Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Banff--Hoodoo Hike

The settings on my camera weren't right, so the picture quality is not as good as I would like, but you get the idea. I love it here.










Saturday, June 6, 2009

Habanera

move

Umm, so I haven't blogged in almost a month. Oops. I'm still here, I've just been busy. I took an audition last month, and I think things are progressing, though I still didn't advance. They let me keep playing more excerpts after I made mistakes, which means there must have been something about my playing they liked. They even let me stop and get some water out of my C key, and they heard me play all the excerpts and then asked for the ones I messed up on again, and I played them better. So at least they gave me a good listen. It's so frustrating to go to an audition, play three excerpts (often with no obvious errors) and then hear "Thank you." Also, now I know what it's like to get water in my key during an audition, so next time it happens, hopefully it won't fluster me as much. At any rate, I had fun eating good food with my friend afterwards and catching up during our wait in the airport.

I also moved, not far, just about 5 miles east to a new apartment. I will miss being as close to the ocean and Santa Monica, but I am in a cute area with a roommate who is super nice and in an improved apartment. But it was still a huge pain in the ass, and I was sick for most of the weekend, which didn't improve things (and meant that I was pretty much exhausted the whole time).

I also had my final concert of the year for my little band. I was pretty stressed out about it, because I've had so many kids miss rehearsal this semester for sports and field trips and such, we were not as prepared as we were for the first concert. But I added a final dress rehearsal right before the concert, and that was enough to fix everything (and to give a chance for our added players to get comfortable with the music), and we had pizza in between the rehearsal and the concert. It went pretty well! I was happy with it, and proud of my kids for pulling it off. But also glad for it to be done. I had a good time chilling with the music teachers afterwards :)

Now I am trying to settle into my new apartment, take care of all of the things I let slip in the last few weeks, and prepare for Banff.