Fun with Friends

I love hanging out with friends. It's basically almost the best thing in the world. I'm not like my brother at all, really. He needs his alone time, and can usually only spend so long with his friends. I could totally spend the rest of my life with my friends. I don't usually deal with solitude very well...unless it's spent practicing. I would still need a few hours to myself to practice. Other then that, I'm good.

So, yeah, I went to Miranda's end of summer fiesta, which was a lot of fun. It rained really hard for about 5 minutes, which was interesting. Conversation at that time was awesome...hehe.

I also tried to skateboard. I didn't go very fast, but at least I didn't fall. Carson totally fell off once when he ran into the curb, but at least he landed on grass. I went inside to see a bassoon youtube thing that people were watching, and apparently he fell again and did a faceplant into the window of a car. Later, the owner of the car came out, and we watched from inside the house to see if he'd see the faceprint Carson apparently left. It was so amusing.

We also broke open the dragonfly pinata. Well, maybe not in traditional pinata fashion. We were trying to hang it up, and once we got it up, we found out people forgot to bring the broom to hit it with, so somebody went to go get it, and while they were going, the pinata fell on the ground. So after that people just kinda smacked it and somehow eventually just broke it in half. The point of the story is, we got the candy in the end. =)

Then my family (plus Corey) went to Calaway park, which was a lot of fun. Corey made me go on a bunch of rides I would never have gone on if he hadn't been there. It was awesome. I screamed. And usually closed my eyes. Good times.

I ate way too much junk today, and way to little real food. Not good. So I'm kinda drinking a lot of water tonight, since I had basically none today, and thinking I may not stay on the computer until all hours of the night, because sleep would probably be good. Especially since my head is kinda starting to hurt a little bit.

But first I have to upload pictures of Miranda's end of summer fiesta onto facebook. =)

~Calminaiel~

"Do you have your seat belt on?"
"Um..."
"It's important, you need it...uh oh...hey, this is the one without a seatbelt!"
"Geez, I told you not to let anybody in this one!"
"Well, what do we do?"
"...Meh, just leave her there."
"...Corey, can I get out now?!"

Hm...

That's me trying to think of an interesting title, and failing. Go me. =)

Anyways, first of all, I love my friends. All of them.

Secondly, part of the reason I say that is because if I die on the road, I want you all to know I love you.

Why might I die on the road?

Because I can drive!

That's right. I'm happy. Of course, it's only my learners. I know, I know, I waited a long time to get it, but whatever. The point is I have it now. So there.

I also went to the optometrist today and ordered contacts. So that'll be interesting. My eyes got worse since last year. Not much, I don't think. But still. Yay.

Not much else to say. I'm excited for tomorrow. Speaking of which, Corey better come online soon.

~Calminaiel~

"Nobody catches our balls!"

What do you do when...

You can't make your mood go anywhere but down?
You can't help but question how you're going to make it in the world?
You're forced to choose between two things, and you love them both?
You're too terrified to know where to start?
You realize that sometimes no matter what you do, you won't make a difference?
You have absolutely no clue what to do with yourself?
You lose something that your friend specifically told you not to lose?
You start to let yourself think that you might actually make a big difference in somebody's life?
You have no way of helping your friend?
You lose a friend?
You realize that somebody will always have a bigger problem then you?
You need to talk but nobody's available to listen?
You're afraid to hope for things?
You're afraid of messing up?
You have things that you want to say, but you're not sure if others want to hear them?
You start counting the number of opportunities you've missed?
You run out of words before you run out of thoughts?

~Calminaiel~

"To a certain extent, it just doesn't feel right for me to just leave."

Intervention!!

Okay, so I basically have seen/read/heard/talk about way too many hopeless romantic things recently. Being a hopeless romantic, I should not be allowed to experience large doses of hopeless romantic things. At least not when I don't have somebody to be hopelessly romantic with. Which I don't.

Anyways, the point is I'm now filled with hopeless romantic fantasies, and seeing as I have nobody to be hopelessly romantic with, this does not put me in the best mood.

Actually I find this whole situation hilarious. Stupid hopeless romantic. You know who's fault it is that I'm like this? It's Disney's. Think about it. You know it's true.

That's really the only super interesting thing I have to say about today. Other then the fact that my brother go Mario Soccer for Wii. It's pretty awesome. I basically rock at being goalie. Nobody gets through me. =)

So that's super awesome. Now I'm looking forward to Mario Galaxy, because from what I've read about it, it sounds really cool. I also have to keep playing Zelda: Twilight Princess, because I'm so close to finishing it, but I haven't yet. And now that we've got a new sensor bar that actually works, I really should finish it! The plot line's better then a soap opera, honestly.

