The "other comments" section on my Brevard application:

What I wrote (which, by the way, was sassy enough for any application):
I have applied to Brevard for the past four years, and I have been at the top of the waiting list every single year. I hope that the admissions committee can see by now the growth I have made as an artist as well as the dogged determination I have to attend the festival. I should hope that after four years of waiting on the waiting list that my wait has finally ended.

What I actually meant
I have applied to Brevard for the past four years, and I have been at the top of the waiting list every year. Can you even imagine how frustrating that is for me? CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE? No, probably not, because you are the people who made it happen. Well let me tell you, it makes me want to kill somebody. KILL A PERSON.
So for the love of God, people, please admit me this year. I'm not asking much. I won't ask for money or high placement or anything...I just want to be admitted. A simple yes will suffice. It's not that hard, yes. It's a one-syllable word. Just say it. For the love of all that is good in this world, please say yes. I really don't want to kill somebody.
(Oh and by the way, if you don't admit me, I will punch you all. IN THE GRILL.)

Shostakovich 9 was AWESOME. This was my favorite concert.

AND it was the first time I have ever been recognized at the end for a solo. No joke.

Text message from Josh Anderson:
J: Ctrl+Alt+Delete
A: ?
J: Oh, you know.

Even from hundreds of miles away, this guy never ceases to amuse me.

You guys would not believe how lazy I have been this week. I mean really, if I told you, you wouldn't believe me.

My body has had it. That's why. But still. The mind makes the decisions, the body has to follow. Bad things can happen if you let you body make decisions and let the mind follow.

I really like looking at my profile picture album on facebook. I've changed my picture enough now and I can see that there are many facets to my personality, and the contrasting pictures show that. Some aren't even pictures of me at all, but that's part of my personality too. The many faces of Ashley.

If I won the lottery, I would move out of the Savannahs and write them a long letter of grievances, and I would buy a nice house for my roommates and me far away from Dewey Street (maybe somewhere overlooking a lake, or with a great view of the sunset...or both) and I would buy us all parking spots really close to the school of music so we wouldn't have to walk far to get back to our cars when the school is retarded and closes all of the parking lots for a week.

Oh, and we wouldn't even have to go to school to practice, because our house would have an extra practice room for each of us with soundproof panels and yamaha pianos in them, and we could practice at home without disturbing each other even. AND we'd have our own state-of the art recording studio, and a full time staff pianist. Well, okay, maybe not the pianist.

I'd pay off my parent's debts and my brother's loans, and I would be able to fly instead of drive home because I could have a car at home, too. OH and I would totally have a pool put in our backyard, with a hot tub, and in the summer the Titusville gang could all come and chill out after Sunday ultimate.

I would not buy a new flute because my flute is THE BEST. I would get a new piccolo. And a baroque flute and an alto flute, and maybe even a bass, just for the heck of it. I would totally buy Wise and Otherwise, the entire Sigur Ros discography, and I would finally buy Mere Christianity.

Life might not be better than it is now. But it's fun to daydream.

Let me tell you guys something: I am not defined by my music.

There's no correct answer.

I'm back from Austin and things are crazy. There are four or five days between each audition, but really it only feels like a couple of hours. I feel like I get back, have just enough time to pack again for my next trip, and I have to be at the airport in a few hours.

Do you guys realize that I have been on 16 flights in the past four weeks? Six to Atlanta, four to Jacksonville, and one each to Phoenix, Austin, Chicago, Houston, St. Louis, and Dallas. Blimey, no wonder I feel like a zombie.

Austin was really, really great. Before I came, I asked people about how they liked Austin, and the answers surprised me. Nobody dislikes Austin, and nobody just passively likes it. Everybody LOVES it, everybody who has been there. And now I see why. It's a hippie city. It's cool. It likes art and music (actually getting the nickname the "live music capital" of the US). It has places called "the groovy lube" and "psychadellic pharmacy." There are mountains and lakes, desert and breathable air. I can see...it's a really great and very special place, unlike any other city I have been to in my wide travels.

My audition was good, all except for Firebird which was the very last thing I played, so whatev. I really hope I get into UT. It's pretty amazing.

It looks right now like I'll either be living in Phoenix or Austin next year, and that is just fine with me.

One more audition left, I'm on the home stretch and can see the finish line, and then I am seriously going to sleep for an entire week. Anyone want to go to Melting Pot or Mori with me to celebrate? But I'm getting ahead of myself: eye on the prize, USO and LSU this weekend.

I can name five or six guys off of the top of my head who, if they ever went insane and went on a crazy killing spree, would definitely kill me first.

I am sick, and tomorrow I leave for UT Austin, an audition that I have been anticipating for some years now. I can play through a cold (more than I can play through a cold sore, to be sure), but it's probably not going to be a very pleasant weekend. Anyway, here to health and hoping I get it back soon.

