petals

Wow. I love being a musician.

The oppurtunity has presented itself to travel to China. Apparently the Northwest Symphony (don’t know them? I didn’t either until last night) got invited to play over there, are taking a bunch of HSPVA kids, and is a little shy of a full trumpet section. Woo! We’ll see how this plays out.

The only thing I’m worried about is having my braces off next Monday– if the director wants me to audition sometime in the near future, I will not be able to play, though I will be more than ready by the time they leave for China. Maybe he’ll just give in to my beautiful new smile (wishful thinking). 🙂 Will they take me on good faith, or will I be stuck with Denton, Texas, and the vast North Texas wasteland as my huge exciting summer trip?

Cross your fingers.

Blogging at the speed of light. Let’s see how I do.

First of all, congratulation’s to my darling Matt! We all thought this day would never come, being the numero uno Matt on google. I always knew it, it just took google some time to figure it out. 🙂 At least now he won’t bug me to endure his wordy latin/computer-talk blog entries (it all reads “blah blah blah WordPress blah blah blah XFN”) … Kidding Matt. 😉

Secondly, to put the random icing on the cake, I’M IN A ROCK BAND. Way to be adventurous, right? These two guys (bass, drums) called Near Dark have been looking for a trumpet player to gig with, and hey, it’s a payin’ gig… So I said, hey, try everything once, right? I must admit that I am slightly, okay, heavily biased against amateur rock bands- 99.999% of them don’t know the first thing about music. Amateur rock bands = LOUD, noisy, and obnoxious. I was actually quite pleased with how our jam the other night went, though. The drummer actually studied jazz at Berklee for a year, so that was double brownie points for him in my book… Not to mention that these two were two of the most genuinely and sincerely nice people that I’ve met. So, make sure to come see me make a fool of myself as soon as i post show dates.

The reason I’ve been so behind in blogging is because I’ve been doing The American Festival for the Arts here in town, for jazz. It’s fun stuff, I’ll post more later as well as upcoming concert dates.

As a comment, Matt is always talking about how energizing naps are. I took my first one in a long time today… and I remembered why it had been so long. Naps are black holes of energy! Once I sleep in the middle of the day, my activities are pretty much shot for the rest of the day without the utmost self-discipline and will power. After I oversleep (I always do), I spend the rest of the day and my night in a half-dreamy haze of living. Naps, as of today, I wash my hands of you.

And for the big fat cherry on top, I’m due to have my braces off on Monday, June 21st! God knows I’ve been waiting for this day to come. I’ve been going to that orthodontist longer than most of his employees have been working there… I’ve been going to that orthodontist longer than his office has been built. I was the first one to get the new, cutting-edge damon braces, and now, four and a half years later, they’re old-fashioned. I’m contemplating throwing a party with lots of gummy foods and hard candies. 🙂

And for now… I’m off! Kyle, Corey, Earl, etc etc, have a gig at Ovations, beginning at 8pm. Go check them out!

(So much for blogging in 5 minutes…. and being on time to the gig)

It’s now 1:30am, and I’ve been lying in bed for a good half hour.

Oddly (or in the opinion of some, sadly) enough, I cannot sleep because I’ve got trumpet on the brain.

As I’m lying there, trying to fall asleep, Nica’s Dream is running through my head, over and over, my mind going over the changes trying to weave a line through the tune, my fingers repeatedly following the melody in the entirety of each chorus.

Think about having a couple lines of a song stuck in your head. This is much worse.

I’ve got to start getting my practicing done earlier in the day.

A – Age: 18
B – Band listening to right now: The Yonder Mountain String Band, and other Bonnaroo ’04 Bands (while I’m savagely envying my friend that he gets to go)
C – Career future: A musician? An entrepreneur? A teacher? I’m going to play all the clubs and teach lots of music and run a record label and love jazz until I die.
D – Dad’s name: Michael
E – Easiest person to talk to: Lizzy Conley in VA! Ohh man I miss her.
F – Favorite song: You can’t make me pick!
G – Gummy Bears or Gummy Worms: Worms, though biting gummy bear heads is better therapy than a stress ball.
H – Hometown: Houston, Texas
I – Instruments: Trumpet and occasionally voice, when I can manage to practice and learn tunes
J – Job: Student Musician BUM.
K – Kids: Check back in 30 years.
L – Longest car ride ever: With my aunt/uncle/cousins to Kenosha, Wisconsin. We pulled all the seats out of the van to put mattresses in, fed on McDonald’s the whole way up there, then it didn’t even snow once the whole week we were there.
M – Mum’s name: Shirley
N – Number of people you’ve slept with: Hahhh, no.
P – Phobia[s]: Flying insects with stingers, and, sadly still, sometimes the dark.
Q – Quote: Hmm.. the one I told someone today was a Dan Haerle original at an 8am theory class– sipping on coffee, “there’s too much blood in my veins.”
R – Reason to smile: I have an absolutely darling boy who set up my blog but can never manage to salvage my address book off of his old server.
T – Time you wake up: I’m shooting for 9:30 the rest of this week… Next week, with AFA, it will be 7am again for me.
U – Unknown fact about me: I check the multiracial box on my school forms- I’m part Japanese.
V – Vegetable you hate: Mushy, squishy, COOKED CARROTS.
W – Worst habit: Procrastination, Nail biting
X – X-rays you’ve had: Orthondontic
Y – Yummy food: French toast, orange juice, and anything Tex-Mex.
Z – Zodiac sign: Sagittarius

Stolen from the lovely Elaine.

This world is full of weirdos.

Apparently someone has gone through Matt’s photolog and picked out the pictures of myself and my glasses…… and then posted them all on a German glasses fetish website. Now, all of a sudden all these weirdos are leaving comments as well as bothering Matt, trying to get my contact information.

…I’m not sure whether, in some deranged way, I should feel flattered, or mildly disturbed by all of this.

As the heat and humidity sets in, the laze of summer has bared me down to the fundamentality of action- sleep, eat, breathe- with the occasional bout of productivity. Enough! Starting next week I think I’m going to begin a loose routine to keep me busy and productive. Starting next week…

• I won’t wake up any later than 9:30 on weekdays
• I’m going to run/cycle every morning
• Weight training at least once a week
• I’m going to practice at least 2 hours a day
• Transcribe a solo every week
• Learn a new tune every week
• I’m going to limit my time spent both in front of the TV and and the computer
• Read at least a couple hours a week

A little ambitious maybe? Nahh. I’ve got so much I want to accomplish this summer!

Lethargy is a baaad habit.

Let’s see how this goes.

VIOLIN RECITAL – On Tuesday, June 1 at 7:30 pm in the church, you are invited to a violin recital presented by Eric Jose Rodriguez, an AFS foreign exchange student at HSPVA who has lived this past year with Lynne Aiken, music teacher at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School. You may have seen him as a member of the Bells of St. Stephen’s. Eric began playing the violin ten years ago in his homeland, the Dominican Republic, and his ambition is to become a professional musician. As there is no university in the Dominican Republic that offers music as a major, Eric auditioned and was accepted at the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston on scholarship. Even with the scholarship, however, attending university here in Houston is still just a dream for Eric and he is seeking financial sponsorship to enable him to return for the Fall of 2004. If you would like to help, please contact Eric at eric_violin@hotmail.com or Lynne at lynne_a@swbell.net. For more information, please see the flyers posted in the gathering area.
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The church is located on the corner of Alabama and Woodhead

he needs to raise around $6000

Help Eric stay in the country!