So my mom brought up an issue today that I was planning on just ignoring for a while (ca 10 years or so).
I own a piano, a grand piano. It is sitting in my parents living room as it has been for the last few years. I am not taking it with me to grad school because I will not be studying piano any longer and it would cost far too much to move out there. Also, I will be in an apartment out there, and for size and loudness issues, pianos don't generally work in apartments.
She didn't come out and tell me to sell it, actually she said she likes it and wants me to keep it there, but she also mentioned that it's ok for a reasonable period of time. Our concept differs in terms of what is a reasonable period of time.
I told her I'm not going to take it out of their house until I have a semblance of permanance... ie a teaching position at a university. At the minimum, I have 2 years before I'm done my masters, to get a teaching position, I'd need a doctorate on top of that, meaning an additional 3 years ish and I'm planning on working/travelling between those degrees. I have no plans nor any intentions of settling down for at least another 8 years. I'm not saying that it might not happen for whatever reasons, but we can't count on that piano leaving the house during that time.
The whole thing has me thinking about whether I even want the piano anymore. I got it because I had plans of pursuing a masters in performance at that time. Piano, and THAT piano was going to be an integral part of my life. Now, it is not necessarily going to have the same significance. If I move to another city to settle down, am I going to be willing to have it hauled across a continent? Or would this investment serve me better if I just sold the piano and put the money in an RRSP or something.
This is where I stand right now: If my parents don't mind, I would like it to stay at their house for as long as I need before settling down. The piano is old enough that I don't think it will depreciate in value, and it certainly isn't falling apart. I want to keep it, at least as a physical investment. If something comes up, I could sell it as a sort of rainy day fund.
When it comes down to it, even though I won't be a concert pianist I've fallen in love with professional quality instruments, and Petra is certainly that. In a decade, I won't be able to afford that kind of an instrument, and certainly not for the amount that was paid for this piano.
Sometimes I feel guilty that I'll be taking up 5'8"of piano space in my parents house even after I move out, but maybe I shouldn't. My dad seems to have no issue with me storing the piano there.
I want to teach my parents piano so that they will stay used!

so, I got a bit more done on that career goals thing.... slowly coming along.

Tonight I started an online German learning course. I figure I'll put some effort into it before going to Berlin. I want to somewhat not make an ass of myself. I'm feeling pretty confident that my pronunciation won't be horrible, but with all languages, it's the lack of facility I have with the vocabulary. In fact, I'm noticing that more and more in English even. Not that I have a terrible vocabulary in my native tongue, but words don't find themselves easily or quickly in my head. My friends keep saying that I have a natural aptitude for languages, but I seriously think I have some sorts of linguistic misorganizations going on dans ma tete!
Anyway, I wrote down a lot of verbs in a little rabbit notebook, so I'll try to memorize and figure out how to use some of them over the next few days, then I'll start adding more nouns into the vocab and try to combine the two categories together.

Tomorrow I get to pick up transcripts in the late afternoon. Once I have that, I have everything for my application, it's just a matter of fixing up my budget and the career goal form.

So, I've been trying to do this grant application for the past few days...
I got myself down to the university to order another transcript the other day and it will be ready for me tomorrow, and all the other paperwork seems to be coming together, except for the damned statement of career goals.
This has probably been one of the most difficult things I've ever had to write. I know it will be good for me to have organized my thoughts and put them on paper and then I can evaluate them and know if my plan is good or not..... FUCK!
Am I honestly supposed to know what I want to do and plan a way to stick to it?!? Not bloody likely!
As a result, I just started writing things today, and the word document had been blank all of Monday and Tuesday. But it's so unproductive, second guessing the wording of everything I'm writing. I'm trying to make it sound the best while keeping a smidgen of honesty, but I just know they won't give money to someone who writes "I'm doing my master's because they're paying me to do it, if someone wants to pay me to do a doctorate too, great, then I'll do that. Or maybe I'll try to sell my music to people, if they pay me for it, yay! If I keep with school, then I'll try to get a tenure position and then I can have money and that would be easier than struggling... but if that doesn't pan out, I'm good with struggling too!"

Truthfully, I just want to make music, and I hope that I can make a living at it.

Can't we all just get along!??!

Back to paperwork!

