aigh, scary night. filed my federal and state taxes online.

(AAAAAAAAAAAAA)

actually, it wasn't half so tedious as it was ten years ago, when dad had me do his taxes. (applause for homeschooling, please...) because i made basically no money last year and can be claimed as another taxpayer's dependent, it went fairly smoothly. lots of zeros. and my combined refund is about $400, which is very nice. that's assuming i managed not make a catastrophic mistake or two....well, really, what's the worst that could happen? i mess up, the irs contacts me, i plead stupidity, and it all works out in the end. joys of studenting.

i set up a url redirect, for those of you who didn't like the whole http://thisisareally.com/longurl/justto/read/astupid/bl/og business. http://ramblinations.zwitch.to. enjoy. (the aloofhosting.com url will still work, the new one's just a lot easier to type.)

exciting evening. forgot that opera rehearsal started at 6:30 tonight, not 7, so that we could all go to jenn's recital. so i made everyone ten minutes late, and we all ended up at jenn's recital five minutes late. my fault, folks, apologies all around. *smacks forehead*

the recital was very good, naturally. she played copland's violin sonata, bruch's scottish fantasy, schubert's the bee, two movements from bach's g minor partita, and an irish reel (the latter accompanied by accordian, bodhran, double bass, and guitar). she did a great job with the fantasy--that's a hard piece, she really pulled it off. i have yet to see a student perform bach from memory without stopping, but that's ok--jenn covered her mistakes incredibly well. (her studio professor made her memorize by harmony, so if she forgot the notes, she'd still be able to improvise.) i was so proud. *grin grin* and i had the reel stuck in my head all through the reception. i get such a kick out of watching people enjoy themselves when they make music.

after the recital, went with blaine and jenn to what we all call "the truck stop," a highway-side diner that people talk about all the time and i'd never been to. had so much fun, i love those two. jenn is just hysterical, comfortable in any conversation with any group of people. blaine could be my brother--comments like the one our music history professor made about john williams not having an original bone in his body rub us exactly the same way. (*grrr*) so needless to say, the three of us made a pretty good time. were there until around 12:45, when jenn finally mentioned sleep as a potential activity for the rest of the evening. we'd been trying to convince blaine to come with us (and alyssa and brian) to the contra dance next month. don't know if we were successful, muchly hope so. we're all going to hit the nickel creek concert in philadelphia next weekend anyway, that'll be fun. we'll leave sunday morning for brian's place, go to the concert that evening, and come back monday. *heheheheheeeeeee*

i think it could have been fun to have friends in high school.

on a side note, lots of electronic equipment is being stolen from the third floor of the music building. seems to be pre-meditated, since it only happens during recitals (when all the music majors are not in the practice rooms), and it's only specific items (the perpetrator ignored the laptop unattended in the middle of the hallway but grabbed the external floppy drive in someone's bag). not a good thing. in the past month or so, two minidisc recorders, two digital cameras, one laptop, and one external floppy drive have been stolen. we've got a few suspects of our own, we'll see what security comes up with. (and yes, i know, "don't keep your stuff in your practice room." look, we live there. most of us come in the morning and don't leave again, except for food, until late at night. if we've got twenty-pound backpacks with us, we're not going to carry the darn things wherever we go--particularly not into recitals--nor are we going to go all the way downstairs to try and stuff them into tiny lockers so we can have a 50-minute lesson. there needs to be another solution. [for example, locks on the practice room doors, like every other conservatory...])

first of all, may i express my frustration at post offices that close at 4:30? come on, folks. the rest of the country works nine to five. is the extra half hour so much to ask, really? actually, make everybody happy and go from 9:30 to 5:30, so people can come to dinner and get their packages. like the memory stick that's going to sit in a box in a corner, all by its lonesome, until lunch tomorrow. memory sticks need love too! here's to longer post office hours and more memory stick happiness!

