Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to at least 15 people and include me. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think! Repost as "my life according to (band name)


( My life according to Jamie Anderson, folk singer/songwriter )

I'm bored, and want to know if anyone actually reads this. Reply please! Anonymous comments should be allowed, so if there's someone from facebook or something who doesn't have an account...post anyways! And say who you are.

Ask a silly question. I'll give a silly answer.

You mean besides the one from the Ice Storm last December? That left New England scrambling? We had power back within three days, but I must say I was quite humbled by the storm. I was even out in it, probably fifteen minutes before the power went out. It was beautiful, seeing ice on the trees with the lights all around them.

And then darkness, and cold. And some people waited two weeks for power to come back on in Fitchburg. They weren't happy with their power company at all.

It's been a while since I posted. Sorry.

So, what have I been up to? Very little, until this week. I've had piano lessons, including one yesterday that I was half-dead for (reason in a minute). I'm improving, and would be better if I would get off my ass and practice sooner than two days before the lesson. I made myself a chart yesterday that runs Friday through Thursday for four weeks. On it, I will put time practiced on either flute or piano and what I practiced. To motivate myself, I'm putting so much money in a jar for so many hours practiced. I will then take what I earned to either the music store or B&N. I have my eye on two music books, one a $30 popular-tunes book for flute, the other a $9 Sound of Music (my favorite musical) book for beginning piano. I already bought two books with $22/$40 gift card for paying for my summer lessons two months in advance. One is the usual Intermediate-level method book for flute. Boring, kind of. But my reward was a fiddle book with Irish music in it, easily adaptable to flute, which I've been having fun with. Ehm. Backing up, most of the piano music I've been working on has been hymn music, since they can be found in simple arrangements that I can wrap my head around, and I already know the tunes for plenty of them. It works. The piece my teacher gave me yesterday is "Morning Has Broken"--you know, popularized by Cat Stevens, picked up by many faiths. He wrote in the chords, which I now have to figure out--I keep wanting to say, "the blocking for the chords" for some reason. At any rate, it will be interesting since I only actually know 12 major chords, and only if I finger through the flute arpeggio for the key first. Minor, suspended--they're alien to me. It can be fun, I guess.

What else? I've been doing training hours at my new job the past three days. 4 ack emma isn't my favorite time to be awake, but it beats not having a job at all. I'm opening at a gas station. I'm just hoping that I'll earn enough to cover car insurance, music lessons, and phone bills for the summer, with a little left over. But the "I got up at four a.m. after about three hours' sleep"--I haven't reset my sleep schedule yet--is what killed me at a 4:30 pm lesson yesterday. That's also where I plan to take the money out for my "rewards" for practicing music. Fun, yes? We'll see what I can do.

[edit: One thing that makes me feel just-slightly special is the fact that I could actually drive to work before 5am. I'm 18, baby. I don't have a restricted license anymore.]

Um. Yeah. I should be starting volunteering in the Geri-Psych ward of the hospital this coming week. It's going to be interesting, I think. I may be considering geriatrics, but this is the extreme end of it, for the elderly who can't be taken care of in a nursing home. I -did- ask to work more directly with patients (as to last year's not at all since I worked in distribution). It's quite direct. I would be doing stuff like playing cards, crosswords, helping them walk, etc.

In other news: It's sunny today. I'm sure I speak for all New Englanders when I say, "yay! no rain! Now where's the heat?"

The artist/writer for Tales From Band Camp advertised this. You can earn "swagbucks" to redeem for prizes just by searching the net.

...not that I'm begging or anything, because I am.

Why is it that my mood dropped a short while after my parents got home? Because I didn't know that dad was coming with mom? Or because I was enjoying the whole "house to myself" solitude and quiet thing? Or maybe because it's harder for her to ask for money when she's 300-odd miles away.

I don't know, I just know I'm not as happy as I was a few hours ago.