~Calminaiel~

"And so the debate propaganda starts again."

Any news?

Not really. Just band camp for the last few days. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely not boring, but I really don't feel the need to describe everything that happens at band camp on my blog. It's definitely awesome, but most of the amusing stories are definitely better in person, not over a blog.

Therefore, I don't have much to say.

Although I am going to cave sometime in the next few days and and up posting about 20 videos on facebook, all of which are about 30 seconds long...or less. So that'll be fun, I guess. But I've been saying that they're going to be put up eventually, and I keep putting it off because I'm pouting that I can't put my awesome edited version on facebook. Oh well. Enough of that. I really need to put them up.

On another note, I really should be going to bed right now. Instead, I'm staying up to listen to music. Go figure.

~Calminaiel~

"Bring out your dead!"

First day of camp!

Yup. First day of U of C camp was today. It was pretty good...seeing as I didn't actually do anything. Seriously. I showed up, and filled out my option form, and then handed it in because my bassoon teacher wasn't there to hear our auditions, so we're auditioning tomorrow.

So then I went down to the horn audition room, because, being a bassoonist, I'm naturally a friend of the french horns. I don't know how that always works out, but it does. It's actually pretty awesome. =)

I hung out with the horns, which is always fun, because it's Christine and Henry, and I love them both. Then after they finished their auditions we went to the food court. Mostly everything was closed, but the Bake Chef was open, so we got these awesome buns and cookies. Seriously, those buns were awesome! They're going to take over A&W as my Friday meal before All-Cities. I'm excited.

I went to Henry's house to hang out, and Christine went home. Which was a shame, because me and Henry played with Lego, and it was soo awesome! I won't go into a lot of detail here, but check out facebook in the next few days (or at the end of the week more likely, when I have time to put up pictures) and you'll understand.

Whether you'll understand that we're that awesome, or that we both have no life, I'm not sure. You'll have to discover that for yourself.

But that doesn't stop me from thinking that we're just that awesome. =)

~Calminaiel~

"Are they twins...or gay...?"

Press the panic button!

That's right. The panic button.

I guess it's not a major panic attack. I've just had too much time to think, and I've started worrying about everything I have to worry about.

First of my worries, the fact that I'm going to yet another band camp on Sunday, and I have absolutely no functional reeds. Okay, I have one that kinda works, but it's buzzy and really old, so I'd rather something a little more reassuring than that. I have one reeds that's promising...but that still only gives me two days to make it, hopefully, audition worthy. I've been kinda working on it, so tomorrow I have to mostly perfect it, and hopefully by Saturday I just have to do some finishing touches. Don't tell any professional bassoonist I'm doing this. They always say you should play on a reed for at least a week before performing or even rehearsing on it. So...sh...

So, after that, comes band council. In the last...hm...day, I'd say...I seem to have lost all my confidence as band council president. Well, not all my confidence. I'm just worrying more and more. I mean, it's really hard to follow Andrea as the band council president. She did an awesome job, and now if anything's not quite as good as it was last year, it'll be like, 'well, that was okay, but not like when Andrea was here...'

Okay, I admit, I am overreacting. Perhaps wildly overreacting. People won't be like that, and I've got an awesome team behind me, so I'm sure everything will be fine. But still. At my worst panicking times, that's mostly what I'm thinking.

So then, just because I was on a worrying-roll here, I suddenly realized that university auditions are coming up this year, and I'm like, 'what?! Already?!' So, yeah, that kinda freaked me out. I'm still not sure about university. I mean, I've been planning to go to the U of C for a while now, but I've had a bunch of people tell me otherwise. Well, maybe not completely otherwise, but still. They've said things to make me think about possibly reconsidering. I dunno. I'll talk to my teacher.

Anyways, that's mostly what's been on my mind lately. Well, mostly the first issue, about having next to no reeds coming up to band camp. The other ones just come in when I start panicking.

And today I may have started thinking along a topic that was probably best left alone. Well, no, I won't say that, since I do think about it...maybe not a lot, but I certainly never leave it for very long. Anyways, it wasn't thinking about it that was the problem...more like the length of time I spent thinking about it. And then I let it lead to other thoughts that were definitely probably best left alone. I also unearthed some memories/emotions that I probably wouldn't have missed had I never thought of them again.

But enough of that. All these weird thoughts probably have to do with the book I'm reading right now. It's awesome. It's a Stephen King book (and we all know how much I love Stephen King) called Lisey's Story. Or something like that, I'm too lazy to double check right now. Anyways, it's amazing, and that's the reason I didn't start working on reeds and practicing until 7:15 tonight.

