Saturday, April 29, 2006

I am going on a cruise for 7 days, and you can't stop me.
NOBODY CAN STOP ME!
I'll be back in a week.
Peace out, dudes.

Friday, April 28, 2006

I realized upon entering Port St. John that I don't want to be here.

My life is going to be crazy for a few days now.
Last night in the dorm: someone pulled the fire alarm at 3:00 at night. Cool*.


*Really, really, really, not cool

Thursday, April 27, 2006

As I sit here, listening to my newly-aquired Irish ensemble CD, my belly full, just back from a night of laughter and friendship, reminiscing about this past year, I realize that I am very happy. This has been a great year, and I am very happy.

There's something about Irish music that reminds me of the past, makes me recall the good times, and that tells me that everything is okay.





(I'm still loving the smiles).
HANGER! You make me mad. You are an odd shape. You don't seem to fit anywhere. In large numbers, you take up way more space than you look like you should. You make packing very difficult.

--------------------------------------

Well, this school year has come to a close. I'm going home tomorrow, and then I'm off on a cruise for the week with my family. And then, the long stretch of summer. Oh, summer. I don't know what to think about you. What will you do to me? What is to happen? I cannot comprehend all of my jumbled feelings about this summer. It's all very uncertain. But I suppose I should just take it like I took this whole year, one day at a time. God will take care of me.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

I've decided that finals week is not a very good week to start being lazy.

All my exams are over, and I am free!

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

I GOT AN A ON MY JURY!
I have to admit that I was expecting an A....until about two days ago. Then I started hearing the horror stories (especially within the vocalists), and the doubts came flying in from nowhere. But I conquered my fears, I played well, and I got an A! I hardly have any negative comments on my sheets, and my teacher even gave me an A+!!!

I have one thing to say to you, nerves:
"OWNED!!!!"

Monday, April 24, 2006

The first words out of our mouth:
"Yup, it's still cold."

Sunday, April 23, 2006

It's okay, guys. You are still alive. You'll get through it. God loves you. Life is good. No worries!
study, practice, study, practice, study, practice

exam week is coming

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Ummm...I have a concert today, but it's going to be like two hours long or maybe longer, so if you are really desperate you should come. It's in HMU 105 at 4:00. I'm playing a bit of Prokofiev and then playin with stupidflutechoir. So yeah.

I watched The Notebook, quite possibly the most girly chick flick ever made, and now I want to fall in love.

(hehe)

I haven't thought about love for a long time. Is it bad that I am not thinking of my future? That I have no thoughts about marriage, or dating, that I am hoping that they will just happen when they happen (if not, then they will not happen, and that's okay), and that I'm not pushing anything right now? Is that bad?

Is it bad that I have no anxiety about my future career, that I'm not thinking about it at all, and that I'm just taking life minute by minute, and enjoying it minute by minute?

Should I be thinking and worrying about these things?

Thursday, April 20, 2006

I finished David Copperfield.

Thank you, Charles, for putting my emotions into words. It is beyond refreshing to read that I am not alone, that your characters feel the same things that I feel. and thank you for your ending.

I love you, David Copperfield. I love you.
I am SO going to be in the Irish ensemble someday. If there ever was an ensemble created just for me, that is it.
I don't really know what to say, but things are going well, and I am happy.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

I finally got my intercollegiate band CD. It's definitely not as good as I remember, but I'm still excited to have it. I feel like I'm in high school again: "yay allstate!" Hehe, I'm such a dork.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Just so you know, three hour chamber ensemble recitals are not that fun to watch.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Take the long way home...
Today is going to be a very busy day! No stress, though. Though I have five exams, a research paper, and a jury coming up, I have no stress! Now isn't that wonderful? I couldn't have done it alone, of course...

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Happy Easter to my readers in Tallahassee, Titusville, and beyond! This is the day we celebrate that Jesus has saved the world!

Also, I found this picture online. It was taken at the flute fair this year. This picture really is worth a thousand words...

Saturday, April 15, 2006

I have the most generous, most supportive, best mom EVER!

Friday, April 14, 2006

Thank you.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

I made the gala recital playing solo and duet, my Haydn variation sounds hardcore, I got a lot of smiles today, and I just sucessfully manuevered the whole second flute part of Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony! Life isn't just good right now--it's wonderful!!!!

