3 for 7

Do you know that feeling when you thought you didn't do something and then you realize you DID? This is not a feeling I experience very often, but this morning it HAPPENED!

So I was talking to some co-workers yesterday about the 7 wonders of the world and I was like, "Yeah, I've been to 2... I don't really have any desire to go to all 7." And then this morning, I decided to look them up and see what all of them are and YOU GUYS! Check it:

Macchu Picchu-- Peru (Been There... while seriously ill)
Colosseum-- Rome (Been There)

Chichen-Itza-- Mexico (Been There sweating my guts out)

Taj Mahal-- India

Christ Redeemer-- Brasil

Petra-- Jordan

The Great Wall of China-- South Dakota

Colloseum, June 2009

Macchu Picchu, December 2008
Chichen-Itza, June 2010 (Yeah baby!)

I am almost half-way! This has ignited a fire in me to see all of these before I die. I think I can do it. Which one should I save my money to see next? I'm thinking Brasil? Oh, and who wants to come with me?

Two more things I need to say:

1. Please forgive me for the layout of my blog. I hate that huge, off-centered picture thing at the top, but I don't know how to change it, okay? I'm kind of blog-challenged. I'll fix it soon. Maybe today.

2. Cancun post coming soon. Very soon. Stop your crying.

Cancun is for BFFs! Part Uno

Last week I was in Cancun: land of sunshine, corona, thiefs, and speedos.

I've decided to do a day-by-day posting system and I was only there for 4 days whole days plus half-Sunday and half-Friday, so just bear with me. This won't kill you.

First let me introduce you to my three partners in crime:

First is Melanie, a new and welcome addition to our crew. Mel is one of my favorite Bostonians, hands down. I knew we were going to have some extra space in our little villa, so I invited her along because I knew she would bring the party and this girl did NOT disappoint. Look at her smiling like a fool in that hat! What a babe.

Sarah: girl with the booty. She was shakin it everywhere we went. This chica SURVIVED the trip. We were a little worried that she would be eaten by Mexicans, but I took it upon myself to be her personal bodyguard and she came out in one piece. I think...

And there's our little Rach Face. How can you not just love that face? Seriously? This girl did a great job documenting the trip, getting weird tan lines/burns/burning bubbles of death, and wearing her braces like a star. Our tour guide even gave her a shout out because she is a brace face! Yeah baby.

Who is this crazy? I think she's been on here before. This girl succesfully got burned in some small way every day. Way to go, lame-o.

So now you have the intro. Here is what we did on Monday:

Of course there had to be some sort of a photo shoot BEFORE we did anything. I think I might've felt a little ornery about that, but in retrospect I am glad we did it. I just wanted to lay down on my beach chair and pass out.

Classic. Love it.

Reunited at last! Be honest, we kinda look like the Fantanas.

Me and the jolly brown giant. Is that mean?


I love this picture of both girls. Monday afternoon we were so BURNIN hot that Mel and I decided to order some drinks that were delivered right to our little beach chairs. Sarah and Rach followed suit. Trend-setters we are. I can't resist a good pina colada. And yes, it was virgin.


Aren't I a babe without the makeup? This is at Walmart. We bought tons of food for literally nothing. Mangoes were 30 cents a piece, a bag of fresh tortillas were like 50 cents, and avocados were dirt cheap, too. We mostly bought a lot of exxxxcellent produce. Heaven.

Is that a papaya, Mel? I think it is... We made dinner back at our villa on Monday. Aaaaaamazing. Seriously, your mouth should be watering. We had such a good time cooking together and I just loved watching the Bachelorette while we cooked and while we ate. Ali is such an awesome person-- I hope to be like her someday. Sarcasm?

Sarah has been a carnivore since day 1. She used to have a special relationship with Chunky's Fajita Chicken soup. I think maybe she severed ties, though.

This mango salsa was incredible. SERIOUSLY. You need to make this. Here are the ingredients:

1 mango, 1/2 red onion, lime juice, cilantro, 1 tomato, 1-2 cloves of garlic, salt and pepper

You will be in heaven if you try this stuff. No joke. Srsly.

Ohmigosh fer cute. Look at that spread! We even had papaya and pineapple, too. Delicious. (Actually the papaya was kind of nasty... kind of... but we tried it)

So that was day 1. It was a good day, but the fun was just starting.

Good Things to Come

First of all. I watched this video a few mornings ago while I was eating my cereal. The story was somewhat confusing to me, but the principle that those who follow Jesus Christ and His Gospel have good things to look forward to really rang true for me. Sometimes my life is good, sometimes it is less than good, but I feel grateful that no matter what seems to be going on around me I have hope in the future and the good things in store for me because of Jesus Christ. So enjoy that little video.



