Mumbly mumbly mumbly GAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going to try to not swear, cause I typed enough to other people already.

I shouldn't complain because things are going pretty well, but I'm stressed and pissy and gah mumbly!

There is so much work left on my thesis, and I need to get the pianist's copy to her on Wednesday and it won't be anywhere near finished, and it's going to be a race to the finish line to get things finished for the conductor's deadline of the 16'th, but there's no moving that deadline so it's just going to happen.

  It's just pissing me off because I know what I want to happen, and I even have most of the musical material to make it happen, but I'm having major issues making it actually happen.

Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean!

I need to just stay focused.

I need to stop blogging, this is taking away valuable productivity time!

And with that said, I'm going out for dinner with a friend - yay for counterproductive time use!

That's what I love about procrastination; even though you know it's for the worst and it won't help you whatsoever, it is entirely appealing!

Nevertheless, I will probably accomplish more before dinner than I have over the last few hours!

Well, I hadn't done it for quite a while, but I started back at it the other night. I stayed up until 5am on tuesday because of it.
I knit.
My new macbook inspired me to knit a case for it. I'm not the type that would waste my money on a case, especially when I can make one myself.
Therefore, here are pictures of the computer and its new home.


There's nothing really special about the pictures of the computer itself, you can get a nicer look at the computer and its features on the promotional website, but there you go anyway.

Below are pictures of the case I've spent several hours of procrastination time making. I haven't finished it yet, I need to sew the back of the apple logo together at the back so it doesn't stretch so much.
Also, I made it a little too small - it fits nice and tight so the macbook is safe and sound, but the stretch is especially noticeable with the logo. Once again, sewing it together at the back will fix that slightly, but hmm.. only time will tell.














In other news, I haven't gotten the gleaming results I've wanted from the pump this week. I meant to fast during the afternoon sometime this week, but it just didn't fit into my schedule. Tomorrow, I have my last phone meeting with my nurse, so hopefully she will have some helpful advice.
I leave on Saturday and will be spending the rest of the month out West. I will be treating it like a pump vacation for bits of it. In order to get a clear picture of my insulin's function, I haven't been allowed to correct for high sugars this last few weeks, but I will be taking care of that while away. Hopefully, this will remind me of the goodness that the pump promises. So far, it hasn't delivered what it is supposed to be able to do. I realize that I need to work at it, and I have, but it has been less than inspiring thus far.

Also, tomorrow I have my last meeting with my thesis adviser before he goes on sabbatical, and though I will still meet with him next term, I want to make the most of it. With that said, I haven't written enough for tomorrow, so I'm off to do that!

I've been bad. Starting my master's is my chance to take the boat by the oars and really get things moving, but I've caught myself procrastinating again. This composition - I haven't really touched it since the last time I blogged, and I should have been spending every spare moment on it. Now, I will have to spend pretty much the entirety of my weekend working on it. I shouldn't say that though, that gives me the excuse to waste a whole weekend on something that shouldn't take that long. I'll rephrase - I will have it done by tomorrow evening so that I can go out tomorrow and spend Sunday doing whatever I please. I also have to keep in mind that I have some reading and listening to do for my first Orchestration class and Composition lecture.

Another thing I noticed myself doing is walking on the left side of the sidewalk. I hate this; I have told people off in Winnipeg for walking on the left side of the sidewalk. Here, they may drive on the right side of the road, but I swear the pedestrians think they're in jolly old England, and it's starting to rub off on me. I will keep my eye on it and try to rectify this mistake.

Today we had a guest lecturer at school. Allen Forte is credited as being the man to have brought the Second Viennese School of music over to North America and revolutionized how we organize pitch content. Long story short, he is a hugely popular and respected music theorist and he came to our school. At lunch, we were treated to a lecture recital of the three Petrarch Sonnets by Liszt, played by his wife Madeleine Forte. In undergrad, I had played the vocal version of Sonnet 104, so having listened to quite a few recordings of the solo and vocal versions, I can easily say that hers was my favorite interpretation. How do I put this nicely... She is not a young woman, which made her incredible technique and pianism that much more impressive.
Later in the afternoon, I attended Allen Forte's presentation of a recent research paper on a short piece by Schoenberg. It was fascinating how he presented the many instances of referencing himself and his students through the use of the musical alphabet within a piece that was under a minute in length. There was so much more substance to his lecture, which I cannot even begin to try and explain here.

Ok, back to procrastination... I will do so by speaking more of procrastination - I've been avoiding dishes since yesterday afternoon. I certainly need to have those done before my roommate gets back from Toronto, but I'll set myself a goal - I should have them done before going out tomorrow. Maybe the dishes will help me to avoid working on my composition.

On a positive note, I finally got around to going to the percussion department today. I found some random percussionists in the hallway and they showed me some of the ins and outs of cymbals. In all of the textbooks I have and some online resources I consulted, nothing could answer the questions I had about them. They all told me about the fact that a cymbal can sound very different based on where you hit it, but they didn't really attempt to qualify that with descriptions. Basically all I wanted to know was if the harmonics increased as you move outwards on the cymbal or if it was the inverse; also what were the sonorous qualities of hitting the dome. Basically, those questions were answered simply enough by just hearing it played at different points of the cymbal. Harmonics are not the same in the cymbal as they are with other instruments. Rather than the number of audible overtones being different based on where you strike, it's the organization of the multiple sets of overtones. Hit at the outside rim, the overtones are quite spread out giving the sound a full body, whereas the inside renders a sound more compact at the high end of overtones. Hitting the dome gives a dead(ish) sound almost exclusively made up of the upper partials. Now I have the information about the cymbal that I needed in order to feel comfortable developing a piece based on the acoustic qualities of it as an instrument.

Now I will stop blogging and maybe even get some work done.