This Side of Lost

One week 'til Nickel Creek! Hey, that rhymes. I'm a poet, and I don't know it.

I had a very choral weekend. It started on Wednesday or so (well, the weekend didn't, but this story does), when I saw an ad for a "Choral Evensong" being performed at St. Thomas Lutheran, the church I attend. So I e-mailed my friend David who plays the organ at St. Thomas and asked him if he was involved, what was up, etc. To make a long story short, I ended up singing in this event. I made it to the last of three rehearsals -- which was at 8:15 on Friday night. Yes, I am a huge choir nerd. But you knew that. The performances were Saturday evening at St. Thomas and this afternoon at an Episcopal church on the east side of Indianapolis.

It was good times. And I realized something rather depressing -- this little choir, made up of organ majors and other church musicians at IU, on three rehearsals, sounded better than CVE has in a month and a half. Sigh. Chats with J. Marty (who is in a master's program here too, for those of you who know J. Marty) further substantiated something that has been growing in my mind -- that the choirs here really aren't that great.

I also realized that, while I had a great weekend doing what I love doing the most (singing), I have failed to accomplish one lick of homework. So now that I'm home and settled, what have I done? Updated my weblog! Sweet. I'll be surprised if I get out of here with a degree at all...

In other news:

• The Twins open the postseason against the stupid Yankees on Tuesday. Santana vs. Mussina. I predict a close game and can't rightly say who'll win. If Morneau, Ford and the other heavy hitters can be as productive has they have been, and if the bullpen can hold themselves together, I think the Twins have a very good chance of winning this series.
• I have shared Storyhill with two people here so far, and they both like them. One has even suggested going to their upcoming show in Chicago! Oh yes. Soon I'll be hightailin' I-65. Anyone else want to go?
• Ramsey and Chris spent about 15 minutes this evening discussing their various prospects for dates and female companionship. This is not ordinarly newsworthy, except that they did so under the auspices of discussing their strategy in the NFL draft. Example: "It's not my style to aggressively pursue my draft picks. As a perennial playoff team, generally I haven't needed to." "My likely pick is pretty new to the game and I don't want to go after them too hard or they get scared off." <shakes head> There's such a thing as stretching an analogy, right?

Perhaps I should sleep if I'm going to get to work on time tomorrow and not flake out like last week. Good call, Andrew. Peace, y'all.

That's right -- Nickel Creek will be here, in Bloomington, playing their magical music just for me -- in two days! Hoo-rah!

Too bad I have to sit through this dork too. Ah well. Small price to pay.

In other musical updates: if I were still in the Cities, this is what my extended musical schedule would look like. Why am I bothering to tell you this? Because these are all awesome gigs -- performers I have seen and are either 1) independent and struggling to hold their own or 2) less popular artists who deserve to be much more well known. Check them out.

• Mon, Oct 11: Brenda Weiler @ Bryant-Lake Bowl
• Sun, Oct 17: Justin Roth @ Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in St. Paul
• Sat, Oct 23: Mindy Smith @ the Fine Line. If you go to one of these shows, make it this one. Smith is truly a rising star. Maybe you've heard her song "Come to Jesus" on Cities 97. If you have, and it sent shivers down your spine (like it did me the first time I heard it), do yourself a favor and buy your ticket now. I'm considering driving to Chicago to hear her the following day.
• Thurs, Oct 28: JoAnna James (and others) @ the Fine Line (I haven't ever actually seen her, but she's a Stillwater grad, very musically talented, and her sound bytes sound pretty awesome)
• Fri, Nov 5: The Olympic Hopefuls @ the Triple Rock Social Club
• Fri, Nov 12: Caitlyn Smith @ Borders Books in Woodbury
• Mon, Dec 13: Tres Femmes @ the Fine Line

I gotta run. Game 3 of the Twins/Yankees series is on tonight. Oh please oh please oh please, Carlos Silva, don't suck...

Peace!

Somehow it's the middle of October already. I'm not quite sure how this escaped my notice as it was occurring.

The Nickel Creek / Howie Day concert on Sunday was very cool. It was great to hear Nickel Creek live. I hadn't before and I believe in seeing any musical act I enjoy live at least once. They were a little rougher around the edges than I thought they'd be, and my rock star girlfriend Sara Watkins was decidedly less hot in person than I expected. Sorry, Sara... maybe you're not the girl for me. Please don't stop playing awesome fiddle, though.

Howie Day was cool too -- very genre-bending. I'd never heard the singer/songwriter genre blended with the electronica genre quite the way he did with his looping guitar tricks. And that's mostly what they were -- tricks. But still interesting to listen to.

I also have a concert coming up. Come at your own risk.

