I think that the times in my life when I am the most happy are always after I have practiced as much as I had planned for that day.

Today was a good day. Dress for the quartet went really well (music was fun to play and we were friends, which isn't always the case), got to hang out with Paul for a while and do a little throwing, and my evening practice session was just stellar. So productive. I found a sweet alternate fingering for this passage in Firebird that I have had a mind block on... for several years. Like 7 years.

I have been trying to play Firebird cleanly for 7 years. Finally, today is the day. I can do it!!!

Am I good enough? Is it just a joke that I want to do this? I have never played in any ensemble even remotely close to that level. Would I be in over my head? Am I already in over my head?

(Edit: the answers are yes, no, maybe, and no.)

comps. I DON'T WANNA.

ALSO. The other day I spilled an entire glass of juice on my desk. Luckily, not much got on my computer, just a few drops on the keyboard. Somehow these few drops made the entire keyboard mechanism sticky. Today I came home from my audition to find that there were ants crawling around my keys. Derp sauce.

Any ideas on what to do about this? I usually use a good dose of raid to get rid of pests, but I can't really spray raid onto my computer...

I am so proud of my car today! 6 hours and 300 miles with no problems. Nice work, Malibu! You deserve a nice car wash :)

I am unofficially accepted to both ASU and UofA.

I R flute playing good to get un doc-tore-ate. Yawl.
(.....or not.)

Thinking about this weekend really makes my head hurt. Concert tonight (30 min away). Call time 6:00, concert 7-8:30. Then get home around 9 or 9:30. U of A audition tomorrow morning at 10, so I have to leave at 7 in the morning at the latest. Uuuuuugh. Finish with my audition around 11, get home around 1. Have about a 4-hour break, then leave at 5:30 to drive up to Sun City for another concert at 7:30 (call time 6:30). Get home from that around 10, go to bed for another early morning. Get to school at 9 to warm up for guest artist masterclass 10-12 am. Have a 2-hour break, then recital 2:30-4. About a 3-hour break, then birthday party for a friend at 7:30.

I'm busy.

Got my Wall-E soundtrack today. How can you not love this little guy??

I don't know why I can't just like everyone. Am I jealous? Of what do I have to be jealous?

Yesterday I was driving on the highway at 70 mph.  There were four lanes, and they were all filled with cars traveling the same speed as me.  I carefully navigated the curves in the road with a car on either side, and the thought struck me: why am I not scared right now? One small mistake, and surely I will die, going 70 miles per hour. My seatbelt makes me feel a little safer, but at 70... that's very fast for anything to prevent death.  Why are we all not scared when we drive every day?

SLIGHTLY RELATED
I remember when I first moved here to AZ and started hiking a lot. Some of those hikes are what you could call "dangerous." A false step or a loose grip could have you tumbling down a steep slope, or even worse, off of a cliff.  I remember my mom was very worried when she saw some of my photos.  "Be very careful!" she always said. But I have never been scared when I hike these steep slopes. I trust myself.  My body will not let me slip.  Sure, the wind could blow, or I could hit a patch of soft sand... these things happen. But when it really matters, all you have to do is be smart and careful. You know inherently that you'll be fine.

SORT OF KIND OF RELATED
Riding my bike home from school today, I passed an intersection.  There was a crowd of cars at the intersection, including a flashing police car. There was also a crowd of people. I heard an ambulance in the distance racing to the scene.  And then I saw a mangled bike and a guy laying on the ground, people kneeling around him. It was sobering. That could very well have been me. "Oh, God..." I thought.

I'm certainly not scared when I ride my bike. But just like driving, just like hiking, one mistake, one bad decision. That's all it takes.

I'm doing my film music project on the music of Wall-E. I love that little guy a little more every time I watch the movie.