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

I had a REEEEEALY bad dream last night. It ended with a guy trying to stab my eyes out with a pen. He was yelling, "You don't know Jesus!" As I wildly tried to block the blows, I yelled, "Yes I do! I said I was sorry! Yes I do!"

What a good start to my day.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

My dorm room is unbearably cold. Right now, I am wearing three sweatshirts, heavy jeans, three pairs of socks, and shoes, and I am still cold. It is soooooooo hard to get out of bed in the morning, because my body temperature is already lowered from sleep, and since outside is loud at night, we have to close the windows. It becomes a literal icebox. This morning, I stuck my hand into the refrigerator, and I felt no difference between the temperature inside and outside. Make it stop!
I don't know.

Monday, April 10, 2006

This excerpt from David Copperfield made me laugh, because I know exactly what he is taling about:

I was not stunned by the praise which sounded in my ears, notwithstanding that I was keenly alive to it, and thought better of my performance, I have little doubt, than anybody else did. It has always been my observation of human nature that a man who has any good reason to believe in himself never flourishes himself before the faces of other people in order that they might believe in him. For this reason, I maintained my modesty in very self-respect, and the more praise I got, the more I tried to deserve.
I ate 7 pieces of pizza today! Okay, they were small, and I didn't eat the crust, but still.
I love pizza.

Also, I was in a sour mood after band today, so I sat out in the sun for 15 minutes to calm down. It was really, really nice. The best decision I made all day. When someone asked me what I was doing, I said, "Making vitamin D."

I've noticed that the more time you think you have, the less you actually have and the less time you think you have, the more you actually have. It's weird like that.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Really, I have nothing to complain about. The thing I am dreading is not here yet, so I should not worry. Maybe I will get off the waiting list, maybe something else will happen that will make my summer better than I anticipate. In any case, God will take care of me, so there is no need to worry. It only serves to shorten my life.

My life here is so good. There is so much freedom. I get to hang out with my friends every day, whenever I want to. I eat what I want, when I want. I sleep as much as I can. There is nobody report to, I can take naps if I don't feel good. I can skip class if I don't feel good. I get to play in band, orchestra, and quintet (and stupidflutechoir). I have ample time to practice, my teacher is wonderful, I get lots of performance opportunities. I play duets. I've found a great church and a great campus ministry. Money isn't a problem. I'm learning a lot, playing great music. Life couldn't be better. Well, okay, yes it could. But not much better.

Thank you. God, everyone. Thank you.

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Sometimes, I just can't believe how wonderful God is to me.

For the first time ever, I don't want summer to come. I want to stay here, classes and all. I don't want to leave. I don't.

Friday, April 07, 2006

::laughs uncontrollably::
Today is going to be a good day! I can feel it.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

I don't know what it is about practice rooms and duets, but they seem to make me think that everything in the world is funny. I laughed until I cried today, and I don't know how or why, but it sure was fun. God has created a wonderful world, He has. I can't believe how beautiful it all is. And this is only a slice of reality:

For now we see in a mirror. dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:12-13.13

I can't even begin to imagine how lovely it will be...

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Who knew that analyzing chords and phrase structures for four hours could be so fun?

I have a favorite group of guys at FSU. It is official.
So in other news, I watched a Bollywood film today.

Monday, April 03, 2006

My parents informed Craig and me this weekend that my mom was hired for a promotion in her job, getting paid 90-100 thousand dollars, and that my dad was able to transfer to the Talahassee branch of his company, and they were moving to Tallahassee, and we were going to live with them again.

My first response was, "I don't want to live with you anymore." I said that, too.

Shortly after they informed us of all of this, my mom said, "Oh yeah...one more thing. April Fools."

They really had me going. I believed every word of it.
I'm glad that it's not really happening.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

THE COST

The Article

What it says:

Freedom wore an expensive price tag.

