fudgey does not like this

she is really mad at me right now for not petting her.
you guys should apologize to her

So I'm glad to see most people are doing well. Although that getting locked in your apartment story SUCKED amanda. sucked. i think i would have cried. Don't you just hate it when that shit happens? you're locked in and your phone doesn't work and then someone doesn't pick up their phone.... le sigh. That was like my Saturday at work, which began with me being the ONLY one there. No manager, no other opener (the stupid new kid was late. predictable), no one at quiznos. It was super sucky.

Speaking of super sucky - I have gotten medical bills for my WORKER'S COMP injury. I am not paying them. I called my rep at Gallagher and Basset freaking all week last week. I just called her again. no answer. I called and got the operator (after pressing about 7 thousand buttons) and he did not help at all and transferred me to the supervisor who also WASN'T there and I left her a message. I am going to get this worked out, I know, but right now I am pissed about my $426 emergency room bill. Medical bills can fuck with your credit score. I am working really hard on repaying my loans so that I will have a good credit score. It is just pissing me off. I'm gonna email Jerry, the lawyer I have already emailed about this. I will get it worked out.

Like my trio on fb! Trying to get some publicity. Classical Nuovo. We have some crazy looking (professional) photos on there too. And btw, those recordings you can play are SO not us.

I went to the gym yesterday! Who is proud?! I AM. I kinda used my arm as an excuse not to gym it for a while. Luckily I have to walk constantly at work so I am not gaining weight. But I am hella sore today. It's hard to stand on your feet/walk at work and then work out after. It was easier when I worked at meijer, I could work out before. Anyway whatever. Back to the gym for me!

My manager said today he's gonna go ahead and push through my promotion!!!! FINALLY. I'm not gonna celebrate it until I get the raise though. The thing is that our starbucks manager for the region, Pam (we are a franchise so we have a starbucks manager and an hms host manager) has quit (in like november) and we STILL don't know who the newbie is. So just waiting on jonathon (baby manager i work with every day) to push it through to tony (jonathon's hms host boss). My pushiness will help.

Glad to hear everyone's relationships are going well! Patricey and I need to catch up! Gonna be hard for me because i have absolutely no social life, lol.

OH you guys might understand this. Newbie at work, who is super cute and kinda niave and in LOVE with jesus, is kinda dating (but not really. she can't date him until she knows god approves. LITERALLY) chandler. She took chandler to work sunday. He was nervous and I asked her about it today. her "I asked him about his beliefs. He said he definitely believes in God, but he also believes we came from apes!!!!! I mean really?! That is so much harder to believe I think!" Evie (a massive fan of jesus herself) "Well that is more complicated than just that we came from apes, and it is possible to believe both... The important thing is that he believes in salvation and is on a path to get to heaven"
that right there? pretty normal day at work for me. And those are the people i like!
for the record, everyone, i do believe in evolution. Just in case that might affect your friendship with me (what newbie was worried about)

my dad's play is getting produced in la this week! And last week actually. But he and my mom are going to see it this week! YAY!

k that's all I got. Miss you guys!

Key fail

So it's 8:05 am as I'm starting this post. My first class of the day is supposed to start at 8:15. It's one of the classes in which I teach judges and prosecutors--pretty cool, actually. I wake up at 6:45, get ready, etc. etc.....I go to the door to leave at 7:45 so I have enough time to walk to my class and get there on time, only to find that there are no keys in the lock. You see, the doors here are such that the only way you can LOCK the door to prevent thieves and kidnappers from coming in is to lock it with a key. At night, my flatmate and I put one of our sets of keys in the door in case there's an emergency and we have to escape....otherwise we'd have to sit around while we found our keys, found the right one for the lock, etc.

You can imagine my surprise when my keys, which I put in the lock yesterday, are not there. I check the chair near the door. No keys. I had just cleaned the hallway on Saturday...could they be lying around somewhere unusual? Nope. No fucking keys anywhere.

Now, my flatmate is notorious for being, shall we say, absent-minded. He's already lost the keys a classroom once or twice. I can see the situation now: he gets up this morning and goes to work about 30 minutes before I get up. My keys are in the door....he grabs them, puts them IN HIS POCKET, and leaves....with his keys as well...then afterwards locking me IN my apartment and preventing me from leaving for class.

Nothing malicious on his part at all; total pre-7-am absentmindedness. All the same, FML.

To add insult to injury, Polish phones have this whole pay-as-you-go or pay monthly thing going on. My brilliant network decides to block your phone after a certain amount of time if you add minimal amounts at a time. For instance, I add only 10 zloty at a time because I rarely use my phone. As a result, after a week or two, my phone is blocked from making and sending calls and text messages (can only receive) until I add more money. I've been putting off adding more money because I figured, hey if I really need to make a call, I can always just add money when I'm out. Never thought that I'd be trapped IN my apartment and unable to call for help. Again, FML.

