People who get tagged need to write a blog entry of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly! In the end, you need to choose 3 people to be tagged and list their names.
I'm really supposd to leave a message for these people on their blog telling them to read mine, but if you're reading, that's good enough for me.
Six weird things about me
1. I inherited the OCD thing from my dad. When I get on an arranging binge, I will stand in front of my dining room table that is covered with all of my homework and letters and bills and arrange them so that they are all facing the same way, and sort all of the papers so that each task to be accomplished (Poulenc syllabus to write, program notes for recital, props for opera next week) are in little piles. I also do this in my bathroom, separating all of the medicine and the makeup and the hair stuff and then arranging it so everything is separated and facing the same direction.
2. My OCD does not apply to the kitchen. I don't know where most of the things are in my kitchen (because my friend Jaci was the one who unpacked the kitchen boxes 2 years ago) and strangely, I don't care. I know where the dishes, glasses, and coffee mugs are and that's enough for me.
3. I scream at horror movies. I don't mean whimper and cower behind the blanket, though I do that too. I mean full out, blood-curdling, only an opera singer could possibly scream that loud, SCREAM. I was once dragged to see a horror movie at a theatre with this girl in college. I told her, you don't want to go with me, you'll be embarassed and people will hiss and point. She didn't believe me. Don't even ask me about the Blair Witch Project. My boyfriend actually got mad at me. And don't think that I don't warn people - I'm not one of those people who engages in social disruption just for the fun of it. So next time you want to watch the Omen, you just go ahead. I'll be in the other room watching Sense and Sensibility, thank you.
4. I am addicted to lip balm. It was classified as a full-scale addiction when I discovered that I was actually having an allergic reaction to my favorite mint-flavored lip balm from Bath & Body Works. I had to switch to cherry Chap Stick. Never did succumb to the Carmex thing like the DP. It just didn't do anything for me.
5. I have perfect pitch. You can play any note anywhere on any instrument and I can tell you what the note name is. You can also ask me to sing any particular pitch and (so long as it's in my singing range) I can sing it for you. I took a test run by a university in California that tested how good one's pitch memory was, and I scored above the 95th percentile. By most accounts, this classifies me as a freak, even among my musician friends. I am a veritable walking pitch pipe.
6. I'm a little superstitious. I believe in luck, I think that strange things happen when the moon is full, and I think that there is such a thing as fate and destiny. I also think that astrological signs are just a little bit true. I think this has more to do with the fact that my astrological sign describes my personality a little too perfectly, but let's be real: I married a Libra. Most of my good friends are Libras. I also carry a lucky gold dollar with me.
I tag:
Casey
Siggi
eBroadhead
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
If you ain't got no money, take your broke ass home
Yes, that's right. I'm listening to Fergie again. What I like the best about this song is that the video involves big hair, big earrings, and acid washed jeans. Fergie absolutely cracks my shit up.
It's spring break and today is really the first day that actually resembles spring. I spent most of yesterday here in my office working on all of my homework that didn't get done because of the undergrad opera. We had some friends over last night for a late dinner and watched Sixteen Candles until about 2am because one of them had never seen it. How could anyone's childhood be complete without Long Duck Dong? I spent most of this morning cooking breakfast and working on the syllabus for a Poulenc class I'm teaching next week. And then I got an email from my boss at my church job. He's not really happy with me right now as I've missed a lot of work in the last two weeks. My first response was to write him the longest email in the history of email about how I'm juggling my DMA coursework, a class that I teach, an undergraduate opera program that has just come into the curriculum and is held together by myself, two pianists and gaffer tape, my church job, my last DMA recital that is happening in seven days, and a career that is trying very desperately to get off the ground and is so almost there I can taste it.
And then I deleted it, wrote a short apology, and sent him my availability until June, promising to not double-book myself anymore.
This is perhaps the thing that I find the most frustrating about being a musician. When you don't have a standard 9-5 job where you are scheduled to be every day, five or six days a week, you end up doing what I do. You have class for a few hours on this day. You have rehearsals scheduled for several hours other days a week at odd hours because the stage director and the pianist have schedules that don't intersect until after dinner. You have your church job rehearsals two nights a week and then all morning on Sunday. And between all of those things, you put on your headphones on the train and memorize recital music. You get up early on Thursdays, the only day that you don't have class, and you go into the library to do research for the papers that aren't due for another month and a half but you know you won't have time to research them later. You eat dinner with your husband once, maybe twice a week. You eat lunch at school five days a week. You grow accustomed to carrying a large lunchbox with snacks because going to Starbucks for a break is something that has become part of the past, your former life, before it was the last semester of captivity.