Grad school applications are so long passed, that I felt the need for paperwork yet again. I also feel the need for as much funding as possible. The due date for Manitoba Arts Council bursary requests is Friday, June 1'st... so I need to be quick. So far, the only thing that might get in the way are the damned transcripts.... always the problem. I have one left over from U of W, and I thought I did from U of M too, but I guess not... also, they're not updated yet, because I haven't graduated yet.. and they're all from before this term's marks were in.
Speaking of grad, I totally missed the cut off date for getting info in on whether or not I'm going to the grad ceremony - I was mostly avoiding the situation. I don't really want to go, but my parents are convincing me to - University is sorta a big deal to them. Apparently, I'm going to be the first one on either side of the family to do a Master's degree... I'll be the most highly educated member of my family... hahaha! My dad has always said I was (a) smart (ass).
Anyway, I'm not doing all that much, so I might as well start running around trying to get money for school.
Oh ya, back to why I was talking about the grad ceremony, I emailed to see if it was too late to attend the ceremony, and the guy said that I should come in to fill in the paperwork for the cap and gown and whatnot. While I'm there, I can also get more transcripts... if they can get them ready by thursday/friday.... though I don't want to leave it that long. Oh ya, I also have lots of medical bills that I need to try and get covered by the UMSU health plan. I was smart and didn't opt out this year, because I knew that my dad's insurance would run out half way through the year. Since then, I've just been absorbing the extra costs, but I can actually get the money back.. it will be like Christmas.. or Income tax time!

This year, I was sad because I didn't really get any money back around tax time because I filled out paperwork saying not to take off the taxes, so I signed forms for some summer work saying to take it off again.. but I have a feeling I shouldn't have... I never seem to be happy with how finances work out.

I'm just writing a quick post on the last few minutes of my extra long lunch break today, just to say everything is going well.
There isn't really anything worth blogging about yet today, so I won't bother.
Or maybe there is.
I got my score for Hair yesterday. I'm accompanying a summer production of my favorite musical. There's a fair number of cuts to it, but it's still going to be a massive chunk of music. Nevertheless, as with most musical theater music, there aren't that many parts that I'm going to have to drill and learn like I have to with Classical music. With a bass player and a drummer, the role of the piano will be different anyway, so it's not necessary that I learn everything exactly as written anyway. But I definitely want to have a strong familiarity with the music before I run off to Germany for half a month. I will be jumping into rehearsals as soon as I get back from Berlin.

Diabetes Nostalgia

Today I cleaned out my medical cupboard. Since I've been 7, the second shelf from the top in our hallway closet has been mine and mine alone. It's housed anything related to my diabetes that hasn't needed to be kept refrigerated. I took absolutely everything out and laid it on the couch and then realizing the historical significance of the collection I had before me, I organized it into a picture! Detailed comments about those pictures can be found at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=23210&id=751740071&ref=mf

That's right, those of you counting can see that I have 17 meters in my collection. There's actually 18, but I lent one of them out to a friend. The picture doesn't account for the many boxes of strips and lancets and the cartridges of insulin in the fridge.

Looking at all the technology that I've avoided throwing out really shows how far the technology has come in development since I was first diagnosed - never mind the advancements that came before that. At the same time, looking at the machines from the last say 6 -7 years, not a lot has changed. While the 1 minute down to 10 second change in test times was significant, tests can't seem to get any faster than 4-5 seconds, which is about industry standard. I'm fine with that, actually that is quite fast. If you don't have the patience to wait for 5 seconds, there is something very wrong.
I just bring it up to draw attention to it being the next big hurdle. I think we've reached the limit to how fast spot checking of blood glucose can be, the only improvement can be to make it instantaneous. If it could be instantaneous, then that would alleviate the problems with continuous systems as they currently exist.
Nevertheless, I'm not complaining. I'm actually rather happy with the way things are right now. Today was just a nostalgic day, that's all. While I'm certainly not going to bring all of my old meters with me, I'm definitely not going to throw them away, so I'm gonna put them somewhere and leave them at my parents house until there is a need for them in some sort of diabetes museum....

I want it now!!!

Damnit, I'm so vain sometimes...
One Touch has a new meter that is teeeny-tiny and I want it now now now. I came across the upgrade ad for the US and I called the number, but they wouldn't send it to Canada, so I tried the webform, but i had to use a fake zip code to submit the form.. so the meter will probably end up somewhere in Vermont anyway. Then I tried to call the Canadian office, who told me that the meter isn't available in Canada yet.
Even worse, I had to give the serial number of an old number and now she wants the old one back! I'm not giving it back, it's part of a collection of my old blood glucose meters.
In the end, the lady said that the new meter will be available in Canada in about 3 weeks, so I guess I will have something to look forward to when I come back from Germany.
But I'm so impatient!!!!

