Forecast for spring break:
Speaking of.....did you know that spring break starts tomorrow? Yeah, I can't really believe it either. I've known that it was so soon, but it seems that I've mostly just ignored that knowledge since I'm not prepared at all. I need to do laundry, and pack....and study for my last midterm and eat dinner and go to orchestra. Sometimes there just isn't enough time in the day. Good thing I have a washing machine at home!
I reluctantly took my Art of Diplomacy midterm today. I apparently ignored the fact that midterms are upon me as well, since I only allowed myself an hour to study (even though I'd had all of last night and all day today). I think I did alright. Not spectacular, but hey, who cares? IT'S PASS/FAIL!
I'm still debating on if I want to take my french horn home or not. As far as practicing goes, I need to, but as far as traveling goes, I have no desire to deal with the hassle. I also don't think it would be monetarily worth it -- the size is just unusual enough that it wouldn't fit in an overhead bin, so I would have to check it, pay another of those ridiculous fees, and risk damaging my instrument. My french horn isn't the grandest model ever, but it's still a good $800. Am I just trying to find another excuse not to practice? Probably. I guess I'll just go to orchestra tonight and see how it goes. Maybe someday if I ever get rich and I still play the french horn then I'll get one of the fancy ones with the bells that screw off (meaning that the case is square-ish).
I wish that the year would just chill out a little. I'll be glad to graduate, but I'm not ready to do all the work that's waiting for me between now and then. We are now beginning the perilous slide into the end of the year: finals, comps, and papers -- OH MY!
I'm still waiting to find out any news about the Fulbright. I've heard from various sources that most people either find out in March or April, so we'll see.
I thought about this thing called "5 second movies" today....
Here are some good ones: Titanic, Rocky I-V, Star Wars II
This is just a very brief blurb since I absolutely must leave in 15 minutes, and there's no way that I can speed blog anything meaningful.
I just tried an experiment: Can one practice the french horn in one's dorm room without feeling self-conscious.
Necessary materials:
1 french horn
1 mute
1 down winter coat
1 mid-weight cotton coat
1 set of music
1 laptop
Instructions:
Place mute inside french horn. Wrap bell in (down) winter coat. Repeat with mid-weight coat. Use laptop as a music stand.
Blow air into the french horn at 1/3 pressure. Play tentatively. Question whether the sound is piercing all surrounding walls. Question whether french horn playing is louder than a hypothetical itunes selection. Play Russian music on itunes slightly louder than usual while simultaneously practicing Yoda's Theme song. Mentally compare. Feel uncomfortable. Put french horn away and write a blog (quietly) instead.
Answer: It is impossible to play the french horn in a dorm room without feeling self-conscious....unless one suffers from a general lack of embarrassment.
It also doesn't help that I absolutely HATE when people listen to me practicing. Practicing is for myself, concerts are for other people.
So anyway, we're playing music from Star Wars in our next concert, which turns out to actually be challenging. I think I may just have to take my french horn home for spring break. Great.
(photo stolen as usual)
This is a scene from last weekend. Scenic, huh? It's interesting how the most stressful of events can appear so calm in photographs.
Last Saturday my crew coach decided it would be a good idea to journey down the mountain (away from our sadly frozen Lake Dimmick) in order to have an all day rowing session. The lake pictured is "Tim's Ford", a rather picturesque lake in the town of Winchester, TN. The location seemed ideal at first: close, large, not frozen. However, it soon became obvious that few crew teams have ever rowed here before. Take a closer look at the dock. Now look at the boat. Can you see the problem yet?
How about now?
Once we (amazingly) maneuvered the 90 degree angle of the dock, we discovered a 2nd problem. Do you see those absolutely pointless spikes on the dock?? In order to avoid them you must lean perilously over the edge of the dock with your hands outstretched, and then lower the boat carefully to the water (the dock was about 2 times higher than usual as well). Honestly, I thought we were going to impale the boat...or just outright drop it. If I haven't mentioned it before, that boat is !@#$ing heavy. In reality each person probably has about 25-30 lbs of weight to carry, but it's a very large, very unwieldy, very expensive 25-30 pounds. And it's over your head most of the time.
