bone in sub

yesterday i had a bunch of time to kill in between rehearsals, so i brought my computer up to school so i could catch up on sending emails. upon opening it, wireless didn’t work at all, and when i restarted it took literally 10 minutes to get to desktop. i got an error about wireless drivers bla bla bla, and i couldn’t figure out how to fix it. this was a new feeling – i’ve always known how to fix (winxp) computers or at least where to start. i’ve learned a ton over the past month since i got this macbook, but i had to start from the beginning learning how drivers (.kexts) work and how to extract a new one from the install dvd and inject it. it was quite satisfying!

today is the last day of classes…for the rest of my life? i’m not ruling out graduate school later in life, but after 8 years of university, i’m done with writing papers and sitting through 2-hour lectures. the last concert i’ll play at this school is tonight, and i’m playing timpani in tchaikovsky’s fifth. yesterday in the dress rehearsal i detuned the 32″ with a solo roll. this is going to be a fun show! this semester’s conductor, ivars taurins, is a lot of fun to play under. not only does he have interesting interpretations of the score, he has intelligent things to say about my part and (most important, and selfish) asks for me to play as loud as the score actually asks for. i’d say an average dynamic of ff, and going up to a soloistic fff in some places.

i got marks back on one of my aforementioned research papers. after my recital, i spent a significant amount of time writing a paper for film, which i turned in a week late, followed by writing my astronomy paper in one 12-hour overnight stretch. a bunch of nonsense about terraforming mars, a topic i’m legitimately interested in, but not so interested that i could write 12 pages off the top of my head. after cursory research and a lot of faking, i turned it in 5 days late for a total of 20% off. yesterday i saw that i’d been given a 50 – i was happy to have (barely) passed, but a little disappointed that i didn’t do so well. after many years of writing all my papers the night before (and the morning of) the due date, i’ve gotten pretty good at getting As and Bs and still expending the minimum effort. i realized during rehearsal yesterday that i had actually gotten a 70, the 50% was after the ‘late fee’. writing a term paper for a 300-level astronomy course in one night and getting a B? i’m pretty happy about that.