My lovely military brother is home on sick leave. I've never been so happy to see someone with the flu! It's so nice to have him home. I do feel bad that he's sick, but he gets to watch Star Trek and eat E.L.Fudge cookies so it can't be all that horrible.

Ah, baby brother, how I love you! I knew I'd miss him, but now that he's home for a few days, I know that I've been REALLY missing him. I write/email him almost every day and I think we're closer now than ever. Isn't that funny? He's farther away than ever before and we're closer than we've ever been? Funny, funny stuff...

I'm just really trying to stay healthy myself. He came home wearing one of those face masks and I'm like OMGOSH WHAT DOES HE HAVE?!??! But it's just the flu. :( His roommate MADE him go to the infirmary and I'm glad he did! Three cheers for Fogarty! Notable people have died from the flu (many of which I love with all my heart -- like George Washington and Jim Henson and Mozart and Lully). I'm glad someone knocked some sense into him and told him to get help. Poor guy had a 102 fever!

So he's on the couch watching Captain Picard save the day and listening to me blabber on about Austria and Hofstra and opera and such. I get him until Tuesday. :) Hurray for sick leave!

These are ALL true about me. See how many you can relate to. :P

You know you're a nerd when...

...you and your friends/family play "guess that conductor" instead of charades.

...you look at a shampoo bottle and say, "Hey! There's a comma missing!"

...you look at the daily Google picture and you know what it's commemorating before you scroll over it.

...you fall asleep with textbooks in your bed and you don't notice until halfway through the next day.

...you quote Captain Kirk in real life and your brother laughs because he knows exactly what you're referring to AND he knows the name of the episode is that the quote is from.

...you think of every purchase in terms of how many songs on ITunes that would be.

...you know a random date that your teacher/professor asked for but didn't expect anyone to actually know and you can't remember how/why you know it.

...you play charades and the choices are: movie, book, tv show, play, and opera.

...you know the Dewey Decimal number of a specific subject.

...you talk about famous people by their first names and everyone knows who you're talking about.

...you can answer the questions on Jeopardy that the contestants don't know.

...you know who Petra is and what their greatest hits were.

...you have drawn out conversations about the meaning of Time and whether it actually exists or not.

...you don't notice that you're randomly adding phrases in foreign languages into your everyday speech.

...you have 43 books checked out and think nothing of it.

...you squee over a New York Philharmonic concert (and think that the first-chair cellist is cute).

...you're 10 years old and your role models are Nancy Drew and an android named Data (Star Trek TNG).

...you can read three different alphabets.

...you know the date of every Mozart opera premiere but you can't successfully drive two miles without getting lost (in your home town where you've lived for over 10 years).

...you correct a teacher's/professor's grammatical mistakes when you copy down their notes.

...you're 12 years old and you want to be an astronomical geologist when you grow up.

...you visit three different libraries in the same day and think that it's normal.

...you use opera singers' names in the place of profanities.

It's frickin' GORGEOUS out today. LOVE IT!

Did some fun shopping today; got a pair of Skullcandy headphones that I love. They're green (at least I'm told; I'm colorblind) and they fit inside your ears. They work fantastically but being the paranoid person that I am, I'm scared that they work TOO well. I'm going to use them when I can't use my big ones (<3). I was hesitant to buy them up to know, but they were a totally low price so I felt it was worth the risk. (The biggest risk was, of course, that they wouldn't fit in my ears. I have the smallest ear canals. :/ )

Washed Gia the Kia-- she now looks beautiful (for about another 20 seconds; then the birds will get her). I'm debating buying a vanity plate for her. I just love vanity plates so much! The $$ is the problem; I'm trying to save up for my Austria trip. I had to buy books already, so that was money down the drain (not really, but you know what I mean). That and I couldn't help but buy the 1979 Kleiber Rosenkavalier DVD. BRIGITTE FASSBÄNDER, I LOVE YOU. Cutest Octavian ever!

My brothers are watching The Dead Zone. I've never watched that show before. It's pretty interesting. And YAY EZRI DAX. At the end of the day, Star Trek is really the only show I care about. (LOST gets second place.)

I have a new book idea stamping around in the back of my brain. This summer might produce another novel! Hurray. I love when that happens. :) We shall see...

Ok, it's off to more lounging in the sun. Yayz!

Don't you love it when someone remembers you? It's a beautiful thing.

I went to cash a check at the bank today and the teller asked me if I'd looked into wiring my money to Europe yet. I'd been at the bank a few days ago and inquired about sending money to Europe for my glorious AUSTRIAN ADVENTURE. Apparently it was the same guy. And he remembered me! And he was pretty good looking. Glorious!

He asked me where I was going and what I was studying.

"Austria for opera."