At some point, I had the good intentions of sending meters away to needy people, but I sent emails and apparently there are no meter recycling programs that want them. Therefore, I give up and keep them all for my collection!

Fun Day.
Fiona did not win the seat she was running for, BUT she did get something like 1,700 votes, which is 20 percent of the popular vote - quite an accomplishment for someone's first campaign. Also working 12+ hour days for the past 30-someodd days on someone else's campaign, I'm super proud of my friend for her initial political successes!
The riding that Fi was working in during the election was also the one I was helping out in. Today Fi and I were walking out in the rain for a few hours trying to get people out of their houses to vote... unfortunately it was raining very heavily and I was very very wet!

Today was the recording. We had discussion time and ran the piece 3 times. The experience was amazing. To start off, the ensemble was very clear in what they did and didn't understand about my performance notes. They were able to answer their own questions as a group, so I feel comfortable that I could give the score to an ensemble and they could prepare something without my presence. The ensemble was also stacked with very good players who were also very responsive to what I was looking for through the concept of the piece. I got good feedback about the piece and there was a genuine interest about my reasons for writing the piece.
As I mentioned yesterday, I wasn't sure of what to expect to hear... but I was happy. It sounded pretty good. The texture balance was good and there was so much variety in tones and colours produced by the ensemble.
Maybe tomorrow I might have time to edit the recordings and put them up on myspace.
I also have to play around with the other recording I made tonight of the musical theatre piece.

Tomorrow is so exciting.
1) Election day. Last day of helping out on the election campaign. It's been a lot of fun, so the celebrations tomorrow will be well enjoyed! It will be exciting and interesting to see how many votes my friend Fiona gets in her riding.
b)Auskultu Bonvolu - the ensemble piece I wrote is being recorded tomorrow evening. I printed out all the parts and the instructions so that I have them in one place and I can read along as the piece is performed tomorrow. I am going to be able to learn sooooo much from this experience. I spent a great deal of time thinking about and then putting into words the description of the piece and the performance/program notes. I will find out tomorrow if they made sense to the performers. While I will be there to answer any questions that may arise, I want to leave a lot up to the group performing it - to see if the way I explained it comes across into a performance that reflects my desires for the piece.
Also, at this point, I'm very happy with the form and structure and concept of the piece. Tomorrow will determine whether the musical parts of the piece are of the same caliber. I put a fair bit of effort into making sure the excerpts fit for each instrument or whatnot, and nothing would be more crushing than if when it is played - if it sounds unmusical and shitty because of the quality of the musical lines. If the performers aren't able to pull it off as a strong piece, then that's one issue and I will be able to examine how I explained the piece and what wasn't clear, but if it's my fault - boo me! Nevertheless, I'm hoping that the piece will be super effective and moving and wonderful!
I will be sure to post about that tomorrow night, or soon in the future.

In other news, Dance Festival is over. It was a lot of fun and mostly successful. One of the performers I played for did exceptionally well and has been invited to sing at the Gala final concert, meaning that I get to play for her again. I also need to record her piece tomorrow for another competition later this summer.

Dance festival yesterday was pretty good, somewhat fun even. It seemed to take forever, because there was time between a lot of the pieces, but not a lot of time - I ended up being something of a chaperone for some of it. Loud children singing showtunes is not my favorite thing in the world. Most of the pieces I played for did pretty well. The ones that were really well prepared did really well and then ones that were a little iffy and/or scary... well they did a little less well than other pieces. Seven of my ten pieces in total were done yesterday, so I only have 3 today.
There are actually almost 2 hours between the finish of the first group of pieces and then the time I need to be back for the others.... I'm debating whether I want to come home for dinner and then drive back downtown, or if I just want to stay down there and maybe go for a long tea break or something.
Ya, I'll just stay down there. There's no point in wasting that much gas.

