A study in irony.

Here's what I find ironic. Recently I heard a review of the movie "Failure to Launch". In it, the film critic was asking how truly believable the movie is, with Matthew McConaughey as a single man who still lives at home. Now, while I don't dispute this, I must say I think they've overlooked a few very important facts.
Fact #1: How many undesirable actors are there in hollywood? Based on looks, I mean. How many unattractive actors could they truly have cast? Besides, if they had, how many people would have come? Hey, I can be cynical about the critics and the fans as well.
Fact #2: How are they to know who should marry young, and who needs more time? Or for that matter, who should marry at all? Now, I know I'm being very critical of a movie, and a movie review, and taking it well beyond the parameters they intended, but this is still the message that everyone gets from hollywood. If you are young, fit, and beautiful/handsome, you must marry early, but not too early, oh, and by the way you will hate it, get divorced and marry again later on. You will have kids, but not too many, and they will be a pain and suck you dry but ultimately be rewarding. Now, not all of these things are good, or bad, but why can you not marry when you're older, or when you're younger (as I will be,) than society's "norm"? Why marry at all if you do not want to? If you don't have the desire, then you really are doomed to be unhappy in a marriage. Children are rewarding, and at this point I don't think I'll mind if they "suck me dry", I'd be perfectly happy with lots of them. But anyway, my point was originally that Hollywood shouldn't be able to determine who marries whom when. Societies norms, like all norms, were made to be broken.

P.S.
I personally loved the movie, with the exception that I saw much more of Terry Bradshaw than I ever, EVER wanted to.

Just a quick note.

Just thought I'd answer a couple questions...

I am planning to get my masters, (doctorate? Possible, doubtful, though...) in Music ( and by that I mean vocal) performance. Right now I"m looking at different grad schools, just sort of scoping them out to know what I need to work towards...two that are plausible and still in consideration right now are USD Grad school, which is more practical simply because I don't have to wait a year between graduation and starting grad school. Another school is University of MInnesota, which would be very cool, very worth it to be able to attend there...it is somewhat expensive, but relatively cheap as the grad schools I've looked at so far go. It's around 7,000 for a non-resident, per semester, and most other schools that I've looked at are at least 12,000.

Amanda, I have no idea what tests you were talking about, to be honest, but now that I've got the heads up, I'll look into them. :)

The trip and future plans and such.

Hi all! By popular request, I'm going to write about all that good stuff.

So the trip. Well, Chris and I, and three other people, went to Kansas City for spring break. It was fun. We did (Chris and I) decide not to attend seminary, after visiting it there and finding that it didn't suit nearly as well as planned. Which is ok. Because we have other future plans. More on that in a minute. We also went to this great place called Swagat Indian Cuisine. Authentic indian food, slightly expensive, but split a $45 bill four ways isn't too bad for 2 appetizers, 2 main courses, 3 orders of bread, and coconut soup for me (my favorite dish!!!). Definitely my favorite restaurant that we went to on the trip. We also went to an outdoor shopping mall, a movie, and hung out at sem. It was a lot of fun.

Future plans. Well, Chris is planning to get his Masters in Business Administration while I finish up my undergrad, and then when we're both done, I'm planning on grad school. Near future plans and such? Well, my good ol' 8 am class is in the morning, and if I get to bed now, I can get just over six hours of sleep. Goodnight!

All that Jazz.

So tomorrow, I'm working at jazz festival. I have to be at Slagle auditorium, (I know that means nothing to you, but let it suffice that it's across campus) at 7:30 am to set up the concession stand. I'm working until 1:30, and all my music classes for the day are cancelled. I still have biology lab, but nothing else. I don't know if I'm happy or sad. I was actually looking forward to my morning class, because I really enjoy it, but oh well. I guess I'll just have to look forward to Thursday. And I guess I'm happy about the fact that I won't have had Music Theory for two days in a row. (Prof was sick today.) So I guess that's the exciting life that is Mine. Hope you've enjoyed my scrambled ramblings.

wow.

So here I sit in U.Brew again. I got some interesting, and really cool, news this week. One of my roomies from Summit is pregnant! She's due at the end of the summer, about. She sounds really happy, so I'm happy for her. It's weird though, because I think I might be older than her...otherwise she's only a month older than me...it's something like that. And she's going to have a kid! Wow. I hope I get to play almost auntie and spoil the kid! :D

Housing

Well, yay! I got into McFadden, the school owned apartments. The free-for-all signup opened at 7 am, and it is 7:18, and McFadden is officially full. That's how quickly it fills up. I even got on first floor, where I wanted to be, and I'm on the end of the apartment, so less noise from all my roommates will be heard! Yay!

Ok, so maybe getting up at 5 am was worth it after all.

Johari Window

Amanda had this on her blog, so I had to copy. It's fun! Copy and paste this into your browser bar. http://kevan.org/johari?name=elythra Then you can make your own, after doing this. Seriously, try it.

