Ooohhh I am trying not to think about the summer drawing to a close! I am having way too much fun. Saw 311 with Matisyahu this past weekend in Philly. It was a great show. Matisyahu impressed me and I managed to record some video when he came out with 311 to rap during Lovesong. I have to clean up the audio though, it's terrible..

Speaking of which I think I will see if I can tweak the audio on the Come Down Spinkle vid before I post it.

I've been playing and planning for Joseph- the music is really good. Quite a variety of styles in one show. There are some things I want to do with it and I feel like I need to break down and buy a sampler workstation.. they are sooo expensive..

The best news of the past week or so is that I got Nicole and I Platinum VIP tickets to see Tori Amos in D.C. We will get to sit in on her soundcheck, meet her, get a gift bag, and be seated in the first several rows. I am EXCITED!! It's not til October..

Oh Tori fans on my list, I made my profile at http://www.toriamos.com/user/pianoscry so add me as a friend on there!

Well I got the rights to do How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Is that the musical I should direct this year? I think I have the right group for it, but it's a comedy and the version of Robin Hood I am directing is also a comedy.. kinda want to do something more serious.

I finished Deathly Hallows in less than two days last week. it was like crack.

I really want my schedule for my classes I'm teaching!! I'm anxious so I'm going in tomorrow. I have a ton of art supplies and books to drop off anyway.

Got almost 4/5 goal songs at least started.. want to do 5 song ep (at the very least) in the next few months. Depends if I get any new equipment.

Rock on, I'm on break!! I was in shock for the first two days. Unreal!

My mom is up here and I'm going out with her and my brother today!

My dad and his wife leave for their honeymoon today- they are spending Christmas in Thailand and Laos. Crazy!

On Wednesday night I played at our school's little coffeehouse night. I played:

Snowdust Waltz
River (Joni Mitchell)
Tennessee Christmas (Amy Grant)- but I changed it to "Baltimore" Christmas :)
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

.. and that's that. It was fun!

Let's see... I plan on doing a lot of visiting with family and friends over this next week, eating, and not much else!!! I'm really enjoying every second of this break.

Maybe I'll even get to log in to myspace. Maybe.

Hmmmmm Guess I'll read my flist with some coffee and then enjoy my day. Merry merry merry merry merry!

In case you couldn't catch my tv show tonight, here's the link to the video clip:

http://cgi.nationalgeographic.com/channel/video/cgi-bin/NGPortal.pl?bitrate=400k&clip=104133805

Barefoot closed today. It was such a good play. I'm so happy to have been a part of it! It's those kids that keep me sane.

Another long week ahead as I go into production on Annie! I might get on here in like a week or so? Comment if I missed anything, anything at all, that you might want me to know. The flist reading has been non-existant. :(

need shleep

I'm back from a pretty fun weekend at the All Good festival.  I saw a lot of really good bands.

Thurs night
caught a few Brothers Past songs after arriving and setting up camp.  We ended up with a good spot- at least it was flat!  Then it quickly became Tent City.  Brought a cute banner to mark our territory with!
Saw the Easy Star All-Stars that night too.  I liked em for the copious use of wind and brass instruments.

Friday
heard Southern Culture on the Skids on the way down to the main stage, then caught John Medeski and the Itch, Soldiers of Jah Army, Les Claypool, Ween, and capped it off with Trey and Mike from Phish playing with the Benevento/Russo duo.  Great night!  We walked back to the tent during The Bridge and before the Disco Biscuits.. kinda bummed I missed them but it did rain during their set.

Saturday
was very pleasant with Tea Leaf Green, Gary Jules, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals (I really like her), Galactic, Umphrey's McGee, Danielia Cotton, Robert Randolph, The Black Crowes, and the Hackensaw Boys.  I was not as impressed with the Black Crowes as I thought I would be, but it was still a great time. 

Sunday
very low key, it was sooo hot.  I mostly shopped and just listened to the bands.  :) 

I drank a lot of beer and got a lot of sun.  We had crazy amounts of Junebugs mating on our screen canopy.  I was nursing a very very bad pimple on the inside of my nose that swelled and made it difficult for me to breathe and I was in a lot of pain the night before it broke, so that was not a good time.  Otherwise I had fun!  It's inspiring to be there and enjoy so much good music.  I really want a Hammond organ more than ever now.  Since I have nowhere to put one anyway, I'll look into patches for my keyboard.

