i am exhausted.

was up until 3:30-ish last night, working on my aspen application and making copies of the CD. (which, incidentally came out very poorly. my intonation is horrendous.) i was falling asleep before i finished it, so i went to bed, got three and half hours of sleep, and finished it by 8:30. just in time for my latin exam at 9:00, which i thoroughly bombed. (ok, not thoroughly, just the three paragraphs about Laocoon and the Trojan Horse, which i didn't have time to finish.) but it's ok, because the rest of the class bombed it too. anyway. got the application mailed at around noon, after chapel. so it's done now. let the waiting begin. there was some last minute craziness involving my mother thinking aspen was a nice little high school summer camp (and not a nine-week marathon coached by half of juilliard), and refusing to answer the ridiculously invasive questions on the financial aid form. (which means they might reject my application right off the bat. $100 application fee down the drain, ladies and gentlemen...) i was eating a very late dinner with friends at the time, they were amused. o and mother, if you read this, you were right, strings camp is for all ages, not just high school.

so i think i'm pretty much done with the poeme. since i have no desire to perform it without an orchestra behind me, there's not much point in continuing--it was mostly done, just needed to be polished. next project: violin concerto in a minor, op. 53, by antonin dvorak. plus a few concert pieces and orchestral excerpts for chautauqua. probably some bach.

in other news, we have a foot and a half of snow. seems like it's been snowing nonstop since i got back, but it might be petering out now. there's about an inch of solid packed stuff on all the roads and sidewalks. plows can't get at it, it'll be there for a while.
it's quite glorious.

notables (no, i didn't include return of the king, that's not notable):

• johnny depp, for pirates of the caribbean. he needs to win this. i don't care if it's a two-bit movie (that i loved, incidentally), nobody else could have pulled off that character the way he did. some of the best acting i've ever seen.
• keisha castle-hughes, for whale rider. yeah for indie flicks, baby. (nevermind underaged nominees in this category...)
• seabiscuit for best picture. go underdog.

while i'm at it, go check out 12 stones. came across a demo cd today. rather a mix between linkin park and third day, i thought. wasn't terribly impressed with the lyrics, but ahhh, the sound... i only sampled the first five or so tracks, but it was so refreshing to hear this sound coming from the christian music industry.

this blog comes to you from the computer helpdesk. i do love lazy tuesday afternoons.

so i swam this morning. 0700, baby, yeah. at least the pool was warm. it was all music majors--two violins, a horn, and a cello. brian, the cello and the only male, was the only one who stayed in for the full hour. freshmen. the rest of us got out after fifteen minutes--FIFTEEN MINUTES!! i actually felt sick after five laps. five lousy laps. i did more than that in elementary school, for pete's sake...

in other news, looks like a few of us (music people) will be starting up a performance group. we'll meet twice per month. play for each other, play with each other, discuss performance technique and other relevant issues, go see professionals at work (concerts and recitals), etc. it'll be really good. it'll be a counterpart for the music education club we already have.

i think i need to go be productive. o wish me luck, i'm recording the poeme [win][real] tomorrow night for an aspen audition...

it's about quarter to four on a wednesday afternoon, and i am sitting in my townhouse.

this is not normal.

i realized for the first time today that i have ONE academic activity on wednesday, a class at 10:00. i have absolutely nothing for the rest of the day. so i'm sitting down here, sun pouring in, watching the icicles melt outside. i could do this every week. there is no reason for me to be on campus later than 3pm on wednesdays (assuming i do my usual 4 hours violining). what a treat.

today was probably the nicest sunday i've ever had at school. sunday school was excellent, based around a study of the nature of the gospel by tim keller, the senior pastor at redeemer presbyterian. good stuff like

...the gospel is news of what god has done to accomplish salvation through jesus christ in history. it is not advice about what we must do to reach god. we do not achieve this salvation.

so the gospel is not an instruction book. 'how to be saved and accomplish sonship.' maybe that seems obvious, but it makes a huge difference in how you approach god, his word, morality, and unbelievers. especially unbelievers--instead of coming at them from this superior moral standpoint, ready to give them advice to turn their lives around, we deliver the news of christ and him crucified, and let the spirit speak for itself. and it makes you view your own salvation differently--it really has nothing to do with me. it was already completed, long before i got to it. fascinating stuff, eh? anyway, that whole study (along with a discussion of dei gloriam that we just barely started and will finish next week) was a background and foundation for the study of the gospel and the family that we're going to start, using each for the other: marriage as it's meant to be. should be interesting.

the sermon was also good. pastor discussed the freedom paul mentions in galations 5:1, and what exactly that means. he said that we usually define freedom as the ability to do what we most want to do. grace changes our nature so that what we most want to do is please god, rather than be autonomous. salvation is a free gift, already achieved and complete, and it frees us from the tyranny of the law--we are no longer obligated to earn our righteousness. we own christ's righteousness, and thus are as free of guilt and fear of condemnation, and as acceptable to god, as he is. our response, through the spirit, is a desire and a will to obey--keep the law because we actually want to, out of love and gratitude, not because we have to in order to earn divine acceptance.