On a less serious note....

One thing you may not know about me: I have a number of blog posts that remain in the draft category because I don't feel like posting them. I was rifling through these old posts at my boring job and came up with a few gems. Observe:

April 29th

First of all, my teeth hurt. I CAN'T FIND MY RETAINER! ANYWHERE! And now I am worried my massive canines are going to go back to where they were in 7th grade and that is definitely NO-MAN'S LAND. I am going to rip my room apart today (which I have already done like 20 times) and if I don't find it then I will be calling a random dentist to get a retainer made pronto. WHY?! (phew, good thing I blogged about that)

Today was the last day of school. I actually just might miss my awkward theory class. Possibly my most favorite quotable from the semester happened on Tuesday: The Internet is a bunch of tubes filled with kittens. And today, our teacher informed us that DIACF means "Die in a chemical fire." This phrase should be used when doing battle over the internet with some other person. Because hello, I do that every day. (unforgettable)

My drivers license expired yesterday. This means I have to get a new one. This also means that my drivers license will no longer have a picture of 18 year-old me in overalls. Maybe I will wear overalls for old times' sake. Maybe I should make it a tradition to always wear overalls in my DL pictures. Just being true to my roots. (don't worry. i got a new license. a new TEXAS license. sans overalls. it was a sad day.)

March 5th

Spring Break is here! I haven't had one of these in

And that was the end of that post. Real promising...

December 23rd

So I went with my cousins and my parents and Jude to hear a children's choir from Uganda on Sunday. Those kids could MOVE. They could sing, too, but that's not important here. (Okay....)

So maybe those little gems weren't that exciting to you, but I kind of liked them and this blog is all about me.

I will be in Cancun in 48 hours. AHHHHHHHHHH!

Will I Ever Make It Home?

This week has been so ridiculous.

I work at the Dean's Office at my school and I literally sit and wait for the phone to ring all. day. long. I keep myself busy by reading, playing on my computer, and... that's pretty much it. Every day we have things happen that we call, "excitement of the day." Here are a few examples:

-We got a phone call from a scammer. Cannon copier, puh-lease!

-A guy came in the other day and asked us if we need rock chip repair on our windshields. (?) In the dean's office? In a big city where most people use PT?

-We caught someone trying to sneak back to see a staff member without identifying himself. He got mad and said to watch out, next thing everyone knows we'll have tazers. And we probably will.

-We found an unidentifiable package. Oooooooh.

-The other day one of the other work-studies found these cool "while you were out" notepads and proclaimed himself awesomest work-study. Yeeeeeah right. I'll show him.

-An exterminator came because someone found mouse poop in our office. Seriously, I don't even want to talk about it. Too many bad memories.

-This guy came in the other day and was all happy to see me and the receptionist and said, "How are you ladies today?" and without even thinking we said at the same time, "Can I help you?" We didn't even say good. Sometimes we just get in a funk, kind of like Glee. I didn't like that episode by the way.

-A certain person has B.O.

-A woman in a zebra coat freaked out at us about getting her ID card coded. She was a psycho. Should've known-- she was wearing a zebra raincoat. Sorry to all you zebra lovers; it was just too much.

-One of the staff members got an Anthro catalog that I got to look at before I put it in her mailbox. Yessssss.

If this sounds like your dream job, just let me know and I'm sure we can arrange a bring-your-____- to-work day.

Seriously, guys. It's been rough. Sleep has been eluding me lately, which is really really a bad thing when you have a job where you do nothing. All I want to do is fall asleep. I don't think I'm going to make it for the next 3 months. I will die.

In other news-- I'm going to CANCUN a week from SUNDAY!!!!!! Sweet relief.

I think I am actually going to post this. It will not remain a draft. Sorry.

Flutey flutey fluter flute

Nerd Alert: This post is very flutastic. If you can't take it, go read a cooler person's blog.

I don't really know what to say about this man, Trevor Wye. Maybe I should give a run down of what the 7 days I spent with him were like? Okay.


Before we even started class he told us all to call him Trevor, so I will refer to him as Trevor not because we are buddy-buddy or because I want to appear chummy with this diva of the flute world, but because I merely like to comply with authority.