speaking of happiness, the college administration has finally (finally finALLY FINALLY F I N A L L Y ) decided to open the music building on sundays! FINALLY! for those of you unfamiliar with the sunday policy here, it is (or rather, was) as follows: sunday is the sabbath, the day of rest. therefore, we will prevent students from working on sundays by closing all academic buildings. except the phys ed center, because exercise isn't really work. and the art building, because painting/sculpting/drawing/etc. isn't really work either. the library has to close, because reading is definitely work. and the music building, because making music is work. *cough* so looks like they're finally giving up the ghost. so nice, when the administration gets off its high horse and starts behaving like administration and not a surrogate parent...

anible left this morning. we had a lovely visit--lord peter wimsey came along as well, livened things up a bit. spent lots of time talking. it was such a treat to be able to read body language, instead of trying to hear everything through a phone. was such a treat to see his eyes again, for that matter....well, i won't bore you. got some truly fantastic pictures, which i'll put up when i get the chance. we made spaghetti, lots of ramen (but really made it, with extra vegetables and real spices and such stuff), some fabulous sourdough pancakes, and some tolerable sourdough muffins. (both of the latter met with his approval, by the way, much to my happiness.) i miss having him closer than six hours from me.

in other news, the most non-flirty guy in my london group eloped with his girlfriend of one month this weekend. saw the two of them today...frightening thought, really. heh. sir daniel, i raise my glass to you.

of course, the sun shines for the first time all week on the day anible comes to visit me. *grin*

i'm working helpdesk at the moment, and he's working library. strange how much of a difference the distance makes--i'm just as alone as i was on tuesday, but i'm nowhere near as alone...

my mind hath got the better of me.

i think this could be it, folks. 200mb web space, 1 gig transfer/month, 2mb file size limit, no banners or pop-up ads, solid FTP. this really could be it. hoorah for external funding. *grin grin*

so i've had a request for more pictures. (just for the record, all of these photos came straight to the web server from my camera. no editing, unless otherwise specified.)

• cacie-solarized.jpg: artsy portrait of my friend
• hands-bw.jpg: look at that curve!
• hands-sepia.jpg: more fleet fingers
• tackboard02.jpg: i got bored at a music history study session and started shooting macro photos. taken with no flash, +2.0 exposure.
• violin-body.jpg, violin-f-hole.jpg, violin-fingerboard-bridge.jpg, violin-fingerboard-down.jpg, violin-scroll.jpg: old red. again, no flash, -0.7 exposure, white balance on fluorescent. (i rather like these...)
• visit-artified.png: this one's not from my camera, but contributed by one maggie, from anible's school. taken during my visit. muchly edited, obviously.

enjoy. o and wish me luck, i've got a listening test to bomb tomorrow morning...;p

*sings* anible's coming on thursday, anible's coming on thursday....

(i worked helpdesk for four hours today. that's wrong.)

i think i'm moving again, folks. found a really attractive free host, funded externally by a market research company. if i'm lucky, this'll be it. really.

i moved again. shouldn't be too difficult, there's a nice little redirect on the old address. new address, as you can see: http://ramblinations.batcave.net/blog/.

my old violin professor has announced his resignation. he and his wife (who also has a graduate degree in music), have decided to move to a more urban area, where they can both work in their respective fields.

i have a feeling there's going to be a mass of card-sending from the string studio. seven of his students left in the space of two years, and a couple more were moving in that direction.

the school has already started looking for a replacement, so there will probably be a fairly busy string schedule over the next month and a half. (my secret dream, of course, is that my new teacher, who used to teach here, will come back. she stopped because the hour-and-a-half commute through rain snow and sleet became a bit much for a professional performing violinist, but perhaps she could be persuaded....i know she loved the school, and the students.) speaking of new faculty, there's a prospective cello professor on campus today! he's giving a concert at 2:15 (which i'll probably miss because i'm working *blaaa*), and open cello lessons at 2:45. very exciting. we could actually have a low strings professor ON CAMPUS.

i'm so glad the string department is beefing up a bit. we've got a lot of good violinists, two good cellos (!!!!), and if a certain violinist comes back for grad school, two good violas. incidentally, the viola professor will also be on campus once a week next semester. hopefully. that's the plan.

