This weekend was soooo great for so many reasons. I guess mainly because of my recital. My hair looked pretty, my mom's dress THAT SHE MADE FOR ME looked super and my voice teacher did my makeup so people could actually see my pale white face from the stage. And even though I was nervous right before going on, I think I did really well. Of course I went back and listened to stuff that I know I could have done better. But I also listen to stuff and think "...hey that sounds pretty good." Which is an understatement in comparison to what people said. Everyone really seemed to like my songs and everything and that makes me feel really great. I especially love the people who hadn't really heard me sing and their comments, such as, "ok, where was the recording in the background that you were really singing along to?" I guess people were even telling Chris later that they were sad I was leaving this year because they wanted me to give another recital sometime...what?!?!?!

So along with the recital, I had all sorts of people come visit me and it was really fun. My dad's family all came from Georgia/Alabama, and my mom's dad from Pennsylvania, and Chris's family from Albany, and of course (e:mike) and (e:jill) from the B-lo. It was so fun. The opera was entertaining and I had a lot of fun going out even if the end of the night was sort of fuzzy.

And then on Sunday I went and had dinner with my family, and then at night Chris surprised me with a box of Nerds, some cards, and a bracelet for a great recital/our one year. Although our one year is sort of sketchy, since it was such a gradual process of us getting together. We've sort of decided that there really is like a two-month span that could be considered our anniversary. Anyway so that made my night.

Overall it was such a nice couple days. I love when (e:mike) and (e:jill) come down to hang out, and we will again so we can drink out of embarassing moment shot glasses!!!!

I'll post pics sometime from the weekend. Thanks to everyone who made it one of the best weekends I can remember.

(CDs, cassettes, and DVDs will be available for purchase soon. Rated R for RAAAAAAWWWWWWRRRRRRRR...)

Ok here's the cover of my program...hopefully...I love it : )

So my recital is less than 48 hours away. In reality, a recital isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I'm just going to get on stage and sing in front of people which I've done dozens of times, sing songs I've been practicing for months and then go eat food, hang out, and move on with my life. It just happens to be that I'm wearing a really pretty dress with a pretty hairdo (hopefully) and I'm the only one performing and I sing for half an hour.

I'm excited about it. I'm not THAT nervous...yet. I've worked hard and practiced and done research on my songs and basically put a lot of time into this recital. I don't even get graded on it. It is just a nice mini-concert for my family and friends. There really is no pressure whatsoever, but of course I want to do well and will get worked up about it, but in the end, I know I will sound fine and no matter what, my grandparents are going to cry. And probably my mother and father and maybe even my sister. And I'm sure Mike will shed many tears. After the whooping and hollering that is always appropriate for the concert hall. Hopefully any tears shed will be years of joy and admiration and not the bad kind, like "why did i spend so much money on a plane ticket to see this crap???!!!"

: ) P.S. my programs are going to look so great provided I can find a color printer and print out a copy of the front. I tried to take a picture of the screen and show you but I don't know how to do that on these new computers, I guess. So anyway once I figured that out I will add that to this entry.

And now I am finished. Ta-da.

So last night I went to see the above mentioned movie. I really hadn't thought I was gonna see it, mostly because I don't see many movies when I'm at school and if I do they are usually like the popular ones. But anyway we decided to see this movie because despite the bad critics reviews, most online reviews by "real people" said the movie was really great.

So if you've seen the commercials, they show the woman who got dumped by her husband and her crazy huge Grandma with a gun rampaging through her ex-husband's house and wreaking havoc everywhere and it looks really funny. Well those parts were really funny. The Grandma was great and the beginning was funny and entertaining. Then out of nowhere it turns into this evangelical story about a woman who realizes God and Jesus can save her and if she prays hard enough then her life will come back together. And after awhile we forget who we're supposed to dislike and like because she keeps like forgiving her jerky ex-husband and turning her back on this other great guy and well I guess I won't give away stuff... But you know how quality a movie is when during the emotional, romantic scene in which this woman finds true love and the man of her dreams is pouring his heart out, people in the theater are laughing out loud at what the guy is saying to her. And at the end there's a scene in a gospel church where this random 10 year old girl starts singing like Whitney Houston in a gospel choir and suddenly this religious power takes over and people who are crippled can suddenly walk again and junkies are drug-free and everyone is singing and happy and saved. It was sooooo cheesy!! I mean I have nothing wrong with loving Jesus but it was totally not what I expected the movie to be. It was so ridiculous, and looong, and just soooo strange. I only recommend the movie if you're in the mood for a movie that's so bad it's slightly entertaining. The Grandma was very funny, but barely in the movie at all. That definitely would have improved everything. Frankly if she had been the mad black woman the movie was about, the movie would have turned out to be much better!

