bone in sub

i’ve been busy. or at least not on computers much. i guess i haven’t written in 11 days, so here’s some straight-up journaling!

the week before last, i was either with my girlfriend (!) or at school. midterms yeugh. valentine’s day was excellent! it ended up kind of being valentine’s weekend. i did a ton of job interviews and hired someone at work on the weekend and still managed to take rebecca out for one of the best sushi lunches i’ve ever had.

on sunday night i went straight to the airport from work and flew down to reagan where my sister picked me up. i stayed at UMW until thursday, relaxing with my sister and her friends and my friends from middle school who happen to go to the same small university. good times – on monday night we spontaneously road tripped to maryland. on tuesday night we enjoyed the fruits of our labours (everclear), and i stripped the lining off of my esophagus and stomach. fun night, but i plan to never do that again. i had a huge headache all day wednesday and i’ve had bad heartburn ever since. neither of those ever happen to me unless hit my head or eat spicy food an hour before bed (respectively). thursday i went down to richmond and had some family time.

i hate writing about girl stuff, but to be succinct i’m incredibly happy. over the past few years i feel like i’ve deduced what’s important to me in a relationship, and i feel like i’ve got all of the good stuff now. superficially things are amazing as well, we’re at the same school in the same program and there’s huge physical attraction. good deal.

the week of march 9th i have three term research papers and my graduating recital. two of the papers are going to be relatively easy, one’s pretty large, and my recital’s in good shape, so i’m not really dreading the week. what this means though is by that friday (march 13) i will be so amazingly relieved and have so much free time i won’t know what to do with myself. the referential meaning here is that i am excited about school. what?!

yesterday i kind of ran from bloor st. down to college to get to my astronomy class (that i’ve been to ONCE). i was running late and guessing that we were going to have a midterm like every other class this week. i got in there one minute late and the lecture had already started, much to my relief. not a midterm!

an hour later (it’s a two hour class) the professor starts wrapping up and i’m confused – he shuts down his computer and announces “now is time for the test”. ohhh. 15 minutes later i’m the second one leaving the room of 100 people, oh yeah.

i’m sitting here at 9am eating chips and watching 24, after the last couple days this feels SO silly.
“JACK! our rules are what make us better!” “not today.”

something insane: the title is a verse from a song on the vampire weekend album i like, but also what happened to me yesterday? huh? my life is awesome.

last night i bought some incense at a convenience store next to my work. today, the cashier that sold me the incense came in to buy something i guess. she recognized me, and jokingly asked “did you have a good night?”.

i ‘ambiguously’ changed my relationship status on facebook tonight (from ‘single’ to nothing) and three minutes later i already have a message about it, hilarious. kind of like when i changed from ‘relationship’ to ‘single’ last year and within an hour a girl was messaging me.

bla bla bla school is crazy and i’m working too much, whatever. all of a sudden this thing is happening with a girl: we both kind of started a mutually casual & slow thing last week but now it’s getting big in an awesome way.

i’ll write a lot more sometime but right now i have to sleep all day because i’m working all night.

for my ‘music recording’ class we were asked to bring a recording that was our idea of ‘a good sound’ (related to production). i brought in ‘five years’ from ziggy stardust and had a great discussion with other musicians about the production. very satisfying.

during class this morning my phone started ringing (on vibrate). it was some 905 number, nobody i know. it rang two or three times so i silenced it. later in the class i noticed that my phone was getting HOT (!) so i took it out of my pocket and saw that it was still ringing…and had been for 20 minutes. my missed call log (50 numbers) was full of 416 and 905 and 647 numbers that i don’t have saved. at first i thought it was a few people leaving me hate messages or something, but once i realized just how many unique numbers were calling i realized someone had put me in a fake ad on craigslist or kijiji.

i thought someone put me in m4m casual encounters asking for phone sex or something, and i wasn’t looking forward to hearing the messages, until i got out of class and checked my (full) voicemail. evidently i was giving away a free laptop. i think there was an ad on kijiji too, i just can’t find it.