The conversation abruptly ended with an uninterested "oh." WHY DOES THE WORD "OPERA" TURN EVERYONE OFF SO FAST?!? I don't understand this. Does opera = boring in some subliminal way? Granted, I thought it was boring and didn't care two cents about it until I saw Marriage of Figaro. But, still! I could have said "astronomical geology" and gotten a better response. Am I doomed to singleness forever because I'm an opera singer? Ahhhh!

On another note: I babysat Tammy's 6-year-old kid Rainer on Sunday. What a trip that was. The kid's a frickin' genius.

We played Stratego and he won. I'm relatively smart and pretty good at strategy games (I'm undefeated at Risk and almost undefeated at Monopoly) but this kid WHIPPED me. He watched what I was doing and said, "My dad uses the same strategy. He attacks in groups, too." He also made comments on what he guessed was happening on my side of the board and 80% of the time he was dead on. I had a few tricks up my sleeve, but not enough to win (apparently).

He could build these really intricate Lego ships without instructions. He used the pieces in ways that I've never seen before. It was crazy. And he understood the word "hydraulics." What the heck?

Sure, he still acted like a 6-year-old sometimes (he refused to eat peanut butter with bread; he wanted to eat it with a spoon), but he was incredibly smart. I've babysat a lot of kids, some of them pretty smart, but this kid tops them all. I'm kind of scared/interested to see what he'll do in ten years.

STAR TREK: I saw the movie and I liked it. It wasn't "Star Trek" but it was good as its own thing. The cinematography was outstanding and I really liked the characters. Bones rocks the house!

Question: Has anyone ever read Rainer Maria Rilke's "Sonnets to Orpheus"? I will have to talk about them when I finish. They are so incredible...

Sidenote: This cracked me up. Opera Chic writes: "Please don't tell Stephen Colbert that an Iranian who, suspiciously, always wears sunglasses and has been denied in the past a visa to the USA went to France to direct a show about marital infidelity and Albanians written by a Jewish heretic/Catholic priest obsessed by sex and by an Austrian kid obsessed by p00p."

This of course refers to Abbas Kiarostami's Così Fan Tutte. Ahhh, OC always makes me laugh. That is, OC and any reference to Mozart. :)

I just started watching Roswell. It's starting to get really good. I just finished the first part (285 South) of this SUPER INTENSE two parter (aha). Yay for teenage drama.

I officially love hulu. :)

Anybody out there ever watch Roswell? Apparently it's a Jonathan Frakes baby. He always supports cheesy sci-fi. Oh, but I love it!

Fav characters:
1. Maria - got to love the weird best friend! I secretly want to fill that role in real life...the strange sidekick...
2. Liz - because she's a super-hot nerd; aka what we all aspire to be
3. Mike - THE HAIR, the bad-boy mentality, the guy who want to but never should date
4. Max - oh so nice and oh so frustrating
5. Creepy "guidance counselor" - didn't you always want someone to care that much about your personal life?
6. Sheriff Valenti - SLOANE! ahhhh Section 41!
7. Isabel - aww, Katherine Heigl

10 Best Books I Read (For the First Time) This Year

1. The Figaro Plays (The Barber of Seville/The Marriage of Figaro/The Guilt of a Mother) - Beaumarchais
2. A Circle of Quiet - Madeleine L'Engle
3. The Robot Trilogy (The Caves of Steel/The Naked Sun/The Robots of Dawn) - Isaac Asimov
4. Understanding the Women of Mozart's Operas - Kristi Brown-Montesano
5. Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. The Inner Voice - Renee Fleming
7. Marrying Mozart - Stephanie Cowell
8. So Yesterday - Scott Westerfeld
9.  What Not To Wear - Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine
10. Penelope - Marilyn Kaye

10 Best Movies/Videos I Saw (For the First Time) This Year

1. Star Trek Voyager
2. Wall-E
3. Mansfield Park
4. La Fille du Regiment - Royal Opera House 2008
5. I Dream of Jeannie
6. Northanger Abbey
7. Finding Neverland
8. Shrek the Third
9. A Wrinkle in Time - miniseries
10. Trollflojten
Bonus: Beethoven Lives Upstairs (55 minutes of educational bliss!)

I just got back from a wonderful concert: Jars of Clay, Sixpence None the Richer, Leeland, and Sara Groves. I love Jars and Sixpence, but I didn't know Leeland. They were a bit young but very good. They looked like a bunch of hobbits, and that made them cute. :) I didn't like Sara Groves (but I never have).

It's so weird though. As much as I enjoyed that concert, it's still nowhere near the enjoyment that I get out of classical concerts. The Phil and the Met...there's nothing like it! Absolutely nothing.

Don't get me wrong; there were some great musicians onstage tonight. It's just...there's something special (at least for me) about classical music. There's nothing like it in all the world.