On the bright side, I'm getting better at playing piano. Or rather, keyboard, sans touch-sensitive keys. I'm even having fun learning it. I'm hoping the hand-moving thing will get easier with practice, since I currently need quite a few repetitions before I can switch hands on a part smoothly or move one hand over to a different part of the keyboard and hit the right keys. But hey! That's better than a few days ago, when I didn't know what the keys -were-.

I rearranged the mess around the walls in my room in order to clear a space for the keyboard. The kitten is now climbing things (like my stereo) that she isn't supposed to because there is no longer junk everywhere for her to get into/play with. Now to realign the shoes under my bed, clean my closet, clean the two storage cabinet things I have and clear my desk and bureau of stuff on top of it. I'm a pack-rat, which makes it hard to actually downsize my stuff, but I have to do it at some point this summer or I'll be in trouble come fall...

Erm, I wanted to put them on here, but I was posting for the benefit of friends on facebook anyways, so, here's a link:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/album.php?aid=2028815&id=1192513744


There's some good ones, some bad ones. Also, I'm not camera-happy like my mother, so there's not a whole lot.


Edit: Apparently you can't see them without a facebook account. Go figure. Bri, if you don't have one, and you wanna see them, tell me and I'll put them on photobucket just for you.

Well, the dealership ran a diagnostics on my car, which was making strange noises when idling and having trouble starting up, as of yesterday. They ended up doing a tune-up and replacing spark plugs and what-not. All for $251. Of course, since they did an oil change, they also ran my car through the car wash, and one of their specials this month is a free A/C clear-up thingy. So now my AC works a lot better too. :) And then, because my brother is taking his driver's test on Tuesday and needs my car for it (it has the e-brake in the center console), I had to go to the junk yard to replace a reflector underneath my passenger-side tail-light. The one little part costs $100 to order new ($105 with tax) and would have cost over $200 from the dealership. *wince* Well, so I basically just spent $350 of my scholarship money on the car. But I have enough extra to cover the cost, so it shouldn't impact me too too much. I have enough to cover my residency & comp fee for both semesters, and then more for school shopping (which I'm thoroughly excited about) and then I'll have a work-study anyways. I'm hoping I also have a job for the summer *pretty please?*.

...I also bought a $30 bike helmet today. Hopefully it will keep my head safe for the next couple years. Wesleyan is pretty much a biking campus. The money for it is going under the "college expense" heading, since that's among the things I wanted for college. Still, I spent a lot of money today. O.O

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090611/ap_on_he_me/un_un_swine_flu

I can't really say it was unexpected. I'm just worried about the public's response to it: how many are going to panic? I know that people are ill, and that some have died, but that happens with any flu virus. I wrote a research paper on the spanish influenza of 1918 locally. It was devastating. BUT health care is much more advanced these days. Doctors know how the immune system works, know how to keep things sterile, know...a lot.

*sigh* Well, we'll just have to wait and see how the flu turns out, won't we?

My car is doing something weird. When I try to turn it on, it like, sputters, before turning on. And then it keeps up strange noises with the engine running. My mom wanted me to take the car to get the tail-light fixed. I'm waiting until she gets home so that  she can drive it to get the engine checked. I'm nervous about driving it without it being in perfect working order. What if, I don't know, it suddenly stalls and I'm in the middle of the road?

:/

A friend of mine woke me up at about 9:30 this morning to see if I'm going to his grad party. I am, of course. I went right back to sleep, but I am beyond grateful he woke me up. Weird-ass transition dreams are not fun. I dreamt that I went back to the band (not even in our band area; some strange place) and for some reason was moving my former (school) instrument all over the place, to send it to the away game they were going to (what? the only away game we go to is if the Thanksgiving game is at our rival's school). And then me and my friend Jon stayed on the bus -which, I might add, was a crappy white old schoolbus instead of the nice Coach buses- and then had to jump off when we realized we weren't supposed to go. Because, you know, we graduated already. But we wouldn't give up the marching band. And then we started discussing what we were going to do next, at which point the phone rang.

For the record, I hate dreams that mix people, or places up. Apparently my subconscious is trying to compensate for the fact that I'm not going back to a marching band next year, since my college doesn't have one --that is, unless I try out for a drum corp, which I just thought of... But which would still have to wait for next year, because tryouts for those are usually early spring.