To make matters even worse, I came up with the brilliant idea of calling on Skype. I have a couple dollars Skype credit left, so I'll just look at the teacher's register for the numbers of the teacher who co-teaches this court class with me....she'll be there and can tell my class. I call the first number listed...."invalid". I call the second number...it's her fucking MOM. Her MOM. Who doesn't speak English. Somehow I manage to get the teacher's number, in Polish (and numbers are like THE hardest thing in Polish....arrrrgh!!) and call, but there IS NO ANSWER.

Luckily, one other teacher has a class there this morning, so I called her and go through.

But I feel like a total idiot. I'm locked IN my apartment. Seriously, how does that even happen?! I just hope my students don't hate me, or don't think I flaked out on them or something. Ugh. So embarrassing.

***

In other news, things are going relatively well haha. I'm working a lot, but I'm starting to get into the swing of things. Last week was my busiest week yet because last Saturday I had to proctor a mock Cambridge English exam, which took over 4 hours to proctor (not including grading time....multiple choice for 3 sections and in total 10 essays.) Wednesday I had to do the speaking part of the same exam, which took over 4 hours. That was in addition to my normal classes. Plus in two of my classes I had to give other standardized English mock exams and grade them. Plus normal book tests for my ordinary classes. Busy busy busy :)

But in spite of that, I managed to have more free time than usual. I think this proves my long-standing theory that I work much better under pressure and when I have less time. I'm hoping to do more with my Polish. I have only one 45-minute lesson a week, but I'm going to try to see if I can find a conversation partner I can buy coffee and a drożdżówka (pastry) for in exchange for an hour of haltingly painful Polish with me :) I'm also starting to study for the GRE. No definite plans yet, but I figure it'd be good to take the GRE in case I want to go to grad school down the road.

I had a two-week holiday (look at me, I'm starting to talk like a Brit. Yikes) at the beginning of February. I took a bus (14 hours) from Krakow to Hamburg to see my boyfriend. Over one weekend, I hitched a ride with someone--paid 25 euros instead of 80 euros for the train--to Cologne so I could see Amy Jantz. Spent the weekend with her, which was amazing, and hitched another ride back, again paying 24 euros instead of 80. My trip back to Tarnow was painful--about 16-17 hours on the bus--but I made it :) Jeff is coming to Tarnow on March 16, so I'm really excited about that. Also, Amy Jantz is hoping to come either in March or in April, so I'll get to have some visitors to my humble abode!!

Admittedly, I'm reallllly missing playing in chamber groups, especially. I've been practicing more, but I miss my string quartet and things like that. Kelly, sorry you have to deal with such crappy violinists....not too uncommon, unfortunately :( Oh, on the subject of music (and radio...) Tiffy, I couldn't get that file to work you posted :(

Well, nothing else exciting is going on in my life right now. I like my classes, and I'm learning how to be much more effective with my planning, which is making me generally less stressed out. At times I feel really discouraged about my language ability (especially since I'm losing Russian at the moment) but I know that I am getting better, cause I managed to get that phone number this morning. Siedem dziewięć pięć dziewięć dziewięć sześć sześć.....yeah have that thrown at you at the speed people normally say phone numbers. SCARY!

Anyways, sorry for the incredibly long post. I had to start off with venting about my ridiculous situation first haha. Hope everyone's well!

Puppy! (Warning: huge blog)

Well, I figure I haven't blogged in forever so I probably should. At any rate, THAT'S MY PUPPY! Her name is Clara (after Clara Schumann, one of the best and far most unappreciated female composers ever). She is so cute and I love her. I have had her for 3 weeks now and she is making lots of progress, though as I write this, she is staring at me while chewing on crap she isn't supposed to chew on (ie her crate). But she's not going to hurt anything by chewing on that.

I got her from this place called SAAP, Stray Animal Adoption Program in Newport, KY right across the river. Her mom was a shelter beagle and she was fostered with her bros and sisters. She got really lucky because every pup in her litter got parvovirus (kills puppies, basically) except for her and she's perfectly healthy! Though I am taking her to the vet tomorrow because I think she has an infection around where she got spayed. Oh well. Potty training her has been the hardest part, but she now knows to go to the door when she has to go, which is a huge improvement from having like 4 or 5 accidents in the house every day. Now she has 0-1 or 2 accidents every day, which is much less stress for her mommy. She is half beagle half dachsund (wiener dog). Beagles are super smart but dachsunds are dumbasses so I think she is just average. But I'd like to think she's pretty smart for being practically housebroken in 3 weeks :)

I love her...it's made my time in Cincy a lot less lonely since I don't have much of a social life. This quarter has been NUTS. I played for the opera (Marriage of Figaro) which was stressful because even at CCM, the violins suck. I mean, the singers were better than the violinists. How messed up is that? But actually the singers at CCM are freaking amazing because it's a great opera school. Well the violinists are actually really good but they don't practice their damn music. It made me miss you, Amanda! We actually have a concert this Friday night (playing Firebird and Sensemaya, remember that orchestra kids???!!) and our director threatened to have (GASP) graded excerpt tests for JUST the violins! Which is cray cray because we NEVER do graded excerpt tests here. Weird.

