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Happy birthday, jenstclair!! :)

I still miss my Shali.

Bought a friend's black 8GB ipod nano fer cheap today; he's upgrading to one of the ones with a camera (which are neat, but i so don't need that atm). So we now have Imperial (my purple shuffle), Talon (Brad's blue shuffle), and...

...Condor. :)

(and holy CRAP, I have a lot of maintenance to do with my music files - all 36 gigs of tunes!!!)

Well, school started last week. Pretty well so far... even busier than I was last year, but the nice thing is that the music building computer lab is now card-swipe instead of needing to be monitored when open, so I can get in here at 10 pm to post after practicing :D And I've been doing a LOT of practicing... 16 hours in the past 6 days, and would have been more except that I got accosted by a friend who needed to vent today and wound up with a 90 minute dinner break... and then when I got back to practicing, found that my arm REALLY hurt all of a sudden. Gee. Wonder why.

Other than class and practicing... nothing really exciting is going on in my neck of the woods. Pixie is determined to learn to sing, although most of the sounds she makes these days are more reminiscent of what dinosaurs must have sounded like than the pleasant sound of singing. It's okay, it's still cute.

Hope everyone is doing alright... there will be more posting in the future as I hammer out some sort of schedule, but... for now, I'm spending almost all of my available time in the practice room. I'll be doing a rehearsal recital in the Spring, if anyone in the area is interested (or if anyone feels up to travelling to Pittsburgh... it will be on a weekend so that my folks can come out for it, probably mid- or late-Marchish).

Still here, still using the library for internet, still reading my fool head off... but not bothering to write anything down, because I started plowing through my own shelves again in a crazy reading frenzy. Bleh. Went through all of my Lackey books (well, the good ones at least), and then through my Kelley Armstrongs. I realized that there's a new one out as of last year that I've still not read, so I need to hunt that one down at some point. Been doing some writing of my own, and I'm checking some movies out from the library this afternoon with the intent of doing some knitting this afternoon-- I haven't knit ANYTHING all summer, and when I stopped in JoAnn's this afternoon to see if a friend was working, I found they have some new colors of sock yarn in a brand (two, actually) that just happened to be on sale... and since school starts in 2 weeks, I should probably have enough time to put together at least a pair of ankle socks between now and then, if I do some movie watching. The only other thing i have to do today is practice, and it's WAY too damn hot in my spare bedroom / office to do anything remotely physical at the moment, so I'll just close the back blinds (to block the sun pouring in our west-facing slider), crank the air down low for the afternoon, get a big glass of ice water, and indulge in those movies that Brad normally has no interest in watching (I'm taking home the BBC P&P cuz I'm curious, and it was the first one I saw... plus The Prestige and Music & Lyrics).

Bah.

Beyond that... nothing really much is doing. I'm behind in tagging on P_L, but I'm going to be putting aside some time every day while at school to play catch-up with that (probably lunch hours). I'm hoping that they got wireless installed in the music building this year, but... I'm thinking it's not likely. 'S ok, the union is right next door, and they have the microwave over there anyway, so I'll just spend lunches with my headphones on and trying to ignore the idiot frat boys :D

1. Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman
2. Omega Games, S. L. Viehl
3. Urban Shaman, C.E. Murphy
4. The Music of Man, Yehudi Menuhin
5. Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen
6. Lean Mean 13, Janet Evanovich
7. Bonk, The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach (suggested by tenaya_owlcat)
8. Storm Front, Jim Butcher (suggested by wcp)
9. The Onion Girl, Charles de Lint (suggested by tenaya_owlcat)
10. The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch (suggested by kynekh_amagire)
11. Fool Moon, Jim Butcher
12. Grave Peril, Jim Butcher
13. Fearless 14, Janet Evanovich
14. Wicked, Gregory Maguire
15. Watership Down, Adams
16. Red Seas Under Red Skies, Scott Lynch
17. Son of a Witch, Gregory Maguire
18. The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
19. Dead Beat, Jim Butcher
20. Proven Guilty, Jim Butcher
21. Small Favor, Jim Butcher
22. Death Masks, Jim Butcher
23. Blood Rites, Jim Butcher
24. White Night, Jim Butcher

... if you guessed I went on a Dresden binge, you'd be right.