[inlink]maureen,40[/inlink] - inlink recorded 02/15/05 17:04



¿I believe they have this in Buffalo, no? (I love that the Spanish language does that....not that little A thing...I don't know where that came from...) I'm pretty sure I've had some Visco sauce back in the B-lo. The word sauce makes me laugh a little.

My computer has its first virus. Or at least the first virus I've been aware of that actually effects what I want to do - talk online, of course. What kind of moron clicks on a link in an away message? Well, me. So now I have a virus that randomly opens up Instant Messenger when it wants to and puts up an away message so other people can get the virus too. That blows.

By the way I always feel guilty when I open this page that I'm not using Firefox. I have no way to use Firefox and actually have never even seen it in use.



Neat logo.

I think this counts as procrastination...

I want people to come visit me too


Tonight is this 100 Days till Graduation celebration downtown and I didn't go...maybe I should have. What is it that makes some people love going out and being downtown at bars and then some people just basically don't ever do it unless it's their birthday or some special occasion. Maybe because I won't REALLY be graduating in May. I don't know. In a way I feel bad that I don't ever go out but at the same time that's just a stupid thing to say cuz it's not for everyone I guess. But I feel like sort of a traitor to my class. Is that ridiculous?

Maybe I just feel funny that it's Friday night and I'm here by myself listening to the Mozart Requiem and contemplating doing some laundry. The Mozart Requiem is great, by the way. If you've ever seen the movie Amadeus you may already be slightly familiar with it. Mozart never actually completed the work. Out of the 13 (?) movements, he only completely wrote one of them (with chorus and orchestration) and wrote the vocal lines and bass line for 6 others. He only wrote the first 8 bars of one of the movements and then a student of his finished it and a couple other movements because Mozart died before it was completed. Isn't that ironic...a requiem mass never finished because the composer died himself. I get chills for that reason when I sing it. I almost feel like its wrong to sing parts of it too...because he never actually wrote it. I don't know. The whole concept of it is really interesting, I think.


Come visit me...this weekend??

I just wrote a whole entry and decided I sounded like a jackass and deleted it. Anyway my apartment is just about ready to be premiered. I'll have to talk to the roomie but I'm hoping to have a get together next weekend or the weekend after. It should be a good time. We finally bought curtains and got rid of the leftover crap from the people who lived there before and so I'm looking forward to playing hostess.

The music lab just got a whole bunch of new computers. They look like this:






They are nice. But they don't have Firefox...sorry little computer voice that opens up when you start this site. It uses something called Safari. Anyway I love these computers. I like Apples. By that I mean the computers. The fruit too. That wasn't funny. Neither am I. I will go back to my boring, late proctoring shift. Good night.

and i have been working on the same project at work for like 3 hours. Not including the work I put into it last Friday. Good times.

So everything is okay lately I guess. I picked out my pattern and material for my recital dress that my mom is making. :) It's gonna be hot! And I picked out my shoes too. Yeehaw. I'm excited about my recital. Soon that will turn into utter dread and fear and freaking out most likely since I'm not quite as prepared as I probably should be at this point. Ehhh, it'll still be good. I have family coming from many places and I'm really excited! Everyone needs to come. By everyone, I do mean every person I've ever met.

I'm moving into my apartment this week. I'm sort of nervous about the whole thing. I don' tknow why. Well I got a hint from someone that there may have been cats living there before. And that would suck because not only am I slightly allergic to cats, but Chris is REALLY allergic to them. And I would be really upset if he couldn't even come over or something because of a stupid cat that lived there before. I just feel like this apartment has been a pain in my ass for awhile and that more things are bound to go wrong. I hate that I feel like that because how negative is that???? But it is bothering me. So I'm bringing a vaccum cleaner and cleaning that place out like crazy.

What is with the word "asbestos?" I will never see that word without stopping and telling myself how it actually is pronounced. Who decided it was pronounced that way and why isn't it spelled the way you'd think?

MADNESS!!!!

why does it say my lastest ten and not latest ten

?