Also, I've never heard of Thomas Newman before... but I should have!!!!! Look at all he has scored:

2011 The Adjustment Bureau  

2010 La siesta de Jacinto (short)

2010/I The Debt

2009/I Brothers (music by)

2009 Autumn of Youth (short) (music by)

2008 Revolutionary Road

2008 WALL·E

2007 Towelhead

2006 The Good German

2006 Little Children

2005 Jarhead

2005 La femme dans la chambre (short)

2005 Cinderella Man

2004 Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

2004 Hope Springs Eternal: A Look Back at 'The Shawshank Redemption' (video documentary short)

2004 Six Feet Under (TV series)

– Bomb Shelter (2004)

2004 A Terrible Tragedy: Alarming Evidence from the Making of the Film - A Woeful World (video documentary) (original score by)  

2004 A Terrible Tragedy: Alarming Evidence from the Making of the Film - Costumes and Other Suspicious Disguises (video documentary short) (original score by)

2003 Angels in America (TV mini-series)

– Perestroika: Chapter Five - Beyond Nelly (2003)

– Perestroika: Chapter Four - Stop Moving! (2003)

– Perestroika: Chapter Six - Heaven, I'm in Heaven (2003)

– Millennium Approaches: Chapter One - Bad News (2003)

– Millennium Approaches: Chapter Three - The Messenger (2003)

2003 Finding Nemo

2002 White Oleander

2002 Road to Perdition

2002 The Salton Sea

2002 The Execution of Wanda Jean (documentary)

2001 In the Bedroom

2000 Pay It Forward

2000 My Khmer Heart (documentary)

2000 Walking the Mile (video documentary short)

2000 Erin Brockovich

1999 The Green Mile

1999 American Beauty

1998 Meet Joe Black

1998 The Horse Whisperer

1997 Oscar and Lucinda

1997 Red Corner

1997 Mad City

1996 The People vs. Larry Flynt

1996 American Buffalo

1996 Phenomenon

1996 Up Close & Personal

1995 How to Make an American Quilt

1995 Unstrung Heroes

1994 Little Women

1994 The War

1994 The Shawshank Redemption

1994 The Favor

1994 Threesome

1993 Josh and S.A.M.

1993 Flesh and Bone

1992 Scent of a Woman

1992 Citizen Cohn (TV movie)

1992 Whispers in the Dark

1992 The Player (music by)

1992 Those Secrets (TV movie)

1991 Fried Green Tomatoes

1991 Deceived

1991 The Rapture

1991 The Linguini Incident

1991 Career Opportunities

1990 Naked Tango

1990 Against the Law (TV series)

1990 Heat Wave (TV movie)

1990 Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael

1990 Men Don't Leave

1990 Rhythm Nation 1814 (short)

1989 Cookie

1988 The Great Outdoors

1988 The Prince of Pennsylvania

1987 Less Than Zero

1987 The Lost Boys

1987 Light of Day

1986 Jumpin' Jack Flash

1985-1986 Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV series)

– The Creeper (1986)

– The Human Interest Story (1985)

1986 Gung Ho

1985 Amazing Stories (TV series)

– Santa '85 (1985)

1985 Summer's End (short)

1985 Real Genius

1985 The Man with One Red Shoe

1985 Girls Just Want to Have Fun

1985 Desperately Seeking Susan (music by)

1984 Grandview, U.S.A.

1984 Revenge of the Nerds

1984 Reckless

1984 The Seduction of Gina (TV movie)

1978 The Paper Chase (TV series)

I have seen TEN of his movies and I never knew who he was until now! For shame as a a musician to not know what I am listening to.

Quartet rehearsals are starting to make me very unhappy.

So much excitement! Surrounded by so little excitement! I don't know if I can take it!

You know, as crazy as it sounds, I think spraining my ankle was a good thing for me. I have been forced to set aside some time to rest and care of myself. Elevate and ice. I really cannot be terribly productive while icing and elevating. I cannot practice, or clean my room, or go grocery shopping. I CAN, however, watch movies, talk on the phone, play Donkey Kong 64, watch required films on my laptop.

I have been working very hard. Maybe this is God's way of saying "chill out, dude." Okay. I'll take a short break :)

ASU audition in one and a half hours. Let's kill it!

Humoresque quotes:

"You know, if you play violin, you'll have to carry a pianist around with you all the time."

"You thought we had a musician in the family because he followed the organ grinder... it was the MONKEY he wanted!"

"Hey, where's Paul?"
"He's practicing."
"Awww, does he have to?"
"He doesn't have to."
"You mean he WANTS to?"

"You might have it!"
"So you think I'm terrific."
"You took the words right out of your mouth."

