Can music save your mortal soul?

It's no secret that I love music. If I'm not listening to music, I have a song in my head. I deal with sheet music every single day. Sometimes, I'm tired of looking at it, but I still come back every day. I love it's possibilities, sounds, emotions, and everything else that music can be.

This weekend, I'm judging original compositions for the local Reflections competition. I remember doing Reflections when I was a kid, and somehow I'm now old enough to be judging it. The teacher in charge of finding judges chose me because "You're an excellent musician, and you deal with music every day. Who better to be a judge?"

Kinda cool. These kids in this district are quite talented and I'm actually looking forward to listening.

The day the music died

The rule is that you don't play Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving (which is today), right? I've been trying to abide by that rule for as long as I can remember, except for Thursdays.

For choir.

Any other day I need to practice my instruments.

Or accidentally happen upon a radio station that is already playing Christmas songs that I like.

Or when I find songs like this:



At least I don't have to feel guilty about it anymore, but the truth is that I've been listening to or singing Christmas music intermittently since October. In years past, I've even listened to it in April.

I love Christmas music!

The lovers cried and the poets dreamed

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm actually writing this post (and those for the rest of the month) before they're to be posted. I'm spending the holiday weekend with friends in and around Manhattan. I'm sure I'm having a blast.

Today, I'm going to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! Keep an eye out for my awesome red coat!

No matter where today finds you, I hope you're having a wonderful day are surrounded by people who are care about you.


Have a great day!

Did you write the book of love

This is my token NaBloPoMo "I have no idea what to talk about" post.

It's cold in my office. I set the thermostat to 85, just to get it to warm up. No dice. My hand are freezing.

I can't find my scriptures. I really hope I forgot them at church, because that's the only place other than my house I've taken them since September.

Only wearing slacks and skirts these days allows me to dress up fabulously. It's kind of fun. But I am wearing my red Chuck Taylors today with my slacks, and I love it.

December is going to be very busy.

As stressful as the really big things are right now, it was FHE planning that got me emotional this week.

I still love my calling.

I'm going to miss my family tomorrow. I miss them all the time, for one reason or another, but I miss them most on holidays and Sundays.

Still, I'm looking forward to having a great Thanksgiving weekend! Starting in five short minutes from the time I'm writing this sentence!

How that music used to make me smile

My Gmail inbox is almost completely archived. At this moment, I only have 13 messages in my inbox. I found some fun things in there, some of which I will share with you.

This was Easter 2005. My sister and then-boyfriend were cracking me up over who knows what.


A few weeks later at my graduation! I don't look like I have any makeup on. Fran just remembers me being really tired, which is totally true. You don't sleep much when you do 4 years of school in 3.


Halloween 2005. For those of who you were wondering, this is Smalls. I did his makeup and we made his costume.


I have this picture on my desk here.


And my dog. Gosh he's cute.

Drove my Chevy to the levee

It can be quite interesting to look back and see past connections that made it possible for me to be where I am today.

There's a theater closing in Utah at the end of the year. Regardless of how I feel about the quality of their work, they did give a lot of young actors a chance to shine.

Cheeky was one of those actors.

If she hadn't done a show there, she never would have joined a local theatre message board.

If she hadn't joined the boards, I never would have met her.

If I hadn't met her, she wouldn't have found me my job.

If she hadn't found me my job, I never would have moved here.

Or started the grad school program I'm in.

Or met so many cool people.

Or done any number of really awesome things.

All because of a theater I didn't particularly care for.

Who knew?

When the jester sang for the king and queen

I've never been what anyone considered "popular". In school and even know, I've always known lots of people, and everyone seems to know me. Lots of people get along with and even like me. That still doesn't mean I was, am, or ever have been popular. Whatever popular means.

Granted, the Rock-tastic friends I hang out with in lands northward are quite likely the popular kids in their ward. While I am part of their group, even if I haven't seen much of them lately, I still wouldn't consider myself to be popular.

The biggest reason I didn't go anywhere to watch the BYU-Utah game yesterday was because I had to study/program. I listened to the game online and chatted with Eilonwy throughout, and actually got as finished as I could be by the fourth quarter.

The other reason I didn't go was because the viewing party I was invited to was being hosted by a house of the "popular kids" in my ward. I know all of them, and they obviously know me. We're all even kind of friends. But, I'm not really one of them, and sometimes I don't want to try to fit myself into somewhere I don't fit, even if they are well-meaning and genuinely like me.

I can't even define why I don't fit, but I don't, and it's really okay with me. I was missed though, as at least two friends texted me to ask where I was.

In chatting with Eilonwy, I mentioned reason #2 for not going, and she didn't think it was weird at all. The best part though? She had a definition for me.

Children who are sociometrically popular are kind, trustworthy, cooperative, and sociable.

Children classified as perceived popular are athletic, cool, kind (if they are also sociometrically popular) but also dominant, arrogant, and physically and relationally aggressive; these children also tend to be the most influential

So you can be sociometrically popular, or perceived popular.

Based on context, it means you are well adjusted and accepted socially.

Sociometrically popular kids would be the ones that everyone knows but that don't fall in the perceived popular category. *

So, I'm sociometrically popular, which totally works for me. I don't think it's bad to be perceived popular. It's just not me.

