This is what I accomplished this weekend.

So I was going to go camping, but then I decided not to, but then Sarah persuaded me to, but then it got cancelled, but then Ashley could go with us so then it was back on again, so I drove down to Salt Lake on Thursday, and then we decided not to go camping.

So what did we do?  Pretty much nothing except go to Keys on Main Friday night which is a dueling pianos bar downtown.  We wrote down our three top song requests for them to choose from and they played MINE, which of course was Girls Just Want to Have Fun.  And I had a virgin margarita that was tasty.

All last week I was trying to schedule something with this girl Andrea from Boise that I ran into at a Latin dance a few weeks ago when she was visiting Rexburg.  We had mutual crushes years ago but hadn't seen one another in a really long time.  She's been in Orem all week trying to get this really competitive writing position, so after a couple failed attempts at scheduling a date, I finally was able to take her out to breakfast this morning.  We made a big styrofoamcup/straw/plasticfork/napkin sculpture thing and dedicated it to the waitress who came up and told us how cool it was, and then had a nice long conversation sitting on wet grass, but our situations are not exactly conducive to getting to know one another at this point since our lives are both pretty much in limbo right now.

The rest of the day was spent sleeping, saxophoning, eating Indian food, learning how to play the ukulele for two hours, risking my and Sarah's lives for the sake of art (as seen above), and watching the Lost Skeleton.

All in all, just about as productive as any other day of my life right now.

Just flying by the seat of my butt... or the pants of my seat... or... my pants have... wings... what?

Life has been nutty lately.  I can't go to grad school because I gots no monies, so I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to be in Provo, Boise, or stuck in Rexburg next year.  My vote is NOT stuck in Rexburg.  Whatever the case, I need to be taking sax lessons from someone in order to improve my skillz, so either Ray Smith in Provo, Sandon in Boise, or Brent in Twin Falls.  But whatever the case, I'm going to be in Rexburg all summer trying not to be in it.

My love life can be summed up in the following two music videos, Ben Harper being my mature response to my situation and Radiohead being my immature response.  Both responses help me get through it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVXFP89EeqU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeowFbvpu0U

Basically she said she didn't want me, acted like she really did want me, I gambled and finally professed my undying love, oops I should have done that three months ago, her true soul mate showed up over the weekend in Baxter-like fashion, my heart kicked me in the groin, and now I'm off to buy me a gromwell and start afresh.  BUT I shouldn't make too light of the situation in that I think it was an important growing experience for the both of us and it's never a waste to have made a great friend.

Last night I hung out with Sara Z for the last time ever possibly.  It was nice to have finally become friends again after a year of weirdness.  In other girl news, I very randomly met someone last Wednesday on my last day of school with whom I'm definitely going to travel the world and overcome world hunger (or, um, maybe just watch a lot of foreign films), but first she really wants to take me to BJ's Bayou and introduce me to the ghost in the green dress.

Funny story that sounds awfully arrogant coming from me but is still funny: Last Thursday Emily and I were Googling our names and my name popped up on a blog entitled "You know you're a music major when..." where several BYU-I vocal major girls had listed their ideas.  One of them said that you know you're a music major when at least five of your friends have had a crush on me at some point or another.  I laughed and left a facetious comment but then erased it because I didn't want to seem like TOO much of a jerk.  Plus some of these girls had been my students in the past so... probably not a great idea.  Oh, and that was my last night seeing Em before she leaves on her mission.  It's definitely been an emotional week of "goodbye, I may never see you again."

This week I'm going to take a vacation to Salt Lake and hang with Sarah for a few days.  It was supposed to be a camping trip, but that fell through, so now I'm just gonna camp at her place.  We'll probably get matching tattoos.  At any rate, it will be nice to escape.  Sarah's a genius by the way.  BOTH the U of U and BYU child development programs have figured out a way to work with her for her masters because they both really liked her, although officially she'll be enrolled at BYU.  She's so popular.

Well the next time I write I hope to know what I'm actually doing with my life in the upcoming year!