I'm about to head off to bed.... tomorrow is going to be one heck of a long day.
I do my normal 9-12 stuff- playing for ballet classes. Next I have an extended lunch. At 2 ish, I need to make my way over to the place where the musical theater fun is going to happen. Basically, I'm there from that point on until around 10pm, maybe later.
I am going to be one tired buckaroo after that, but of course I'm gonna go out after that. My sister is in town and she brought a friend from Thompson who is here to socialize, which I should also do. I haven't really done much socializing since I finished school, so I need to get on that before I become a hermit.
Anyway, goodnight!

There's not a whole lot to blog about these days. One of my summer mini-projects for composing got axed, so one less thing to do before Germany. But ya, I've been busy helping out of the campaigns lately, so it's not like I'm just sleeping all the time.
Dropping election material has been good, good exercise and nice to see that area of the city.
Anyway, I won't talk about that cause it's not too exciting and it's touchy info on account of the election being so close....
I have signed up for a myspace account. It's been a bit silly because I signed up for the wrong type and I couldn't put music up... but now it's all good. The address is :
HERE

Anyway, mostly it's going to be my new home for showing off my music - this should be especially good once I'm away from people so that everyone can keep on top of what I'm composing! Right now I have the Alzheimer's Variations and the Baking with Momma song up. After election day, I will hopefully have my ensemble piece up too!

So, I don't think my haircut is all that bad... I fixed it a bit today, it's still not the best I've had, but it's certainly not the worst.
Which reminds me of a life lesson I've learned - twice:
Drinking and Scissors = bad times
or
Liquor + Haircut = No

As many of you may know, I've had quite the history with haircuts from friends, but at least I laugh about it... I actually treat it much less seriously than many other people, and it's not even their hair.

Dance Festival is coming up. I keep being warned by some co-workers - It is apparently a highly competitive, highly energetic, overly dramatic event with tempers and egos flying and very unorganized. I've been told that I will need to fight almost tooth and nail for rehearsal space. Nevertheless, you all probably know that I just thrive on the energy given off of socially awkward situations, and this will be no different. I'm a little unhappy that this is falling on my long weekend, but there's nothing I can do about that, so I'll just smile and make the best! At the same time, most of my friends are not doing anything for the weekend because they are either going to a summer program or they are involved in the election or some other things, so I'm not out of place being occupied this weekend.
Saturday will be long. I do ballet classes starting at 9am, then at 2ish, I start my time at dance festival. I have a supper break, BUT I am stuck there from 2:30-10pmish. Similar time frame for Sunday.

I also can't complain about not having much of a long weekend, because I really don't have much to do on the other days. I have slipped into my unproductive sleep habits again.. where I stay up until at least 3am and then sleep past noon. If I was doing something during my waking hours, I wouldn't mind, but alas I have really been doing a whole lot of nothing when I'm awake lately. I go between watching t.v., facebook/msn and I guess I've done a fair bit of cleaning lately. I have so much stuff to sift through.
The biggest challenge with moving will be to decide what to take with me (not much), what to pack up and leave here, and then the majority of it will be donated or tossed out - maybe Garage Sale.

I think I got a bad haircut today. The lady had no concept of what I meant by asking for my hair to be tapered at the back. I didn't have the patience to explain, so I will live with whatever she did back there. I could have waited til tomorrow to go to my normal barbershop, but I felt the need to get it cut today, in fact I went to several places before finding this one where I wouldn't have to wait. I guess I precluded a bad haircut by my low standards.
Actually, it's not bad... all I told her I wanted was shorter hair than I have now, then I told her shorter half way through, so I got what I wanted.
This afternoon was a bad diabetes day... I ran low on rapid insulin and ran out of strips, so I couldn't even test to find out how much insulin I needed.
Anyway, long story short, I got to my pharmacy and got more strips for even a new machine. I also got more insulin and everything is hunky-dory again!
I want to do something tonight, as in - not being bored.

I'm intrigued and a little frustrated.

I have agreed to write a piece for a friend's grad recital next year. She is doing her recital on the theme of the seasons. I love the idea. She was having trouble finding a song about Autumn, so she asked me to write one.
Problem is that Fall has not only been ignored by the music community, but seemingly by poets as well. I don't understand. I seem to recall seeing lots of paintings of Fall, but I guess the colours of that season are of particular draw to the visual artists. But it should be for everyone. Maybe it's the periods of history which I'm looking in... but I'm only excluding things that might cause copyright problems... as in the author has not yet been dead 50 years.
Anyway, I have a fairly good idea of what I'm looking for, and so far all I've seen has been vague references to the word autumn, void of seasonal descriptions.