Southern blacks who tried to register to vote--and those who supported them--were typically jeered and harassed, beaten or killed. In 1963, the NAACP's Medgar Evers was gunned down in front of his wife and children in Jackson, Mississippi. Reverend George Lee of Belzoni, Mississippi, was murdered when he refused to remove his name from a list of registered voters, and farmer Herbert Lee of Liberty, Mississippi, was killed for having attended voter education classes. Three "Freedom Summer" field-workers--Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman--were shot down for their part in helping Mississippi blacks register and organize. Michael Schwerner, a social worker from Manhattan's Lower East Side, James Chaney, a local plasterer's apprentice, and Andrew Goodman, a Queens College anthropology student, disappeared in June 1964. Their bodies were discovered several months later in an earthen dam outside Philadelphia, Mississippi. Schwerner and Goodman had been shot once; Chaney, the lone African American, had been savagely beaten and shot three times.

When violence failed to stop voter registration efforts, whites used economic pressure. In Mississippi's LeFlore and Sunflower Counties--two of the poorest counties in the nation--state authorities cut off federal food relief, resulting in a near-famine in the region. Many black registrants throughout the South were also fired from their jobs or refused credit at local banks and stores. In one town, a black grocer was forced out of business when local whites stopped his store delivery trucks on the highway outside town and made them turn around.
Like voter registrants, freedom riders paid a heavy price for racial justice. When the interracial groups of riders stepped off Greyhound or Trailways buses in segregated terminals, local police were usually absent. Angry mobs were waiting, however, armed with baseball bats, lead pipes, and bicycle chains.

In Anniston, Alabama, one bus was firebombed, forcing its passengers to flee for their lives. In Birmingham, where an FBI informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor had encouraged the Ku Klux Klan to attack an incoming group of freedom riders "until it looked like a bulldog had got a hold of them," the riders were severely beaten. In eerily-quiet Montgomery, a mob charged another bus load of riders, knocking John Lewis unconscious with a crate and smashing Life photographer Don Urbrock in the face with his own camera. A dozen men surrounded Jim Zwerg, a white student from Fisk University, and beat him in the face with a suitcase, knocking out his teeth. The freedom riders did not fare much better in jail. There, they were crammed into tiny, filthy cells and sporadically beaten. In Jackson, Mississippi, some male prisoners were forced to do hard labor in 100-degree heat. Others were transferred to Parchman Penitentiary, where their food was deliberately oversalted and their mattresses were removed. Sometimes the men were suspended by "wrist breakers" from the walls. Typically, the windows of their cells were shut tight on hot days, making it hard for them to breathe.

Out of jail, the freedom riders joined mass demonstrations where the violent response of local police shocked the world. In Birmingham, police loosed attack dogs into a peaceful crowd of demonstrators, and the German shepherds bit three teenagers. In Birmingham and Orangeburg, South Carolina, firemen blasted protestors with hoses set at a pressure to remove bark from trees and mortar from brick. On "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, Alabama, police and troopers on horseback charged into a group of marchers, beating them and firing tear gas. Several weeks later the marchers trekked the 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery without incident, but afterwards four Klansmen murdered Detroit homemaker Viola Liuzzo as she drove marchers back to Selma. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his life for the movement, struck down by an assassin's bullet in Memphis, Tennessee.

When white supremacists could not halt the civil rights movement, they tried to demoralize its supporters. They bombed churches and other meeting places. They set high bail and paced trials slowly, forcing civil rights organizations to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. At a Nashville lunch counter sit-in, the store manager locked the door and turned on the insect fumigator. In St. Augustine, Florida, city officials who had promised to meet with black demonstrators at City Hall offered them an empty table and a tape recorder instead. In Selma, Sheriff Jim Clark and his deputies forced 165 students into a three-mile run, poking them with cattle prods as they ran. Random violence accompanied calculated acts. The Klan bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church killed four black girls. On the campus of the University of Mississippi, a stray bullet struck a local jukebox-repairman in a riot that killed one reporter and wounded more than 150 federal marshals. In Marion, Alabama, 26-year-old Jimmy Lee Jackson was gunned down while trying to protect his mother and grandfather from State Police. Not far away in Selma, a white Boston minister who had lost his way was clubbed to death by white vigilantes.

The more violent southern whites became, the more their actions were publicized and denounced across the nation. Increasing violence in the South's streets, jails, and public places failed to break the spirits of the freedom fighters. Indeed, it emboldened them.
Aloha oi

Saturday, April 01, 2006

bleh