Just so
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?"