Patrick isn't going to DePauw anymore. Without getting into too many details, he's basically just taking a break and is hoping to transfer into IUPUI to get a music technology degree in the next couple of years. He is actually far happier to be away from DPU and I'm happy for him as well. Just a warning...he and I will hopefully be engaged within the next 2-4 months.!!!!!!!!!! Crazy.

School is going pretty well, though like I said, this quarter is nuts. I finally nailed down a recital program for the fall: Brahms Eb Sonata, Hindemith Op. 11 No. 4 Sonata, and Stravinsky Elegie. We have to give 2 recitals as MM students and most of us violists do 2 in our second year, one in the fall and one in the spring. That's basically because our teachers spend the whole first year changing our entire technique and way of playing (which is totally happening, though it's for the best). Now my dog is biting my feet. OUCH. And now back to biting the crate.

Rachel and I were talking the other day about how much we miss people from DePauw and the SOM. I told her that all I asked was to be able to play drinking games vs. the violins, but considering there are 39 violists in my studio here and like 3 times that in the violin studio, we'd be a little outnumbered. We'd probably win anyway, though. I'm pretty good friends with like 5 violists in my studio, but that's about it. I don't even know everyone's name still, how messed up is that?

Anyway, I think that's all I can think of. But I miss you all and hopefully it won't take me this long to update again!!!!! Peace.

Springtime! (it's almost here...)

HEY GUYS!

Rach: how's the arm? s'bucks? the new car?

Patrice: update on borders? (heard about it on the news last week) so excited for the JET intv...i'll be sending positive thoughts your way on Wed.

Kelly: How's school? you got a puppy?!?!

Amanda: How's it over there in your neck of the woods?

All the other followers: what's up?

So it's almost springtime! SO CLOSE! tired of cold, dreary weather. yayyyyyy

I think this is update #2 for me. I officially have Sunday's off now! For the month of January I only had one day off because Whole Foods was messing up my sched, but now thats all fixed. So Sunday is the best day to get a hold of me!

WNYC is good. I worked on my first "idea" segment (on how artists build setlists for shows). It's a segment that I pitched and saw through from the beginning to end. Very fun stuff...a little stressful though doing interviews and finding guests. You can listen to it here:

WNYC: Soundcheck. The Art of the Setlist

I'm trying to do a few more idea segs before my internship ends. I've pitched a few already that didn't really ring for the producers, but I just came up with two today: Breakup albums (records or songs that people made after/during a break up) and *ahem* Drinking songs/bands (a seasonal seg for St. Patty's I think). Not sure what the outcome of this internship will be...perhaps I'll get an offer, but I don't want to get my hopes up. I'm kind of in this weird spot right now in which i'm not sure if I should go back to school...are my radio chops at their best? I think I'm going to speak with the senior producer of the show to get his advice.

Other updates: 


I joined the New York Road Runners and ran in my first race a few weeks ago in Central Park. I did pretty well considering I slipped on a patch of ice right before the race and banged up my left knee. It's all better now (no where near Rach's encounter with ice) and I think I'll be running in another race next month, a 15k.


Ryan and I are thinking about moving in together in the summer. I think we want to stay in Jersey City, but move closer to "downtown" where it's more "hip" and not as ghetto. It's cheap here and not as pretentious as Brooklyn. My place is not bad. I have heat now and the downstairs bathroom is all set up, but I'm kind of over living with my landlord and following her weird rules. I shouldn't complain though because it's so cheap and it is her home. so yeah.


I cut this guy's hair:

(also this is ryan)

this is what's happening right now: listening to arcade fire and drinking banana beer


thoughts on this?:

singles awareness day???!!!!!

So.....I kind of don't like valentines day even though during valentines day there are a ton of pink things.

I haven't updated in a while, but i finally have stuff to update on.
I got a JET interview. YAY!!!! It's on the 23rd. I'm super happy/excited/relieved about it but also worried and nervous for the interview.

I recently bought a Sony Pocket Reader. Its pretty neat. I like it so far, except for the shade of pink it is not. More of a fuchsia/magenta. I've been reading a lot. There are tons of free ebooks and my library ebooks to borrow. But I have been buying more and more stuff from my store.

Oh and so I hear that Borders is going to file for bankruptcy sometime this week. But we are told to tell the customers we haven't heard anything and are still operating as normal until then. I read somewhere that they may have to close 1/3 of their stores, meaning 20,000 jobs will be lost. Kind of makes me sad. I really did like Borders more than Barnes and Nobles.

So I officially have to start paying back my loan on April 1st. Doesn't that sound like a joke. Hahaha...to bad it's not. I will be poor come April.

Oh yeah, I've been practicing driving too. The other day it was raining while I was driving. I did not like that.....It was way too distracting. My goal is to get my license before my permit expires in August.

Hope everyone is doing well.

grrrr

um i am pissed, not that yall will respond.
my kids played at solo and ensemble. they were nervous. they played GREAT
they both got twos or silvers, whichever you want to call it
the judge was fucking evil. gave out 4 golds or ones all day
apparently my shit luck is rubbing off on everyone around me
they were so sad. but they played so well!!!
and i am mad