Life and Times of AlieMalie

Been in a funk for the past couple of days, having bit off enough to chew on for the next eon or so. Thought I’d share something I stumbled across earlier today that plays directly into my current state of mind: A FOG – Another Fucking Opportunity for Growth.

I have this recurring eye twitch that will not go away – and I’ve had it for almost three weeks. I don’t know what it’s caused by and there’s nothing I can seem to do to stop. It is so. freaking. annoying. I think this just means I’m stressed and tired. What a surprise.

I think I’m suffering from a lack of sunshine because of the never ending rain we’ve been having here – I’ve been moody and snippy all week long. I feel like I’ve gone off and moved to Seattle it’s been raining so much and cannot remember a day since I’ve been home – over a month – when it hasn’t rained at least once. Gar.

I’m really, REALLY looking forward to September now. I’ve got that trip up to Vancouver but I’ve also got a friend coming into town during the first week so we can gorge ourselves on sushi – I won’t eat it alone since I don’t know what to order and he’s a sushi freak – and maybe go run around the hill country for a bit if it’s not horribly hot. Whee!

The morning of the marathon concert, I decided that I needed a bit of help waking up so I popped into the nearest coffee shop to pick up a dose of caffeine. I was already decked out in the all black attire customary for the concerts and the girl behind the register looked me up and down and then asked, “Do you feel more like a ninja when you’re wearing all black?” Well, now that I think of it, I sure do. This is even more hilarious if you’re ever the recipient of my majorly idiotic ninja jokes. Was a good way to start that day in particular, too bad I didn’t put my mad ninja skillz to use later that afternoon.

This past weekend was the marathon (read: 3 hour, no intermission) concert for the strings camp that I was helping with and our grand finale that included 6 orchestras and most of our faculty was to be an arrangement of the Harry Potter theme. At the beginning of our dress rehearsal, two of the parents came up to us to tell us that a. Harry Potter (the books, though I’m sure by default that means Harry himself) is evil and that they encourage witchcraft and b. they weren’t going to let their kids play in the finale.

We can’t argue with a parent when they make such a decision, but my goodness. On a level, I can understand where they won’t allow their child to read Harry Potter because they think it brings about evil in the world, encourages witchcraft (though in my book, the people I know who consider themselves witches are some of the coolest people I know, hello auntie) and whatever else. Those are decisions the parents are entitled to make, they are the ones who are given the right to choose what their children are and are not exposed to. So don’t let your kid read Harry Potter. It’s not a decision I’d make, but whatever. Do what you will. I know christielli is gaping here, “Not read Harry Potter?! Impossible!”

Anyway, Saturday was just music. There were no words to the music, we didn’t read a passage from a book and we didn’t have a clip playing in the background as we played. It was just music. Your kid was playing their instrument. Is the music going to expose your kid to witchcraft? Are we going to conjure up a wizard? Well, witches maybe when you don’t play in tune and they’re named AlieMalie, but in all seriousness, these kids were snickered at by some of their orchestra mates because they were forced to sit out. Not right, I know, but why’s the music itself such an evil thing too?

Blah. Some people.

I know I owe at least two more episodes from my most recent trip – the last days without the Texans in Europe and Morocco and also my weekend in Canada with the biggest nerd I know aside from me. Well, he might out do me in the nerd department actually. But anyway, I’ll get around to those soon. I apologise for the sheer lack of posts with any meaningful content – who the hell am I fooling? There’s never meaningful content around here – but I have been busy, busy, busy. Work, work, and getting myself into a really big spot of trouble that I have been dreading all week. That’ll come to pass tomorrow afternoon.

Anyway, in my spare time, instead of zoning out and checking the news online – since I’m a complete news junkie – I’ve been playing around with Benedict, you’ll remember he’s my camera. In the past couple of days I’ve discovered the RAW setting on him that allows for some really freaking awesome detail. Now, normally I can fit around 700 large sized photos on my memory card but with Benedict set to large + RAW, I can get a grand total of 160. But oh. my. gawd. Instead of looking like they are simply photos, each of them look like you’re actually looking at the subject in question in real life. They are amazing. So much so that when I went rifling through some of my previous photos from B, I think they look like crap. Well, not really, but I kinda wished I’d started shooting in RAW a while ago. Oh well, you live and learn, eh?

So I’m really excited about that – nerd alert – so I’ve been taking photos of anything and everything, manipulating the focus – oh, the manual focus does so much more in RAW too, things just POP now – and just having a blast. Man, he is so much fun.

So with that, I’m off to see the Wizard. Hope y’all have a wonderful weekend.

I was infinitely stupid on Monday evening. After this weekend, I’ll let you know how it all played out. As for the rest of things, I have 6 concerts in the next three days. I’ll be back.

Ciao.

I feel dead to the world. This week has been so damn busy that I feel like I’ve barely had time to breathe. I have a regular child minding job that runs through the beginning of the week and has included intensive summer academics so the kid can get a head start on the new school year and prepare for testing to get into an honours program at the school he’ll attend for junior high, then I was called in to sub for another friend of mine who’s helping to run one of the orchestra summer camps we have in town.

I must say, at the outset I was really excited to be able to help teach especially with the chamber groups because I absolutely love chamber music but when I was told I’d also be conducting three one hour rehearsals of one of the symphonies, I got a little scared. Petrified would be more like it. But … I always overestimate how freaked out I’ll be in the moment, and I’ve gotta say, yesterday and Wednesday were SO MUCH FUN. I don’t conduct well, I know this, but being able to lead – can you tell I like control? haha – and hear that the kids were starting to sound better under my direction? Priceless. Especially when we’d play together in chamber. So much fun. I want to do it all over again – even though there were some kids I’d like to stab with my bow. I didn’t say that. Anyway, the best part about these past two days was that I had two quartets and small chamber orchestra under my tutelage and they rocked all their pieces. Wow.

I wanna do it all over again tomorrow – even though I can barely keep my eyes open. Man, I’m such a damn nerd.