Long story short, please recommend to me any poems that would be appropriate.

Super Duper Dancey

I went to the ballet with my mother for mother's day. It was superb.
It was 3 shorter pieces rather than a long long show - I highly approve.
Even better than the length was the quality of the shows. I rather enjoyed all of them for different reasons.
Our Waltzes - I approve of the use of solo piano to accompany the dancers. It really showed off the high caliber of dance accompanists that the RWB hires..... But seriously, the pianist was excellent and showed a nice sensitivity both to his own musicality as well as that of the dancers. The choreography was not quite what I expected, but I liked it and it really highlighted the strengths of some of the dancers. The thing I didn't like about it was that it was very female centered in terms of the choreography; the men served only to lift and highlight the women. Not that men shouldn't be utilitarian, but I guess I just saw too much standing around of the men while the women were doing their things. Still, keeping in mind that that was the stylistic preference of a classical style piece, it was well executed.
Angels in the Architecture - I thought this was brilliant in choreography and execution. I shan't point out a flaw, lest there be one. Quite a suitable and sensitive setting to the music of Copland's Appalachian Springs. The simplicity of the sets/costumes were a nice parallel to that of the music - but just as the music, the apparent simplicity brought out some beautiful resourcefulness. The way the women's skirts were used was affective and artistically strong. And the incorporation of the props (brooms and chairs) into set design was very efficient and allowed for new venues of exploration. Overall this was my favorite, and I didn't even need to get around to the actual performance comments. I really enjoyed the male / female role portrayal as it referred to Quaker culture. I loved the use of 'architectural' body shapes and forms as an expressive tool as well as how it shows on the dancer's bodies. HOWEVER, there is a pose on many many posters for this piece that I was waiting to see in context... but it wasn't there... I even checked with other people!!! NOT IMPRESSED. Actually it's only because that poster is the main poster in the pianist's lounge at work, so since I'd first seen the poster, Ive been hoping they'd do this piece...and finding out that they were doing it, I wanted to see the scene. Oh well.
Small Wonder - Cindy Marie Small was wonderful. The piece was wonderful as well. Mark Godden, you are wonderful. I didn't care for the shell staging/set theme, but I assume it is personal to her, and thus it was acceptable. Beautiful and moving. Congratulations on not only a great performance, but a great career.
The new one... Hikarazatto -ish - While I didn't think the performance of either the music or the dance was on par with some of the other pieces, I applaud the artistic daring of this piece. It had an energy throughout, which I felt needed to be more relaxed in the middle, then should have had more direction from it's return to the end. The piece as a whole was brilliantly organized with the staging and the lighting and setting of the movements. I really liked the repetitive elements in the movements which was implied by the percussive nature in the music, but I don't think it was clear enough in the music itself - until the end with a 3 and a half bar ostinato going out of sink with the rest of the texture. I saw this kind of idea implied in the choreography, but only up to 2 or 3 levels... whereas there were 6 groups, it would have been far more effective and apparent had it been more sequential or canonic. However, I loved the movement quality of this piece and the relation it had to the music. It filled me with excitement over things that can be done with modern dance and music!

Overall, I loved the contemporary flare that permeated this evening. It stood as a testament to the versatility of the company.

Mom and I went for Nachos and dessert afterwards and had a delightful time.
Happy Mother's Day to all of you!!!!
especially all of you....
MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!!!!!!

BloggidyBlog!
I don't really have much to say.
I'm taking my mom to the ballet tonight for Mother's Day... ooh I should also get her a card, ya. I should have bought her a present during the week, but now it's the weekend and I have no time, because I'm always super busy on the weekends.
I've been very involved in this provincial election - much more than I had ever thought I would be involved in politics. But I guess that's what happens when you are close friends with an up and coming young political superstar! Anyway, the election will keep me busy in the evenings next week, and then the weekend is Dance Festival.
My long weekend = 16 hours of loud and tacky-costumed musical theater fun..... I'm frightened.

I still haven't composed anything this summer. Nevertheless, my orchestra piece has been living in the near-back of my mind for a while now, so lots has developed in terms of the form and structure and conceptual aspects. I've even been thinking of the relation I want the themes to have between movements and some other characteristics of the musical lines. Once I get around to actually writing the music down, in theory lots of stuff will appear quickly.....at least that's what I'm going to try and believe. The piece has been living in my head for a while now, it's about time for it to start taking shape. I imagine that it will also take longer to sculpt and craft on account of all the orchestral colours available. I think that will be a lot of fun!