I'm trying to think of something else in my life to add, and I really can't. My life's not too exciting right now. Unless you count me being constantly excited for the coming school year, but if I blab on about that now, you won't want to read about it when it actually gets here. So I'll leave that until it actually happens. =)

*gasp!* Is Corey actually going to compose something that might be playable by All-Cities?! I'm excited. Corey's stuff sounds amazing, and I'm sure it would sound even more amazing when it's not in midi-form.

Alright, so instead of going on as I'm often known to do on my blog, I shall leave you for now. And attempt to think up a half decent quote for the end of my blog...

~Calminaiel~

"I thought you must have pretended to be the Queen to get that girl to let us play with the puppies!"

Good news or bad news?

Okay, maybe it's not really good or bad. More like light-hearted subject, or not so light-hearted subject? Which should I start with. I'll go with the first, because I've been thinking about posting it basically all day. So we'll start with that, and I'll go from there.

So I had this dream last night, and it was really confusing, but at the same time, it was one of the few dreams I have that I can actually explain to other people and it'll make some sort of sense. Unlike that last sentence. Anyways, here we go...

It started out with me at the Colorado music camp. Except it wasn't actually at the place where that music camp is, it was just some random bit of forest or something. But I knew it was Colorado music camp. Anyways, me and a bunch of people were talking, and somehow I got a hold of one guy's iPod.
Then suddenly, camp was over, and it was time to go home. I still had this guy's iPod in my pocket. Speaking of pockets, I actually had them in my dream! Like, pockets that are in guys pants, not the stupid pockets we have in girl's jeans that can't actually hold anything. Anyways...
So to leave the camp we had to go down this huge steep, rocky, hill, where the path twisted and turned a lot. It was really weird. But I had this little go-cart/car gadget thing with an engine and breaks and everything. But halfway down the breaks stopped working, so I was like, darn. So I had to walk the rest of the way.
Meanwhile, I was thinking, "How am I going to get to the airport?" And then I wondered if my mom would drive down to Colorado and drive me up. But then I figured that didn't sound right, so I'm like, "Oh, yeah. Mom's going to drive here, take me to the airport, and then drive home!" Because, in the dream, that made perfect sense to me. =P Oh, and when I got to the bottom of the hill, I gave the guy's iPod back. =P Oh, and if anybody's interested, it was Evan's iPod. lol
Hokay, then I found myself back up the hill, at the same camp, except this time I knew it was Red Deer camp instead. Except there were people there from both Red Deer and Colorado camp. Go figure.
Then we got into groups and started to play this game. Except the Supes never actually explained this game. Everybody else seemed to know how to play, but I didn't. Which made me so made. It was like Mau, except so much worse. lol.
Anyways, after a while, I figured out that the basics of the game was that we group up and find ourselves a base and defend it. To what purpose, I'm not sure, but that's besides the point. We even had these laser guns...that didn't actually hurt...except they did. It was a very weird feeling, believe me, I got shot more than a couple times. =P
So when I finally found out what we were doing, I teamed up with a couple people and we went and raided a bunch of video tapes from another person's base. Again, to what purpose, I'm not sure, but that's what we did. To all who know him, Kofi's base was the one we raided. And Beets was totally on my team. =)
After that we went down and sat in some random place in a circle. And the camp director was there (except it was the Colorado camp director, not the Red Deer one. Go figure), and she had some random old guy with her. And he was some important guy...some past director or something. And she's like, we shoud play something for him! So somehow she decided we should play 'Festive Overture' by Shostakovitch for him. Which was weird, because I've only ever played that at school, not at camp.
Anyways, it seemed like everybody else had the music, except me. So I figured that was okay, I'd just do it from memory. Which I did a pretty good job on. The only weird thing was that I was playing the clarinet...not that I realized that in the dream at the time. =P
So we messed up or something, so we decided to do it a second time. And the camp director said I was doing a really good reading job. Which I thought was odd, because I was not reading it...I had played it before, and was now playing it by memory. But anyways.
So we went to play it again. And this time it sounded really weird because we didn't have any french horns...and at the tempo change, the horn has a slightly important part. Anyways. This time not only was I playing the clarinet, I was playing the clarinet solo at the time. (Again, not that I realized any of this in the dream). But I was thinking, man, I'm doing a really good job. So I kind of stepped forward so that the old important guy could hear me better. But then I stumbled, and then stumbled more, and before I knew it, I had stumbled all the was into the middle of the circle. So I was really embarrased, and I apologized and went back to my spot in the circle. Except it was more like I stumbled all the way to my spot, running into people on the way. It was one of those moments where it seemed impossible for me to walk straight.
So I was still super embarrassed, and I took off my shoes when I got back to my spot, because for some reason I guess it was my shoes that had made me stumble so much. And everybody laughed when the piece was over, but I didn't because I was so embarrassed.