i got really excited that i had made someone that angry until i thought about it – i haven’t deliberately pissed someone off for a while. it’s still awesome, but i’m a little curious who did it. the calling kept going solid through 2pm, insane! i found an angry response, hilarious.

crazy day. 2 hours of very dull latin music history. that class gets more and more boring the further away it gets from mexican music. there was one sweet part today where guatemalan marimbas were recorded with such low fidelity that it sounded exactly like a nullsleep tune. i had my first rehearsal for the operas (TWO) that i’m playing in this term: this one and this one. comedie musicale plots are so funny. then i stayed and practiced until 11.

IT WAS A GOOD PRACTICE

shaved my head tonight. i thought it was going to be pretty fast, like when people join the army in movies and there’s a bootcamp montage where the clippers just shear the hair right off, but either because of my thick hair or cheap clippers it took way longer, like 45 minutes. regardless, it turned out great. i did mess up once – i was confused as to why it was so slow, so i took off the guard to see if it was even working. there’s one small spot on the side of my head that’s really short as a result. there was hair EVERYWHERE too, i’m glad i put down plastic sheets all over. i used a #2, also known as 1/4in. i’m really happy with the results unless i get to school tomorrow and someone points out there’s something wrong with the back (i obviously couldn’t really see the back while i was shaving it).

two hilarious things from work today:

early in the day, i’m at the front and at the end of a conversation with a female customer my age, i ask if she needs anything else. she responds “well…are you for sale? hehe.” wow.

later, a woman and her young son are buying things while i’m doing money stuff at the front. i wasn’t involved in it at all, but i heard the entire thing – the mom was trying to be funny the ENTIRE TIME, in that awful unfunny middle-aged woman way. the cashier was laughing a little bit just to be nice while i was basically shuddering. eventually the kid, who was eight years old at the oldest, speaks for the first time with “mom, you aren’t funny.” “well why do i constantly get laughs?” “they’re pity laughs. people pity you. you’re really not funny.” that was AMAZING, the kid was perfectly right and also in second grade.

so yesterday was the longest day ever, and afterwards i got 7 hours of sleep – something i haven’t done in a week and a half. i had some funny dreams, mostly about orchestra rehearsals.

anyway i played bolero with the TSO and evelyn glennie as a snare drum duet. both of us at the front of the stage with a drum on either side of the conductor. i never get nervous for ANYTHING, and i was ridiculously nervous for that. my hands were shaking, honestly something i can’t ever remember happening to me. after i got going, maybe 2 minutes into the piece, it felt like someone turned a fan on me and i suddenly felt great. from then on i was in such an amazing mindspace: “i’m playing the hardest piece in the entire orchestra snare drum repertoire with the toronto symphony and evelyn glennie right now, and 4 hours ago i didn’t know i would be doing this”. i haven’t played something that big since timpani on der rosenkavalier with the richmond symphony. interestingly that is also the hardest timpani piece in orchestral rep! NINE people came out to see me, i’m really happy that so many people got to see my biggest show ever.

after four shows at roy thompson i went up to school to play the UTSO concert. i realized shortly after getting dressed that i don’t play for the first half (four pieces, i played in the last two). that’s never happened to me before… i mean i’ve played single pieces in shows where i arrive 10 minutes before and leave after i walk offstage, but for an entire orchestra show (important to me) to only play half of it is very weird. sitting in the house during tuning and while the conductor walked onstage was weirdly unnerving, a huge sense of “I SHOULD BE UP THERE”. oh well. second half was fun, a lot of timpani and debussy’s nuages.

day wasn’t over yet, then i went to the duke with a few people and stayed there until late. the blue line bus home was ridiculous. people are generally really dumb.

how did my room get so messy? this is stupid. i’m going to spend an hour cleaning after work today.