Currently Reading:
All the Windwracked Stars, Elizabeth Bear

Still hanging in there in SS/DD mode. Read another three Dresden novels, and I'm considering picking up the three that our library doesn't have and I had to skip over at the book store. Had to take a break from practicing recently due to some pain issues with my hands, wrists and shoulders... which really sucks. But. I don't need to push too hard right now, as it'll just get me behind schedule. I need to sit down and work up a reasonable schedule for finishing my recital works... I have about six months until they have to be ready, and they HAVE to be ready. I'm not asking my folks & friends to drive out here for a shitty recital, especially when you add in the possibility of bad weather since it'll be late January. Ugh. And yay at the same time. It'll be a good show.

Just one day of class left before my summer break officially starts... the month and nine days of it that I actually get, at least. I'm going to spend some of it travelling... I want to go back up to MI to see my brother's puppy after he gets to bring her home (Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaby husky! D'awwww!), and maybe I might go roadtripping or something. I don't know. Being broke doesn't lend a lot to vaca options. :D

Writing... has been going well for once. Granted, it's only been three journal entries so far, but... that's three journal entries, meaning one entry three days in a row, and they've all gone somewhere and gotten me something. Some of it will fit into what I'm actually going to be writing when I start my private marathon, some of it is just stuff on a page that I might not ever come back to. But all of it flowed. I got an idea, and I followed it instead of forcing something to stick to an outline. And I think that's how I want to do this marathon. 1700 words a day for a month really is doable like that. I wasn't planning on starting till Wednesday, but I might let myself jumpstart it today or tomorrow. I've been wanting to start, but keep putting it off... maybe it'll be good to just let it out of the starting gate. Haven't yet decided.

1. Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman
2. Omega Games, S. L. Viehl
3. Urban Shaman, C.E. Murphy
4. The Music of Man, Yehudi Menuhin
5. Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen
6. Lean Mean 13, Janet Evanovich
7. Bonk, The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach (suggested by tenaya_owlcat)
8. Storm Front, Jim Butcher (suggested by wcp)
9. The Onion Girl, Charles de Lint (suggested by tenaya_owlcat)
10. The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch (suggested by kynekh_amagire)
11. Fool Moon, Jim Butcher
12. Grave Peril, Jim Butcher
13. Fearless 14, Janet Evanovich
14. Wicked, Gregory Maguire
15. Watership Down, Adams
16. Red Seas Under Red Skies, Scott Lynch
17. Son of a Witch, Gregory Maguire
18. The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
19. Dead Beat, Jim Butcher

TBR:
... I don't have my list of currently checked-out titles with me, darnit. But I have a non-Narnia novel by C.S. Lewis, something by Andre Norton, and something by Elizabeth Bear. I figured I should branch out a little bit.

Also... I only have a week and two days worth of class left. I'm planning on spending about a month doing some heavy-duty writing work... but more on that later. :) Yes, cryptic on purpose... but I plan on being productive with a story that really hasn't gone much of anywhere since 2002. It's time to rewrite it froms scratch, the way that *I* want to write it instead of by committee and market... and I want to tell the damned story, not write something 'that will sell'. If I *can* sell it, awesome, if not... it'll at least be out of my damned head.

1. Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman
2. Omega Games, S. L. Viehl
3. Urban Shaman, C.E. Murphy
4. The Music of Man, Yehudi Menuhin
5. Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen
6. Lean Mean 13, Janet Evanovich
7. Bonk, The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach (suggested by tenaya_owlcat)
8. Storm Front, Jim Butcher (suggested by wcp)
9. The Onion Girl, Charles de Lint (suggested by tenaya_owlcat)
10. The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch (suggested by kynekh_amagire)
11. Fool Moon, Jim Butcher
12. Grave Peril, Jim Butcher
13. Fearless 14, Janet Evanovich
14. Wicked, Gregory Maguire

