Sunday, April 12, 2009

And now, a word from our sponsors: Food and Procrastination

LET'S GET (META-)PHYSICAL

One thing that I find funny (funny in the way that I find absurd things hilarious when no one else in the room is laughing, not even on the inside) is that the physics building on UI's campus, or as I like to call it, Van Alien Hall, has about 6 churches within two blocks of it. Yes, for some reason, that strikes me as intensely hilarious. I didn't even realize this until I'd been hanging up some posters in the upper floors of Van Alien some months ago, and looking out the window I saw a church spire, and in another direction, a different church spire, and another direction ... you get my drift. 

Sadly, the university has taken it upon itself to eliminate this quite wonderful piece of graffiti. Luckily I snapped this before the paint police came in. 



Speaking of things meta-physical, here's a belated photo story of Easter Brunch. As you may remember, I was quite excited to eat at Devotay. As you can see from the pictures, it was quite lovely and delicious: mimosa, coffee, applewood-smoked bacon, patatas bravas, poached eggs covered with portabella mushroom cream sauce. I must admit, however, that in years past (ok, the last 2), they had a buffet, which had a wide variety of mouth-watering dishes, including fresh grilled asparagus and this amazing chocolatey-torte thing. So I'd been really looking forward to those. Sadly, no brunch this year. Got my hopes up for nothin'. So while the meal was great ... it did let me down a little bit. Sigh. 




To make up for my disappointment, I went to the New Pioneer Co-op and bought this chocolate bunny, which you will notice is really a chocolate cake with a big frosting bunny on top. Easter isn't Easter without chocolate bunnies. 





TWO THINGS DOWN, APPROXIMATELY A MILLION AND EIGHT TO GO

I don't really have a million things to do, it just feels like that. 

Here's what I've done so far in the Final Chapter of Spring 2009:

1. Voice recital
2. Ligeti Piano Concerto Presentation

Here's what I have left in the next three weeks, in order of appearance:

1. Another voice recital, Tuesday the 28th
2. Liebermann Piano Concerto No. 2 Paper (have I started yet ...? what do you think?)
3. Another voice recital, Sunday the 3rd, in Missouri
4. Listening Final Exam with a bunch of post 1970 music. I have listened to some of this, just not a whole lot yet. 
5. Choir concert.
6. Another choir concert.
7. Another voice recital.
8. Violin recital ("just" one sonata)
9. Another voice recital

Plus I'm applying for a job. Applying for a college faculty position = good. Time it takes to update CV and write letter of interest = approximately forever. Seriously, I think I spent 10 hours on it this week. Maybe because I'm the slowest person in the universe. 

I can't wait until on or around May 13, when I can finally concentrate on practicing solo rep again! It's been slowly simmering away ... even though this year has felt rather non-productive 
in this arena, I have learned (memorized) the following:

Prokofiev 3rd Concerto
Liszt Petrarch Sonnets No. 47 and 104
Beethoven Op. 110
Bach Prelude in G WTC II (working on the fugue)

It's not slouchy. It's also not at the level I want it to be at. 
Sigh. 
Luckily May is not far away! 


ONE MORE (WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL) PROCRASTINATION DEVICE

I finally went to hulu.com today for the first time ever. GENIUS! Now I can watch recent Simpsons episodes. And I have. Fastest 22 minutes of the day. 


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Best dessert of this week (remembering that Easter was more than a week away): the chocolate espresso pepper cookie at Fair Grounds. A close second place is the vanilla cupcake with lavender frosting from Bread Garden Market. 






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