Can you say "BUSY"

Wow. It's been just a few months since I've updated this blog. I guess that just shows that I've been living life rather than writing it! :P The only problem is trying to summarize the second semester of my senior year. Let's see if I can pick up where I left off:

College Auditions/Acceptance/Decision: These went very well. I was accepted to both Houghton College and Roberts Wesleyan College, debated which one I should go to, and now I'm going to Houghton!! At Houghton I was also accepted into their First Year Honors Program - East Meets West, which occurs during second semester and then during the May term we take a trip to the Balkans. I went up over Spring Break for my orientation (which was awesome), got my lap top, made some new friends, and did my schedule which includes Theory I, Music in the Christian Perspective, Biblical Literature, Percussion Instruments, Chapel, First-Year Introduction, Work, Advanced Composition: Formal Essay, Aural Skills, Symphonic Winds, Applied Clarinet and Clarinet Choir.

EHS Band: Okay, this is the hardest to sumamrize. Ms. Thomas is our new band director (used to work at Northside, helped out at band camp for 2 years, played in the musical pit with me) and she is basically AMAZING! She did an incredible job with us in both concert band and jazz band. With jazz band we actually went and performed at a jazz festival, the NHS induction, and the band welcome night!! So that was really cool. I've joined the Percussion Ensemble, and we played at the welcome night as well, and this wednesday we're going to go play for some day care kids I believe. We're into parade season now, and we're doing "Swing Swing Swing" which is an awesome song. It's a little challenging to keep up the tempo, and they decided to stick the saxes up in front, so that's been a pain getting used to that. Monday is our first parade, so it'll be pretty interesting to see how that goes. Oh, and at the final band concert I got to perform the Rondo form Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, which was cool.

IB: I'M FINISHED WITH IB!!!!! I had my last test on Tuesday, and so now I'm officially free!!! It was really weird yesterday waking up and realizing I didn't have any projects to work on. Minus the fact we have a "final project" in every single class, but we're doing those during class, so that means no homework!!! Yeah, I'm pretty excited about that. The History of the Americas exam was okay - the DBQ was easy since it was on the Cuban Missile Crisis, Paper 2 was easy because we guessed the topics, but we were off the mark on Paper 3, so that wasn't easy. English Paper 1 was pretty easy - I did a commentary on a prose passage by C.S. Lewis and Paper 2 wasn't too bad either. Biology SL turned out to be easier than expected, and Spanish was so-so. Music was by far the easiest exam, and it was actually kinda fun. HC guessed the 2 question on "Dido and Aeneas" exactly right, and our 2 unidentified pieces included a bagpipe music (world music) and a weird 20th century German vocal piece. Our identified with a score was Haydn's Symphony No. 104 (excerpt from the opening of the first movement) and the other one without a score was a dixieland tune. Boy, and I glad that's over!

End of the Year Senior Stuff: I didn't participate in Senior Skip Day, because the girl I was going to skip with wasn't allowed to skip after her French exam. Bummer. We had the Senior Honor Recognition night thingy at West, and it was really long, somewhat pointless. The other night we had the Senior Awards Night. I received the NYSSMA award for participating in All-State, The Nello Martini award (outstanding clarinet player) and the John Philips Sousa award (for being an amazing band member, duh). Oh, a while back I was voted (along with Marty) for Most Musical for Senior Mosts. I've picked up my cap and gown, I'm figuring out my grad party date, and we got our yearbooks on Thursday (Java Jam). WOW!!!!! Congrats to Sarah, Caitlin and Dave - the yearbook is AMAZING!!! It is by far the BEST yearbook I have EVER seen.

Other random thing: We're doing a prepared piano piece (actually, we're going to write one) in Music class, since we're cool like that. We're doing it to the firewood piano in the band room (it is beyond the point of being out of tune).

Spring Musical: LES MISERABLES!!! We sold out 3 nights, it was incredible, and yes, it was life changing. And no, I'm not just saying that. The cast (including crew/pit) became really close during the time, and I miss it terribly.

Poignant Moment: (I'm even going to summarize this section) As excited as I am for college, I really don't want to leave all of my friends because I love them and they're the best and especially since I've gotten to know them and so many other people so much better over this past year. The Lesson: Don't wait until your last year to make more friends.

Okay, moving on.....

Each summer, I make a list of books that I want to read. Mainly because I have nothing better to do in the summer than get caught up on all the reading I haven't done all year. And every year, I make my list WAY too long. But I consider making the list half the fun. And this year I'm sticking to books that are sitting on my shelves (and I'm including the half dozen or so books I'm in the middle of reading....I can never read just one book at a time....)

So I present my 2008 Summer To Read List
A Grief Observed - C.S. Lewis
The Problem of Pain - C.S. Lewis
The Rest is Noise - Alex Ross
Musicophilia - Oliver Sacks
The Seuss, The Whole Seuss and Nothing But The Seuss - Charles D Coben
Julius Caesar - William Shakespeare
Split Ends - Kristin Billerbeck
What To Listen for in Music - Aaron Copland
(more that likely, that's as far as I'm going to get....but here are the rest that are still on my list)Silas Marner - George Eliot
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
C.S. Lewis - Sam Wellman
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and other stories - Robert Louis Stevenson
Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Roots - Alex Haley
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

(now that I've decided to become more faithful in writing in this blog again, this note slightly overlaps with my last facebook note, sorry about that!)

This is the point where I'd normally insert some meaningful quote that describes my state right now, but I really can't think of one, so I guess this is it!