Currently Reading:
Watership Down (yeah, I know, I'm amazed I've made it this long without reading it also)
The Inner Game of Music, Barry Green and Timothy Gallwey (long, slow, slogging reading on this one)

TBR (currently checked out from library):
The Art of Practicing, Madeline Bruser

strange happening this evening - brad has been doing a lot of cleaning and reorganization around the house. today he brought in the grate from Pixie's cage and leaned it in front of the fireplace as a joke, as I'd commented that I'd like to get a screen for the hearth. about an hour later, we heard a ton of fluttering in the chimney - not a huge thing these days, as we knew there was a pair of somethings nesting there. but this time... a little yellow beak attached to a red breast showed up against the grate... a robin had fallen into our fireplace!! a quick nab with a towel and a short walk out to the porch, and the little one was gone in a puff of down. Needless to say, Monkey checked the flue - it seems to be broken in the half-open position, which explains a lot. We'll have maintenance over tomorrow to look at it, but until then that grate is staying in place as a screen to prevent any other uninvited visitors!

1. Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman
2. Omega Games, S. L. Viehl
3. Urban Shaman, C.E. Murphy
4. The Music of Man, Yehudi Menuhin
5. Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen
6. Lean Mean 13, Janet Evanovich
7. Bonk, The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach (suggested by tenaya_owlcat)
8. Storm Front, Jim Butcher (suggested by wcp)

Currently Reading:
The Inner Game of Music, Barry Green and Timothy Gallwey

TBR (currently checked out from library):
The Onion Girl, Charles de Lint
The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch (suggested by kynekh_amagire)
The Art of Practicing, Madeline Bruser

1. Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman - Typical absurdity from Gaiman, although parts felt a little like Neverwhere. Overall thought it was much better than Neverwhere, story more cohesive, less grasping, more like American Gods.

2. Omega Games, S. L. Viehl - I generally like the StarDoc series, but this was definitely underwhelming. Marel was sadly absent from this one. I think I'm sticking with the first 5 and ignoring the rest of 'em. :(

3. Urban Shaman, C.E. Murphy - a lot of fun, pretty good integration of Celtic and Native American mythos in an urban fantasy. I know there are others that follow this, and I'll probably hunt them down at some point.

4. The Music of Man, Yehudi Menuhin - non-fiction, coffee-table book that came out as a companion to a late 70s/ early 80s CBC mini-series on music anthropology. Picked it up used in Lansing (Can't go wrong for $5.00), has lots of stuff I already knew and a lot of insight into Sir Menuhin's take on music. Quite a bit of violin-centric stuff going on as well.

5. Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen - It was okay. Felt removed from the characters, possibly due to the style & time that Austen wrote in. Worth the read, though. Would love to see some of the movies that have been made (and would probably enjoy them). Like it (much!) better than Shakespeare :D

6. Lean Mean 13, Janet Evanovich - Fun afternoon read. Same fun formula. Same fun characters. Kinda like cotton candy... little substance, but every now and again it's a nice treat that doesn't take too much effort to enjoy and always brings a smile.

Currently in progress:
Bonk, The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach

TBR (currently checked out from library):
The Onion Girl, Charles de Lint
Storm Front, Jim Butcher