I don't even row in that boat. I just helped carry it out of the goodness of my heart...and a general mistrust of freshmen.
Oh, there was also a small crowd of boaters standing on the bank watching our little misadventure.
I'm also starting to become germophobic. Every time someone sitting next to me starts coughing or sniffling I want to push them away (but without touching them), and then go take a shower. Usually I just settle for trying not to breathe in their general direction and scooting as far away as possible. I've had a very tenacious cold for the last 1.5-2 weeks that I was FINALLY starting to get over. However, it seems that I, being the trend setter that I am, was one of the first to get sick, and now the rest of the school is starting to catch up. I'm terrified that I'm going to get over my cold, and immediately catch a new one. These fears are in no way unwarranted either! The day before yesterday I had finally gotten to the point where I only needed to blow my nose once in the morning, and once at night (at first I could go about 20 minutes), and I overall felt perfectly alert. Then, starting sometime yesterday afternoon, my throat became incredibly sore and I started getting a headache. It was bad enough that I vowed if I didn't wake up feeling absolutely perfect, then I was just going to roll over and go back to bed.
This is a lame note to end this on, but people have come home now and I've lost the will to write.
Watch this:
http://vimeo.com/2809991
As most of you know, my 22nd birthday was last Friday. As fun as a trip to waffle house would have been, my suitemates and I decided that an escape from the mountain was in order. It turns out that 3 of the 4 of us have January birthdays....and the 4th's conception date was in January (which I'm sure is more information than any of us ever wanted to know). To celebrate this most hallowed of months we got tickets to a mystery theater(I mistakenly called it a musical theater in my last entry) in Chattanooga that included dinner and certain birthday embarrassment..most likely in the form of singing. Everything was great -- the timing worked, the show was supposed to be good, and we were all excited.
Then, on the morning of January 29th (my birthday), it began to snow. And snow. And rain. And sleet. And rain some more. And snow a little. And then rain some more..............and then freeze. The end result looked something like this:
I can't take any credit for these photos. I stole them all from facebook because I am a loser and didn't take any pictures. It's a good thing that I have artistic friends!
Anyway, needless to say, we didn't make it to Chattanooga on Friday. The last 22 years have been great, and I really didn't fancy dying on my birthday. Especially not for a mystery theater.
In reality the roads were probably fine, but you never know about these southern drivers (dear all who are from the south who read this: Don't hate me. I've just lived around snow a lot and I don't trust y'all). The police dispatcher would also send us e-mails like this every few hours:
"ALL ROADS ARE SNOW AND ICE COVERED AND VERY HAZARDOUS!!!!!!PLEASE REFRAIN FROM DRIVING IF AT ALL POSSIBLE.
EXPECT DRIVING CONDITIONS TO BECOME EVEN MORE HAZARDOUS AS THE TEMPERATURE DROPS."
That is a direct quote. The university is so small that the police have nothing to do and therefore mostly issue parking tickets and alert us to weather conditions. They also really really like capital letters.
In lieu of watching the mystery theater, we watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in the room and ate my massive birthday cupcake/cake (my suitemate recently acquired a cake mold that is the shape of a large cupcake). Since the movie is a million hours long, that took up the better part of the evening.
Then I decided to check my e-mail. In the middle of my frenzied quest to purge my inbox of police weather updates and facebook notifications I spotted something intriguing: an e-mail simply entitled "U.S. Fulbright Program". I was a little hesitant to open it, since I was pretty sure it was an e-mail letting me know if I had made it to the semi-finals of the Fulbright ETA selection process. I would have really hated to get bad news on my birthday. Luckily, it was all good news! Whether it was birthday magic, a good resume, or a combination of both...I MADE IT!! The way it works is that 30-40 people make it to the semi-finals, and 20 receive the assistantship. Now all I have to do is wait anywhere from February to May to find out if I will get an assistanship (I really hope that I do. I am not in the mood to think up an alternative life plan for this upcoming year).
