nightmare on michigan ave

I had THE weirdest dream last night. I dreamt that my old teacher made poisoned cookies with his mom and handed them out to CSO musicians, and in so doing wiped out the rest of the oboe section and half the violas. Why he had it in for the violas I don't know. For some reason, the oboe section was large, like a string section, but it was more of an abstract idea, and I didn't know any of them. I did check to see if a few specific musicians were OK, and the ones I knew were fine. But people had actually died as a result of the cookies! I was very upset about this, and kept talking with various musicians trying to convince them he was innocent, but in the end they all convinced me that alas, it was true. I was so upset at this point that I woke up. In retrospect, it's hilarious, but I was really horrified in my dream!! When I was little I had this idea that if you told someone your bad dream it made it less likely to come true, and I still get relief from relating bad dreams, so I thought I'd post it here. Besides, it is rather amusing in its own ridiculous way. I mean, poisoned COOKIES??

Happy New Year!

May 2008 bring you great joy.

In Memoriam, 2007

The New York Times Magazine devotes the last issue of the year to people who have passed away during the previous twelve months. Usually they create one short article for the really important/famous people, and then a series of smaller articles for lesser-known but still influential people. I have my own, somewhat more personal list, that coincides a bit with theirs, but not completely.

Eleanore Schoenfeld
Tara Davis
Molly Ivins
Gian Carlo Menotti
Norman Herzberg
Kurt Vonnegut
Boris Yeltsin
Mstislav Rostropovich
Berverly Sills
Jerry Hadley
Michelangelo Antonioni
Ingmar Bergman
Merv Griffin
Luciano Pavarotti
Madeleine L'Engle
Eudice Shapiro
Benazir Bhutto
Clarence Ching

Seems like we lost a lot of good people in 2007.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

happy birthday lone oboe

heh, i kind of forgot, but, happy birthday to my blog! it's a year old now!

done

Got the DVD made, thanks to a wonderfully helpful employee of the Leavey Library at USC whose name I never got. It was complicated and took two hours, but I finally got my 6-minute recording done. What a lot to put up with for such a small DVD.

First semester is over, THANK GOD. Just one left, and only on academic class at that!!

Meanwhile, I'm transferring my recital (back in May) from MD to CD. I am amused to hear my friends' voices at the end of the first half all debating how to turn off the MD player. How many musicians does it take to operate a MiniDisc? Lets see, I heard Kim, Jamie, Carla, Ben, Shirley and Ginni. That would be six :) The recording, well, the recital had its ups and downs. But it will make an excellent Christmas gift for parental types.

AAAAAUUUUUUGGGHHHHH.

So on Friday I found out that I had to make a DVD recording before I leave on Wednesday. My friend was kind enough to let me borrow her DVD recorder, and I have made the recording. However, she has a PC. I have a Mac. Apparently, her camcorder is not compatible with macs. I googled the issue, which led me to this website, with many varied, complicated, confusing, and sometimes costly ways to get around the issue. She's going home tomorrow, so she won't able to help me. I have to give the camera back to someone else before I leave so that she can have it when she gets back in January. I have a final tomorrow morning at 11, and I really need to study for it. It is now 2:15 am. I also have to have lunch with one friend whom I might not see again for a long time, and dinner with another. I need to pack. I need to make two other recordings, one definitely before I leave, and one hopefully. I need to return library books to USC and UCLA. Oh yeah, and I need to pack. AAAAAUUUUUUGGGHHHHH.