So there was my dream. Kind of odd. Not quite as bad as some I've had, but still quite odd.

And now for something completely different.

I miss my quintet buddies from Colorado. I really didn't realize how much I missed them until I looked at pictures on facebook. I really do miss them. They were so awesome, and so fun to play with, and they made me feel so welcome when I joined them for the last week of camp. I miss a bunch of my friends from that camp.

I hate depressing events. Just in general. I don't like being depressed. I don't deal well with depression. And I'm never quite sure how to help other people when they're depressed. It makes me feel bad. I mean, I definitely don't mind when people come to me when they're depressed. I'm glad that they know I'm there for them, and I'm always willing to be there for them. But I don't always know how to help. So..yeah. I'm not sure if I really have a point to all this...so I'll just move on.

The middle year of jr. high and high school seem to be the worst years. In jr. high it was the year that I basically had to switch all the friends I had, and for a few months I was just drifting. I didn't really feel like I belonged to a certain group of friends, which didn't suit me well. Then the middle year of high school I had a crappy break up. Well, my first break up, which might have been part of the reason why it sucked so much. Anyways, it was not the best year. But, on the bright side, the last year of jr. high was definitely the best year, so maybe this year will be the same. I'm hoping so. We'll have to see.

And I think I'm finally done with this post. I may or may not go to bed after this...I slept in way later then I meant to today. Which felt nice, but at the same time. =P

As a last thought, I'm really tired of my parents bugging me about practicing. I mean, everyday when I don't practice I beat myself up for it, because I know I can't get into this habit of just taking random days off. I mean, what happens if I do that in university? It's definitely not a good thing. I know I have to practice. It definitely doesn't help when my parents comment on the fact that I haven't practiced, and bug me about how I have to practice. Thanks for that, but I'm already mad at myself for letting me take a day off. I don't need reminders about how I really have to stop doing that.

~Calminaiel~

"Woah! A beat on a string! And when I hit it, the blue thing moves too!"

Marimba!

So, for all of you who don't know this, I'm pretty much in love with marimbas. And mallet percussion in general, but marimba is definitely my favorite.

In case you're wondering where this came from, Corey arranged Rhapsody in Blue for wind ensemble, except instead of a piano, it's a marimba and...some other mallet percussion. The marimba's the only one people actually care about anyways. lol. I'm kidding. But still. I'm listening to the midi now, and it's awesome. Even though that song really was never meant to be in midi form...it just doesn't sound right. But still. It's so awesome.

Leading me to my next question...will Corey ever compose something that's playable by an ensemble that I'm in?! I hope so. I really really want to play some of Corey's music. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to be in an ensemble that conveniently enough records music for video games that Corey composes for...or something...=P

I'm sure, with me going into professional playing, and him going into professional composition, I'm bound to run into his stuff at some point or another.

Anyways, enough about that.

Mike e-mailed me audition info for the U of C wind ensemble. I'm kind of excited, and kind of nervous...along with other various ranges of emotions, but those are the two most important ones.

I'm reading this amazing book right now. It's called A Thousand Splendid Suns. I can't remember who it's by, but it's the same guy who wrote The Kite Runner. He's an amazing writer. I'm making my dad read it after I'm done. Which really isn't hard, he loved the Kite Runner.

I really need to start writing letters to people who I've promised to write letters to.

Me, my brother, and Henry went to see Hairspray today. It was awesome. I love it so much.

Seeing as I'm falling into one sentence paragraphs, I'm thinking it would probably be a good idea to leave. I should go to bed, but I'll probably end up hanging out on the computer for another little while.

~Calminaiel~

"Geez, she's such a...something that rhymes with Snitch..."

I'm back...again!

Yes, I know I've kind of been neglecting my blog. Anyways, yet again I'm back from another band camp. It was sooo much fun. I've been telling a lot of stories.

Really, I don't have that much to say here. Life's been going up amazingly fast. It's so awesome.

I'm excited. For no particular reason. It's awesome.

I still need to write a letter back to Haley, since she wrote me one at band camp. Which was awesome. I love getting mail at camp.

I just realized how many times I've used 'awesome' in this short post. I really need to get a wider vocabulary.

I might be retaking math 30. I don't know if I will yet. It really sucks. I'm not pleased.

~Calminaiel~

"Meanwhile, the orcs are sitting in the corner, drinking punch."