Monday (yesterday) I had my Russian interview. I mentioned last time that is was supposed to be on Saturday...however, it seems that they had some scheduling conflicts, so they moved it to Monday. Overall it went pretty well; I understood all of the questions and answered most of them. I also found out that the interviewer's son plays the French horn. I'm hoping that this gets me some brownie points, since the French horn world is a small and close-knit one. There was really only one problem: the call was from Moscow, and it seems that they got the time zone mixed up. I was expecting a call at 8:20 am, and as such I dutifully set my alarm for 7:45 so that I could make sure that I was up and coherent by the time that I had to have my interview. However, promptly at 7:20 am my phone rang. I jolted awake, caught the phone on the 2nd ring, and let the adrenaline rush carry me through the next 15 minutes. I was actually quite impressed with myself -- I went from deep sleep to speaking Russian in about 5 seconds, and I don't think that the interviewer noticed.
In true senior-year fashion, I've decided to extend my slackerly ways and make 1 of my 3.5 classes pass/fail. I do have some sound logic behind this though! Right now my GPA is hovering at about a 3.7. I'm pretty confident in my other 2.5 classes, but the 3rd is a new subject for me -- "The Art of Diplomacy". Usually in subjects outside of my major I work really hard, but still end up with a B or an A-. I did some math, and I determined that the risks of dragging my GPA down with a B far outweigh the benefits of getting an A. Grades are a competitive business you know....you've got to play the game right. Additionally, this means less stress for me, and I do so hate stress.
Well, it's quite late and I have class semi-early tomorrow, so I should go to bed. I think I've covered everything of recent importance.
On a final note, here's a quote from the blog "Sleep Talkin' Man" (if you can't guess from the title, it's a blog that the wife of a chronic sleep-talker keeps)...I feel like this all the time:
"So many little people. Pet them on the head. pet pet pet pet pet...."
as well as:
"No, not the cats. Don't trust them. Their eyes. Their eyes. They know too much."
Have you ever noticed that sometimes the only way to make a decision in life is to first decide what you DON'T want to do?
That's really how I decided to be a Russian major...I took a bunch of classes in almost every department and discovered that:
No way in Hell would I become an:
Economist
I really really really don't want to be a:
Historian
English major
Mathematician
It wouldn't kill me to be a:
Geologist
Computer Programmer
German major
Some days I might even like being a(n):
Anthropologist
Religion major
I love:
Russian
So really the choice was easy. There was only 1 subject that I liked, so I made it my major and skipped any of that minor business. Now I just have to figure out what I'd like to (note: what I can get paid to) do with a Russian major. My biggest plan was to try to join the foreign service, but now I'm taking a class called "The Art of Diplomacy" that is starting to make me second-guess that plan. I like the class alright, and the teacher is really cool.....I just don't know that I'd be any good at diplomacy or if I would even like it. I'm also *be prepared to be shocked* thinking that it might not be so bad to be a teacher. The most fun would be to teach English abroad (what with me being a native speaker and all). However, for those times that I want to live in the US I could be a Russian teacher. The pluses with this plan are that you have a lot more freedom than you would have strictly working for the government (for example: you can have your own opinions about what the US is up to). Also, everyone wants to learn English..you could get a job pretty much everywhere. However, I don't think I'd be satisfied being just a regular ol' teacher either. It's the only child thing where I have this unending desire to be unique in everything that I do. If anyone out there has any connections to the Russian world with fun job opportunities, let me know..I always take suggestions. I would even settle for Ukraine or Belarus. Or the Czech Republic or Slovakia or Switzerland or anywhere really.