Anyway, back to the day of ballet classes!

Holy Fucking Shit...
I just lost a whole post because of a browser error... and it was a long one... and when I say it was a long one.. I mean I've been sitting for over an hour doing random things but mostly working on this blog entry.. and poof it's gone...
I covered a lot of ground.
Now I'm angry
FUCK
goodnight

I'm finally starting to feel better. It seems I never just get a cold that comes and goes.. it always morphs into a different kind of a cold or something worse...
This time it started as a sinus cold and then turned into a chest cold and I lost my voice and I had a fever, and now it seems to be on it's way out.. my voice isn't 100% but it's a little more reliable and not squeaky.

I feel like I'm wasting time presently... I had plans of being so super productive and creative during this time composing and whatnot, but I have some serious writer's block. I don't want to have to wait until I go to Berlin, hoping to be refreshed and inspired.... I want to be creative now.

I don't really have any projects to work on.. I want to write a piece for orchestra and I have lots of ideas floating around in my head, but there's just something that's preventing me from taking that initial plunge into it. It's very much the same feeling as standing on a really high diving platform, trying to gather up th nerve to just step off.
I have projects that I will be working on this summer, but I'm waiting on things from other people for those. I can't really start until I have their input. One of them is composing music for a dance film, and I need to see the film before I can start that.. even just to see the movement style so that I can get some sort of musical ideas...

NEW GLASSES

I actually have new glasses!!!
I'm actually thinking of keeping track of everyone I see over the next few weeks so that if people insist on commenting on my new glasses well into the future, I can hold them accountable for the fact that they already saw them on such and such a date, but that might be taking it a little overboard.
For now though, I will rejoice in being able to just say "thank you" to people when they compliment me on my new glasses without following it with "but, I got them about a year ago".
They have the tinting stuff in/on them so that they react to the sunlight and turn into magic sunglasses! Also, the Rx isn't much different, but it made a big difference to be able to see perfectly when I first put them on.
They aren't exactly what I was looking for in terms of the style, but they are nice and conservative and spiffy too!

So tired this morning.
No time for coffee.
On lunch break, walking - my bag strap broke and clunk went my bag (with computer) - things seem to be functioning well enough.

I bussed home, which is fine, but I don't have to ride the bus much lately, so it reminded me of a beef I have with the buses:
Design issues: Why have butt-grooved seats? At the back there is a row of 5 seats - which can only hold 5 people comfortably - spaced with buffer seats in between. If 5 people sit there, everyone is cramped so it's alright, but then there's the awkward situation... if there's already three people and a fourth wants to sit - Today was the day!
This guy was walking down the row with that 'I'm gonna be on this bus for the next 20 minutes and I'm not willing to stand the whole time' look on his face, so I moved my bag. Do to social convention, I couldn't just stay right where I was and force that squishiness on three people - I did the expected thing and moved a little to the side.... problem being: the hard plastic thing between seat grooves. Now, if the mood was a little different, nice lighting and say if I hadn't been on a piano bench all day, I might have even secretly enjoyed that hardness against my tailbone, but not today!
Old bus designs had one big padded seat at the back - upon which 4 people could sit perfectly comfortably without invading anyone else's personal space. These stupid fucking seat grooves are the worst invention ever!!! FUCK!
After a while a sideways seat opened up, and I moved to there - somewhat relieving the back misalignment from having one cheek higher than the other for 10 minutes.

That is all.

Tonight I had my first Rocky Horror Picture Show experience. I did not like it.
I did enjoy the aspect of people heckling movies.. as I fully support that endeavor, BUT most of it was so canned and uninspired. The idea of watching a movie with a script is a little ridiculous and the practicality of it meant that when I was trying to stay on top of things, I was ignoring the movie.
Nevertheless, it was fun to spend the evening with friends from school.

I have no voice. I was doing telephone work today for the election and my cold is not letting up. Add to that the excessive yelling from the movie, and my voice is hoarse.
Tomorrow is back to the ballet, no musical theater tomorrow, but there is on Sunday. Tomorrow night is a dance show, it should be weird and interesting in a fantastic way!

I'm officially going to Germany!

