still busy...bring on the holidays

it has still been busy, but is that any surprise?
i missed seeing christian lindberg with aco, which i am a bit miffed about, but that is completely my fault too.
i had dinner at wen-li & jude's place last week - it was amazing, steamed fish and vegetables with rice! ok, so this is something i may typically have at home, but wow, was it super good or what?!
met up with erica on wednesday, it was beautiful just to sit in the sun (well, shade really, but a nice day) and catch up with her and read the bible and talk about stuff.

ace and i went to see 'waitress' at nova on wednesday night - i'd won tickets, being a brunetti's member thingo and all. we really enjoyed it! it's an indie sorta drama/comedy. really enjoyable. my type of film :) then we went to brunetti's, which was just round the corner, to indulge in some dessert and tea (especially after a fairly unsatisfying dinner).

had a very long thursday. it kinda went something like this (some bits i'm very proud of!)
piano practice at 7am or so, for 1.5hrs before my 9am class. yes, that's right, BEFORE a 9am. class 9-11am. more practice in the basement, 11-1. went to a careers seminar (the lady was wafty) at 1.10, till 2pm. hung out for about an hour (revising that morning's lectures, no doubt on the couches in the con foyer...!), rehearsal 3.15-about 4pm, got kicked out, then went to sinfonia at 4.30-6.30. then came home. unfortunately i didn't go to the Switchfoot concert, which i'm a bit miffed about, but i 1) couldn't afford it (despite it being ridiculously cheap for a concert, $45 oh well), and 2) not enough time.

last week was just really busy doing stuff before the weekend...

so, the weekend was APOLLO CAMP!!!!
(gah, the bit that i'd written wasn't saved, and i can't remember what i wrote. darn! oh well)
so, apollo is the group i am involved in, with the choir in particular. we went to shepparton to rehearse some, the opportunity for med kids to look at the rural clincal school, perform a community concert and to basically hang out with each for a weekend.
it was a great weekend - admittedly, i had a smaller choir which was quite unbalanced, but it worked out well in the end.

and what camp wouldn't be complete without some sort of disaster? oh, it happened, just near the very end. take this: we were driving a small truck/large van (to and) from shepparton, and i was getting dropped off at queen's. i got all my stuff out of the back, and the other two guys got back in so they could drive to the next place to unload stuff, and the vehicle wouldn't start. hmm...one first thinks, flat battery. ok. we had to tell the honking taxi behind us that it wasn't going to move so his best option really was to back out the driveway. so, went and got my neighbour to see if he could jumpstart the car. had to push the vehicle so it didn't block the road (actually, watched in amusement as somebody else did it haha). couldn't find button to put the hood up. had to make a zillion phone calls to all sorts of people. i actually had to run off (i was really really late oops..) but it turns out it wasn't a dead battery, but something was actually wrong with the starter motor. sigh! oh well, hopefully all good now.

so, camp was actually really fun - had a great time, walking along the main road in shepp (to burn off the amazingly large amounts of food we ate at dinner on saturday night), interpretive dance to the wiggles' hot potato (including the best peeling of a banana i have ever seen), getting freaked out about extra people in rooms, the game we played on saturday night involving a round of charades which involved me taking (a layer of) clothes off (hahaha...probably don't want to know....! hahaha sorry), walking around shepp, almost driving into the shepp club, george (in a yellow fluoro jacket) directing us around a tight corner, dress-shopping (aka. helen and me diverting into a shop), looking for missing sunglasses and watch, rolls in a bag in the water ('oh snap' hahaha), cow statues of all sorts. fun times :D it was great to meet and get to know med people!

had a bunch of reherasals on tuesday afternoon: 1pm don giovanni sextet, after that some of my own practice, then a trio rehearsal at about 3.30-5pm. lots of playing. quite wonderful really. when i think about the prospect of just playing lots of piano in one day, it really gets me quite excited. nerdy, i know hehe :P

i sat through a faculty of music undergraduate studies committee meeting on wednesday morning. (My piano lesson was cancelled) there was the dean and other various important people representing heads of departments (instrmentally, and specialisation-wise etc.) there were some bits that were interesting - there are many changes going on pertaining to the melbourne model! however, there were some boring bits too...as with most meetings! i went to the MUCO concert on wednesday night (instead of the GM...). considering that reherasals weren't going all too well (as i hear), it stuck together quite well. i went out to koko black with kristen and jen afterwards, which was really nice! i had a chocolate ice-cream martini: wow!!! how amazingly beautiful. that place is just wonderful hehe.

had a rehearsal on thursday, which went well. (wow, can you see how my life could really be described as: "practice, rehearsal, meeting, rehearsal, more practice"?!) i went to sinfonia in the afternoon; john couldn't be there, so mark took it instead. it went really well! there was much more stop-starting, but that was ok. mark would always say something helpful or suggest a way of doing something, like, "play it like this violins" or "let's do something about those note lengths". it was great! i was leading the 2nds, which was scary but fun (we were so hot right now hehe). we played the overture from wagner's tannhauser (however you spell it..), and parts of brahms' symphony 4. much fun-ness!

there was an open vic night on friday night. not too many people came, because people had gone to med ball or home or on camp. but we watched STAR WARS!! (a new hope, and the empire strikes back). i've never really watched them before, so that was pretty epic! almost everybody else in the room had, so they knew when all the funny bits were coming up, and were laughing at those as well as at me, when i made noises of surprise or when i giggled at the funny parts! it was great! i didn't think i'd enjoy star wars at all, to tell you the truth, but after the first one, i fully got into it and promptly announced "we have to watch the next one!". don't worry, i will get to watch them all, it's pretty cool!

i haven't done too much this weekend....there has been a lot of lazing around, just because it's the first weekend of the holidays. so, practice has taken a bit of a battering at the moment. there is much to prepare and practice for!
i had several minor disasters this morning, all before 10 o'clock in the morning!! how terrible! but thankfully, ace was there to help me out, and andrew was there to say everything was ok! thanks guys, you know me too well - stresshead!!!! on our way home from hawthorn this morning, i pointed out that japanese crepe place where you can get sweet or savoury crepes. they were so funny that andrew thought we should have some. hehe. so much fun, it was really amusing actually!
so, today was actually just beatiful - music, friends, eating, enjoying the day. that just seems so ideal really! that's what i definitely could be doing all weekend, all year round :) thanks for so much fun guys! xo