Happy weekend

I'm happy at how my break went. Particularly, how this weekend went. I got a fair amount of homework done, just like I'd hoped. But in addition to that, I went swing dancing on Friday, garage saleing Saturday morning and played games with friends Saturday night.

Swing dancing was amazing. The first two times I went, there were not enough men and they were, for the most part, too young or too old. And in either direction, it's just inappropriate. The ones that seemed the right age were all too weird, too short, or had some other fatal flaw. But this Friday night? It was amazing! I danced with several different guys and most of them seemed quite normal. I didn't have to ask anyone to dance, not once, and amazingly enough, I remembered enough steps that I only stepped on a couple feet. I have to tell you, it feels very flattering to be asked to dance.

Garage saleing proved fruitful... I found a whole boxful of country CDs and bought five of them for 8 dollars, which I thought was a good deal. Then across the street from that sale was another sale, where they were giving away a porch lounge chair for free. I had only just decided I needed one of those last week, and here it was! Life is funny that way sometimes.

The only low point at the game night at E's was that U brought a huge chunk of cheese, which I am giving up for Lent. This is the second time he's done this! Last year we were watching Harry Potter as a group, and I was giving up chocolate for Lent. So what did U do? He brought a huge chunk of chocolate. Maybe for Lent next year I can give up dating... then perhaps he'll bring a chunk of eligible bachelor. :P

show tunes never die

There's something magical about buying a book full of music. Today I bopped into Watermelon Music, as I have a tendency to do every couple months or so, and found my usual two musicals, one book of church music and, new for me, a how-to guitar learning book. We'll see if that results in anything... I really want to learn the guitar, but right before finals is probably not the best time to start that. Maybe over the summer. We'll see.

Anyway, I love playing through arrangements of musicals. I have about thirty of these, and my favorite thing to do recently is flip through the books to the songs that truly express how I'm feeling, any given day. Sometimes I sing along, sometimes I don't. But it's a nice positive way to express myself, even if I'm a bit down.

So this time around I bought "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying" and "Hans Christian Anderson". There are inevitable memories that bubble to the surface when I buy musicals... memories of shows past, present and sometimes even future, if I'm buying a show to familiarize myself with the music before playing or seeing it performed. Today was no different. My friends (you know who you are) and I used to spend endless hours in junior high and high school singing through certain musicals, of which "How To" was a top hit and a favorite. We all swooned when the cute boy sang "I Believe In You", we loved chanting the "coffee break" song and we certainly weren't going to be secretary toys for any man to play with. It is a great musical, and quite possibly the first musical I saw professionally performed, at the B Street Theater in Sac.

Less known by me is "Hans Christian Anderson". I have only seen it once, when DMTC's YPT did it when I was about eleven years old. Yet playing through the music contains with it an odd familiarity. Could I have learned the songs, the tunes, so well that playing them now I still remember them? Just from seeing the show that one time? Only four of the six or seven songs in the book seem familiar, but given the fact that I haven't seen it for years, wasn't in the show and haven't seen it since, it was an eery type of deja vu to tinkle the tunes out on my beautiful upright here at home.

It's funny. I have been collecting arrangements of musical theater shows since junior high, when I first became able to play them. I don't need them anymore. A good fake book and a good keyboard, and I'll play anything but Sondheim and make it snazzy. But there's something in having those notes in front of me, of playing through all the well-known tunes from a show, that I'm addicted to. I love making up arrangements, but to have a book containing a show... to pick a show from a stack of books... it's just satisfaction for me. I can't really explain why, but I love it. Maybe it's because it's easier to sing along if I'm not making up the accompaniment. Maybe it's because the fake books never have all the good songs. Maybe it's because I like taking other people's arrangements and adding to them. Whatever it is, I love going through the broadway shows at Watermelon looking for that one musical I don't own yet... and even more than finding it, I love sitting it down at my Packard and plunking through it. Whatever it is, it makes me happy. And that, in this world, is no small thing.

pausing to breathe and enjoy the flowers

I sometimes forget how lucky I am. Then an hour long walk around my beautiful neighborhood with a friend reminds me that I live in a lovely part of Davis and that I have lovely friends with which to enjoy it. Life is good, people. I'm enjoying this whole study as much as I can while still keeping a social life spring break thing. I'm glad I didn't go away, because it means I can spend more time studying, but I'm also glad I have time to spend with friends that usually eats away at study time. Now, I can do both. Even though finals are a blink and several outlines away from arriving, I don't feel stressed. Thank goodness for spring break.

Mom Day

I had a Mom day today. She graciously accepted my request to help me pick out frames for glasses thsi morning, and additionally suggested we hit some of the thrift stores in Woodland, which we love to do from time to time.... it's a hobby of ours. So we got an early start this morning (9:45) (what? that's early on a Saturday!!!) and spent some quality time at the glasses frame place picking out frames for yours truly. I was very happy with our picks: I got a pair of glasses with these intricate burgundy-colored frames in a very 70s retro hornrim shape with little gold flecks at the edges. I also got a pair of sunglasses in a deep pink / purple color with little palm trees and faux diamonds (yay for bling!) that were really big on my face and made me feel more like Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde than my first pink suit did. To top the morning off, I got to practice my Farsi with the pleasant glasses fitter, who was Persian. Amazingly, I understood everything he said.... in those two phrases he responded to me with.