Ich Gehe auf Deutschland!! und ich spreche nicht Deutsche!
I'm totally going to try to buff up my German, cause I want to be at least somewhat functional in the language at some point.
it's official because I bought the tickets online today. I leave Thursday June 7th at midnight almost and I don't get back until 6pmish on the 25th!
I'm flying to London and then on a different airline to Berlin. So much excitement!!!

I was so impressed - no more than 5 minutes after I bought my tickets, my credit card company called me to verify the purchases. That's what I call efficiency!

Other good news, I have some work for a short period this month. I will be doing some campaign phoning starting next monday evening. Minimal time commitment meaning minimal money coming in, but that's alright.

It's so exciting looking at my schedule, I have things for work coming up this month, shows to see, Dance Festival, I'm having my ensemble record that piece I wrote, and one of those wonderful Diabetes Dinners I love!
Then I have a few weeks of nothing (maybe good composition time) then my grad dinner and ceremony and then BAM! I'm off to Germany! When I get back, rehearsals for Hair will be in the works and soon after I will be playing for a musical theater camp, once that and Hair are done, we're in August already! This summer is going to go by so quickly!

YIPPPEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My endocrinologist appointment went very well today. I got my medical form filled out so I don't lose my license... oops, I have to take that in to the office.
My A1C was 7.9, a nice improvement of the 8.3 or 8.6 of last visit. I won't ignore or deny the fact that the new standard in diabetes care sets the goal at under 7.0; I'm simply enjoying the fact that my level of care is improving. Also keeping in mind that the last 3 months have been filled with extra stress from recital and school coming to a close as well as poor eating and a complete lack of activity. I have even higher hopes for the summer.
However the A1C is only one of the numbers I need to be concerned with. Apparently I have a healthy heart - he described my cholesterol as great and my blood pressure is within normal parameters.
My urine tests came back very normal, so I know that my kidney is still functioning well.
He saw the letter from my optometrist and his reaction that it was nothing and it's simply a sign of having had diabetes for as long as I have. He said that most people have at least what I have without damage to their vision. I still have my appointment with the specialist later in July, so I'll see what that doctor has to say about it.
All in all, I think this was a good appointment. He gave me the names of some endocrinologists in London, but mentioned that if it's not permanent, I might as well just go to a GP and get the same tests, as I know what to be looking for. Then if there are problems, I can see him, or go to the endo out there.

Cleaning off my piano just a few weeks ago, I remember throwing out the papers from the last time I bought glasses - On that paper were written the model numbers of the other pair of glasses I almost bought. Those are the glasses I want right now, but alas I haven't the model number and the store I originally saw them at didn't have that model anymore... at least not that I could find.
I went to another place and told the guy what I was looking for, and he knew exactly the general style I wanted, he even found a picture of them on the internet, but we couldn't see them in the store.
If I had found them tonight or another pair that seemed just right, I would have bought them in a heartbeat.
I hate shopping. I hate trying to decide on things, and glasses are pretty bad... I get nervous when I'm going from one pair to the next and trying to see which I like better... so stressful (haha, not really).
My sister and I are very similar in this way, fundamental difference being that she has patience to draw the process out over a LOOOONG period of time, I however get jittery and end up making rash decisions without actually weighing those aspects that I think so much about anyway....

Tomorrow is my endocrinologist appointment. As per usual, I hope for a vast improvement in my A1C. Either way, I'm reasonably certain that I'm on the right track with improvements I've made in control and testing, but it sure would be nice to have a number that gave me solid proof that I am making progress.

yay, things are working out pretty nicely!
I looked at finances and, not that I could ever really AFFORD to go to Europe, but I think I'll be able to go to go to Germany and not be in a terrible terrible financial situation, so it's decided! I'm going to travel and be refreshed this sumer. I think I'm going to be leaving very soon after my grad ceremony and I'll be back before the end of June, so about 2 weeks in June.
I was doing well making money and being ahead of what I expected for summer savings at this point... but that seems too easy... so I will spend everything I have made already on this trip and then I will be even! I still have work in July that will bring in about as much as I have already made, so I'm not terribly worried about finances. (famous last words)

In other news, I'm going to get new glasses. my eyes had changed a bit at my most recent appointment, so even the newest ones I have are a little old. The glasses I wear the most often (the conservative ones) are 2 RXs old, so I need to update. I'm still going to get a fairly conservative style because they have to balance my plastic Ray-Bans.
Actually, I'm going to go browse right now.