• 16:22 going to the symphony for Mahler 2!! #

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math sucks

I'm still here. First week of summer class is almost over, halleluja. Things are going pretty well, not wonderful, but... not terrible. too many other people just don't get it... seriously, how can you not understand that null set is a subset of every non-empty set? Just because you have a container doesn't mean you have to have specific things in it, right? *sigh* Seriously though, this class is like a rehash of 10th grade math. I've been having flashbacks to sitting in one of the few classrooms at RHS without windows to the outside world, talking about how to find the initial sums of arithmetic and geometric sequences, set notation, operations and logic... all that fun honors math crap. It's coming back pretty well, and it's been what... 14 years? 15 years? Yeah. I really don't get how all these college students just aren't following along. Oh well. The biggest loss to me is the instruction time yielded to answering their questions and dealing with their lack of comprehension, which I apparently don't need since I'm following along just fine. Maybe I should look into taking the elementary math Praxis II once I get to that point... a couple hundred bucks to get more subbing ops and make myself more valuable to potential employers might not be a bad thing in the long run.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately on how our country runs on fear... advertising, politics, religion... all centered on fear. I have some stuff to say about it -- quite a lot -- but I haven't quite hammered out how to say what I want to express clearly, so... it's simmering more. I have quite a bit of writing simmering, actually... I'm working on a potential cookbook aimed at college kids (if I finish it, I'll probably self-publish and try to sell through Lulu and placing ads on strategic sites, because I have NO idea where slush cookbooks are supposed to go...)... I've also had some fiction tidbits dancing around with my muse. Nothing substantial, but... words are there. Not on the surface yet, but, there. Somewhere. Buried. Well-marinated. Ready to stew longer. Maybe I'll start writing about Cori again. Maybe it'll be something new. Who knows. It's kinda like stretching for the first time after skipping the gym for several months... feels kinda weird, kinda stiff & sore, but with a wonderful promise of things to come down the line.

And speaking of the gym... I put on everything I lost during fall semester and then some. Ugh. I'm back in the gym when I can be on campus for now, but... having to try to find a job is potentially going to put a damper on that, depending on what kind of shifts they have available (they being whoever is willing to hire me). I *really* need to get this weight off, but can't afford weight watchers or any of the medical plans; and I'm consistently struggling with my own discipline issues when trying to do it on my own. This *sucks*. Things are getting a little better, but... I want a *big* noticeable change, and I want it soon (and I can't afford the lap band, either). I really hate being poor, but I hate the idea of going back to do work that doesn't actually do anything for me more. *sigh* Anyone know of any violin students looking for a good teacher north of pittsburgh? (good news is that I have two gigs coming up in August & September... not much, probably only $150 total between them both, but it's a damn sight better than nothing).

It's roasting in my office. I'm off to sluice off some of this sweat and try to get some sleep.

... leftover burrito filling (rice, ground beef, black beans, tomatoes, green pepper, onions, & chiles), mixed with salsa & cheese and reheated until a light queso has developed as a sauce.

NOM. No added cost, either, as all the ingredients were sitting around and needing to be used. :D

And now... I go practice more. Pens play tonight, game 4 in Carolina -- Go Pens!! I'm hoping for a rematch from last year.

... I have a feeling that someone will probably be interested in this one, maybe several someones, so rather than just mention tonight's meal, have the recipe :D



Buffalo Salmon
from Gourmet, May 2008

2 lbs salmon fillet
1/4 c. hot pepper sauce
5 tbsp butter, melted
1 tbsp oil (plus enough to oil baking dish)
1/3 c. panko

Preheat oven to 425*. Lightly oil shallow baking dish.

Whisk together butter and pepper sauce until thoroughly combined. Reserve 1/4 cup of sauce for dipping with meal.

In a small bowl, combine oil and panko, toss to combine.

Place salmon skin-side down in baking dish. Brush with remaining hot sauce mixture. Sprinkle panko over top and lightly press into fish. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until fish is cooked to your desired doneness. Serve with reserved sauce, crisp celery sticks, and blue cheese sauce. Rice and steamed broccoli also make nice friends with this dish.


(ETA - you can blame my dad for this, as well as last night's entry... he sent me home with a stack of old Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine and a few other old magazines that had been sitting around. There's plenty more to come where these came from!!)

Today's lineup...

Brunch:
--Crustless Quiche (yogurt formula) w/ sausage, red peppers, onion, mushroom, co-jack and cheddar (recipe below)

--Buffalo Salmon w/ steamed broccoli & rice

Tomorrow is the GoodEats spaghetti with meat sauce recipe, with a few modifications. Monday will be pork loin chops of some design.


( Simple, easy, yummy quiche--it's not just for restaurants anymore )

parmesan-crusted chicken with balsamic-glazed oven-roasted tomatoes over whatever pasta is in the pantry. Maybe a glass of wine.