In other news:

• The Twins got eliminated from the playoffs by the stupid Yankees. Sigh. Just because they can hit the ball a lot doesn't mean they're a good baseball team. I just wish the Twins would have hit the ball as much as they did. Next year's the big year, though: Twins '05, World Series Champions! Oh, and go Red Sox!
• It's getting steadily more fall-like around here. Still not as consistently cool as I'd like it. But the trees are getting pretty.
• Turns out grad school is still not very hard. Just time consuming.
• I'm actually learning things in my L401 class now. We're doing UNIX. It is good times.
• Umm... well, I'm dating someone. Yeah, I was surprised, too. I guess being a mac pays off. Her name is Samantha (the same as I've mentioned twice previous) and I've been thinking she's really awesome basically since the first day I met her, but she claimed to not really be interested in a relationship, per se. She changed her mind. :) I'm glad she did. At any rate, I'll try not to let this decrease the amount of posts I make. Indeed, it might actually improve -- I think she reads this too...
• Quote of the Week 3:
  "You guys are Risk players?" - Susan, referring to my roommates and me
  "Yeah." - Me
  "You guys are so hot right now." - Susan

"That is one nerdy woman." - Dustin, in response to being told about the previous exchange

Enjoy watching the debates tonight. Be sure to tune in (and watch my man John crush Georgie boy) in case you're still undecided as to who is more fit to run our country. Peace.

It's been a great weekend. Somehow great weekends always leave me tuckered out, though. Here's the rundown:

Friday: Katie Dunn, walking into SciTech, looks at me and says: "Ah. Hawaiian shirt. Must be Friday." Pumpkin-shaped iced sugar cookie from Sugar and Spice. University Chorale had their first concert -- Byrd, Batten, etc. Went out with Samantha to support my local organist. Go David! Hung out at Borders afterwards.

Saturday: Up too early for a couple reasons, one of which being the dress rehearsal for my choir concert. Dress rehearsal didn't suck too bad -- no guarantees for the real thing... Went to the mall -- found and immediately bought the coolest t-shirt I've ever owned. Wiffleball in the backyard. Chris looked like Santana (with moderately less control) out there. Very impressive. Inspired by the t-shirt purchase, subjected Samantha to Transformers: The Movie. Says she, while Kup was telling war stories: "He's just makin' that s**t up." Cheeky!

Sunday: Watched part of the Astros/Cardinals game with David while eating his Astros Victory Cookies. With milk. Almost fell asleep in his super-comfy chair. This was definitely the icing on the cake (or cookie?) for the weekend.

In other news:

• The stupid Yankees are busy crushing the poor Red Sox. Boy, I'm glad I'm not a hard-core Sox fan -- I mean, the Twins losing was a bummer, but this is downright painful.
• A quick shoutout to my teacher friends back in Minnesota. Happy short MEA week this week, guys! Manternach and Miller better be staying up until 4 am for me this Wednesday night.
• Ashley Simpson's single won't get out of my head. Freakin' A.

<shakes head> I'd better wake up here. Time to grab some dinner before the show... wish me luck. Peace.

This is what dating an English major does to me, apparently...

I really don't have much of interest to say. I just wanted to express the fact that my life is just fabulous right now. I'm happier than I can remember being in quite a while.

It's actually kind of strange. I haven't had things go this right for so long, I can't take it without feeling a little bit guilty. Yeah -- screwed up. Blame my midwestern Lutheran upbringing. I'm sure this will pass -- either I'll get better with the guilt or things will come crashing down. Hopefully the former. :)

Factors in this (in case you're curious):

• Classwork continues to go very well. It is not overly taxing, but still interesting and truly applicable to my future career. What more can I ask for from my classes? I'm looking at registration for next semester and am excited for what my classload will look like then, too.
• My stress level is nearly nil. I can't remember the last time I haven't felt stressed about something -- work, future plans, family situations, etc. Wow.
• Things with Samantha are excellent. Excellent. I won't gush about this but feel free to ask. :)
• Oh, and most importantly: holy &%#$, Curt Schilling and the Red Sox. We'll kill those Yankees yet! I'll be watching the game tonight.

Work work work! Peace y'all!

Last night the Boston Red Sox completed the most historic comeback in major league baseball history. As silly as this may sound, I feel privileged to be witness to this. If I ever have a son someday, and he likes baseball as much as I do, I am glad I will have stories to tell him about some of the amazing things that happened in the 2004 season of the MLB.

I can only imagine what it must feel like to be a Red Sox fan today. Here's to you, guys. <tips hat> Good luck in the World Series.

I generally don't like Mondays. But the way my Mondays have been going the past couple weeks, that may be turning around. What an exciting development.

Things continue to cruise along here in library science land...