Then we were off to Woodland for My Sister's Closet shopping, Pacos, and more thrift store shopping. My mom is great, for those of you who don't know her. She always points out "you don't need that" or "it's too small" or something like that, for like 90% of the stuff I try on, so when she approves of a sale I always know it's perfect! She treated at Paco's just as we were running out of steam.... the food gave us more energy so after that, we trudged through the big thrift store downtown. We also located the office where I'm interviewing on Monday, so I'll know where to go and how to get there.

All in all, this was a productive and fun day of shopping, and we got back in plenty of time for me to study some too. I love it when days are balanced like that: social time v alone time, fun time v study time. (Ok, ok, some studying is fun too.... but you know what I mean!) And Mom's even brave enough that when I told her about the chicken / onion / rice stew I made for dinner tonight she offered to eat some of it tomorrow night! :) So... looking forward to that.

that's all.

Since when did 10:30 AM become noon?

So I was on my way home from class this morning, my last class before spring break, and I had a craving for McD's coffee. For some reason, it tastes better to me than any other coffee I've ever had. I don't like supporting the company for political reasons, but the coffee is amazing. Plus, it was the morning and I was thinking I'd get some breakfast too. So I pull up there and place my order... remember, this is 10:45 AM here... and the dude says they're not serving breakfast anymore!!! They start serving lunch at noon. I couldn't believe it. I really thought he just didn't like me, and was arbitrarily changing the rules. But B says that a lot of fast food restaurants do that. It doesn't make sense. It's.... morning. Isn't breakfast supposed to be served in the.... morning? Rrrr. Chalk one up to the annoying things in life that make no sense. But you know? It was probably better that way, because I got home, B and I decided to make our own hash browns and since we baked them instead of frying them in cheap, deadly oils, it was probably healthier and less expensive than Mickey D's would have been anyway. And scrambled eggs too. Take that, lousy fast food chains!

yay me family is famous

So here I was tonight, bored with the television programs on yet needing that comforting noise in the background to really get some good studying in, channel surfing. On any normal day I would check the major stations and give up, but a little sprite must have been controlling the remote (as opposed to those little birds that always let the cat out of the bag? toooo many mixed metaphors...), because I flipped straight through the public access channels I Never Check and checked them all. And there he was: my father. I thought at first that I'd somehow flipped the channel straight through to watching my parents at home (I always kind of figured that day would come, what with all these webcams these days... watch your family! watch your friends!) because there he was, my dad, on TV.

It took me a moment to place what I was watching, but I finally realized that he was giving his report from the Bicycle Commission at the City Council meeting. He's the head of the Bicycle Commission, which I think is pretty cool since I always thought of him as The Bike Guy anyway, and now he officially owns that title. My mother had told me earlier that this was going to happen tonight, but it never once occurred to me that it would be televised. I guess most of these public meetings are, probably by law even. So, I yelled to my roommate that my DAD IS ON TV and we watched the end of his speech regarding bike lanes in Downtown Davis. Pretty funny stuff. Yay.

I can only think of three times that I myself have been on TV: once in high school, directing the Madrigal choir on Good Day Sacramento or some such show, once in college during Christmas Fest at St. Olaf first year when they taped it and once some random time in Davis when a camera crew interviewed me for something about the Davis Public Library. But as far as I can remember my parents have not been on television. So, I thought this was pretty cool. I vote for going through the archives and adding "Dad talking to City Council" to the DVDs on the shelf. What say?

a summer day... in winter

It's a beautiful day today. Just crisp enough outdoors that the heater on indoors makes me lethargic. A little homework here, a couple job prospects there, and the day hasn't been a complete waste. I feel like cooking but there are too many leftovers for that... need to finish them up soon.

About the most exciting thing this week is getting a new prescription which usually means, getting new glasses. I'm thinking about tortoiseshell or something daring like that... my current frames are no frames at all, which is more subtle than the ones I'm considering this time around. It's always fun to go shopping, especially when insurance foots the bill.

I think I'll make guacamole.

I am Persian... like the cat... meow

Everyone look up Maz Jobrani on YouTube. I'll post links later if you're too lazy to find him yourself (as I am). We had a wonderful evening listening and laughing. He's totally changed his material since I saw him the last time he was in Sacramento, so it was even more hilarious and fun than I had expected. For anyone that knows anything about Persian food, language or culture, it was really funny... and for those of you that don't, it was still funny. He's very talented; he made quite a few off-the-cuff comments reacting to us, our audience, right there on the spot. The comedy was mostly about the Persian life and culture, but he did a slam dunk job making fun of the rest of us as well. All in all a really great evening... I laughed so hard I cried a little.

a good friend of mine just gave birth to her first child. I'm amazed at the whole process and so very happy for her. read about it here: lunargoat@blogspot.com.

the o-per-a

So, I went to Sac Opera's The Marriage of Figaro on Friday night. They did a spectactular job; the sets were beautiful, the costumes were beautiful and (most importantly) the voices were beautiful. But unfortunately for me, my contacts were not strong enough to read the supertitles without squinting. By the end it just wasn't worth it. Plus we were in the second tier and they all looked like tiny specks down there. But at least we could hear well. The friend that came along with me had never seen an opera before, so that was fun. "They don't have microphones!" was the comment. Anyway, it was a good opportunity to dress up, go out to dinner and visit the Sac Community Center. The quality was high enough that I recommend to you all that you should see an opera there. The next one is "La Boheme", another classic.