Warning!! This is long and personal and probably won't interest 99.9999% of all people who may come across it.


In the light of the new year, I was looking back on my older entries at this point last year and my resolutions and stuff. I feel like I've changed a lot since this same time last year, and I guess generally also that my life has changed. Lots of things I thought were going to happen either aren't going the way I thought they would or just aren't happening at all...and I guess some things that were unexpected happened too. I made some weird decisions at the beginning of this semester that right now I am regretting somewhat. Nothing crazy personal...just that I'm delaying truly being a college graduate until next December. I didn't have to have it this way, but I looked at my choices and I decided to take a different plan, and graduating late was one of the consequences. And although I had justified it in my head and to others, I started to get the idea that it was the wrong choice. But at that point it was too late to change what I'd decided. It feels as though I've changed my mind about a hundred different things since last September...grad school, student teaching, how I want to spend this next semester, where I want to live. I feel like I can't make a firm decision about most things. I've reached this part of my life that's unlike anything I've ever encounted before. And I generally feel like I'm not handling it well. I can't seem to get over the fact that I messed up my plan for school, that I'm not graduating in May like everybody else. I feel this odd guilt and unease about it. And I absolutely hate it. Lots of people stay longer in school. Who cares? It's an education. And rather than taking this next semester off, I decided that I'm going to take advantage of some time and take a few more classes. And I should be happy about this. I'm going to be doing some things that will hopefully look great for grad schools and just make me a much more knowledgeable person in my field. But still I feel guilty. And I don't really understand. I just have this nagging feeling like I'm doing it for the wrong reasons. I mean I did mess up. I didn't get things finished in time. But now it's come to the point where I need to accept that, and I need to accept the fact that I made my own choice to take this extra time. Regret is something that seems totally absurd to me, but maybe this is what I'm feeling. I thought that no choice could really be the wrong choice. But that's not really ringing true lately. I just know that I'm not completely content. I'm not satisfied with everything. I feel this strange guilt, this anxiety, just a general feeling that I'm either wasting time or wasting money. And I guess that is just how I feel, despite everything else I tell myself or hear from others. And while I've talked about it with a couple people, it's obviously not changing. I mean, maybe it's a matter of who I'm talking to. I don't really tell my parents these feelings, and maybe it would be best if I did, since for some reason, they are the ones that I am thinking about when I say I feel guilty...which is ridiculous because they have never once told me that we can't afford more schooling or that I made a bad choice. They have always supported me and never given me any indication that I'm not doing the right thing. I suppose by getting a good GPA the past couple semesters has helped that also. So maybe being more honest with them may help me. It seems obvious that I need to take this energy that I have, this anxiety and frustration and make it positive. I don't want these bad feelings to stop me from doing OTHER things that I need to accomplish. Frankly I'm just going to drive myself crazy otherwise and probably make myself sick. I was all upset last night and didn't get enough sleep and I feel so drained and exhausted today. And last night wasn't the first night I've gotten upset, and probably won't be the last. I've never had an anxiety attack before this year and this semester I've had several. And they are not fun...to say the least. Leading a lifestyle of being upset and depressed and no sleep isn't exactly what seems ideal. I don't know why I'm finding it so hard to just DO things, and to deal with myself, and to take care of myself. It seems like the most obvious and easy thing in the world to just turn everything around. I have no choice but to make everything better in the long run. "You can't change the wind, but you can adjust your sails." Some teacher I have ends all of her emails with that. I don't know why I just thought of it.
I guess I'm sort of losing track of where I was going. Well maybe I wasn't really going anywhere. I guess this was just some sort of way to organize my thoughts. Writing stuff out doesn't necessarily make me feel better...I guess it just seems to be a release. Some other way of talking to people, maybe. I have way too many thoughts. My mind is always racing a mile a minute, especially when I am just sitting or lying quietly with no other distractions. I always seem to think of more and more stuff. I don't think that's a problem except for when my mind keeps getting drawn to negative thoughts. And I stopped keeping a journal, mainly because I lost it at school. Maybe it's time I got another one. While I don't mind writing here, it's not the same thing. I generally hate when people write endlessly long entries about this stuff so I wouldn't want to be the kind of person who does that all the time. But once in awhile I don't feel bad about it at all. I know a few people who sometimes choose to share their deepest emotions with totally random people. I always thought that was interesting. I'm not usually like that, but maybe a change would be okay.

....


In case I don't update before...Happy New Year!