• Done with the UNIX module of 401. Easy as pie. Next is HTML. Why couldn't I completely waive this class? Sigh.
• I actually did my reading for Reference today. Of course, it was on dictionaries, and really, there's only so much to read about dictionaries... at least, once you get past the whole prescriptive vs. descriptive debate... and (much to Samantha's dismay, apparently) I think I fall on the descriptive side of this one. ... did I just write all that? Wow, I'm a nerd.
• Rocked and rolled my assignments for Management. I almost forgot that we get grades here. I care so little about grades, honestly. If I'm learning what I need to learn in order to be a good librarian, isn't that all that matters?
• I've registered for classes for next semester. Collection development and online information retrieval, here I come. I will also be taking a class in the History and Philosophy of Science department, as a trial run of what it might be like to get a master's over there as well. Cool!

In other news:

• These Red Sox are on a roll. Never mind that the things they have to do to Curt Schilling in order for him to pitch make me want to hurl. <shudder>
• Kantorei had their fall concerts last weekend. I was feeling sad the last few nights, knowing Axel & crew were out doing their thing without me. Someone drop me a line and tell me how it went.
• I'm digging this weather. High of 71 yesterday, and 69 today. Winter? What winter?
• Samantha and I will likely be heading to Chicago the weekend of November 6-7. Saturday will be busy finally buying my desk from IKEA and seeing Storyhill (yes!!!), but we'll have all day Sunday to bum around. I've never planned a trip to Chicago all by myself. Any suggestions on things to do?

I must be off - happy Mondays are still busy Mondays. :) Peace.

I've changed my mind about my comments policy on this weblog. Steve has struck a preemptive strike against spammers (thanks Steve!), which was my primary reason for not allowing them. That and it'd be fun to hear from y'all every once in a while. So comments are now allowed on this post and all the others you see right now (including the one below, where I ask for your suggestions about Chicago -- hint hint). I'll get around to enabling the rest of the site later.

Peace!

EDIT: This has changed. See the November 15th post.

David: "Like the other day? When I wanted to find out more about midgets? I Googled it."
Me: <pause> "Did you find good information?"
David: "Not really. Mostly porn."

Congratulations to the 2004 Boston Red Sox, World Champions for the first time in 86 years. They did things no one thought possible. They came back from being three outs away from elimination in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series with the Yankees. But not only that -- they won eight straight postseason games against the two toughest teams in major league baseball.

Unbelievable. What a wild ride. Thanks, guys. And congrats to all the Red Sox fans. This one's truly for you.

In other news:

• I dreamt that Kerry won the election. I'm taking this as a good omen. By the way, did anyone else notice that headline about 58,000 absentee ballots gone missing in Florida?
• Wait... it's Halloween on Sunday? Wow, where did October go? Shoot, I don't have a costume. Looks like last year's might get a replay.
• Choir was cancelled today. My immense joy at this is definitely not a good sign about my attitude towards this group...
• I was veering between boredom, despair and insanity for most of 401 yesterday. "This is a link tag. Make sure to close the tag at the end. The close tag has a slash..." Aaarrrgh. <beats head against monitor repeatedly>

Perhaps I will go now and make good use of my time. Unlikely, but possible. Peace.

Tomorrow is All Saint's Day. Many of you know this because of the far-more-frequently-celebrated All Saint's Eve, aka All Hallow's Eve, aka Halloween. But I think you should know that tomorrow is a holiday too. It needs love just like you and me.

Yesterday Samantha and I attended the SLIS Halloween party. (I reprised my mad scientist costume that some of you may have seen last year -- Sam went as Britney Spears a la the "... Baby One More Time" video, primarily because her first idea -- Moaning Myrtle from the Harry Potter books -- didn't quite work out, but provided her with an ultra-cute school girl outfit. Raaahr.) There weren't as many literary character costumes as I had thought, but still a good number of entertaining ones. Especially couples costumes. I had never realized or even thought of the phenomenon of couples costumes before this year. What a brilliant idea. Dustin and his girlfriend Jen went as the White Stripes, for instance. Awesome!

In other news:

• The baseball season is over now. :( Umm... go Twins 2005!
• I get a desk next weekend! You can't understand how excited I am about this, unless you've seen the pathetic setup I have in my room for my computer. Picture a bunch of cardboard boxes with a mousepad and my DSL modem sitting on them, and my monitor sitting on top of an inverted milk crate. Yeah.
• Election day is the day after tomorrow. This really snuck up on me somehow. I'm going to try to take the day off of work, however, with the intention of somehow doing my civic duty of encouraging people to get to the polls. I mean, even though Indiana is doomed to send it's 9 electoral votes towards the enemy's camp, that doesn't mean we shouldn't exercise our citizen's right, does it? Does it?!? Sigh.

That's all I got. Supper calls. Happy -- err, I mean, spooky Sunday. Peace.