And it made me think. This must be a fallen world because there are moments with no music.

mcollinknight did a wonderful meme giving the first/best line of each first post of the month for each month of this year. She's an outstanding writer so her's was rather poetic. Since I'm first and musician and second a writer, I'm going to switch it up a little. I did the same thing (went to the first post of each month) and took down what I'd written in the "music" section. So, here's my year in music:

( Playlist 2008 )

BTW, I just noticed that my icon is a snapshot from Resolutions. That show appealed to me. I don't like Chakotay/Janeway; I just like the energy and the visuals in the show- they're very unusual. I've watched it more than once, which is more than usual for a Voyager show since I'm going through the series for the first time. I was watching the show and I saw that moment and I'm like, "Where have I seen that recently?" And it was this icon! I didn't realize that the white stuff in the bottom left-hand corner is text; I thought she was wearing one of the old-style dresses that she wears in the holodeck. I am so silly! This makes me happier. :)

Ok, it's off to finish my final final project. Then I'm completely free from school until the end of January. Hurray! Isorhythmic motet, here I come!

Today was...eventful. An interesting end to an interesting week.

shroomshipper and I went into the City today to see Dr. Atomic at the Met (opera house). It was a gray, dizzly day, but we had fun. I ordered hot chocolate at a little cafe (we boycotted Starbucks) and I got hot milk. Fun times.

Dr. Atomic was grossly disappointing. Visually, it was gorgeous. Unvisually...not so much. You can read my review here.

If you'd like a little sample from the libretto (aka if you like poetry), here's something:

In the ocean of your hair
I see brief visions
of a port resounding with
melancholy songs,
of vigorous men of all nations
and ships of all shapes
outlining their fine and complicated architectures
against an immense sky
where eternal heat
languidly quivers…

That's nice to read, but three and a half hours of that non-stop and sung tends to annoy the brain. This opera was totally what I DID NOT need.

I wanted to purge it from my system, but I didn't have any music in my car! Let me list the things that broke this week:
Ipod
car CD player
internet router (for laptop)
laptop (but I fixed it -- mostly)
cell phone

After that, I went straight back to school for a vocal recital. What a great recital! It was such a pleasure. :)

Donizetti rocks my life.

Whatever happens tomorrow, I'm ready because it's a new week. I survived this week (thank God!) and next week can only be better.

All I ask is that no one sing the aria from Dr. Atomic that is exactly five lines and starts "In the north the cloud-flower blossoms..." She must have sang those five lines 10 times. I HATE THAT ARIA WITH A BURNING PASSION.

I'm okay.

"Well my heart knows me better than I know myself
So I'm gonna let it do all the talking.
I came across a place in the middle of nowhere
With a big black horse and a cherry tree.

I felt a little fear upon my back
He said "Don't look back, just keep on walking."
When the big black horse said, "Hey lady!"
Said, "Look this way, will you marry me?"

But I said no, no, no, no-no-no
I said no, no, you're not the one for me
No, no, no, no-no-no
I said no, no, you're not the one for me"

P.S. This made my day on Wednesday. Only Star Trek fans will understand. And if they do, they still might be mad because of the implication. Sorry.

Click the thumbnail to see!

The funniest things I heard all day:

1. My brothers, Justin and Ryan, turn on the World Series game.

 

Justin: Look, the score is tied already.
Ryan: It starts tied.

2. Harry Kim has a crush on Seven of Nine and attempts to woo her with subtle lighting.

Seven: This lighting is inefficient.

3. Same scene, later after Seven catches on to Harry's wooing:

Seven: I don't understand these complex rituals of deception.

4. Captain Kirk attempts to outwit some androids with his "illogical human" ways (this never gets old):

Kirk: Oh no, Scotty's dead.  He's had too much happiness.

hhahaha

Ohhh, what a crazy day.  I really needed that.  It's just been...insane.  I've actually had to deal with some drama (professor drama strangely enough).  I'll probably get into it eventually.  I'm too tired today to elaborate.  Let's just say that I'm happy and upset simultaneously.  Hurray for complex emotions!

I had some fun and some frustration today.  I broke into my grandparents' house and "stole" Mary Poppins tickets.  I'm going to see Mary Poppins on Broadway tomorrow!  (And this was totally unexpected.)  Yay!!!  I can't wait.  :D

I was frustrated by the drama and by my not-so-loyal GPS, Terry.  Terry gave me angst.  It tried to make me go down a street that didn't exist.  Then it wondered why I was such an idiot.  It tried to make me back-track like 5 times.  *sigh*  You can't always trust technology.

I have to go to sleep.  I have so much work to do and I need SLEEP.  What is this "sleep" you speak of?  Ich weiss nicht.

Buona sera!