anyway, a very humbling church service. i fall so far short. food was good, as always. got back and did lots of homework, AND watched a movie, AND got to talk to anible. and now it's 10:50 and i could actually go to bed feeling like i accomplished something. how exciting.

have i mentioned recently that i love snow? i love snow. i walked home in it this evening, a good ten inches (at least) on the ground and more falling, all of it sparkling with street lamp sheen. it was wonderful. and i kept walking through it on campus during the day, just because i couldn't resist. i like watching the powder spray just after you put a foot down, savez? (i was also struck by this intense, inexplicable desire to not walk on the paths. i watched the lines of students going to and from chapel, going to lunch, one following another, and it almost made me ill. go figure.)

so the sourdough isn't dead. the muffin batter rose beautifully, and i made muffins this morning. *hallelujah* [i'm listening to a seriously fly jazz radio station at the moment and having a little trouble concentrating on being coherent. so please excuse my lack of coherency, it was sacrificed for a worthy cause...] i made the cutouts too thick, and i didn't have any corn meal, and i didn't know the heat settings on our electric stove (*gag*), so they ended up fat, dense, and tough. the insides were still good, though, at least for the few that did turn out edible. (the others didn't have cooked insides.) i made more dough tonight, and hopefully i'll make good ones in the morning.

speaking of sourdough biscuits *whistles innocently*, i can't eat real butter anymore. see, i always have anible butter on my sourdough muffins. it's something like half butter and half something else--like homemade margarine, except it really does taste (have the same flavor as) like butter. so i put normal butter on my muffin this morning and it tasted completely wrong. *sigh* have to use honey or some such...

first lesson today. (violin, piano is tomorrow.) it went pretty well, all things considered. my teacher was really pleased with some things. i had been reconsidering my whole major before the lesson (you didn't get into eastman, you can't play at that level, you can't even play an a-major four-octave arpeggio in tune, you'll have to get a rotten job teaching snotty-nosed miscreants, you shouldn't have continued! you should have done computers!), so his response was very encouraging. had a rotten rehearsal with my accompanist, but it was mostly my fault. it'll be better later in the week.

go check out the eroica trio. they're mahvelous.

i just noticed my comments have died. (lots of death going on here...) hopefully they'll be back up by the weekend (more info); if not, i'll go find another one.

i think i killed my sourdough. anible's mother gave me a starter over break, because i'm addicted to her english muffins and i wanted to make them at school. so i got it here, after a 2-hour car ride in subzero temperatures, and after a night in the fridge it had about half a centimeter of water on top. not to worry, thunk i, the instruction sheet says just add more flour. so i added some more flour. but then it looked too thick, so i added more water, and i think i ended up where i started.... anyway, i set it out on the counter to do its thing. after a night, it got all these tiny tiny bubbles on top, and then it just completely flattened. so i think i killed it. just to test it, i started a muffin batter tonight. if it doesn't rise, i can assume i killed it. *sigh* it's a sign, i am not meant for the kitchen. ever.

anyway, second day of the semester. i have no high hopes or any such. likely to be a fairly blah few months, apart from the panic this month. it is great to see da gang, also great to be rooming with bexx again. my classes are looking interesting--i'll actually have homework on a regular basis this semester. what a concept.

elementary composition: a bit daunting. i'm not a composer, see, i'm a performer. so we'll see how that goes. first assignment: pick any three household items and turn them into a percussion band. 16-32 measures.

music history: late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. i really enjoyed both theory iv (sophomore year) and systems (last semester), so i'm looking forward to this class. it'll be good to get out of the theory room and into the cultural context. *grin grin*

latin: second semester. this'll be challenging because i never actually finished all the material from last semester...*cough*

we're trying to get the mendelssohn octet going in chamber music. don't know if it's going to happen, since our best cellist nixed on us, but we have a couple others we can ask. the orchestra has an awesome repertoire this semester (brahms #4, gershwin, john williams, etc.), and my seats aren't too bad. (be nice if i won the concerto competition a week from tomorrow, but it's not going to happen.)

in other news, i'm really sore. (my muscles, that is, not my general psyche.) the fifteen minute, uphill walk to campus actually has me out of breath by the time i'm in class, and i just about destroyed my thumb yesterday, practicing with tension. *kicks self* it hurts. throbs when i'm playing. needless to say, now is not the time. first violin lesson is tomorrow; hartman will not be pleased. ah well.

o o, i'm playing in galadriel's (that's a nickname) voice recital. she's a soprano, and she wants to do some irish songs with violin/fiddle accompaniment. *dances* it'll be sometime in april, i can't wait. the music looks like a lot of fun.