Lessee if this one actually formats my line breaks.

Well would ya look at that! It's thomask's Birthday! Have a good one, old man!

Tonight I will be attending Starscape. I haven't been to a rave since like, high school. I've been to clubs like Nation in DC but not an actual rave since then. Anyway.. I'll be dancing my butt off! Medeski Martin and Wood, the Disco Biscuits, and BT will be among the live music :) Maybe BT will spin some Blue Skies! Well it's gonna be a very late night so today during the day I'm just gonna lay low here and conserve my energy.

So last night during a fit of boredom I created an account at Adventure Quest, an online RPG. It's very cute and so far it's fun! This led me to discover my Renaissance Fest name: Mandala de la Faerie Aire. Wait, I want to see it sparkly

«.·.·Mandala de la Faerie Aire·.·.«

there we go. Did that work?

I don't know which is my favorite part of that, the "dala de la" or the play on my last name. Oh, I saw a rough cut of a segment of the Nat Geo show and it is looking fantastic! Still no more pics to post of it.. and I know there's some good ones on somebody's camera.. PEOPLE, you NEED to give me pictures! What is wrong with you?! Help a daughter out. She has no digital camera and therefore is at your mercy. I thank you. I want houseplants. Cute nursery recommendations? Any big "no's" for kitties? I already know they can't eat Poinsettia. I'd rather they didn't eat any of my plants.. I'll put out a catnip every once in a while and they will gorge on that and it works for a bit to keep them away from the other plants. To Do: clean patio schedule vet appts car maintenance quick grocery trip GRR it formatted half the entry and not the other half. I don't get it!!

I just had to share this embarassing moment from the other night.

It was the 8th grade graduation, and I was playing the organ in a little chapel on campus. This chapel and building has fallen into quite the state of disrepair over the years. Several months ago, when I first went into the chapel, I tried the organ and it didn't work- it turned on but didn't make any sound. Hadn't been serviced since 1989, according to the little sticker on it. Anyway, fast forward to the rehearsals for graduation. I figured if the organ didn't work, I'd just bring in a keyboard, but to my surprise it actually worked! Yay, I thought, I can just use this and I won't have to bring mine. So we rehearsed three consecutive days last week, and on each day the organ worked fine (although a spider crawled out of it while I was playing it one day, that was... exciting) so I concluded that I shall use this organ, even though the pedals don't work, the rest of it worked well enough.

Okay, so now it's graduation night (this past Wed) and about twenty minutes before 7pm, I turned on the organ to warm her up, played a little bit (couldn't play too much since people were all waiting in the chapel for it to start) and it sounded fine, and then I waited to begin. The graduates filed in as I played Pomp and Circumstance, that sounded fine. Then we did an opening hymn, and towards the end of that I noticed a strange vibrato whenever I played a "D". Hrm, I thought. So the next song, a responsorial Psalm, well that song is in the key of G so D is a pretty prevalent note. Well as soon as I hit that D, it sounded like a duck had DIED inside the organ. It emitted the most AWFUL noise. Not on pitch, totally scary. OK I thought, maybe that was a fluke so I hit the D again, same noise, only worse! Then I thought, maybe it will work itself out, so I played the D again when it came up, and no dice, SAME AWFUL SOUND OF A DUCK DYING. At this point, I laughed- what else could I do? I couldn't just stop playing.. and I couldn't stop the graduation to run out and grab a keyboard from another building on campus.. I just had to keep going, and just not play any Ds! It wasn't just the one D either, it was every D across the entire board, upper and lower registers.

I was MORTIFIED. I mean, to the unmusical in the audience, they prolly thought it was my bad playing. I'm sitting there, completely embarassed, trying to send out vibes of "it's not me, it's the organ, I swear I'm an amazing piano player, really I am". So I had to play the entire rest of the service without hitting any Ds, of course sometimes I'd accidentally hit one.. do you realize how hard it is to play songs and have to avoid hitting a certain note? I'm sure you can imagine my Distress with a capital D!