Saturday morning at 10 am I have a phone interview in Russian for the Fulbright ETA. I hate phones in English, but phone+interview+Russian = panic. Hopefully it won't be too bad though. I think the point is just to make sure that I can communicate in Russian in some form or another. Sunday I'm supposed to find out if I make it to round 2 of the application process. I will find out for sure if I did NOT get the assistantship, but I'll have to wait another month or 2 to know if I did. It could go either way really. Wish me luck on the interview!
I haven't been speaking Russian very much, but I've been reading and writing it a TON lately. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across this website (interpals.net) where you can get international pen pals. I've tried these things before in my ongoing quest to master the Russian language, but most of them haven't been very efficient. This one, however, works. Maybe too well? I've been spending at least 2 hours every day responding to messages (in Russian). If nothing else it's helping my typing speed.
Apparently my biggest problem in Russian is comma placement....that and the fact that I stay up too late at night responding in Russian and make stupid grammatical mistakes.
The first 2 weeks of school have been alright. Nothing really to write about. I'm ready to graduate.
Friday is my birthday, and the suite mates and I are going to have a collective birthday party in Chattanooga at a musical theater (food and perhaps birthday embarrassment included). I'm not sure that I'll have a separate party for myself, I'm really quite lazy when it comes to planning these things.
We had a tornado nearby last week...disproving the myth that tornadoes can't climb mountains. It also instilled in me great confidence in our warning system....since my suitemates and I sat placidly throughout the storm in our common room complaining about how the internet was being sketchy, completely ignorant of the fact that there was a tornado. However, our dorm is pretty much a fortress....the walls are so thick that I don't get cell service.
We're playing Star Wars in orchestra. The 2nd piece in 4 years that I've actually thought was fun (the first being from either freshman or sophomore year -- Night on Bald Mountain, which has an awesome french horn part). Dumb violins...90% of the time they get all the cool parts.
As usual, I need to do laundry. I also need to go to Wal-mart and get printer cartridges, toothpaste, and snacks. And do my homework.
On Saturday we all watched the movie Up, and my suite mates have been quoting it for days...
SQUIRREL!!!
So I was just idly surfing the internet today when I ran across a blog called "Sleep Talkin' Man". As the title indicates, this blog documents one man's rather humorous sleep utterances. It almost makes me wish I shared a room with someone who sleep talks. Almost. Although really the best thing to do would be to share a house with someone since I'm a light sleeper.
(Somewhat) Sadly, I don't talk in my sleep. A past roommate did say that I "mutter emphatically" now and again though.
Anyway, the blog inspired me to record a few of my favorite dreams.
My dream world is a frustrating one. Generally I am the only logical person and the duty befalls me to fix all of the horrible messes the other ridiculous characters have caused.....all the while seething, yelling, and occasionally fighting people. A little different from my self-controlled and mild-mannered conscious exterior, eh? I think it's my way of detoxing after a hard day. As the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes so aptly puts it: "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."
The first "I have to remember this!" dream comes from when I was about 7 years old. At this time I was living in Lufkin, TX and one of my greatest fears was getting caught in a tornado. We talked about them all the time in school and I was well versed in Tornado survival techniques. So, when the newscaster in my dream said that there was a tornado warning I knew just what to do! I herded my entire extended family out of the living room and into the one hallway in the house, told them to stay away from windows, covered them with a couple of mattresses, and very severely ordered everyone to stay put. I, in the meantime, went outside to check the location of said tornado and gather a few favorite toys from the front lawn. To my shock the tornado was just 2 houses away!!!! I race back inside, and to my horror everyone is gone. I'm nearly frantic by the time that I hear a voice calling me from my bedroom. I look inside, and my body grows numb. There everyone is (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins..) on top of my bunk bed having a PARTY. They're laughing and dancing and throwing streamers and telling me to come and join them. I can see out the window that the tornado is growing steadily closer. I'm shaking with rage and hysterical by this point. I'm shouting that a tornado is coming and this is not the time for a party and we're all going to die! They don't listen though. Typical. Then the dream changes.