in other news, i've been having lots of fun with my camera. been playing with manual settings and trying to figure out what the freak all the symbols on the lcd mean. hopefully i'll get a few more shots up later today--took some great ones of my friend cacie, and my friend old red.

that was an ordeal. i spent hours yesterday trying to set up this blog to be run on a different server. because i have nothing better to do, of course...i think i've just about figured it out. i kept going back and forth between hosts--i found another one that offers 250mb of webspace, but you only get 250mb bandwidth/month and they plaster your site with banner ads. this host is great, except the FTP connection can only handle ten users at a time. inconvenient, savez? so i've still got a few more up my sleeve. doesn't help that i absolutely cannot upload any file off this computer while i'm on the campus network. it's absurd and it's starting to drive me nuts...and bananas...

orchestra concert last night. probably one of our worst, i'd say. we just couldn't fit together. we had some varying tempos, as well, which made things a little more difficult. ah well, people clapped at the end. and the brahms really is fun music, even if we slaughtered it. it was neat just to be playing a major work from the romantic symphonic repertoire. we hadn't done any before. *grin grin*

must breakfast...(i think that word sounds so good as a verb.)

i've moved. now that i finally have a digital camera, i want to have the option of putting images in my blog. new url: http://ramblination.freewebpage.org. the blogspot account is still there, for some reason. go figure.

title of the hymn we sang in chapel this morning. i'm not a fan of that brand of hymn, where we sing about how cool it would be to be an ideal church/friend/christian/world/etc.

unlike the hymn, the chapel speaker was fabulous. truly fabulous. john case, lecturer in theology at kingsley college in australia. ach, it was great. he'll be here for the next few days, doing a few more lectures. he's a post-modern systematic theologian--by which i mean that he recognizes the philosophical and epistemological state of western culture, and meets it where it is. shouting absolute truths at people isn't going to help if all they hear is me trying to force my personal experience and worldview on them. "sure, sure, that's an absolute for you." (relax, thou good reformed presbyterian, i'm not saying absolute truths are a thing of the past. on the contrary. i'm saying it doesn't benefit swahili-speakers if you read them scripture in english.) so yeah, all his lectures will deal with christian witness in a post-modern culture.

today, he focused on how to speak to non-christians who have 'spiritual experiences' while watching a movie, or listening to music, or studying a statue, or reading a poem. all artistic venues. he made the case that all human creativity--art--points back to the original creative act. he quoted george steiner, who said that all art holds within it the null, the negative. in all art there is the potential that it might never have existed. you can look at a famous painting, and know, wow, if turner hadn't put that stroke of color in exactly that place, the entire piece would be completely different. same goes for music, poetry, etc. (science and technology don't necessarily have that implication, because the nature of humanity is such that progress continues. quest to know, etc. eventually, someone would have discovered gravity and figured out how to harness it, and someone would have discovered that heat can make light, etc.) anyway, case likened that concept to god's creation ex nihilo. perhaps a bit of a stretch, but fascinating nonetheless.

*ten minutes later*

and i forgot the the second point, because i'm thick. ag! it was really good! ah well, if i remember, i'll put it here. must eat. a few of us are going to the head of the music school in a few hours to discuss the ineptitude of our music history iv professor. should be interesting...

about that camera. a&m photo world is a crooked store. they employ what i have learned is known as the "bait and switch" technique: they offer what appears to be a normal product, advertised at isanely low prices. you look around the website, to see if there's a catch, and don't find much. you place the order. then you get an email, asking you to call the company to "verify your order." when you call, you find out that the product you ordered includes none of the usually-included accessories; these you must buy separately. (you couldn't have known that in the first place, because there is no "what's in the box" explanation.) in my case, when i tried to deny the $30 one-year warranty, the salesman informed me that if i didn't get the warranty, he'd have to order an "international model," which would take four to six weeks to ship. i ended up placing the order (very reluctantly) anyway, but called back ten minutes later to cancel. the jerk sat there and argued with me for five minutes--"i'm sorry, ma'am, i don't understand why you placed an order and now you want to cancel it..." "you don't need to understand, just cancel the order." he threatened to charge me a $20 cancellation fee, but backed down when i refused to budge. it was ridiculous. so. buyers beware. for future reference, i found a great site that has reviews and ratings for internet stores. great place, perfect for use with froogle, which (as yet) has no store-rating system.

anyway. ended up buying the camera from newegg, with whom i have been 3satisfied in the past. i ordered it yesterday, and it shipped this afternoon. how's that for exciting, baby, yeah. it could be here before the weekend.