Tales from the Crypt

It's time for my update of random events.  Ready GO!

1. Kyle made his senior recital poster with pictures of he and Aaron on it (Aaron is directing the orchestra).  Both of these guys are geeks.  Everyone know that.  They know that.  Talented geeks, but geeks nonetheless.  And they both spend way too much time trying to impress the ladies by coming off as these attractive, professional, intense musicians.  Kyle wanted his poster to send that message of course, so both he and Aaron are staring at you dead serious with these really intense resolute looks.  Well of course no one was taking the poster seriously.  Aaron was holding his baton like he was Harry Potter about to defend himself with his wand, and as I stared at it more, I realized how much Kyle looked like professor Snape with short hair holding the neck of a cello.  So I spent a good two or three hours finding the perfect pictures on the internet to turn this poster into a Harry Potter movie advertisement.  Snape's head fit perfectly onto Kyle's and the cello neck turned into a broom.  For Aaron, I cut out just Harry's hair and glasses, both of which were slightly too small, giving it this really awkward geeky look.  Of course then I drew a lightning bolt on his forehead, and he already had the wand.  Then I taped it up on Kyle's locker.  It turned out really well if I may say so myself.  I wasn't there, but I heard it attracted quite a crowd, and I got compliments on it for the rest of the day.  Kyle hunted me down but he was a good sport about it and left it hanging on the inside of his locker.

 

2. So a little over a week ago we played a couple of days in the new dining area in the MC to advertise for the Wycliffe Gordon concert that weekend.  Well for like two weeks we'd been complaining and joking about how ridiculous the Wycliffe poster was that Center Stage designed because it had a picture of Wycliffe against a blue background with a yellow circle around his head, which was functioning as the "O" in GordOn.  So the message being conveyed was one of three things: 1. Wycliffe, your fat head is so round we thought it'd make a good "O"; 2. Wycliffe, your head is so round we thought we'd make it look like the moon; 3. Wycliffe, we admire you so much we decided to saint you and give you a big yellow halo.  In fact the first thing most people noticed was that it looked like he had a halo.

So anyway we were performing with one of those posters set up next to us and this girl comes up to me and says, "So what do you think about that poster?"  Without hesitation and without even thinking I turned to her and said very matter-of-factly, "Oh it's hideous."  She looked a little stunned and suddenly it dawned on me and I said, "Oh!  Are you the girl that designed them?"

Yup.  I talked to her for a minute and it turned out she had done her research and now I can see what vintage style she was going for, but it just turned out really awkward.  I apologized like a million times.

3. The Wycliffe concert was awesome.

4. I went to FHE for the first time in who-knows-how-long where they had a grand showing of The Incredibles in the cultural hall on a huge projector screen with popcorn and everything.  I'm finally making singles branch friends I can hang with, largely because my roommate is one of the integral members of that social scene.

5. I've been getting to know this girl Shanda who's a folk singer/guitarist/photographer/soccer player from California, so we started hanging out this week, mostly talking music and movies.  Her family is a bunch of intense movie buffs.

6. I've feel like I've become the cultural center of my singles branch because word got out that I'm into foreign flicks and now all these people have been borrowing my movies and watching them all week.  My Mongolian friend Roza watched The Color of Paradise from 2-4:00am last night and said she cried all the way through it, which is just kinda funny because she's one of the most happy, care-free people I know.

7. Thursday night Emily found me practicing and explained that she needed me to accompany her to a dance lab right then because her stalker was bound to be there.  We went, but it ended a lot sooner than she thought, so we got in a cha-cha-cha (FYI that's it's real name), fox trot, waltz and a couple of swings and it was over.  But we won some silly string for striking our best interpretive dance poses!  Then we made french toast at 10:00 at night with way too much nutmeg and it was scrumptious.