Well it certainly provided a comical element to the evening, but at the expense of my sanity.. Now I've started the joke around school that we need an "organ donor".

So that's my most embarassing moment lately! What's yours?

I had fun at the bandfest at school! I played a pretty good little set.

Gamble Everything for Love (Ben Lee cover)
Your Cloud (Tori cover)>
Everlong (Foo Fighters)
Space Dog (Tori cover by request for Vinnie)
Can't Go Back (original)

Yeah I thought it was okay. I could have definitely done better but considering my residual cold it wasn't too bad.

I had missed playing!! It was great once again to see my students up there performing their hearts out. I was impressed!!

at a decent hour! :) Yesterday I didn't get home until 8 pm! I didn't get on the computer until like, 11.. I've been trying to catch up. :)

Fiddler is going spectacularly. I'm pleased. I have A LOT to do for it yet, but I love it!!

Teaching is off to a good start too after the nice long spring break. I'm doing Romantic music with the young ones now and Jazz styles with the older ones. Groovy.

We finally watched Narnia this past weekend. It was great! I had read the books as a child but I haven't read them since, so I can't say how true to the book it was. Difficult to watch the scene where *SPOILER ALERT* Aslan was being tortured. I can't handle animal abuse, even of the cgi variety. It was well done though. Are they making the rest of the series?

We still haven't watched Mirrormask! <--- Bad Neil Gaiman fan!!

Um...... oh yeah.

I'm playing in the school's band concert on Thursday. Playing flute. Yay! I had been sitting in with the band just for fun most of the year, but I wasn't expecting to play.. however the conductor said I should! So cool. I still have the same flute I've had since I was 8 years old. There's several jazzy numbers and I believe I'm taking a solo in Basin St. Blues. My favorite song we're playing is Birdland (by Weather Report).

SO BUSY

I'm so busy it's hard for me to think of anything!!! I just got home not that long ago from Fiddler practice so I should go make dinner and just relax while I wait for Dale to get home. I'll prolly just end up readling my flist. :)

Ahhh, my last weekday of vacation. I'm milking it for all its worth.
Is it "all its worth" or "all it's worth"? I can see it both ways. For all it is worth, and for all its ownership of worth.

I've had a nice break. The other day I went to see "Little Women" at the Hippodrome with some ladies from Seton Keough. This was a special matinee performance for B-more high school girls and faculty. It was great! The actor who played Laurie was amazing. His voice was to die for. So smooth and powerful, yet in the character. Bravo to him! Also, the guy in the pit playing the flute was HOT. Always an added benefit. I loved the sets, and the way the story was constructed. The lighting and sound were perfect. The dialogue was good and had funny moments. The songs for me were just good, not great. There were some standout numbers ("Astonishing", "The Fire Within Me", all the "Operatic Tragedy" numbers). Those were all Jo songs though. The songs for the other characters (except Laurie's) weren't that impressive. It was a great show all in all and a fun day with friends! I got one of those plastic bracelets when they handed out the program. It's pink and it says "Little Women- Big Future" on it. What is it with those plastic bracelets???

I've done a lot of cleaning this week. I finished mopping today, did another load of laundry.. Thrilling.

Ooh but I did buy some things on ebay and they have begun to arrive.. all music books. Classroom songbook type stuff. These little goodies should help me end the year on a good note! :) Pun intended!

I did work on two of my songs.. but they still need more lyrics.

I'm just going to relax for the rest of the day. It's gonna be push push push till the end of May.

Everyone should end their journal entries with a rhyming couplet. ^^

First of all, ZOMGuserpics!!!42!! Yay for loyalty rewards. I'm going to have an icon making party.

Well the show the other night did go well! We had a lot of nice feedback. We're going to try to do the radio plays every other month (at the Waterfront in Fells).

The faculty retreat was nice. JC (no, not Jesus Christ, although he was there too, but someone else) and I bipped off to the music store to look at pianos for the auditorium. *grin* We picked out a Yamaha Clavinova 230. I was like a kid in a candy store there and bought a few things- a game for the classroom, a decent piano primer for my 6th graders, and the Into the Woods songbook for me. I wish I'd had more time there to look over the songbook though.. I'm VERY disappointed in the selection and arrangements. I wouldn't have bought it if I'd had the chance to play a bit in the store. There's gotta be a better ItW folio than this one. I mean, if you know ItW, you would agree with me that no collection is complete without "I Know Things Now", "Giants in the Sky", and "On the Steps of the Palace". Anyway.