*dances*

it's on slashdot, so it must be true: coffee, espresso in particular, is good for you! drink up, yo! [source article]

lovely unproductive weekend. watched five movies (i think) and learned to write my name and insult people in elvish. also attempted to contact the idiots at am photo world, who are refusing to ship me my camera because i tried to send to an address other than my credit card billing address. so couple that with the incompetency my music history professor is currently displaying and you get a somewhat irritated gemma....

*listens*

ah, but copland's fanfare makes it all better....

excellent news today! next semester, all seats in the orchestra will be auditioned! meaning players will earn their seats, and there will be no one in a seat they don't deserve! this is exciting! it seems the orchestra director finally decided there are enough majors (music majors, 'scuse me) that he doesn't have to take every non-major who's interested. now, don't get me wrong, there are good things to be said for rotated seating. everyone gets a chance to play in almost every spot, etc. good experience, no competitiveness to get in the way of music-making. but when you've got a non-major violinist who just learned third position a year ago sitting second stand in the firsts, i'd say it's a little out of hand.... anyway. just imagine the possibilities. he could have us audition on music we're actually going to play, and give us the parts over the summer, so that when we came in for the first rehearsal in the fall, WE'D BE ABLE TO PLAY THE MUSIC. straight off, yo. ah, it'd be so cool! make me so happy! we could sound good, really good, and work on ensemble issues instead of i-don't-know-my-notes issues! i'm so excited about this, i just can't tell you. the school has finally found the guts to say, "some of you play better than others of you, and we're going to rank you accordingly."

*dances*

heh, it'll also be nice to finally have a little competition going on. i'm far too competitive for this school, and the ambiguity has been driving me up a freaKING W A L L . i don't care if end up sitting in the back of the seconds, just to have something to shoot for would be lovely.

had yet another fantastic lesson this afternoon. i absolutely love the way she challenges me--e.g., she'll have me play my material a tempo when i really don't think i can, and then i do and...it's great. i surprise myself in every lesson. and she's such a great player. with my old teacher, you always got the impression that he was working very hard to keep everything tightly reined, under complete control at all times. not a terribly compelling way to play, savez? (i didn't intend for that to rhyme....) she is the opposite, gets completely into the music and if she has to sacrifice a few notes to her musicality, so be it. it's so nice. it's been a while since a teacher inspired me, i'm enjoying it. thank you, lord.

charles ives was famous for writing music that mimics other vernacular sounds. he wrote choral pieces in quarter tones to simulate a small-town church choir singing out of tune, or in exotic meters to imitate their inablity to all find the downbeat at the same time.

so, had orchestra rehearsal tonight.

the violins sound so wretched.

right then, don't particularly want to go into it. it wasn't as bad as tuesday, and there will be many trips to the woodshed this coming week. concert's a week from saturday, yeah babay.

in other news, today i learned that not practicing a piece of music because it's scary is not a good idea. it wastes time and doesn't help to learn the piece. i'd been avoiding my dvorak all week, because i can't even really play the etudes my teacher assigned me, and i feel like i have no right learning repertoire if i can't play etudes. (i've been practicing, understand, just not that piece.) finally picked up the dvorak today, ugly etudes notwithstanding, and found that it's really not that terrible. i covered two pages of new material in an hour. was a great feeling, let me tell you. i love playing in tune, it's such a treat. and it's truly beautiful music, phrases just flow, transitions and all. finely crafted. very nice to play. anyway.

brian invented a new game in the third floor lounge. doesn't have a name yet, but it involves a broken french horn mute electrical-taped to four drumsticks, a trumpet stand, a hymnal, and a small trumpet mute. i missed the creation process, but i did get to see brian and dan playing later. exuberantly. we were all a little fried after orchestra...