There were around 25 people in the class. 14 performers and the rest were all participants. Everyone participated in a 2.5 hr. warmup routine every morning and the rest of the day was dedicated to Andersen Etudes, orchestral excerpts, and solos. All of the "rest of the day" material was played by the "performers." We were given a general list of pretty much 1,000 different things that we should have prepared for the week and I started working on them about a week before. :) Hooray for procrastinating. Here are some memorable points:


The first thing we did every day was tune to the piano, something that all flutists are generally quite bad at (myself included), and I really feel like I made some progress as I had to go through this process of tuning myself and listening to others tune every day. We tuned A-D-A, which I have never done before and it was reaaaaally great. Almost everyone was sharp on every note-- Trevor always says, "When in doubt, pull out. YOU'RE SHARP YOU'RE SHARP YOU'RE SHARP!" One fabulous trick I learned is this: depending on your flute, your middle D might be sharp (very likely, actually). If this is the case, pull out the foot joint. That's right, foot joint. It has the same effect as pulling out the head joint. Genius, no? Try it and thank me later, okay?

After we tuned we always played a tune by ear. FYI: I am terrible at this. He wouldn't tell us what key he was in, he would just play the tune once and we had to find him. So the first day I was a completely lost soul, but I kind of believe in staring my fear straight in the face so naturally I was looking right at Trevor. He stopped the entire class, walked up to me, took my hand off my flute, and slapped my left hand. Hard. Then he said, "Tell everyone what that was for." I had no idea, so I just raised my eyebrows and said, "Uhhhhh...." and he said, "Do not let me catch you looking at my fingers again. Cheaters never succeed." So that was fun. This happened to everyone at least once during the week, although not everyone got their hand slapped like me, so we got used to it. But that first day was a SHOCKER. If he every caught anyone playing the exercises with round thumb Bb, without their pinky on middle E, or forking F# you had to come to the middle of the room and "confess" before the whole class what you had done wrong. It eventually became kind of funny, but at the beginning everyone was very. afraid. Anyway, bottom line from this point is that this class was not a hearts and roses and every body hold hands and sing-around-the-campfire kind of class. There were some tears (not on my part). I feel like I grew a thicker skin, which is great.

Each performer played a solo from the standard repertoire as well as a solo of Trevor's choosing. Trevor's goal in all of this was to expose us to some pieces that were good pieces but aren't often included as a staple of our rep, which I loved! Here are some pieces you might like to check out:

Blavet, Sonata no. 4 op. 2
Bonis, Sonate (I played this one-- very nice solo, not too tough)
Gaubert, Madrigal (beautiful beautiful piece-- I am also in love with Gaubert)
Damase, Sonate in Concert
Marais, Les Folies d'Espagne (g minor w/ piano)
Doppler, Airs Valaques
Berkeley, Sonata


So when we weren't doing solos or etudes or other things we were working out of this book, Trevor's Guide to Efficient Practice Book, or Book 6: Advanced Practice. Let me tell you, friends, it was insanity. My brain and fingers have never hurt so bad. I highly recommend purchasing the book above. In that book, our favorite exercises were:


p. 64 (don't forget to use first finger Bb)
p. I don't know. Reichert exercise #1-- it's in Section 3.
p. I don't know. Section 6. Trevor's exercise where you play MTriad, mtriad, minor subdominant, dimished in each key. Double time beats 3 and 4 of the bar.
p. 74 Scales. Glorified T&G.

All of the exercises above had to be played from memory after the first day. Disgusting. This might be why I did not get much sleep that week. I remember coming home the first night at 11 and my roommates were asleep, so I just sat in my room and fingered and thought through all the major and minor keys and their dominants and dimished triads for a very. very. long. time. It didn't help much. For that reason, I spent a good amount of time "demonstrating" in front of the class until I could do it. Ohhhhh dear.

We also did a lot from the Efficient Practice book. We did a lot of the thirds exercises (kill me) and always played Mozart Symphony No. 41, 4th movement in every single key. From memory. I cannot do it.

And if you have practice book 6: Advanced Practice, we always did the first technique exercise. RIDICULOUS. You try that at lightning speed and tell me you can keep up and put your pinky down every time you play low E. That's what I thought. My pinky was so sore. And some days he made us do the pinky polka, which was a joke.

Trevor is a brilliant flutist and teacher, but he is tough and if you can't adapt quickly it will not be a good experience. He actually ended up liking me quite a bit, which I think was completely due to my ability to adapt because I definitely wasn't the best player in that room. I would recommend his class to anyone, simply because you will have a new desire to improve your technique and your ability to transpose and think quickly.

Okay, this post is waaaay too long. There is a lot more to tell, but I don't feel like writing it down. I feel like I have written down everything that could be beneficial.


And here's a picture of him coaching me (Linda took this) :

Can we pretend that airplanes...