Today is Fiddler rehearsal.. :) I'm choreographing "Tevye's Dream" today. I have it all worked out and it will be SO fun! For those that don't know, the "Dream" sequence takes place in a cemetary.. so all the dead villagers will be doing the "Thriller" dance at one point. Hahaha! It's gonna be awesome. Fruma-Sarah will be flying and Tevye will also be flying at the end of the scene! :D

Tonight/Tomorrow: Lesseee. Icon making party? Test grading party. Call my family that I have sorely neglected for the past three months. I'm sorry, family. :/

Gotta make sfx for Little Women (the play, not the musical). And they want me to do something with "Ashokan Farewell" but I'm not sure what.

Yep, this entry was mostly about music and musicals. But then again, aren't all my entries about that?

I got a minute here for an update. It's been a busy week of rehearsals. Today I have a long day- teach, lead Fiddler rehearsal, then perform with Mobtown at the Patterson.

Yeah.. I'm performing tonight at the Patterson, the home of the Creative Alliance here in B-more.
http://www.creativealliance.org/events/eventItem677.html

I'm in the radio play and I somehow got roped into being "Councilperson #2" in the main show. I get to say "Why I saw a man sleeping on a park bench just this morning!" in my best Tress MacNeille voice. :)

It'll be pretty fun but it will be a long night. Then tomorrow we have a faculty retreat and I have to be there at 8 am.

What else is going on? I dunno... I gotta get ready for work though. Have a sweet day my sweets!

Last night's "Music for Life" concert went very well! We raised over $250 edit: we raised almost $1400! Over a grand, people! for the local charity My Brother's Keeper which provides meals and other services. The show was well attended and all the bands and acts were really good! I played a six song set:

I Feel the Earth Move (Carole King cover)
How You've Grown (10,000 maniacs song I dedicated to all the parents and teachers)
Mother Revolution (new Tori Amos song)
Snowdust Waltz
The Killing Dove
Croquet

I received a lot of nice compliments, and I was thrilled that so many of my girls from SK were there cheering me on too. I had a blast! It was such a treat to get to perform my stuff for my school!
~
BIG THANK YOU to Jen and Dusty, aka Screeching Felines, for sending me their V-day ep! It rocks! I HEART "Last Call". This is a great lil ep. You just have to go to the website and listen for yourself!
~
What to do today.. well we had considered going to Linganore Winery for a tasting, but it's kinda cold today.. I might just stay here and take care of bidness. I have ppl to call.. my website needs updated SO BAD that it's a monster at this point. I haven't logged in to Myspace since December. Also planning on seeing Michelle and CJ at some point.

I have Monday off though! I have plently of time. Yes, I left the typo in there, because I like the sound of "plently".

I have to write and direct the Easter assembly at school. I have to make the Holy Week stories relevant to modern teen life, and write some scenes that reflect that. Kinda hard..

And I have to prep for Fiddler on the Roof auditions which are March 1.

What else is going on?

Oh, I got a stupid red light camera ticket! POOP! I seriously do not remember running that light. I am, like, the best driver in Baltimore! And this is the thanks I get! Jerks. $75. POOP.

I don't want to end this entry on a sour note. But the cursor has been blinking for five minutes straight and I can't think of anything else to add. I hope everyone is doing well and having a nice weekend.

I had a really great time tonight. I'm so glad I accepted the opportunity to perform and get out there again a little. And, at my favorite establishment, The Waterfront Hotel. The new upstairs lounge is so tight. Leather couches, people.

I have a standing invitation to come and play whenever, and that's awesome.

I need to write!!

It was fun improvising with the gang tonight. Nothing better than the old radio plays. It was chock full of throwbacks to the era. I borrowed a keyboard from school that had perfect sounds.. the hammond for the "Suspense!" play and the spacey brass and strings for "The Planet Man". It was very fun and funny! We may do it again in March at the Creative Alliance.