Um. Yeah. Going to try to forget about that dream now. Might not seem like a big deal, but I didn't like it at all, Todo.

But I'm still hyper today. Excited much? Yeah. It's a big day. I'm not sure whether I'm more excited that my 18th birthday was yesterday or that I'm graduating today. Either way, I couldn't sleep last night. It's still hasn't hit me that I'm 18. I did buy a lotto ticket today, but I don't think it's going to sink in until, say, I register to vote, I actually vote, or I'm in college. It's a new feeling.

I just reread the nearly 20k words I wrote two Novembers ago. There's a lot of work to be done if I want to make this into a readable story. There's a lot that I like, though.

Characters: There's a lot of characters, which is okay given that I feel like I'm still in the exposition (or at least the beginning)--it's going to be a long epic hero tale. However, none of the characters seem to have any flaws, or quirks, to make them round. Oh, I like several of them, certainly, but they're all high ideals and good people. No arrogance, or foolhardiness, or anything else. The only character I think is just about perfect is Felix, the cat. He's amusing, in a way only cats can be.

Plot and Worldbuilding: Pretty much nonexistent. I need to figure out the antagonists and what the MCs are saving their world from. I also need to settle on what species are in the world--worldbuilding, in other words. Countries, species, and other things have no names. I need to work on what kind of music the Bard plays. I need to track characters, time elapsed, and distance--yWriter should help with that.

I'm gonna break it down into an outline and restart. I think that this story ought to be fun, if I can just work on it without losing motivation, as I usually do.

Anywho, I'm excited.

So, big day today. First off, I'm eighteen! Exciting yes? Yes!!! I was going to register to vote, but for some reason, City Hall is closed on Fridays. It will have to wait for Monday. We had our senior "bagel breakfast" this morning--with nary a bagel in sight. Not that I mind, I had some fruit and a donut hole (Munchkins from DnD) and milk. We got our yearbooks, and then spent two hours signing them. And then a 1 1/2 to 2 hour long grad rehearsal as everyone got themselves all confused. Mr. Lepisto, the band director, thankful did most of the work because otherwise they'd never have figured out how we were supposed to enter and sit and what order to go in and everything. Lep does this stuff for marching band, so he's a little more experienced than the Principal, Vice Principal, Class Advisors, and all the other people who were trying to run things--and failed. Epic failure on the Wed. rehearsal, at least.

So! I then spent hours wandering the halls of the school (actually less than two hours) getting teacher signatures and everything. It was fun.

And tomorrow night I graduate! Isn't that awesome? I have waited so, so long for this year, this week, this day. And it's finally here. And then I'm off to college next year.



And I need to not think about how much I'm going to miss my best friend next year or I'll cry before I even flip the tassle. He's staying here, going to the local community college. I will be moving two hours away. *sniffle* There aren't many people I'm close to in the school, but for those who I am close to...I'm going to miss them.

*sniffle* *cry* *sniffle* 

*sneeze*

Did I mention I think I was light-headed from either Mydol that was a few days expired or from mixing that with pseudophedrine? Yeesh. I was fine unless I stood up, but still...On the bright side, the sudafed and clarinex together actually kept my sinuses clear today.

I'm beginning to think that having graduation outdoors is a bad thing. We won't be as sweaty and hot as indoors. But sneezing is almost worse. We went on the football field for a practice today, and after waiting an hour while the staff in charge figured out "shit, we haven't planned this right because we haven't been outdoors in four years" and then gave it to the band director to figure out, due to his credentials in getting us where we need to go in marching band.

In the meantime, I got a noseful of allergens. And haven't stopped sneezing for more than fifteen to twenty minutes since. Now I have a stuffy nose. Thankfully, nothing else, but I mean, really? Did I have to start sneezing the minute we stepped on the field?

So. I've been meaning to post since I got back from Anime Boston, but have yet to do so. I have to go get the camera developed, since all I managed to bring with me was a disposable camera (our digital one broke months ago).