And yay Eilonwy for helping me out! She's pretty much The Awesome this week. And always.

*Antonius H. N. Cillessen and Lara Mayeux, From Censure to Reinforcement: Developmental Changes in the Association Between Aggression and Social Status Child Development, January/February 2004, Volume 75, Number 1, Pages 147 – 163

Man, I dig those rhythm and blues

Saturdays are my favorite day of the week. I always have lots of things I need to do (seriously, you should see the current list, I might just post about it), but right now, Saturday is the only day I rarely ever NEED to be anywhere. I don't have class or work or church rehearsals (at least right now). I enjoy those things, even immensely, but it's nice to have one day a week that I can schedule however I see fit. All activities are voluntary, and if I set an appointment up, it was my choice. By the end of most Saturdays, I feel like I got to do what I wanted to do, on my terms, even if it was boring as doing school work or running errands.

Here's what I've done on Saturdays in November thus far:

Nov. 1 - Slept in, caught up recent TiVo activity. Did some web programming. A quick grocery store trip. Halloween party.

Nov. 8 - Slept in. Ate breakfast whilst watching The Office. First day of jeans shopping. 2.5 hour spa visit - massage, facial, and pedicure. It was divine. The massage was a gift from my parents, and I just decided to make an afternoon of it. Bought a couple new books. A little homework and laundry in the evening.

Nov. 15 - Probably slept in a little. Gym. More jeans shopping. Was asked for my phone number by a hot Israeli. Ward Thanskgiving Dinner/Talent-No-Talent Show. Sang one of my favorite songs.


Nov. 22 (Today!) - No sleeping in. Instead, I got up at my usual time to see a movie about sparkly vampires. I went with Alvin and the Chipmunks and we met a bunch of ward friends there. Overpriced movie theater popcorn = breakfast of champions. Movie = brain candy. Lunched at TGIFridays. Took Theodore and Simon to run some errands. None of us found anything we needed, but we all got a few things we didn't. Once home, I worked on more web programming whilst listening the devastating BYU loss (it should have been a lot closer).

And now I'm here. Lounging in the comfortable papasan (the uncomfortable one is in the living room, because I'm mean like that) with my feet propped on my bed, watching Gilmore Girls.

I love Saturdays.

I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck

With my choreographing, I get to observe high school kids in their natural habitat.

I usually think one of two things. Either something like "Look how young they are! Were kids I went to high school with that young? Not possible. Oh how much they need to learn! How cute and wee!"

Then sometimes they remind me exactly of me. The female lead is also doing the costumes and she has a harp something or other next week. One of my dancers had some field trip last week and had to leave early today for a tennis tournament. My male dance captain is the light designer and was arranging a cappella music and is one of the people in charge of the swing dance club.

These kids are already juggling 25 things and doing really well at it. The high school they're attending is a magnet high school for the gifted and talented. Had I stayed in Texas after middle school, that's the kind of high school I was enrolled in. These kids are brilliant and talented and totally on top of things. They're quite pleasant to work with and they remind me so much of me. I even see myself in the really geeky ones sometimes, though I'm thrilled I mostly grew out of the awkwardness. Mostly.

The marching band refused to yield

I'm a librarian, right? So I love to organize things. LOVE it. I love putting everything in it's perfect, little place so that I can find it easily later.

Unfortunately, there are two things that sometimes hinder this love:

1 - The sheer number of things that need to be put away. My room, for example, needs a lot of help right now. I've been busy lately. I know where everything goes, but there's just so much to put away that I don't do it at all. However, when I do get around to it, it makes me happy to know that all my boots are on the boot shelf, and that my "to-read in the near future books" are in the white bookcase, etc. My system isn't perfect, but it works.

2 - Not knowing how to organize it. I haven't touched the stuff on my desk at home in ages, because I don't know what to do with it yet. (Problem #1 also applies here, and it's just getting worse.) This is why I like LC Classification so much. Someone else already created a perfectly detailed organizational system and all I have to figure out is where an item fits into it.

I had an organizational break-through of sorts today. My work email inbox, on Outlook, got a little messy the last month or so, but I reorganized it today. I added some new folders and put away or deleted a lot. Could do more, but it's good enough for now.

My Gmail account, however, was a different story. I had around 3500 messages in my inbox. YIKES! I discovered the Archive button last week sometime, and had done a little damage control that way. I've also been sporadically using labels for quite some time, but that only makes it easier to find things and doesn't clean up my inbox.

This morning, I probably had 15 labels. (Too much? I don't think so. I like specificity, remember?)

Then, Eilonwy taught me about filtering (which I knew about but never did) and retroactive filtering and automatic archiving! And I figured out how to put my labels on the right, so that I don't have to scroll past my gchat list to see what's new.

Now I have 23 labels, and it only took me an hour to go from 3476 messages in my inbox to 2382. This was just staying on my first page of messages and clicking them and applying my newly acquired skills. I had to stop myself (which took me at least ten minutes) just so that I could write this post before heading to rehearsal. I could easily sit here and archive for as long as it took and not even notice the time change. As it is, I now don't have time to eat.

Totally worth it.

Plus, my Gmail now has a ninja theme.

This week rocks.