My husband says that I'm so close to the end, what am I worried about. The other side of being this close to the end is that you have so much more to lose. My last academic recital (EVER) is in seven days. It's being adjudicated by members of the DMA committee who are not singers. I'm putting together a proposal for an independent study so I can finish my last academic class long-distance in the fall so I can advance to candidacy on time in December. The closer I get to the end of my post-secondary education, the more frightened I am that it will slip through my fingers through some freak mishap.
None of the people I work for care that they are not paying me enough to pay my rent and my bills and my health insurance. None of them care that they play only a small part in the larger sphere that is my occupation. I think music may be one of the only fields where you are expected to start practicing your craft long before you're done studying for it. If a medical student started hiring himself out as a doctor before he'd even finished the first year of medical school, you'd think he was crazy. But the simple fact of my occupation is this: my jobs are what pay most of my bills, and my craft is why I take the jobs. Until the craft pays most of the bills, the jobs are the necessary evil. And no boss wants to be told that they are the necessary evil.
If your kids tell you they want to become musicians, tell them that it's the most difficult and rewarding life they could ever choose. And offer to cook for them frequently.
It's spring break and today is really the first day that actually resembles spring. I spent most of yesterday here in my office working on all of my homework that didn't get done because of the undergrad opera. We had some friends over last night for a late dinner and watched Sixteen Candles until about 2am because one of them had never seen it. How could anyone's childhood be complete without Long Duck Dong? I spent most of this morning cooking breakfast and working on the syllabus for a Poulenc class I'm teaching next week. And then I got an email from my boss at my church job. He's not really happy with me right now as I've missed a lot of work in the last two weeks. My first response was to write him the longest email in the history of email about how I'm juggling my DMA coursework, a class that I teach, an undergraduate opera program that has just come into the curriculum and is held together by myself, two pianists and gaffer tape, my church job, my last DMA recital that is happening in seven days, and a career that is trying very desperately to get off the ground and is so almost there I can taste it.
And then I deleted it, wrote a short apology, and sent him my availability until June, promising to not double-book myself anymore.
This is perhaps the thing that I find the most frustrating about being a musician. When you don't have a standard 9-5 job where you are scheduled to be every day, five or six days a week, you end up doing what I do. You have class for a few hours on this day. You have rehearsals scheduled for several hours other days a week at odd hours because the stage director and the pianist have schedules that don't intersect until after dinner. You have your church job rehearsals two nights a week and then all morning on Sunday. And between all of those things, you put on your headphones on the train and memorize recital music. You get up early on Thursdays, the only day that you don't have class, and you go into the library to do research for the papers that aren't due for another month and a half but you know you won't have time to research them later. You eat dinner with your husband once, maybe twice a week. You eat lunch at school five days a week. You grow accustomed to carrying a large lunchbox with snacks because going to Starbucks for a break is something that has become part of the past, your former life, before it was the last semester of captivity.
My husband says that I'm so close to the end, what am I worried about. The other side of being this close to the end is that you have so much more to lose. My last academic recital (EVER) is in seven days. It's being adjudicated by members of the DMA committee who are not singers. I'm putting together a proposal for an independent study so I can finish my last academic class long-distance in the fall so I can advance to candidacy on time in December. The closer I get to the end of my post-secondary education, the more frightened I am that it will slip through my fingers through some freak mishap.
None of the people I work for care that they are not paying me enough to pay my rent and my bills and my health insurance. None of them care that they play only a small part in the larger sphere that is my occupation. I think music may be one of the only fields where you are expected to start practicing your craft long before you're done studying for it. If a medical student started hiring himself out as a doctor before he'd even finished the first year of medical school, you'd think he was crazy. But the simple fact of my occupation is this: my jobs are what pay most of my bills, and my craft is why I take the jobs. Until the craft pays most of the bills, the jobs are the necessary evil. And no boss wants to be told that they are the necessary evil.
If your kids tell you they want to become musicians, tell them that it's the most difficult and rewarding life they could ever choose. And offer to cook for them frequently.
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