8. Last night we had a Vernal Equinox BBQ at Holly and Pili's place.  Somehow I got stuck grilling all the burgers and hotdogs.  I don't know how that happened.  It ended with Shanda and Pili doing several songs with the guitar.  They're both really pretty good.  Shanda had texted me that afternoon to announce the precise minute at which the vernal equinox was taking place.  I'm pretty sure I could feel it.  And it was fitting that it was the first day of spring because it was the first warm day we've had all year.

9. This morning Ryan, Shanda, Meagan, Roza and I went to the college flea market that some business students are doing for their project this semester.  It was actually really big with some pretty good booths, but it was apparent that several people were just using their booth as a garage sale.  Favorite parts: the booth selling a bunch of a used clothes and a bowling ball, the booth selling cats(?), the TWO booths selling flowery tutus, the booth selling edited movies including an edited version of a Hannah Montana video, and the random tire for sale that I didn't know which booth it belonged to.  Afterward we went ate lunch on the grass in the park in the SUN.

10.  Tonight I went to Guitars Unplugged at the last minute with Emily, and after we went to Ingrid's and ended up playing Guitar Hero which we were all really bad at.  Well then Ingrid's roommate comes in and I said I'd play against her and she looked at me like, "Whatever dude," sitting there chomping on her gum like it was cud and playing with her hair and staring at the ceiling and looking totally unimpressed with everyone.  And then she puts it on Expert mode which is LITERALLY almost impossible, and she starts playing and her fingers are FLYING and she's getting almost every note.  It was the craziest thing I've ever seen.  Her fingers were just a blur.  It's like she was this Guitar Hero prodigy.  As ridiculous as it sounds, and as much as I didn't want to admit it because she was being a brat, it was actually kind of inspiring.  Like, I don't think I'm even that coordinated on the sax.  The funny thing is I guess the game got her into actually picking up the the guitar a couple of years ago and Ingrid said she's really good at it now.

Because it chases away the loneliness birds.

To whom it may concern,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97BwLXtLTT0&NR=1

Waters of March

A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road,
It's the rest of a stump,
It's a little alone

It's a sliver of glass,
It is life, it's the sun,
It is night, it is death,
It's a trap, it's a gun

The oak when it blooms,
A fox in the brush,
A knot in the wood,
The song of a thrush

The wood of the wind,
A cliff, a fall,
A scratch, a lump,
It is nothing at all

It's the wind blowing free,
It's the end of the slope,
It's a beam, it's a void,
It's a hunch, it's a hope

And the river bank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the end of the strain,
The joy in your heart

The foot, the ground,
The flesh and the bone,
The beat of the road,
A slingshot's stone

A fish, a flash,
A silvery glow,
A fight, a bet,
The range of a bow

The bed of the well,
The end of the line,
The dismay in the face,
It's a loss, it's a find

A spear, a spike,
A point, a nail,
A drip, a drop,
The end of the tale

A truckload of bricks
in the soft morning light,
The shot of a gun
in the dead of the night

A mile, a must,
A thrust, a bump,
It's a girl, it's a rhyme,
It's a cold, it's the mumps

The plan of the house,
The body in bed,
And the car that got stuck,
It's the mud, it's the mud

Afloat, adrift,
A flight, a wing,
A hawk, a quail,
The promise of spring

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the promise of life
It's the joy in your heart

A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump,
It's a little alone

A snake, a stick,
It is John, it is Joe,
It's a thorn in your hand
and a cut in your toe

A point, a grain,
A bee, a bite,
A blink, a buzzard,
A sudden stroke of night

A pin, a needle,
A sting, a pain,
A snail, a riddle,
A wasp, a stain

A pass in the mountains,
A horse and a mule,
In the distance the shelves
rode three shadows of blue

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the promise of life
in your heart, in your heart

A stick, a stone,
The end of the road,
The rest of a stump,
A lonesome road

A sliver of glass,
A life, the sun,
A knife, a death,
The end of the run

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the end of all strain,
It's the joy in your heart.

Pixi Stix? JUST HOOK IT UP TO MY VEINS!!!!!!!

