Life is good...

It's Christmas break,
I'm at my parents new cabin in the woods, sitting in the great room overlooking their pond and the woods covered with fresh white snow,
there's a fire going in the wood burning stove,
my dog is curled up next to me,
life is good.

finals week kills me twice a year

I'm done will all of my finals, my tests and such. But I still have some things I need to finish up. I need to catch up on my lab reflections for conducting. I've been really bad about that. I also have to finish my paper for Music History. I really should force myself to work on these things tonight, but I just don't have the energy. Last night, I went to bed at 2am and woke up at 7am. I'm not loving this 5 hrs of sleep thing very much. So I'm going to go to bed pretty soon so I can be rested for tomorrow. I'm working a crapload of hours tomorrow. (that reminds me, I forgot to do my timesheet for last week. that might be bad.) And I have to do all that stuff I just mentioned.

Oh! Today I had my voice jury. I leveled up! (to explain, when you take lessons for credit, there are different skill levels. for voice, there's 2000, 3000, and 4000. I leveled up from 3000 to 4000) I was very excited. Also, I had my final conducting lab today. I conducted Set Me as a Seal by Rene Clausen. It was so cool. We got to conduct Kapelle. I've never conducted that well (I know my experience is limited, but still). The song really resonated with me when I did it with Kapelle for Fall Tour. It really meant something to me. That song was inside me, in my heart. And since it was in my heart, everything else came. I didn't even really have to think about it. I don't know if it was mainly because the song really resonated with me or because I knew it so well, but my hands just...did it. It was like they were on autopilot, but I still had control. And because of that, I was free to listen. I could hear everything. And I was paying attention to the right parts at the right times. It was so amazing. It wasn't perfect, but it was still pretty good. I loved it so much.

I'll be glad when finals week is over, when everything is finally done.

Come soon, Lord Jesus

I love Lessons and Carols. It's one of my favorite Kapelle performances. My dad said to me after this afternoon's service, "I don't know that it's Christmas until I come up here for Lessons and Carols." I would have to agree. It's not Christmas until Lessons and Carols. For me it's everything that I love about Christmas. It's incredibly reflective and meditative. It sort of puts everything into perspective. I don't like Christmas songs unless they're fairly meditative. I hate the cutesy, commercial songs (ex: John Rutter.). They seem insincere and most of the time they're just for flash and show. But most of the songs that we do at Lessons and Carols are the kind of Christmas songs that I love. This year we sang a song that is about Herod killing all the baby boys under age 2. I never really put much thought into that, but this song just makes my heart break. It's lamenting for the "little tiny child[ren]" that Herod killed.

Furthermore, Lessons and Carols affected me more deeply than usual this year, for some reason. I'm not really sure why. It could be that for a lot of my friends from Kapelle, this is their last Lessons and Carols. That's possible. But I think another explanation was that I kept thinking about all of the suffering going on in our world today. Saturday night, it made me cry. Advent is all about the anticipation of waiting for the Savior to come, waiting for Jesus. He came, but we're still waiting. We're still waiting for him to come back and end all of this worldly suffering. My heart breaks for all of those who suffer much more than I do.

Come soon, Lord Jesus.

I miss blogging....

I've been wanting to write a blog for SO long, but I've been so busy. I have a huge paper due tomorrow (well, just the rough draft-I only technically have to turn in half of it) and I haven't even started yet. I have my sources, and I have an outline, I just have to write it all. My paper is for 20th Century Music History and Techniques. We have to write a term paper about a 20th century composer who is still alive. All the good ones got taken early, and so I've been struggling to find a composer, and I've finally settled on John Corigliano. I've heard of him, I think, but I'm not familiar with any of his music. Oh! Except that he wrote the score for the movie, The Red Violin, which I've seen. So I'm thinking it'll be a long night. I'm definitely not going to pull an all-nighter, but I will stay in the Kretzmann Computer Lab until late. They lock up at around 11pm, but normally let you stay in the building until about 1:30pm (which doesn't ever happen in any other building). They sure like us musicians around here.

Ugh. I have a headache. It's because it got super cold all of a sudden. I hate it. It was so cold today.

We've been searching frantically for a roommate this week, seeing as the end of the semester is fast approaching. Sam and I were freaking out a little bit, but we posted our apartment on a few different sites, and got some replies that look really promising. One girl is coming on Monday to see the apartment. She seems like a good fit, and she's really interested.

Thanksgiving was awesome. I went to Springfield, MO to spend the holiday with my boyfriend Shannon. We hadn't seen each other in a really long time and that was really starting to take a toll on us. Thanksgiving was really good for us. I also needed it to sort of de-stress, to take some time and not do any schoolwork at all. I can't wait for New Year's. I'm going back down there after Christmas, which is in less than a month. I'm so excited!

Sigh. This blog made me happy. I want to try and blog more, but with the end of the semester, I just don't have as much free time to blog and check facebook and such. It makes me sad. I can't wait for Christmas break. I need it so badly.