School starts again

Welcome back to school last Tuesday for CSU students!

My schedule this semester is crazy wonderful and easy. Let me lay it out for you:

Monday - (10am) Jazz Pedagogy, (11am) Trombone Studio, (1pm) Understanding Dance, (3:30pm) Trombone Lesson, (4:45pm-6pm) Concert Band

Tuesday - (11am) Independent Study, (3pm-4:30pm) Symphonic Band

Wednesday - Monday without the trombone lesson

Thursday - (3pm-4:30pm) Symphonic Band, (7:30pm-9:30pm) African Drum and Dance

Friday - (1pm) Understanding Dance, every other week (4pm-5pm) Symphonic Band Sectionals

Jazz Pedagogy is taught by someone whom I idolize a little bit and have for years: Peter Sommer. He is a saxophonist, amazing at that, and he is a great teacher. Since I am not really a music education student anymore this class is not necessary, but I am interested and my three best friends here are in the class so that makes it even that much more enjoyable.

Trombone studio is a once a week meeting of trombone players, usually all low brass. While it is sometimes organized differently than I would have done, it is good studio bonding.

Understanding Dance is a class that I originally decided to take because it will give me credits not in music when I return to Lawrence. After two class periods I am really looking forward to the course material and teacher.

Concert Band is for fun. I am playing tuba and I am SO excited!!!!

My independent study is on band literature/history/stuff. It has yet to be fully decided and that's alright with me. There are two other people involved in this, one is my new friend Joe (who will become one of my new best friends though he doesn't know it yet) and my amazing band director, Dr. Nick.

Symphonic Bans is also fun, not completely for fun but it is great. Unfortunately, this semester my bass trombone friend, Mark, could not be in an ensemble and my new friend has yet to actually show up....but Dr. Nick is the director and he always picks great music and gives us good comments.

African Drum and Dance will be simply amazing. It's taught by a girl who I know and I am just generally super excited.

So yeah, it should be an fairly easy and fun semester!

Home Improvement

As I was replacing the light in the office that I'm helping my parents re-vamp I was reflecting that I have gotten all of my home improvement knowledge from helping my parents with these types of projects. The past few days I have clocked just over 10 hours removing "popcorn" from the ceiling. removing floor boards, removing tack strips (after not stepping on too many), removing nd replacing the light (so I could get to the ceiling), removing cupboards, sanding so the paint lines won't stand out, painting the walls, spackling the walls and a little light plumbing to help with the removal with the "popcorn". It's amazing. I'd never thought about how much I'm learning until I took a step back and looked at all that I had done. Wow. I mean, where else does one learn these....skills? Books when you need to fix your own house? watching a youtube? or do you just give up because you believe it is difficult (or too messy) and hire someone? Just thoughts.

If you get the chance, help people with home improvement projects, you'll thank yourself later.

Also, as I was painting the wall this great green color I realized that when I own a place, every room will be some shade of purple. It won't be intentional probably but it'll happen. :)

Look at me blog! I'm so proud of me! :P

Happy New Year!

Alright, so I'm technically 8 days late. whatever. get over it.

I've never really come to terms with new years being a big thing anyway. Right now my life is still run on a school calendar so my new years happen in September usually and I find the one in January to be quite awkward actually. I mean, yeah, I stay up till midnight and say rabbit rabbit rabbit (just like the first of EVERY month, when I remember) and happy new year. I attempt to come up with some resolutions and think about the past year but it feels weird. Especially this year because I'm between two different schools and I think I've done too much thinking and had too many different experiences to have remained the same person. In fact, I'm positive I'm not the same person as I was last year, or even as I was in August (when I started at CSU).

As long as I'm being all reflective, and a little hippocritical, let's look at my year in review:

• Word of the year: Epiphany. why is this my word? because I've had a lot of them and I just learned how it was spelled and I think it's wonderful.
• Name of the year: Ingrid. This is what I named my bass trombone and it is also:
• Favorite Music/Artist of the year: Ingrid Michaelson. I love her, this has already been mentioned.
• Best book I read last year: I haven't really read much, regrettibly, but I think I'd have to say The World is Flat By Thomas Friedman. I actually read this for one of my classes and as I have said a few times in the past few months "This damn book is ruining my life" as I realized just how right Mr. Friedman is/was.
• Band Piece of the year: Armenian Dances. Just is, played it twice and LOVE IT!
• Favorite thing I baked: My birthday cake: Chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, chocolate ganache.
• Drink of the year: Tea. if I had to pick one flavor, it would be vanilla strawberry rose, which I just learned has been discontinued and I wanted to cry.
• Website of the year: Google. Duh.
• Webcomic of the year: Questionable Content. If you're gonna read it you should really start from the beginning
• Biggest FAIL of the year: this blog, also mentioned before
• Punctuation of the year: ...yeah...
• Addiction of the year: Texting. OMG, texting.
• Phrase of the year: points for trying. I think...there might be another one....not sure.

So...resolutions...I make them but I'm still not sure how I feel about them...I think in part because I resolve to do things all year round, it's not a special thing for me. Just because the calendar year changes doesn't mean I need to pick RIGHT NOW to start new and over and make huge amazing changes in my life. I do that whenever I feel like I need to. This year kind of happened to fall near new years....points for me?

Anyway...welcome to my new year, glad you're a part of it :)

~Renee