The accordian. Why???

Ok, so I'm sitting in U.Brew, again, (I'm here every tuesday and thursday, because I have most of my mornings free then...) and there is a guy on stage with an accordian. He wrote his own music. Now, as much as I enjoy original music, this is definitely not high on my favorites list. Oh dear. He's just attached a harmonica around his neck. His next song is about skeletons. He sings too, but you can barely hear him over the accordian. Scary. Why am I still sitting here? I guess because I have other things to do while I'm here. I'm just going to try to block him out now.

U.Brew

Here I sit in U.Brew with Chris. We've both got our laptops, and he is of course checking out tech sites for news. I'm planning to meet with my friend, Jenny James, in a few minutes to go over plans for a new bible study that I'm planning to start, and also to have lunch. I'm looking forward to it, really. Partly to hack out the plans for this bible study, which I'm really looking forward to doing, and partly just because Jenny is fun to hang out with. :) Well, that's about all the time I want to spend on updates today. Hopefully sometime soon I'll be e-mailing people.

Ode to my friends. (The Group).

So much potential, so much variety,
Wrought in different people.
All friends, all feed off each other,
But each unique to a fault.

While others discuss fashion, they discuss philosophy.
While others are picked up for DUI’s, they kick back pixy sticks.
While others fight to blend into the cool crowd, they choose to remain unique.
While others avoid “useless” knowledge at all costs, they thrive on it’s potential.

These are the theater kids, the band and choir kids, the debate and chess club kids,
Those that you knew and made fun of, or were friends with.
These particular people are my friends.
I was one of them, and they will forever be dear to my heart.

Blah.

I don't have much new to report, I just felt like I hadn't blogged in awhile.

Chris and I went on a double date last night, which was pretty fun. We went out to Cattleman's, and then rented "The Exorcism of Emily Rose". I hate horrors, but surprisingly, I kind of liked the movie. I will say that that is the first movie in an extremely long time that made me feel uneasy about falling asleep. I think the last one was "It", when I was four. I didn't even watch all of "It", but I always came in on the creepy parts...(well, creepy to a four year old...I haven't seen the movie since...) You know, the part where the clown eats a boy, or blood starts coming out of the showerheads in the locker room...parts like that. But I digress.

So the movie was good, and then we played two games (with many hands making up one game) of UNO. The first game, I did not win a single hand. The second game, I won. Yeah. It was fun though.

Ok, so I was planning to be in bed about an hour ago, and while I could ramble more, I know I"m going to hate my alarm clock in the morning already. Goodnight!

I think I'm just going to ramble...

Today I made cookies. I think I made about twelve dozen...at least, I did according to the recipe. I'm sure it was less than that, but it was still a lot. Is that a dozen dozen cookies? Oh well. :)

Engaged life is interesting. I have the strange urge to stop people I know to see if they know Chris and I are engaged yet, when I know the automatic response of "Congratulations." Some people, those I"m close to, whom I've been good friends with, and of course family, have more warm reactions, but others I almost feel as though I'm intruding on their lives by telling them of mine. I have become quite an introvert, haven't I? Oh well, I don't mind it, and I can still play the extrovert well enough. At least I think I can...

I'm sitting on my parents queen size bed with my computer next to me as I watch Law and Order: SVU. Those who know me know of my recent addiction to the L&O shows...SVU is my favorite. So much so that it's 12:30 am and I stayed up to watch it instead of sleeping at midnight after the L&O: CI got over. Oh well. I haven't been watching tv all day, whatever it may sound like. I was making cookies, remember? :)

There are so many things I could ramble on about right now, but I'm getting the same feeling of intrusiveness were I to share them. So if you're really curious, you can talk to me. But until then, I think I"m going to be done rambling.

delayed updates...

Hi all!
I'm sitting in Chris's apartment right now at Finals Fellowship for CSF. I should be studying, but it's nice to take a break for a bit. I just got through 51 flash cards for my test tomorrow night. I have 145 more to do. So I'm avoiding them. It's alright, they won't be bad...I"m just really tired and not up for it...

On another note, I wrote a song. It's for two pianos, and I found out today that it's too difficult for even the piano prof to play. So I have to rewrite it so it's easier, and possibly comprimise some of the sound, or I can rewrite it for other instruments, namely percussion...if it were any other instruments, it'd be too difficult...the convenience of marimba methods makes it playable there. Unfortunately, the program that I wrote this song in doesn't list the marimba as an instrument possible to write for... So yeah. I'm having difficulties. Hopefully that all made sense.

So, for my last post, I'm going to make an announcement. Chris and I are engaged!!! Yay! I'm officially going to call everyone and talk to them, preferrably in person when I get home, but I thought I should probably officially announce that here.

So yeah. That's it for now.

Surprise!!!

