Back to school...

Classes start again tomorrow for me after a wonderful Christmas break at home. I had a very enjoyable few weeks of playing games with my family, shopping in the retail Mecca that is Round Rock, driving around (paying gas prices similar to when I was in high school!), opening presents, and playing with the dog. What could be better? I ventured out to Houston, San Antonio, and Georgetown, and thoroughly enjoyed wearing short sleeves and not even a jacket outside. That's the life!

I'm gearing up for school, excited about my classes, and hoping to have a good winter quarter. One of my goals is to spend more time with friends than I did last winter quarter (which was an all-time low for my social life), and hopefully to see more of friends from out of town. Another goal is to continue working on my preliminary dissertation research as my highest spare-time priority, which might actually happen because one of my courses is a history class on the Revolutionary War. It is a lot of fun for me to work on dissertation planning and such, and I'm eager to make progress.

I spent the evening with two friends, one from college and one from here (they knew each other from high school!) It was great to catch up, and reminded me yet again of how much I miss my Lawrence friends.

Only about two weeks until Obama takes office!

Mmmmm vacation!

I'm all done with the academic quarter! I had a particularly great quarter, and I'm fairly proud of the work I did. Mainly I'm proud that doing the work was not agonizing or frustrating in any way- it was just fun, interesting, and satisfying. It all depends on your mindset, and I've learned in the past year that if I'm not going to be playing music and practicing all the time, I should take as much pleasure in research and writing as I used to in performing. I think my perspective on what a good term paper is has changed quite a bit.


I went to the Chicago Lyric Opera last night to see Porgy and Bess with some friends. That is a fantastic opera, and it was performed extremely well. The singers were also great actors, which makes a big difference. It was definitely worth braving the snow and slush.

I'm finally in Christmas shopping mode, but I haven't decided on anything yet! Mainly I'm looking forward to my winter travels.

School/Stress

Well hello. School has gotten very busy and demanding, so I'm not doing much fun internet playing lately. Instead, I'm mostly researching, studying, grading papers, and attempting to write papers of my own. I'm impressed with how cool and collected I was most of the quarter up until this week (and part of last week), but now there's no denying it: I've got too much to do and not enough time to do it in. Luckily my professors are being very supportive, and I'm growing quite fond of them.

I'm going to be home (in Texas) in one month, and before then I have to write three research papers, grade a bunch of final exams, research for my professors, and plenty of other random stuff. I really like the various things I'm working on, and I like all of the other tasks, too, but it's nice when they aren't all piled up at the same time and vying for my attention! I'm confident I'll get everything done and (hopefully) be proud of my work when I'm finished. My fear is that I'll hate all the work I did and hide it away forever.

Enough complaining. In better news, Thanksgiving is coming up, and I'm excited about that. I'll probably have to get some work done, but mostly I want to spend some quality time with my parents and some relatives who are also coming to Chicago for the weekend. I love an excuse to be a tourist in Chicago.

And in weather news... When I woke up this morning there was snow on the grass and on top of all the cars!!! SNOW!!! I'm not going to complain about the cold this year... life is better when I don't complain about it, especially since I've been bragging all year that I really do like the cold.

Obama!

I am so, so happy that Barack Obama is our next president.


Ever since I heard his speech at the DNC four years ago, I've known he was our future, and it's been a true pleasure to watch him succeed time and time again in the past 21 months. I believe he'll lead our country to a better time, and a more responsible character.

Zoo

I had a really enjoyable Halloween yesterday! I decided to take some time off from working on my papers to go to the Lincoln Park Zoo with a group of my grad school friends. The sun was shining, the weather was phenomenal, and the human beings were crazier than the animals (not my friends, but the hundreds of people we saw in costumes!) It's pretty weird to see a group of people in over-the-top costumes (King Tut, for example) pointing and gawking at a bunch of monkeys just minding their own business.

The most interesting animal behavior we experienced was a roaring session between three lions (two female, one male), who barked and barked for several minutes. It was an incredible sonic experience- I couldn't believe how loud and frightening they were. The cave-woman inside me wanted to turn tail and run! It wasn't the MGM Studios kind of lion roar, more like what you'd expect from a barking sea lion but far louder, deeper, and more resonant. And more ferocious. We couldn't figure out what had set them off, but they certainly set off a bunch of little babies, who probably ruined their Halloween makeup crying.