Tonight there were six--count them, six--police cars in the parking lot of my apartment complex. I later found out why they were there--the guy hired to paint the buildings attacked a girl from the apartment RIGHT NEXT to mine.

When I say that anywhere I go for grad school will be an upgrade, it's not just because I'm simply annoyed with Tallahassee.

I really need to get out of here.

Celebrity Morph by MyHeritage

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Genealogy software - Family web sites

I took this picture at Rice University. Do you notice anything odd about these three bikes?



(I'll give you a hint: notice how they're notoriously NOT STOLEN.)

I'm back from Houston and I am pretty exhausted. The auditions went well, all three of them. I didn't get nervous even a little bit for any, so it was a real step forward in the whole process of performing. I'm not used to having good auditions, it's such a wonderful thing to walk out of the room and be able to say, yes, I did show them how I can play. And to do it without drugs...

I got 11 event invitations on facebook in one day, and uhhh, I am going to get some well-deserved rest now. Good night.

P.S. I don't know how the heck anyone can ever find a practice room at Rice. They have like 30 total. I know the SOM is a lot smaller, but still, man...

I discovered tonight that I'm actually not normal.

HEY! let's talk about different things

I actually told someone tonight to please stop talking. it was glorious.

INVALID DOMAIN PLEASE DISABLE YOUR COOKIES

I'm off to Houston tomorrow to have many an audition. Wish me luck.

One of these days, I'll get what I've got coming.

I had a recording session today, playing some pieces for competitions including Copland's flute sonata.

I am listening to the recordings right now, and it's strange...this is the first time I have been moved by listening to a recording of myself. It's so strange, so very strange. Maybe it's Copland, but I have a feeling it's more than that.

I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but I have come a very, very long way in the past four years (in terms of playing). For a while there I thought I was stuck, that I was not going to get any better, or was not getting any better. But I was wrong. The changes that we make at this point are so subtle, yet they are the most important. It's the difference between merely playing a piece well and being able to move people with the music. And if I can be moved by my own performance, then by golly, I must have come to that point.

What a wonderful realization.

It would appear that ASU is no longer an option for me:
http://www.asu.edu/budgetcuts/asu_program_closures_20090210.html

I feel like one of those people who sit at the bar and look forlorn.

The sum is most certainly the same.

EDIT: FALSE ALARM! I just got an email back from the flute teacher at ASU. The masters programs that are being cut from music are old degree programs--nobody is in them right now. So no need to worry. Whew. That had me very scared and angry for a while there.

Oh, and P.S. I just realized I don't have class tomorrow. Wee!

Stronger and stronger, it's growing.

I've been feeling very close to God lately. It's a wonderful feeling. And I feel that He's answering my prayers about various things, so that's also a good feeling. My cold sore notwithstanding, I am pretty pumped about life right now. I'll regret leaving by the end.

For some reason, I have been having the urge lately to yell out random french phrases, like "allons-y!" "zut alors!" "allez viens!" or "d'accord!"

I mean, YELL them.

I done went and joined the Tallahassee Ultimate league. It's new, just started up this year. And now I'm on a team, a real honest-to-God team.

It's too bad that I will be in Houston, and then Austin, and then Baton Rouge for the next three games. But I couldn't resist joining. I just love ultimate so much.

I like pianists.
(In general.)

Well, I'm back. It's 11:30 PM and I have been traveling since 9:30 in the morning. Fourteen hours of traveling. So tired...

If truth be told, I'm not that pleased to be back in Tally. I have decided that anywhere I decide to go for grad school will be an upgrade to this city. Every time I come back into Tallahassee, it's like an immediate shadow washes over me. It's like, really...do I have to come back here again? Really? And then I sigh and count how many days it is until I can live somewhere else. If you lived here, you'd know what I'm talking about.

Today, in the fifteen minutes of driving in Tallahassee after getting off of the highway, I got cut off twice, a homeless dude knocked on my window asking for money while I was waiting at a light, a police car was on my street arresting what appeared to be another homeless dude, and dozens of stupid drunk kids tried to kill themselves by crossing the street in front of my moving car. I mean, really, I don't know how much worse of a place Tallahassee can get. Maybe if it was really cold all the time...

Don't get me wrong, FSU is a wonderful school, especially the College of Music, and I have a lot of really great friends and teachers here--don't for a second think that I feel the same way about you guys as I do about the city, no way--but it's not going to be enough to make me regret having to leave this place. Four years is long enough. Get me out of here.

I'm here in Evanston posting from the public hotel computer...eww, there are probably germs all over these keys...and the hotel is playing Rampal's recording of Bolling's second suite for flute and jazz trio over the speakers as background music. For some reason, that really amuses me...