Since when was it okay for summer to be busier than the school year? Some things that have been contributing to this overall busy-ness:

-I am riding the T again. Hello time waster and creepy people. I sat next to a black guy in a leisure suit with no shirt on a few days ago and he was kinda weird.
-The Celtics are in the Finals.
-Boys.
-Flute. Although not enough.
-Work.
-Summer parties and overall happiness because it is so warm.
-I can't talk on the phone during my commute anymore (it's bad manners if you didn't know), so I end up spending lots of time at home on the phone.
-I go to bed LATE, which is not good because I have no desire to get up before 7.
-Shaving. Let's all just be honest about it. I add a good 2 minutes to my showers in the summer because I have to shave every. single. day. Not fun. Should I have kept that to myself?

Some other things that haven't contributed but are worth noting:

-I saw a drag queen last night in Porter's Square: Platforms, hairy legs, mini skirt, tank top, cowboy hat (huh?). Creepster.
-I was walking to a friend's last night at Porter's Square and a guy rolled down his window and yelled, "You're welcome, sweet cheeks," all because he stopped to let me cross the crosswalk. That's a new one.
-I didn't realize Porter's Square was so sketch.
-Somehow I just got suckered into watching my friend Mike's fish and plant for the next month. I have a feeling I might kill the fish or both. Do fish need air? Because I left a magazine on top of the bowl when I left for work because Mike said sometimes it jumps if you don't watch it.
-I have been doing unusual jobs to earn extra money because I didn't want to find a second job so I would have more time to practice before the convention (by the way, did I mention that I'm playing at the National Flute Convention? I am... more on that in a flutey post), and I have been doing weird weird things. I had an MRI this week and got paid $70. Cha-ching! A few weeks ago I took a hearing test for an amount that will remain undisclosed because I am embarrassed I put myself through that for such a small amount. I'm just learning about being a starving musician, okay?

I need to learn how to be a better blogger. Really I do. I read other people's blogs and the way their thoughts flow and the grammatic beauty of their posts really appeals to me, but I just can't figure it out. My writing style in blog-land is the same as it would be if I were speaking directly to you, which may just mean that my speech is a little less advanced and educated, but I just try to be me, alright? Don't know why I just got all defensive about that.... (?)

One more thing: I am going to rent The Young Victoria this weekend. I have heard too many good things to pass it up.

Let me tell you 'bout May

Where is the time going? Seriously. May flew by. Here is the month in pictures. Again. Soon I will favor you all again with written prose. Oxymoron? Probably.

It was military week or something down by Faneuil Hall/Quincy Marketplace the first week of May. Met Brad for lunch and he made me take a picture with this huge thing. It fits me, right? I'm thinking about joining the military. Please disregard my hair in this humid weather.

2nd: Went down to FM for Mother's Day weekend. My family always treats me like a star when I am down there. This is a picture of my sister who is not-so-little anymore at my FAVORITE restaurant in town.

Mom, Sam, Luke, and Meg coincidentally had their annual piano recital, also known as "showcase of mad skills and fat beats," when I was in town. Here is my mom playing her Brahms Intermezzo. Yeah, mom, yeah.

No comment.

Can we all just take a minute to freak out about how huge everyone is getting? Huge does not in this context mean jacked, although Sam would argue that it does.

This is me and Chad at the Boston Pops earlier this month. The music I am not a huge fan of, but the atmosphere was incredible! They pull out all of the seats on the floor and put in tables and chairs and people order food and drinks throughout the whole concert. It was sweet.

Another very important happening of May was the reopening of Kimball Farms (actually I think this happened in April), so naturally I got a group to go gorge ourselves. I was disappointed to find out that pumpkin and ginger snap ice creams are only "seasonal." Please. Oh and this picture: child size scoop. CHILD size.

I also had a week of flute overload. It was out of control. I will probably include details of this in a written post. This is a picture of me and Trevor Wye and my flute that Trevor wants me to get rid of. This is after our chamber recital at the end of the week.

Me and my flute bestie, Kristyn. Love this girl.

There should have been more pictures taken of this event. This is the Celtics PLAYOFF game #4 against the Magic. Thank you, Allen Stoddard.

Leah and I went to the New England Aquarium on Saturday and saw this big shark. SCARY.

This weekend I went camping with an AMAZING group of people. Seriously awesome. We spent Sunday night on the campgrounds of Lake Wompatuck and we hit a beach on the way home on Monday. This is a shot of some of the group sculpting Brent the Merman.

Not pictured: Brent's seaweed chest hair. Excellent.

So anyway, May was busy. June is going to ROCK.