up to a lot of money by the end of the semester I'd miss out on. Not only that, but it'd be time at work when there would hardly be anyone in the lab: 9 AM. People are in class then. So it could basically be like a time to do my homework and get paid for it. I'd really love to be more in shape, though. It's be right after sight singing, too, so I'd have half an hour to get ready for it and leave early to take a shower or something. I can sign up for the class tonight... someone help me decide!

Okay, what else is new... I took yet another Calculus midterm. I felt pretty good about it, not as good as the last midterm, but pretty good. This one took me two and a half hours to take it! The other ones only took me about an hour and a half, probably less. This one I just kept checking things and reproving things I wasn't sure about. It took so long and made my brain so tired. Let's hope I did well on it! I should find out later this week. Either Tuesday or Thursday. I'm hoping Tuesday. :)

So I think it's decided that my camera is broken. Sad day! I went to the Kodak website and the fact that it broke after I dropped it makes the warranty invalid. Understandable. I got an estimate of what it would cost to repair it without the warranty... they estimated 70 dollars. Umm, I think not. They have refurbished cameras that are just about as good as the one I have that are like 75 dollars or so. I'm thinking I know something I'll get for Christmas. :) I'll try to be extra careful with this next one! What the heck is wrong with my luck and cameras! I need a camera, though. It's so nice to be able to take pictures and videos and share them with people. Not to mention I'm planning on going to Fan Fair again, and I'd really like to have a camera for that. It's just nice. If I could just stop breaking them then life would be grand. I even tried just fixing the camera myself... instead I just go some plastic pieces that apparently broke inside the camera to fall out. I don't get it. It's fallen down before, what the heck made it break so dumbly this time? The battery was dead at the time... so maybe I should try a new battery before completely junking the camera. I don't know.

Okay, I should really go and practice or something. I've got a lesson tomorrow and I've got some things to practice. Oh the joy of it all. :)

More than halfway!

As we get into November and closer to Thanksgiving... I'm realizing that the semester is really getting close to finishing! Which also reminds me that I have yet another Calculus midterm that I should take tomorrow or Wednesday. Fun stuff.

Tomorrow I have a mini-recital thing for my Music Education class. I just have to play something contrasting for about 8 minutes. I've got the song picked out and rehearsed with the accompanist I'll be playing with tomorrow. I had to get a different accompanist than my normal one since I'm playing for the class at 9:00 AM... which just so happens to be the time that everyone ever has class. Well, in the school of music at least. :P So, I've got someone whose in my class playing with me. He's a vocal major, but he's a really good pianist too! It seems like everyone in the school of music is already a very competant piano player except for me. Oh well! I'm not completely illerate on the piano, I'm just not amazing like lots of people. I'm looking forward to the piano class I'm going to take the Spring term next year. Though I hear that's really more of a class on playing cadences in different keys and whatnot rather than real piano technique. Whatever, it'll be fun either way. :)

My camera doesn't seem to be working anymore. I was using it to record myself playing while it was low on batteries. It was propped up so that it was angled so you could actually see me playing. I had it leaning on its lens... the one that comes in and out and it turns off and on. So, while I was playing it ran out of batteries and thus the nice lens thing went back in, which caused my camera to fall on the ground. I didn't notice it had turned off until it had already fallen on the ground. This isn't the first time that my camera has fallen on the ground and I've had to snap it back together again to get it to work. I wasn't too worried. Though, this time when I put it back together, it wouldn't turn on. Well, duh... the battery is dead, right? I tried charging it, nothing. And I know that in the past even when it turns itself off like that from running out of battery, I can normally still get it to turn on again for a moment before turning itself off again from lack of battery power. I think it just knocked just wire loose that connects the battery to the rest of the camera when it fell. I'm not sure how to fix it, though. I would probably end up breaking it more if I tried to hard. So, I need to find a way to get Kodak to fix it for me. I have a year warranty with them. I'm just hoping that they'll still fix it even thought it fell and that's what caused it break. Oh well. I'll try not to dwell on it. I just don't seem to have good luck with cameras. I really don't try to mean to them. Bad things just happen.

I registered for my classes on Thursday night. That was a bundle of fun. :) I can't believe I'm going to be taking my fourth semester music core classes. I'll be in Sight Singing 4, Dictation 4, and Music Theory 4! Wow... I should know my stuff by then. Though, I heard that Theory 4 was just contemporary stuff and completely left any kind of rules or anything. I'm really excited for it, actually. I heard that the 3rd semester was the hardest... but I love it. I love it all! I love music so much, man. It's all so freakin' fascinating. Is it weird that I sit through Sacrement meeting analyzing the hymns? Some are much easier than others... and some are just awesome. I guess Music is a good major for me. If I could, I would try to major in every type of music major offered. I could do performance, education, composition, media music (recording studio type stuff), jazz (could be fun!), or whatever else there is. I'd love it all. I've vaguely considered doing composition, but then I remember how much I love Education and how I've already started the program and got into it and everything. Maybe I can do a masters in Composition or Theory or something. So much to study and learn about! Why can't I do it all?

I think this blog is turning into a "General Sarah Ramblings" place. It's my padded cell, man. It's where I can let my insane thoughts come out into words! Such a joy.

New Song!

Aren't you all lucky... you get to hear a new song I've recently written. :) I've been working on it off and on for about a month or so. I finally got to perform in my most recent master class on Wednesday. This time I remembered to record me playing. So, I uploaded it to myspace videos. I tried youtube... but youtube only allows videos to be 10 minutes long, and mine happened to be 10 minutes and 29 seconds. I talked about for about a minute at the beginning... if I just hadn't talked. :P Oh well.

I talk much quieter than I play, so be warned. Since I have a bad habit of mumbling and you can't really hear everything I say at the beginning, I'll try to explain what they are all about here. :)

It's three movements: Verwirrung, Traum, and Maske. It's German for Confusion, Dream, and Mask respectively. It's like a progression of emotion when something dramatic happens to you. It could be like a death of someone close to you, breaking up with a boyfriend/girlfriend, maybe even losing a pet. Just something that really hits you hard when you first hear about it. The way I portray it in these songs is initially you're just really confused as to how it could have happened and just angry about it. Why? How? It doesn't seem possible! That kind of thing. Things just don't make sense. A somewhat disjunct melody with some nice dissonant chords to throw things out of whack.

After that stage of confusion... the whole situation starts to sink in and you start to realize what really happened. It feels like a dream. You feel like the world is moving and you are just standing there in the background watching. As the second movement goes on, there are moments of just feeling the magnitude of it all... just plain sadness. It kind of moves from a dream stage to just a stage of mourning and sadness. You now know what really happened and have at least started to accept that it really did happen.

The third movement is settling into life coping with this new situation. You don't really move past it, but you put on a mask to make it seem like you have. The third movement is actually in the key of F minor, but I don't use any notes that would make it sound minor. It's just a mask... it's supposed to sound major and happy, but the reality is that I'm still in a minor key. I'm still sad and mourning... but I'm putting on the appearance that I'm okay. A happy melody that just keeps repeating with some slight variances. I keep telling people, "Yeah! I'm good! I'm happy! Everything's great!" Eventually I get tired of it, and the true emotions start to come out. Then it finally ends with me shoving the happy melody down your throat. "Yeah, it hurts... no I'm HAPPY gosh darn it!"

Not really the happiest of songs, but it was fun to write. :) Please tell me what you think!

Verwirrung, Traum, and Maske