Hello word.  Here's the world.  Wait, flip that...   Illinois accepted me. Colorado did not.  I'm just waiting for my FAFSA pin number to FINALLY arrive so I can finalize that and find out if Illinois wants to offer me any money.  Cross your fingers.

Other than that life has been slowish: 

*I'm trying to practice a lot more.

*I think I've been grinding my teeth at night which is why my jaw hurts all the time.

*I leaned to one side of the toilet seat the other night and it snapped clear through and now it pinches really bad.

*I had to tell my stalker student to stop texting me for the second time.

*I saw a great Russian film by Andrei Tarkovsky called "Nostalghia," but if you're not into abstract artsy foreign films, I wouldn't recommend it. In fact I liked it so much I bought it.  It arrived in the mail today. There are several interesting themes in it, one of which is introduced by a crazy guy who's putting drops of oil into his hand and saying that when you put two drops together, you don't get two drops.  You just get a bigger drop.  And then they're walking through his house and there's this big sign on his wall that says 1+1=1.  Kind of a cool thought.  Oh, and then my friend Shanda referred to that scene in sacrament meeting last Sunday in a talk she had to give on marriage.  Actually there is a lot of Christian symbolism throughout the film.

*Speaking of films (but on the other end of the spectrum entirely) my roommate really likes High School Musical.  He threw a HSM birthday party for a girl he has a crush on in our ward the other day, and let me tell you, it was a big deal.  HSM pictures all over the walls, HSM decorations, HSM presents.  And he's been complaining about how much he wants to watch it lately, so finally he got a group of people together this evening for it.  I definitely wasn't interested, but he kind of guilt tripped me into thinking about it, and now we'll see.

OH WAIT OH WAIT OH WAIT!!!!!!!!  My roommate and friends just showed up HERE with the movie, and Ryan just stood in front of the TV and gave a very lengthy and eloquent introduction to High School Musical that was actually really funny.  And now the movie has been going for five minutes and I haven't stopped laughing.  Wow.  That's all I have to say.  In Ryan's words, it's like being fed Pixi Stix intravenously for an hour and a half...

Audition #2:

Very hip school.  Beautiful campus.  Terribly worn-down facilities.  The jazz department is crammed into a small corner of what looks like a cathedral.  The undergrad department is still fairly new so they only have a handful of undergrads, which means most of their jazzers are killer grad students.  I don't think I impressed anyone with my playing, but everyone was very cool.  John Gunderson the sax guy seemed fairly impressed by my teaching, maybe because he's so new to teaching and frankly isn't much of an educator yet, although he's a killer player and very personable.  I went to his advanced jazz theory class and it was hilarious.  We spent 15 minutes going over a graphic analysis of a Bjork (That's right, Bjork) song that he did.  It was a piece of paper that read from left to right, full of all these symbols he came up with to represent the different sounds.  "So right here there's this pointalistic texture going on, so I drew a bunch of dots, and this jagged line is for that jagged electronic thing going on right there."  And he doesn't really break things down because I don't think he thinks that way (the exact opposite of Dr. Watkins).  He just throws stuff out there and then sits there like he doesn't know what else to say, and people might take the opportunity to comment, or they might not.  "So man, check out those first three chords..." (long silence). Or, "So I think if I wrote a tune like this where the melodic phrases didn't line up with the harmonic phrases and they were all odd lengths, that'd be pretty cool..." (long silence).  One of the students gave me a tour of the campus which was really nice of him.  Overall it was a positive experience and it's motivated me to start practicing my butt off again because ever since I started teaching my practicing has been going down hill.

Crud I gotta go teach a lesson.  Anyway, I kind of don't think I'm going to get accepted there.  But we'll see.  I might not get into either one of my programs, in which case I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  Keep teaching here?  Move to Boise?  Move to Salt Lake?  We'll see.

It's ADVENTURE TIIIIIIIME! My posts are too long.