"This is my friend Paul Boray, and I'm sure that any friend of mine is not welcome here."

"Take that glint out of your eye."
"Glint?"
"Mmmhmm, that gleam. I don't know how you men get that way, but every time you meet an attractive woman, you begin to plan on how and where you can club her wings down."


"The first few minutes I didn't have any control!"
"Forget it... it was only perceptible to the whole audience."

"I fruffed that fast passage in the Brahms."
"Don't worry, you won't hear from Brahms in the morning."

"What are you afraid of, Helen?"
"I'm just careful."
"Of what?"
"The world in general."
"That's pretty vague."
"It's a woman's privilege to be vague."

"She's as complex as a Bach fugue."

"Did I ever tell you I was in love once? It took me two weeks to get over her. I played all the 32 Beethoven sonatas, it took exactly two weeks."

"A French philosopher once listed 300 ways of committing suicide. Well he left one out--falling in love with an artist."

Pretty sure I sprained my ankle last night. Pooh pooh.
Of course I am signed up to play a piece in studio class today which involves stomping on the ground.

Musicians are so negative. I can't stand it anymore. Yeah, you have a lot to do... but YOU'RE PLAYING MUSIC FOR A LIVING. COME ON PEOPLE. STOP WHINING.

50% off Valentine's candy at Safeway. Yup.

When I was single, I never thought of Valentine's Day as Singles' Awareness Day. I thought of it as 'buy yourself some chocolate' day.

A little misnomer that people say often.  Say there are two people named Alex in a room, and your name is Tom and you are sitting between the two Alexes. It would be a funny thing to say, "I'm in an Alex sandwich!" But really, if you are between the two Alexes, you are a Tom sandwich with Alex bread.  When you eat a sandwich, you call it by what is in the middle of sandwich, not what is on the outside. You don't say "I'm eating a sourdough sandwich!" when you're really having turkey and swiss.

So. I'm a Tom sandwich with Alex bread. NOT an Alex sandwich.

PONG's game last night was wicked. We scored the first point, then the other team scored SEVEN IN A ROW to make it 1-7.  We were looking pretty bad, so we called a timeout and regrouped, deciding to switch from to a vert stack.  It worked... we answered with five in a row to make the score 6-7.  SO exciting!!!

We then traded points to tie it at 10-10.  After some pretty intense D, me getting punched in the face and rolling on the ground, and excitement abound, the other team scored 3 more points to end the game on soft cap at 13-10. We lost, but I was still very, very proud of my team for pulling together like that. I love PONG!

In addition, we have been missing our top two guys these two weeks (and our top girl for this game). Nate Johnson, a total game changer, and Rob Norbeck, an all-around solid player... imagine if the whole team was there, what we could have accomplished...

Lulling the other teams into a false sense of security, quietly gaining strength every week... that's what we're all about.

PONG... my favorite league team so far!

Spring 2009 -- Fhloston Paradise (in Tallahassee)
Fall 2009 -- Cheaper than Gold (Tim Streit)
Spring 2010 -- 3BK (Nate Johnson + Lindsey Doedens)
Fall 2010 -- Fall Chickens (Paul + me)
Spring 2011 -- PONG (Paul + me)

Soon enough... I'll have a list of like 20 teams. Just wait.

It's scary to want something this much. To practice practically from the moment I wake up until my head hits the pillow at night, to invest so much effort and time into one goal, and still it's a long shot. Dream big, they say...

Clint Foreman of the New World Symphony won a job with the Boston Symphony. Wonderful, Clint!

Hey readers... do you know what this means for ME?

It means that there will definitely be an opening in the NWS...

None too many updates this month. It's been busy, a little stressful at times, and apparently not post-provoking.

Arizona State

Florida State

They're so similar!

I totally went skiing yesterday. In Arizona. And I didn't fall and I learned to turn and stop. And go really fast. And it was awesome.

I was just asked by an orchestra to sub for a concert, and now I am going to live my lifelong dream of playing John Williams music. Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Harry Potter, along with cool things like Dances with Wolves and Schindler's List... it's going to be a good one!

Hearing the word "excellent" in my lessons more these days. Yes! Yes! Yes!

$80 in my bank account right now. Cool.