A very similar dream comes from either junior or senior year of high school. One of my friends at the time was in love with all things Finnish...including the Finnish exchange student. We spent many a lunch break plotting how to get his attention, so it's not surprising that he made it into my dreams. One night off in dreamland myself and a large group of friends were gathered at a house in the country. Just as I tuned in to the radio to (you guessed it) listen to the weather report everyone decided to scatter. A few friends went for a walk, some suddenly had errands to attend to, and some just spontaneously disappeared. Well, it just so happens that a huge (and probably deadly) storm was scheduled to hit in just under and hour.....and I was the only one with the brain capacity and a vehicle to bring everyone back to safety. I rushed around the countryside picking up people here and there and just when I thought I had everyone I realized there was one person missing: that dang Finnish exchange student. The problem was he suddenly forgot how to speak English and apparently thought I was trying to abduct him (which is what I had to do in the end). Just as soon as I would catch sight of him he would take off running. I tried repeatedly to reason with him and warn him of the danger, but each time he would just look at me suspiciously and run away again. Eventually he tried to dodge me by running through a carnival. You can't get rid of me THAT easily, chump! He gave me the slip a few times, but after some careful sleuthing I found him in one of the tents hiding behind a few clothes racks. I then forcibly dragged him to safety. The things I do for people...
The dream with the best catch phrase comes from my time in Irkutsk. It was a time of great self-discovery. A friend of mine had morphed into a wolf and we were having a semi-friendly epic battle in the woods in the dead of winter. We fought long and hard and the battle was close, but in the end I won. As I pinned her down in the snow the dream camera zoomed out dramatically. In an attempt to end the dream meaningfully I assumed a wise tone and explained to the imaginary masses: "Sometimes the wolf tricks you. Sometimes you trick the wolf.....And sometimes it doesn't matter because you're a shark."
Words to live by.
The next one is more of a blurb than anything. I get really incoherent around the time to wake up and usually my dreams dissolve into a constant wave of short clips or shapes or words I like. I suspect that this was the tail-end of a longer dream, but in this one the entire cast of Friends was assembled in my living room for a party. We were having a great time...that is, of course, until my alarm clock started going off. I was far too deeply asleep to register what this noise was in real life, so in the dream it turned into the smoke detector. Mass hysteria erupts as we all try to make the noise go away. I'm shouting to turn it off, and Chandler's on a chair trying to rip the thing out of the ceiling. Unfortunately this didn't work and I had to actually wake up and hit snooze.
Last, but certainly not least, is the dream that probably sparked those afore-mentioned "emphatic mumblings". I'm an only child and I don't like for people to mess with my stuff..especially not my really expensive stuff. It's taken me 4 years to trust Kendra to drive my truck across campus, so as you can probably guess, I'm a little touchy about it. One day I'm walking along and there I see my TRUCK! First of all it's not supposed to be in the woods, and second of all these Beta frat boys are messing with it!! They're ripping the rubber stripping off from around the windows! I stomp my foot and yell at them to leave it alone, but they don't even see me. Well, this gets me really worked up. I storm up to my truck, throw open the door, and grab my 2ft steel maglite flashlight from out of the back seat. The jerks were stupid enough to bring their van to the scene, so I stomp over to it, lift up my flashlight, and bash in their windshield while shouting "HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT?! HOW DOES IT FEEL NOW??" Not satisfied I throw open the sliding door and proceed to grab everything within reach and throw it to the ground in a fit of blind fury. The guys eventually noticed and just watched me aghast. Then I take my truck and leave in a huff. Their female companion who had been watching everything from the sidelines just turns to them and says "it served you right".
These should provide everyone with some interesting mental images.
Well, that's it for me. Goodnight all!
Here's to hoping for interesting dreams
Best. Mad-libs. Exclamation. Ever.
So I went up to Cottonwood the other day to visit Kim and Amanda #2, and here is a picture to sum up the visit:
'Nuff said.