Truly it has been a weekend of adventure.  Kurt came to Rexburg and stayed at my place Friday night.  It was tons of fun to have an old friend back, especially one who gets really excited about music.  For awhile now the jazz department has been short on assertive jazzers who are serious about learning the art, especially rhythm section guys.  It used to be Ben and Leighton on guitar, Kurt on keys, Nathaniel on whatever he wanted, and several drummers and saxophonists.  Everyone was looking for gigs and organizing jam sessions and experimenting and trying to play tunes that were way too hard, but it's not like that anymore.  So for Kurt to come up from Utah and practice with the Lionel Hampton festival competitors this year (because we have NO jazz pianists) totally made my day.

Last night was the premier of "The Quartet of Super Doom" which was the movie we made a few weeks ago, and Ingrid and I were going to turn it into another date, but she had to bail on me last minute.  So Kurt and I went to the piano at the Manwaring Center on the second floor (where terrible amateur male pianists frequently try to show off for the passers-by) and attempted to show off for the passers-by.  We actually didn't expect many people to go by, but it turns out we were right by some kind of new ticket kiosk (which was broken but apparently word hadn't gotten out yet) and tons of people came by.  Some stayed and listened.  It was really fun to play in public again, especially with someone who's good.

Later we got a big group together and watched our movie on a big screen in one of the lecture halls in the Snow Building with stadium seating.  Kim made a huge bag of popcorn.  The whole thing was amazing.  John's going to put it on YouTube, so I'll post the link as soon as I get it.  Plus it was like old times with all these people that I don't see much anymore, so I was getting in an increasingly slaphappy mood and soon my maturity level literally dropped to that of my high school days.  I was climbing the Snow Building walls, singing, dancing, saying all manner or retarded things, being flirtastic, and when we went to Millhollow I just had to change "$1.89 Chips and drink with purchase of sandwhich or salad" to "$1.89 hips and drink with purchase of sand or lad" just like old times.  The awkward thing was no one else was hyper, which made me the group entertainment for the night.

And then the moment of glory.  This cute girl with some other group at Millhollow said something kind of funny to me in passing, and then we kept making eye contact for some reason.  And then when I "accidently" flicked a piece of ice at their group, she was the only one who saw, and Dave said she was glaring at me.  So I collected everyone's styrofoam bowls and plastic spoons and constructed an elaborate doll with a face that I drew saying "I'm sorry I threw ice."  It was hideous and dripping melted ice cream, and I walked over to her table and gave it to her with my profound apologies.  Later she came up and told me it was the most elaborate thing she'd ever seen and asked me where I got the inspiration.  My mind went blank because I hadn't seen this coming and my ten noisy friends had suddenly gone completely silent to watch the awkwardness unfold, but I said something stupid and she said she'd cherish it forever.  Later I went through all the clever things I should have said but didn't.  Oh well, I'll probably never see her again.

So now I'm in Boulder, Colorado and already having a swell time.  Everyone's been so nice.  I was at the airport trying to figure out the bus situation from Denver to Boulder when I realized that a bus ticket was $12 and I only had $11.70, and you have to pay in cash and it has to be exact change.  So I said something to this old bus driver from this other bus and after he asked how much I had, he said "Don't worry about it, he'll let you on."  But then a few minutes later he came back and gave me 30 cents!  What a saint.  And then I had only just met this CU student girl when she entrusted me with her stuff so she could go do something back in the airport.  And then I met this retired couple on the bus who found out what bus stop I needed to get off at and explained how to get to my hotel, and the lady had worked at CU so she told me how great the school and community are.  And and this other friendly guy jumped into the conversation who had taken a bunch of jazz classes here and was telling me how cool the jazz faculty is.  And my hotel guy was nice and everyone's a hippie and everyone rides their bikes and the weather is only slightly chilly and I bought food at the organic grocery store right in front of my hotel and the jazz building literally looks like an old cathedral and it's a seven minute walk from my room and and and and...  and everything is just great.

So wish me luck.  I audition in 12 and a half hours.  But even if I don't make it in I'm still moving down here.  I found the perfect spot under a footbridge with some other bums.