When it started to get dark and the zoo closed, we walked up to Belmont and had dinner at an Irish pub kind of place, then walked around and saw hundreds of costumed revelers. My favorites included a couple of Waldos, a Pikachu (in a full fluffy yellow body suit!), two girls dressed like cards from the game "Apples to Apples," and a smoking, drunk Sarah Palin. There were some pretty scandalous outfits (don't dress like a hooker to take your young daughters trick-or-treating!), but a lot of clever ones as well. My friends and I did not dress up in the slightest, and I was definitely ok with that! I didn't eat a single bite of candy, either.

Today I wrote half of one of my term papers, which is remarkably productive for one day. I have to make every minute count because I'm going out of town for four days this coming week, and Thanksgiving won't offer much time to work because I'll be touring Chicago with family. I'm determined not to get above a 7 out of 10 on the stressometer, so I'm trying to buckle down. It worked today, let's see what happens tomorrow!

Group projects

Normally, I hate "group work" in a school setting. I hate being told I'll get the same grade as my group members, and I feel a lot of responsibility to make sure the weakest link either comes up to my standards, or I do their work for them. Today, however, I was impressed when my current group project experience took a surprising turn. Someone else volunteered to lead the paper-writing effort. Everyone else seemed eager to do their part. I was the one who (almost) felt like a slacker. It was a pleasant experience.

In other news, I totally broke down a bought a piece of chocolate-peanut-butter cake tonight. It was kind of worth it, but I'm still kind of mad at myself. I think it's because my friend is coming for a visit this weekend and my brain already kicked into "fun vacation" mode a day early. At least it was an organic vegan cake... because, you know, vegan calories don't count, right?

I just watched the season premiere of 30 Rock on Hulu and it was awe-some. I looooove that show.

I'm beginning to worry about the two-year-long election season coming to a close. It's been such an adrenaline rush, an endlessly interesting news smorgasbord. I'm going to really miss it, although I'm confident I'll be a happy person on November 5th (either that or I'm moving to Australia.) I told a friend my concern and she said I might have "post-partisan depression." Too true.

Long weekends

Sometimes I just get so overwhelmed with the amount of work I have to do, and it gets to the point that all I can do is crawl into bed and let my head swim. That happened today when I was faced with the task of learning how to read and transcribe medieval notation. I love medieval music, and I wish that I could read the manuscripts, but I've never learned, never even tried. Now I'm thrown into it and have to produce a transcription in a week. I'm leaning towards some chant by Hildegarde. It has to be easier than polyphony, right? I would rather do a good job on a short Gregorian chant than a terrible job on a motet.

For my American Art Song class (which I love, by the way), I've been listening to Aaron Copland's Twelve Emily Dickinson Songs. They are quite melancholy, and when I listen to them my mind shifts its weight between different sad memories.The songs are wonderful, though, and I intend to become very well acquainted with them. I'm ashamed that I hadn't heard them before.

For my Wagner class I have eased my way into a particularly exciting term project in which I will examine the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson's famous epic poem Tristram, and try to get a feel for his obsession with Wagner and how it may have been part of a larger movement of American poets between the World Wars who were admirers of Wagner. Of course, in the thirties the meaning of Wagner changed entirely because of Hitler, but before that an innocent American could simply love Wagner without feeling the guilt that we may feel now. My relationship with Wagner is rather fraught, aesthetic enjoyment versus histo-political disgust. One of my favorite quotes so far is Robinson's letter to a friend in which he writes, "It makes me wish sometimes that I lived in Madagascar. But I shouldn’t like that, either; for then I should have no apples or Tristan and Isolde. I can’t get along much without T. & I. And apples." Believe it or not, but he often mentions Wagner and his love for apples in the same sentence. It reminds me of Berlioz writing so often in his memoirs about music and raisins. In any case, Robinson is an adorable person, and there's nothing like reading a poet's (formerly) private correspondence.

Here's Edwin:

I suppose that will be all for now. I've been relaxing tonight after a day (week? month?) of working constantly, and my saving grace is that I have a four-day weekend every week in which to work work work. It's nice not to have to be anywhere for a few days. I'm incredibly lucky. At the same time, though, you can trust that I don't spend my long weekends lounging or window shopping. At least I get to sleep in.