Guess what????
Well you'll have to guess, because I"m not telling unless you call me yourself. This means all of you! Big news though. Yup. Call me!

Delayed reactions.

Hello one and all who read my blog. I am currently sitting in U.Brew, sipping an apple-raspberry italian cream soda, trying my hardest to avoid homework. This is of course to no avail, since I have none. All I have to do tonight is practicing for my voice lesson tomorrow. What I really really should be doing is going over pronunciation of all my foreign language pieces. Of course that is the last thing I am doing. This requires me to put on headphones and speak aloud a language which no one else understands when I say it, even if they are native speakers. It's alright. Sometime tonight I shall confront my french, my german, and my italian, and I shall attempt to conquer them. If my tongue is sore in the morning, this shall be why. :)

What I would like to be doing, even more than blogging at the moment, is to go get my sketchbook out of my dorm room and head over to shakespeare's garden and draw all that I see there. Or perhaps I'd like to work on the third chapter of my story. I haven't worked on that in awhile, and I fear one of my characters is suspended in time walking home to dinner until I begin the next chapter! As I like this girl, I would prefer to keep her from being suspended long. (This is not a literal telling of what I am writing about. If you care to know what it really is, ask me.)

Well my cream soda is drawing near it's end, and I should too. I think I"ll leave you with this thought. Ask someone to answer a question you don't yet know to ask, and you may get one of three reactions. They may a) look at you strangely and shrug, b) say yes/no, sarcastically, or c) give you a very creative, fun answer to something that you really didn't know about them. Try it sometime. The risk of the first two answers are made worth it by the possibility of the third.

Complete rambling.

Well, as far as that bio test goes, I am pretty sure I passed, and that's about all I can say. It was horrible. I made it through it though, and supposedly that's the worst test of the year, and they're better after that. I hope so!
I should be over practicing for my voice lesson, since that's tomorrow, and I haven't really practiced all that much since last week, being sick and all, but I don't want to practice right now. I have class at three anyway, and I think I'm just going to hang out and relax until then. I should be writing some letters in my free time, which is also the reason why my stationary is sitting out on top of my dvd table, but I haven't gotten to it yet...I just can't seem to get started. Maybe I'll journal for myself. Not likely though...I usually do that at night, and I don't feel like it right now. Book it is! So I'm going to read something....not completely sure what yet.

Biology.

Tonight I have to study Biology. There will be a test over chapters 1-8 tomorrow. Fun fun. I aced my aural singing test! 100%! Yay! So that's good. Now I just have to increase my brain capacity by a lot to contain bio, and get better.

Cold. Busy. Cold.

Yup. I'm not actually shivering, I'm sick. On top of that, I had a test Monday, I have a test Thursday, and I have a quiz and a test on Friday. I just got out of my voice lesson, and I've got music theory and choir still today. I might also be going to a study session tonight from 8-9. If not tonight, then I'll go tomorrow 5:30-6:45. Or maybe both. Who knows. I guess I should grab some lunch right now, even though I'm not really hungry. Meds shouldn't be the only thing I eat today. :) Wish me luck on everything!

many wanderings.

Well, I've been able to access my blog for quite some time now, and I've done nothing about it. So I guess I should update.

I've started classes, obviously, and I had my first lessons last week. I really like both of my lessons teachers. I have a grad student for piano, and a new prof for voice, and they're both really nice. I practiced piano for two hours yesterday, and voice for about five minutes. Do you think that's a bit imbalanced? Well, in reality, I was told to pick and practice about four songs, practice Hanon, and learn all the sharp major scales this week, while in voice, I was given three warmups to practice, only two of which I can remember since she didn't write them down. That's ok though. I'm also supposed to be journalling about my practice time for voice, so she can keep track of it that way. I haven't started yet, and she expects five per week. I might be in trouble tomorrow at my lesson.

In other classes, well, they're all music too, except bio. So I guess bio is going well. The prof is interesting enough for me to stay awake through his class, for the most part, despite it being my first class in the morning. I've got lab for it with a grad student, so we'll see how that goes.

Back to music...in music Theory, I have a fun older guy who gave me the required software we had to buy for free when the bookstore ran out. Speaking of that, I forgot I have to load it onto my computer before class today, and class is at one. I also have homework for the rest of the class (today is just the lab), and I also have to catch up on reading for bio. I think I"m supposed to be to chapter seven for tomorrows lecture, and I'm on chapter three. Yeah....I better get going.

Back to school.

Well, I'm finally moved in to school, and classes started today. I can't guarentee the frequencies of my blogs now, because for some reason the USD firewall doesn't like to let me on this site. I can see other people's blogs, but not my own. So this is the first time in awhile that I"ve been on here.
Anyway, I actually have homework I have to do. I have to memorize a song and a half for an audition I have tomorrow. I just got the music about 2 today, so I have a lot to do. Love ya all!