We went shopping a lot, spent a lot of time in the Dealer's Room, although Artist's Alley was more interesting. People have such great talents! I bought a nice bowl from a potter. I liked most of the stuff they had, but that one somehow spoke to me. It's brown. Foodsafe, even. I'm bringing it with me to college.

We got in line for autographs from Troy Baker and Travis Wellingham. Troy wrote "Something Bizarre" and Travis responded with "Something Awesome!" I liked Troy Baker right off. He seems like a cool guy. I had no idea who he was, but the girls I was with are huge fans of his. He's really cute, at least.

We also went to Troy Baker's panel and the Voice-Actors' Roundtable panel. I have a new respect for voice actors, and they're really fun to listen to. One of them looked really familiar, and I can't quite figure out why. I can't even remember her name right now. She was probably in a movie or show I've seen somewhere. After listening to everyone though, I'm convinced that I should watch Trinity Blood at some point.

We went to a "Main Event" concert for a group called Kalafina. I'm not sure that Japanese music is quite to my taste, but they sounded great and I got a Single from the table selling their CDs in the Dealer's Room. Before Kalafina came on though, a "Video Game Orchestra" came on. They're made up mostly of music students local to Boston --from Berklee College of Music, among others (I saw part of Berklee's buildings while walking to the Convention Center! I was excited). I have to say, this is the first time I've ever had my jaw literally drop in awe. They were just so good I couldn't believe it. I guess I'll start with instrumentation: Two percussionists, a vocalist, a cellist, two violinists (I think they were violins), a clarinetist, two flautists (one doubling on piccolo), a soprano saxist, and a keyboard player. Why was I impressed? First off, the music sounded really, really hard. I think I could play the flute part in a few (or ten) years of very intensive study. I'd never really thought about video game music, but it's really advanced. Second, the instrumentation. I've never actually heard a soprano sax live before--I didn't even know they existed until a couple months ago, and the first one I saw was in the past month when a saxist in the band brought one in. But I've heard that it's extremely difficult to sound good on a soprano sax. The guy playing it sounded absolutely fantastic and even had a solo for quite a bit of one piece. And the pic player! There's a long running joke that the only way to get two piccolos in tune is to not have one of them. But this guy was completely in tune with the rest of the orchestra and played very well. I heard a lot of runs for both flute and piccolo, which is common enough, but these people did them so well that I wasn't sure I believed it. Those factors, among others, were what had me gaping in amazement for most of their concert. I wish I could play that well. [/amazed rambling]

Where was I? Oh yeah. I had a blast at AB, just because of that concert and the people I went with. It was a lot of fun, even for someone as ignorant of anime/manga as I am. Too bad none of the Nyeusi crew made it, but there's always next year.

Watched this when he first did it, and it still sends a powerful message. I wish I could bottle it.

I thought of it because I'm doing a speech for English that's probably going to be something about GLBT rights.

So, we're up to the 1960s in my AP United States history class. The Civil Rights movement. We've watched videos of the things that happened back then, the brutality of the KKK, the bravery of young folks--black and white--who dared to stand up to them. We listened to MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech in class today. I found myself annotating the speech as we listened to it (we had printed copies in front of us) as I would for AP English (as in, I analyzed language techniques like anaphora, metaphor, allusions, etc).

( More deliciousness about past and present civil rights issues, mixed in with frustration )

Have a nice day.

I had a very fun history lesson today. We "examined" 1950s music as primary sources. For some reason, I was surprised that I recognized most of them. Also, I think our band's stands tunes need an upgrade--although, granted, Louie Louie is a fun song. I couldn't resist doing the flute dance to it, even if I'm  no longer in the section (and we weren't in band).

"Mr. Sandman" and "Hound Dog" were among the ones played, although we listened to two versions of the latter--the original, and the commercialized white version of it that most people know.

Fascinating stuff, ranging from rhythm and blues to rock 'n' roll.

I can't wait to take music classes in college. It's going to be fun!