Well, it's actully not that cold here. My first thought when stepping out of the airport wasn't "wow it's cold out" but instead it was "why is everything so wet?" Apparently when it is warmer, the snow melts and gets everything all wet. Imagine that...even so, it was like 40 or 45 degrees when I got in. That's about as cold as Tallahassee gets, right? I walked into a Subway that night, and the guy working there was like, "Nice weather, huh?" And I've been hearing people talk about how nice the weather has been all weekend. It's riduculous. This is the WORST weather you can get in Florida. Crazy.

I'm just going to come out and say it. My audition was bad. I've had a special visit cold sore friend, of course right where my flute lies on the lip. Every time I play, it is actually painful. And I get puss all over my lip plate, and I literally have to peel my flute off when I stop playing. I mean, I can still play, but it really affects a lot of things. It's like I have a busted lip, or have started to play with braces again, or something.

So yeah...if there are any full scholarships to be had here, I'm pretty sure they're not going to me. I told the flute professor what happened, and you can't do much about it really, but I still don't think he was really impressed with my audition at all. I mean, I was physically incapable of playing well today.

Other than that, it's been a pretty nice weekend so far. Northwestern has this very northern feel about it, just as Arizona had a very western "desert" feel about it. (I bet LSU has a southern feel). There were patches of snow all over the place, and I really didn't want to embarass myself by taking too many pictures, because only stupid tourists do that. Anyway, I guess I should let someone else use the computer, so bye for now...

There's been a surge of notes on facebook lately. Is it that time of the year when everyone needs to procrastinate? It's like the Tuesday of the semester. Nobody likes Tuesday.

Tuesday: Heeeeeeeey

Audition no. 2 this weekend: Northwestern at Chicago (actually Evanston, but Chicago sounds so much cooler).

I don't know what to expect except that it will be cold.

You know, there are a lot of love songs out there, and I really like a lot of them, but I would have to say that out of all of them, this one is my favorite.

"To Love Somebody" by the Bee Gees.

You don't know what it's like
To love somebody
To love somebody
The way I love you

UUUUGGHH UHUGU
IGH
UGHUUGHGH
YOUR DUMB AND I DONT' LIKE U

Coach: "I wrote 'Touchdown Machine' for you in the gradebook.'"
lol

Dave Glerum got fired from NPR. The economy won't let him keep his job. I simply cannot believe it.
He was the music announcer/anchor for WMFE Orlando on weekdays between the hours of 9 AM and 3:00 PM. I am so upset about this, you guys don't even know. I work at the Health Department every weekday over the summer from 9-2:30, and I listen to NPR the entire time I am there.
Dave was my best friend at work. I feel like I knew him. I remember one year when he played all of his mother's favorite pieces in an hour, in honor of mother's day. The next year around that time, he was gone for about a week, and we found out that it was because it was his mother had died. And after that, he played Brahms' German Requiem. And he has been playing

We went through so many fund drives together. We counted down the 100 favorite classical pieces together. I even voted for that. He was essentially the voice of the summer for me. And now he's going to be gone. What is NPR going to do now? Who will choose the music, who will talk about the relationship between Clara Schumann and Brahms, or about the premier of the Rite of Spring, or about why Mozart is so popular? Who will tell me how to pronounce Jean-Yves Thibaudet, or Essa-Pekka Salonen, or Bedřich Smetana? Who?

I'm so sorry, Dave. This is one listener who will really miss you.

Sigh...I can't do my social experiment. My bike frame has been stolen (before I asked people to steal it). :(

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

A few days ago, my camera broke. It was doing this strange thing with an "access" error message, the lens pulling in and out with strange whirring sounds, and finally a message to turn the camera off and back on again, which if I did, would cause the whole process to start over again.

I tried charging the battery, and then thought about replacing the battery, but I wanted to make sure that the battery was the problem before I bought it. So I looked online for some troubleshooting and found myself on this page:

http://www.fixya.com/support/t194522-access_probelm_dsc_w50_camera

which recommended a few good whacks to the camera to get it going.

Dubious, I hit my camera in my hand a few times. No dice, I was still having the same problem. So I tried hitting it on my desk--hard. And lo and behold, the problem was fixed. My camera is good as new again.

Moral of the story: never underestimate the power of hitting electronics until they work again.

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

Haha, I just noticed that I forgot to write the word "day" in my last post. Talk about absentmindedness...

This is the first year I have ever watched the Super Bowl, and I really enjoyed it. (I rooted for Arizona because I might live there next year.) It came down to the last 30 seconds. So exciting.

HEY YOU
YEAH, YOU

Today is my laziest of 2009 to date, and I don't doubt that it will stay that way till the end.